A/N My first Fanfiction! Enjoy!
Phew, I finally escaped.
My breath was coming out in short puffs and sweat was dripping off my forehead and nose. My arms stung from the scratches I got from running through bush at top speed, away from the most horrible place on earth, The School.
I stopped for a second, doubling over onto my knees and took in some short, fast breaths, brushed my over-long brown hair out of my eyes and then started running again, through the trees and the brush. Behind me, I heard the barking and shouting of the Erasers that were after me, trying to catch me and They loved doing awful experiments on us to see how long we could last and stuff. bring me back to the School, to the Whitecoats-. At that thought, I pushed my body to run faster.
I just escaped from the place that created me; The School. You see, I am only 98% human. The other 2%, well, the other 2% is avian DNA, so I have a few things that make me special, or maybe I should say different from other people. For one thing, I have wings! I have a whopping ten foot wingspan and I personally think that they are magnificent. My wings are mainly caramel brown, with a couple specks of darker brown, almost black in some places and a bit of grey around the edges. They are almost the same color as my hair, which comes down to my waist. I have a couple other qualities that are bird related, but those aren't very important right now. I'll tell you about it later, if I survive.
While I lived in The School, they would keep me in a dog crate between experiments. Beside me, there were some other bird kids that also made it past childhood, and they could communicate with each other. I learned English just by listening to them but I never talked to them and they never talked to me. I don't think they even knew I existed. But sadly, one day, all six of them were taken one morning and never came back.
I thought they were dead because it seemed like the most believable solution. No one ever escaped from the School and if they actually managed to, the Erasers would chase after them and kill them, no questions asked. But the night after they left, I was looking out the open lab window through the bars of my cage and saw five dark shapes flying away from the place of death and out to the mountains beyond, huge wings moving powerfully and a bit wobbly, like they had never flown before, followed closely by three whirling helicopters. I could hear Whitecoats shouting and Erasers barking at each other down on the ground. The other freaks around me just ignored the commotion outside but I knew what was going on. The other bird kids had escaped. I will always wonder if they survived.
That night, I dreamt that I too escaped from The School and, using my beautiful wings, flew high above the clouds, away from the evil claws of the hounds of hell and into the gentle arms of freedom. But I knew it was just a dream and that my dream will never become a reality. Or so I thought.
The next day, I awoke from my wonderful sleep to the harsh lab lights that flooded through the doors and from the ceiling and the sound of voices. There were the regular, human voices of two Whitecoats, the voices of silk of four Erasers and the sound of wheels squeaking. I began to feel familiar fear start its course through my veins, making me shiver as my blood ran cold. I hoped with all I had in me that they would take someone else, just not me. But of course, the voices came closer and closer until I saw six pairs of feet, two small, human pairs and four huge, oversized Eraser pairs, turn the corner around some larger empty crates and come to a stop right in front of my own. I scuttled backwards and pressed my back against the bars at the back of my cage, my wings pressed so hard in-between it hurt. I pushed harder despite the pain, desperately trying to escape their evil grasp and what they had in store for me.
"Are you sure that's what the Director wanted?" One of the Whitecoats, a male, asked. "We didn't even get a chance to finish the blood tests and the DNA extraction."
"Yes," said a female voice next to him. She sounded a bit disappointed. "She said we can't risk the last one getting away. It's better this way."
She must be talking about the other bird kids that got away, I thought. Does that mean…. That I'm the last one here?
"Okie dokie then! Let's get this show on the road!" The male Whitecoat piped. In the next second, my crate was hoisted into the air by one of the Erasers and tossed onto the cart. I had just enough warning to quickly grasp a bar in each hand before the metal cage connected with the plastic cart and flipped over, causing me to crack my skull on the top of it and land on my back in the upside down dog crate. The Erasers laughed as I cried out in pain and one of them began to push the cart toward the exit while I tried to right myself and the other Erasers poked at me through the bars, trying to scratch me and laughed some more.
They pushed the cart through a pair of double doors and, blinking and shielding my eyes in the bright sun rays, out to the court yard of the School. There was no fence. Behind the School's court yard lay a large forest, plus the mountains I saw from the lab window further behind that. And about a dozen Erasers.
The Eraser pushing my crate lead the pair of Whitecoats to the middle area of the court yard and pulled to a stop. The Erasers were laughing hysterically around me, giving me the start of a headache with their high pitched barks. After a few heartbeats, the Erasers started to retreat to the edge of the grounds, lining up with their backs to the forest, their faces already beginning to morph. I could see muzzles starting to form, over large canines as sharp as knifes starting to jut out the sides of their no longer handsome faces. Ears starting to get pointy and nails turning into claws. I knew what was about to happen; I wasn't stupid. I knew why the Erasers were laughing; I had heard them make the same noises when I was in my crate in the lab. They laugh like that when they were about to make a kill. Everything here meant my death.