I was 14, a girl, a mutant freak, and I couldn't even make scrambled eggs without burning them to the pan.
"What kind of leader am I?" I grumbled.
"A very bad one." said Iggy. "I can smell the horribleness of your cooking. What were they, scrambled eggs?"
"Started out fried, turned over hard, went to scrambled with the final result of charcoal and a ruined egg pan."
"Clearly. Here, I will make the eggs while you wake up the girls and Gazzy."
"Wait, Ig-" I started, but it was too late. There was a loud crash, accompanied by loud groan and a series of curses.
"Max, don't move furniture without telling me! Its bad enough being blind as it is, but you could at least tell me when you do something rash!"
"It wasn't rash, and it was in the way!" I said indignantly.
"Morning, Max." said a voice behind me. It was Fang, who was tall, dark, quiet, and could be the perfect assassin. Not that he'd ever want to be. Though he could be cold sometimes, he could also be surprisingly sweet.
"Morning, Fang. Max decided we needed to be punished, so she went ahead and made breakfast herself."
Fang groaned. "What did we do this time?"
I stomped into the living room, where I could still hear the two boys' guffaws. I climbed the stairs to Nudge and Angels room.
"Come on girls, up and at em'. The response was two groans. I pulled open the curtains as Nudge and Angel sat up.
Nudge asked, "Did you try to make breakfast again, Max? I smell something burnt."
"Hey, I didn't set off the smoke detector this time, at least."
"Max?" I heard Angel whisper.
"I'm here, sweetie. What's wrong?" Angel looked slightly sick. Her face was pale and slick with sweat.
"Just a bad dream. I'm o.k."
"Im sorry, honey. Why dont we go pick strawberries this afternoon?"
As I helped Angel get dressed, I wondered if she'd been dreaming about erasers. Heaven knows how many times I'd woken up gasping, the image of an their claws inches from my face.
"I'm really o.k, Max. Dont worry about me."
Oh, thats right. Aside from being a bird mutant with wings, which the whole flock was, Angel could read minds. Only Angel could read minds, and not even her older brother, the Gas Man, (the name says it all) A.K.A Gazzy, has her ability. Angel was the youngest of the flock, followed by Gazzy, then Nudge, completing with Iggy, Fang, then me. Iggy, Fang, and I are all 14, but I was older by a matter of months, so I was the flock leader.
Long story short, we got injected with bird genes as babies, stolen or bought from our parents, and brought to a lab called the school. Three years ago, we got busted out by a man named Jeb, and brought to a house in the mountains. We lived like a happy family for a while, but then one day Jeb disappeared. We all assumed erasers took him. Erasers were also experiments from the lab. They looked like normal humans until they transformed into wolf-like men, with long teeth, sharp claws, and more muscle than a wrestler. I wasn't surprised that after three years, we were still dreaming about them. After all, they were pretty hard to forget.
"I know youre fine, Angel, now get down to breakfast."
The meadow we were picking strawberries in was a few miles away from our house, and it was quite beautiful. I suddenly heard a scream.
"Max! Erasers! Angel-"
I sprinted towards the voice as fast as I could, and almost smacked into a huge, hairy eraser. He had Angel by the throat. I gave a wordless shriek of rage and did a spinning front kick, right into the eraser's hairy face, making him drop Angel. I suddenly felt a painful blow to my side, and fell to the ground. Before I fell unconscious, I got a glimpse of the eraser who was holding Angel. There was a long, jagged scar running from the middle of his forehead to his cheek, running through his eye.
"Ari?" I gasped, before being claimed by darkness.
"Max? Max! Wake up! Max!"
I groaned then sat up quickly.
"Angel? Angel!" I looked around wildly. "Wheres Angel?"
"Max…" Nudge looked at me. "They got her, Max. They took her into a helicopter and left. Fang tried following, but they almost shot him." Her eyes filled with tears. "What are we going to do? I'm so sorry, Max... " THen she set her head on my shoulder and cried.
"What are we going to do? We are going after her, of course."