Every so often (no way to tell time here) we're let out from our cages into outdoor pens, complete with electrified fences and chain link roof! How luxurious! Yeah, it's basically a larger cage, only with space to run around a bit and try to soak up a little bit of warmth from the sun. Of course, that's hard in the winter, or in the rain like it is now. Not that they care.
The right side of my pen isn't electrified, as it doubles as the left side of the pen next to mine. The left side however, looks out at the woods I'll never see. I'm currently laying flat on my back smack dab in the center of the pen. I figure if lightning strikes the metal, it'll zap around me and I should be good. Besides, I don't mind the gentle water on my face. It reminds me that I'm alive. Which isn't too great in this nightmare.
Birds chirp in the distance and suddenly one streaks over my pen and rests in the shelter of a hole in a tree. I close my eyes. What I wouldn't give to stretch my own midnight wings for once, without supervision and just…disappear. Never have to deal with the School or any of this crap. It'd be like I never existed.
Guess we're not all that lucky. Snarling nearby jerked me out of my reverie. I sit up fast, my acute hearing on full alert. At first all I pick up is the soft pitter-patter of rain on the forest foliage, but then the heavy metal door to the pen next to mine swings open and hits the wall with a bang. I jump to my feet. Only Erasers can throw the door like that. And when I say Erasers, if you think of the pink rubber tips of pencils, you've got another thing coming.
Two monsters throw a bleeding mass into the pen. It lands in a puddle of mud, and one of the Erasers leans over it, whispering something. It spits on the monster, and that's when I realize. Wait, that's no mass…
I rush to the fence as the Eraser stomps down on her arm with a sickening crack. "MAX!" I snarl, clawing at the fence. She screams once then stops herself, trying to hold herself together. The creature laughs darkly, then slams the door shut behind him as he leaves.
"Max!" I call, but she just lies there in the mud. My stomach drops momentarily. What have they done to her this time? "Max? Can you walk?"
I notice from here that she's panting, and minutely shakes her head. "Give me a minute," she sighs, and I can barely hear her over the rain. I nod and crouch along the fence. What if she can't perform tomorrow? They could kill her for that.
"Come on, Max. If you don't get up now, you might not tomorrow." Sighing and seeming to use every ounce of strength she had in her, she dragged herself out of the mud with one arm and crawled over to the fence, collapsing again beside me. I meet her brown eyes for a second before she closes them again.
"Max… Are you alright?" Trying not to react, I looked over her injuries. The arm that the monster had stomped on was bent out where it definitely shouldn't, bruises ranging from yellow to purple dotted her arms, neck, and legs, but the most prominent injury was the three claw marks gashed and trickling blood down the side of her face and across her cheek. "What did they do to you?"
"I'm peachy, thanks for asking," she mumbled hoarsely, still not opening her eyes. "Pain tolerance testing. The bruises are from restraints and where they had to hold me down and from injection sites."
I take off my shirt quickly and wrap it around my hand, reaching through the fence to gently press it to her cheek. She winces and bolts to sit up. "Sorry…" I mutter, placing my other hand behind her head to support it, but don't move the cloth. "And this?"
"This," she answered, "was from an Eraser. Let's just say they didn't like my screaming."
To be honest, I couldn't take it either. I mean, this is where I've spent my whole life. I fall asleep every night and wake up every morning to the sound of screaming experiments. After all, that's all we are. Experiments. And I don't know why, but Max's screams do something else to me, something stronger than the usual disgust. I don't even know why. It could be because I know her. I mean, we've met other experiments with brain function to talk, wings too even, but Max and I have always been in this nightmare together for as long as I can remember. I guess that's why when it's her screams and pleas of agony that split the air, I find myself clawing and pounding at my cage to get to her until my hands bleed and bruise.
You have no idea how much it would please me to watch every one of these sick bastards bleed out in the most painful way possible for everything they've done to her. To us. To perfectly good people in general. You have no idea how much I'd love to break their necks with my own two hands.
As if to reinforce that, I move my hand up the side of Max's face and she hisses, trying her best to keep in the cries of pain. I know because I do the same thing. "Sorry. Give me your broken arm, I need to get it back in place before it sets."
"No! Just leave it, they'll fix it," she says angrily, jerking away at the idea of me touching it. I sigh. This is going to hurt like Hell, but I have to.
"Are you sure, Max? They could just use it against you." Her eyes narrow, but she knows I'm right. Reluctantly, she moves her left arm into my grasp. Taking a deep breath, I count to three in my head then snap the weird angle back into a straight line.
She screams loudly, punching me with her good arm. "FANG!"
"Sorry! It had to be done! Look at least you're not dead."
"Is that supposed to be a good thing?" she mutters.
"True enough," I say and almost smile, until the door to my pen flings open and they drag me back to my little cage. I just hope they're not too rough with her, because I love her.
Whoa, did I just think that? I curl up and try to sleep over the cries and pants and other random noises of the… things around me. Max… did I love her?
They have some crazy drugs here, I finally decided.