Hi guys, so another little disclaimer, I own nothing except my OC and my own story-line. Don't forget, please leave a review if you liked the story, have constructive criticism for me, or have any story ideas. I'm open to suggestions and thoughts for the plot. Thanks, hope you enjoy.

8 Years Prior:

"No!" I screamed as I punched, kicked, and slapped the two men restraining me. "Help!" I yelled, "Help me!" It was pointless, and I knew it was pointless. No help would come from my parents, who stood off to the side of the doorway, eyes cast to the ground as if they couldn't bear the guilt of seeing me being taken away, of it being their faults.

"How could you do this to me?" I snarled at my mother and father. "We do love you," my mother told me, and I softened for a moment at the sadness that coated her voice. My father just scoffed. My mother may have loved me, but he never would.

"You-" I was interrupted by a hand smacking across my face. "You will not speak to your father that way," my dad told me strictly. That was all it took for my rage to consume me once more, "You are not my father, you have never been my father," I spat menacingly. My mom winced, but my father just chuckled.

That was all I remembered of that time before blacking out and waking up on a lab table, needles and IV's in my arms, and a knife digging into my back. They had been giving me a pair of 16 foot, silver wings, feathers and all. And I had felt every minute of it. It was agony, but through my pain, a man had stood in the corner of the room. His arms had been folded over his chest and an amused gleam in his eyes told me he was playing a game, a game I would never win. Then he uttered the words that would ring in my head and haunt my nightmares for a long while, "Welcome to the School, Skylar Clarke."

Modern Day:

My back was stiff and body protested with pain as I lifted my head from the floor of my crate to take in my surroundings. It was the same room. The same fluorescent lights illuminated the room, the same horrid antiseptic smell filled my nose, and the same cold eyes met my gaze.

"As always, Test Subject #2, I'm impressed. Your pain tolerance never ceases to amaze," Jeb said, managing to make the complement seem menacing. "Your experiment was a success." I just gave him a wry grin and retorted, "And your ability to do the unthinkable and inhumane continues to astonish me daily." The malicious grin left his face as he said, "You may think I'm wicked and evil, but you have no idea of the countless lives I could save with the sciences we are testing in this lab."

"I don't think you're wicked, I know you are," I spat, "and what you're telling me is you're saving countless lives at the expense of other countless lives." "You would never understand," he remarked coldly, before tossing an apple through a slot in my cage then sealing it once more. "Go to hell," I quipped, as Jeb strode out of the room. "Will do, Sweetie."

I flopped onto my back and took a small bite of the apple. It wasn't sweet, it wasn't tasteful, and it's juice didn't quench the seemingly never ending thirst in the back of my throat. It was genetically modified to nothing but provide me with nutrients, and nothing else.

I am relentless, I am strong, I am resolute, I told myself repeatedly, hoping it would become true one day. Because currently, I was breaking. I was both externally and internally being torn to shreds, and I didn't know how much more of it I could take.

But I couldn't focus on that, so I tried not to. I simply focused on my breathing, on the rising and falling of my chest, acknowledging that it was there. That I was alive and breathing. But just being alive isn't living, and I didn't know if I would ever live again.

I was torn out of my thoughts by hushed voices in the hallway outside my room. "We have to get everyone out," said a voice that was most definitely female. "And die in the process! No, we're leaving and getting out of this place once and for all," whispered another voice that was deep and masculine, even in a whisper.

"Fang, please, think of all the people around us, of who ever's in the room beside us, they are like we were, Fang. Tormented and tortured, destined to stay here until the end of their painful existences, we can't leave them. You wouldn't leave if it was one of the flock in these rooms." And with those quiet words, the door of my room was opened to reveal six children, three of which look around my age.

Two of them looked almost identically, except for the difference in gender, with wide, innocent blue eyes and golden hair, they appeared to be the youngest. The third youngest was a girl with brown, wide, bambi eyes and chocolate colored skin.

One of the older boys had strawberry blonde hair and glazed over blue eyes. He was obviously blind. The other older boy had jet black hair, and dark eyes to match, with his pale skin and black attire, he looked like an angel of death. The girl, the one who I thought had been the one to convince them to save me, had light brown hair with amber brown eyes.

"Oh, look at her hair!" The Bambi eyed girl exclaimed. "It's so pretty, look Max, it's silver!" That was the one difference that had appeared in me that had startled me the most since I'd been at the School.

My hair, once black and raven, had turned silver due to one of the medications and drugs they had given me. So it now fell to my waist in a shade of silver to match my silver-grey eyes.

"Nudge, now is not the time to worry about hair, Fang get the key to her crate," the girl who was evidently called Max ordered. Fang did as he was told and grabbed the key off of the hook it hung on by the door and unlocked my crate. "Who are you people?" I asked as I crawled out of the cage I had lived in for years.

"We can do introductions later, for now, let's just try and make it out of here alive," Max said to me, her tone grim. "How do I know this isn't some kind of test? That you're not here to murder me?" I questioned. And the sudden truth of what I had said hit me, it could just be a test. One of Jeb's plans to see how much it would take for me to break.

"It's not a test, and we're trying to harm you, we're trying to help you," Fang said, and for a brief second his eyes looked upon with sympathy, understanding, and compassion. Then he simply walked out into the hallway. The rest of the group began to file out of the room as well until only the little angelic girl stood, looking at me expectantly with her hand outstretched.

Without thinking about what I was doing I clasped her hand and joined everyone in the hallway. "Okay, so there are four more rooms-" Max began, but suddenly an alarm sounded, one so loud it felt like my skull had cracked open and my ears were bleeding. Flashing red lights filled the hallway.

I clutched my head and began to shake. It was so loud, but none of the other's even flinched, like they didn't hear it to the extent I did. "Are you okay?" Inquired the girl who had commented about my hair. "Nudge, back up," Max told the girl. She jumped out of the way as Max and Fang kneeled down to where I was on my knees, clutching my head.

"It's loud isn't?" Max asked. I attempted to nod. Fang lifted his head and glanced around the hallway, his face paled. "Max, they're coming, we have to go." "Just wait a minute," she snapped. She turned to me once more, "Okay, focus on our heartbeats. Not the alarm, not the lights, just one of our heartbeats," she told me.

So I tried. I narrowed in my acute hearing on the loudest thump of a heart there was in the hallway. It was steady and rhythmic, it blocked out the alarm. I released the death grip on my forehead and began to stop trembling. I rose from the floor, "Let's go."

Fang nodded, "The nearest exit is a window near the labs, can you fly?" In response, I unfolded my wings, the red flashes glinting off their silver feathers. That was when I noticed wings protruding out of all of their backs. They were like me.

"Okay, great, let's get moving," Max ushered, her voice betrayed her urgency. Max took the blind boy's hand, and the little girl reached for mine once more. "I'm Angel, by the way," she told me, before the group took off at a run.

I kept up with them easily, Jeb's physical tests had ensured I would be able to run as fast as necessary in any situation. Angel stumbled and I righted her before continuing to sprint until we reached the labs. Around us examination tables were lined up in rows, and the antiseptic smell was stronger here than anywhere else in the School.

The window, it was across the room. I was forty feet from freedom, and I was terrified. "Come on," Max's determination was almost scary. She yanked a metal pole from the leg of one of the tables and swung it at the window with unbelievable force.

The glass shattered and fell to the ground in shards. I completely unfurled my wings, all sixteen feet of them, and Nudge looked a little awe-struck. I smiled before I felt a solid and forceful figure slam into my side, sending me fly across the room. The eraser retreated back to the doorway. I looked up, Jeb stood in the doorway, erasers gathered around him. "Skylar, you wouldn't be planning on leaving would you?"

I snarled, "So it's Skylar now, not Test Subject #2?" "Oh Dear, you've always been Skylar, but we needed to break you. Although that proved to be more difficult than expected." Jeb's grin was malicious and sickening.

I heard a sharp intake of breath from behind me. Max was pale and shaking with fury. "You!" She screeched. "Max, lovely to see you, I see the flock is doing well," Jeb gestured to the rest of them. The flock, I wondered silently, like birds.

"You won't touch them," Max's voice was low and menacing. "And I won't, well, that is if you give me the girl." My heart sank, I was headed back to my crate, back to the needles, labs, and scientists. My taste of freedom was over before it had even started.

Because they wouldn't help me, they wouldn't fight for me. Why would they fight for someone they didn't even know, risk their lives for a mere test subject. Max glanced at me and opened her mouth to say something.

I beat her to it though, I took a step forward and announced, "Take me, let them go and take me." "Come here," Jeb motioned for me to walk forward. My feet seemed glued to the floor and my heart was beating rapidly. I swallowed my fear and began walking robotically towards him.

"No," Nudge cried. "Max you have to do something!" "It's fine," I told them, though I knew my voice was shaking. "No, it's not." I was shocked to find that Fang had said it. "Just go, go before one of you get's hurt," I told them. I couldn't be the cause of one of them being harmed, I may have been breaking, but that would shatter me. The people I had just met, who had tried to help me, regardless if they had known me or not. That would truly break me.

I was ten feet away from Jeb when I saw something fly through the air, the light making it look like a flash. It grazed Jeb's eyebrow and blood began to leak out of the wound and down his face. It had been glass, a shard of glass from the window. Max had thrown it.

Jeb's voice was calm and unwavering as he said to the erasers, "Get them." He looked over me once more and added, "All of them."