All characters and settings in this story are owned and created by me, Trace Wiley.
Prologue
I thought I would live here all my life. I thought my family would live with me.
I was wrong.
Chapter 1
"Hey, hey Eric wake up." I heard a young voice crack as he said my name. I blearily opened my eyes to see the boy who woke me up. He looked around ten years old, but he was really around seven. His voice was already starting to change. In a few years, he would look like a male model. He would only live around fourteen years. Poor kid.
Children like him grow at an alarmingly fast rate. He grows so fast because of the Lupine DNA in his body. he looked harmless, but in a second he could morph into a hulking, terrifying wolf monster. And rip out your throat without a thought. The boys name, is Jip. We named him that because thats all he would say when we first came here. that was seven years ago.
"Get up, Risica's making breakfast." He said cheerily, his blond hair shining as he leaned forward, into the light, and pushed on my shoulder.
"Alright, I'll be downstairs in a few minutes, just give me some time to wake up Syska." I told him, as he ran off, his dark blue robe trailing behind him. The kid wore that thing like it was a cape.
I stood up and looked around the room for a shirt to put on. Pretty much everything in the room was black. Even the pants I was wearing. Maybe that had to do with my panther DNA. You know, the need to feel like you're invisible. That, or maybe its because i just looked really really good in black. I found a shirt, black of course, and pulled it over my head, feeling it tickle my large black cat ears on top of my head. I walked out of my room and down the hall, to the last door on the right. I walked inside. The door creaked, just barely loud enough for me to hear it. I looked up at the nest of pillows inside a net of metal bars in the corner of the room. I leaped up, an easy fifteen feet, and grabbed on to the top metal bar.
A small dirty blond head popped up. I looked at the hair that completely covered her head, except for one eye. That eye looked groggy and unfocused, until it saw me.
"Hi Eric," The pile of hair said, one hand reaching up from the mass of blankets and scratching behind my right ear. "Hi Syska," I answered.
Syska is one of the only people I would let get near my ears. Which is why my hair is so long. And thats just the way I like it. She pulled her other hand out of the blankets and started fixing her hair. In a few seconds it would be untangled, and very neat. "Jip has told me that Mom is making breakfast, and you are invited." I informed her, my tone jokingly formal.
"How polite of her," She retorted, her tone just as joking and formal. "Would you like me to carry you down from your nest?" I teased. Despite Syska's Falcon DNA, she couldn't fly well in the morning, and hated it when someone brought it up. "No, I'll get myself down." She snapped, standing in her nest. She unfurled her brown and white speckled wings, and jumped.
The resulting crash from her fall to the floor had me fall to the floor in laughter. The fall hurt me more than her though, my body wasn't made for high altittude impacts like hers was. She quickly stood, and walked out of the room. I knew she wasn't really mad, she never was. We had been raised together all our lives and this was standard routine. We considered each other siblings, and siblings make fun of each other.
When I got down to the kitchen, Breakfast was already laid out. Syska was in her seat, Jip was in his, and Risica was pushing Angorra down into hers.
Angorra was part bat, and therefore, nocturnal. So she didn't like it when Risica pulled her out of bed every morning and made her sit at an uncomfortable table. She thought Risica would understand, Her cougar DNA also made her partially nocturnal.
"Hi, Eric, sit down I made bacon." Risica told me. "Thanks Mom." Even though she was only two years older than I was, she acted like everyone's mom, which earned her the nickname, Mom. "Your welcome," she said sitting in her seat at the head of the table.
After breakfast, I walked outside. Looking from the front porch that ran along the first floor of the house, I could see that all the other families were up and making there way to the places they usually went around the facility.
Growing up in a science facility in west Texas, We weren't a normal family. We lived in a four floor house with a launch pad on the roof for starters. There were no actual parents in the facility. We were all test tube babies, raised and taught by scientists. Until they deemed us old enough for a family, we lived in cages. The families are groups of four or five test subjects (us) in one house.
The facility itself is enormous, a veritable fortress. It spans for miles over the state of Texas, The concrete walls three feet thick and inlaid with steel so the stronger subjects can't get out. The avian subjects have microchips in them, so if they escape, they can be controlled to return to the base. I wasn't told how, and no one's tried to escape.
In the center of the facility, there was a forest, filled with both natural and unnatural animals. The unnaturals were test subjects who the scientists had made that were nothing more than mixtures of animals. Once when I was in there, I came across a wolf/monkey thing. Not very pleasant. Even though it was very dangerous, I still spent most of my time in there. Its where I can fully use my abilities. I have much better eyesight than most humans, and I can turn on and off other types of sight, like infrared and night vision.
I saw a shadow pass over the tall grass at the edge of the porch, and looked up to see Syska fly out over the forest, towards the lake.
And all of the sudden. My world was ripped apart. Literally