Note: Early years. Likely to become a miniseries of six parts -- one for each person. This time, Reza.

He was awake.

He knew he was awake.

Why, then, was everything dark? Why, then, could he not hear, smell, feel anything?

He reached out, seeking something he could touch.

His fingers brushed a hard surface. He knocked on it. Glass.

And suddenly, there was light, and he knew nothing more of it.

---

I have not always been as I am now.

Fourteen years ago, I was a fairly ordinary little boy.

Then I was captured, and I was changed.

When I awoke, I had wings.

Pretty brown wings, they were, already with full flight feathers.

I flexed them often, trying them out. Being small as I was, my mind easily accepted all the new facts it was given.

The first thing I remember is falling and scraping my knee. Not an entirely pleasant experience, to be sure.

The second thing is the man who raised me, for the most part.

His name was George, although he asked me to call him Uncle George.

Uncle George was of medium height, with graying hair, kind eyes, and glasses. Once the sun had gone down, he would tell me stories before bed.

Why was I treated so well?

I was the first truly successful avian recombinant. True, the flock have always believed themselves to hold that distinction, and I have no desire to destroy their beliefs, but I was the first.

The first tests were fairly simple. Stamina, strength, intelligence.

I remember some of the Erasers. Although there were some of them who would clearly like to barbecue me alive, most of them actually looked up to me.

I grew up as a friend to most of the scientists. Being of an inquisitive bent, by the time I was ten, I knew more about the facility than some of the scientists did.

I remember also one night when I was about nine, not yet too old for bedtime stories.

It was late, later than usually, and I was almost asleep already.

Uncle George began to tell me a story, something about dancing princesses, when he suddenly stopped and listened for a moment. "I think it's safe," he said in his quiet voice.

"I want a story, Uncle George," I said sleepily, watching the patterns on my eyelids.

"Very well. I'll give you one," he said. "Once, a long time ago, there was a little boy..."

I listened raptly as he went on. This little boy had several remarkable (and quite unlikely) adventures, most of which involved the creepy house on his street.

"So what was the little boy's name?" I asked, yawning.

"Michael," said Uncle George. "His name was Michael."

So I fell asleep, and I dreamt of a little boy named Michael, and he was me.

---

Once I turned twelve, I was deemed responsible enough to be taught how to fly.

Now, since I was the first human to fly under their own power, I mainly learned how to fly from some inept scientists, nature videos of birds, and guessing.

But once I had the hang of things, I took to spending entire afternoons aloft. I loved flying among the birds, free.

Despite the fact that it was entirely possible, I never crossed paths with the flock. I lived in Colorado, they lived in California. Simple.

Later that year, I was allowed into the labs for the first time. I peered at the equipment as only a child can, wanting desperately to know how it was used.

I was taught some of the functions of certain machines and how to use them. After a while, I was allowed to work among the scientists. I loved every moment of it.

---

I turned thirteen, and was not quite fourteen, when I first heard of the flock.

Actually, I only heard of their reported deaths, and the death of one scientist, Jeb Batchelder.

I pored over the reports I was given for days, wondering at the few photos of others like me. I was amazed. Others could fly?

I created a few recombinants of my own in that timespan. Mostly, they were simple things, mutations done on animals, instead of humans. Mice with wings, for example. Snakes that could talk.

And the days passed.

---

Of course, I had to turn fifteen eventually, and this was celebrated with a birthday party. This was where I met Ari for the first time.

He was a new Eraser at the time, and obviously none too happy with it.

So while the scientists celebrated my survival for eleven years, I wandered over to him.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Daddy went away," he said, in a small voice that hardly fit someone his size. Ari was almost as tall as I was at that point, and twice as strong. "He left me alone. I was scared."

"I never had a daddy," I said, feeling slightly bad about myself.

"Really?" he asked, and went off somewhere else.

And that was my sole encounter with anyone who ever knew the flock.

---

Shortly after my fifteenth birthday, I woke in a tank.

Everything was dark around me, but I felt for the sides of the tank. They were glass.

So why was I in the tank in the first place?

I guessed that they were trying to change me again. I felt my wings as best I could. Same as ever. I ran a hand over my skin and hair. Normal.

There was light, suddenly.

I blinked in surprise. Through the distorting liquid, I saw two scientists standing, both holding clipboards and taking down notes.

One of them looked up a moment, saw me, and said something casual to the other scientist. The other scientist pressed a button, and I was free.

I stumbled from the tank, naked and disoriented. One of the scientists handed me a towel.

Shivering, I was led to a small room that held a bed, a mirror, and a sink. Not much.

On the bed some clothes were laid out. I quickly put them on, threading my wings through the slits provided for them with practiced ease.

It was then that I turned to the mirror.

I seemed to absorb light. My wings seemed to have no color. It was like I was the opposite of existence. A black hole personified.

I plucked a feather from my left wing. Examining it, it seemed like any other feather of mine. Except... it seemed to just absorb light. As if the light had never existed. And it was ragged-edged, like an owl's feather.

I was intelligent. If it looked like an owl's feather, it would probably do the same thing as an owl's feather -- silence my flight. Or at least make it quieter.

My hair and eyes had the same quality as my wings; they absorbed all light. Since this effect applied to my entire body, I looked more like a walking shadow than anything else.

Someone knocked on the door. "Come in," I called, still standing before the mirror.

The scientist who entered was one I didn't know. "Reza," he began. "We have a new mission for you..."

---

That mission was the first of many to come. For four years, I traveled the States -- mostly on investigations of other facilities. I saw facilities newly established, and those that had been around since the 50s.

Yes, the 1950s. Remember the Roswell crash? The strange bodies pulled from the wreckage and kept on ice ever since? Those were no extraterrestrials... they were the first recombinants to survive outside the womb.

In those backward days, test tube babies had not even been attempted. So those first recombinants -- experiments, if you will -- were actually born to human mothers aboard aircraft belonging to those early facilities. These strange experiences became referred to as "alien abductions".

In my time, there were already third-generation recombinants, whose grandparents had been created in the 1950s. These third-generation experiments tended to be of higher rank than those actually created by scientists.

The year I turned nineteen, I was sent on a mission to the South, to retrieve a fellow experiment who had gotten lost in a search for escapees.

And of course, you know the story from there.