Summery: It's been almost two years after the great escape from the labs and expirements and mutants are settling into their lives of freedom and new family. But when an odd flock of robots appear hunting the skies things start to change as a new enemy rises with familiar faces. With a capture of a fellow expirement everyone is risked exposure to the public. Will everyone be able to stay in the dark, or will the secrets of existance be spilled? and who's this new jumpy character that can't stay in one spot for more than a few seconds?
Prologue
In an average town, out in the average country, with the average woods bordering the side of town there was an average baseball diamond being used by an average teenage ball team. It was practice time on an average spring afternoon, though a not so average teenage boy sat in the dugout with a laptop.
Damien E. Vansant scanned over the internet during the snack break. He was one of the few guys on the team that actually had a computer of his own. And one of the few with lucky parents that traveled the world and trusted the sixteen-year-old to the house by himself, but no one knew where his house was exactly. No one looked for it, and Damien never invited anyone. Plenty offered to walk home with him, but he refused every time. Parents offered to drive but he said he'd rather walk. After a while his teammates just gave up.
"What'cha doin'?" one of his teammates asked, plopping down on the bench next to him.
"Nothing," Damien muttered.
"Free experiments chat dot com?" the boy read the site address.
"It's just a chat room website," Damien said and looked through the alphabetical names. First he scanned through the 'A's. "Damn, Alex still hasn't signed up…" he muttered a little surprised. Next month's the second anniversary of freedom for all of us and Alex, Razor, and Gorf haven't found the site yet? They couldn't be dead… could they?
"D… E… V? What's up with that?" the boy read the username.
"My initials you dolt," Damien said distractedly and scrolled through the names.
"Double D, Doc, Piper, Bruiser, Basher, Bomber, Slasher?" the team mate listed off the more interesting looking names. "You know all these people?" he asked.
"Would you go away already?" Damien said sharply when a window popped up on his browser.
"Hi Dev!" a six-year-old girl said waving happily. Sitting beside her was a boy with messy hair with a red and black scarf around his neck coloring a picture with a box of markers. From what the web cam could catch the boy was very good at drawing considered that he looked merely five.
"Hi Eli," Damien said. "Hey Psych."
The coloring boy looked up, waved without saying anything, and turned back to his coloring job.
"Who's that?" the ball player beside Damien asked.
"Some friends of mine now go away," Dev said and turned back to the computer. "Is Bomber around?"
Eli shook her head. "He's out grocery shopping again. I'm trying to convince him to get a puppy, but he still says no."
"You guys there by yourselves?"
"Would you leave?!" Suddenly a whistle sounded from out on the field. Dev huffed and stood up. "I gotta go Eli, say hi to Bomber for me, and good luck with that dog thing."
"'Kay bye!" Eli said as Dev turned the computer off and put it in his bag.
Dev and his teammate walked out of the shade of the dugout to continue practice. The boy the entire town knew as 'Damien,' was in the middle of practicing his batting, cracking the ball against the bat and flinging it to the edge of the outfield every time, when it happened. At first it was nothing but a faint buzzing that reached their ears. When it got louder the teenagers started to look around. As it got louder still there was no denying that the buzzing was there and Dev started to back away from home plate, eyes scanning the cloud dotted sky. Whatever was there saw him before he saw it.
With a colorful exclamation Dev leapt back as red lasers pounded the ground where he had been standing only seconds before. If that wasn't enough the things that landed near the pitcher's mound (the pitcher having ran for his life at spotting the creatures) weren't the robotic bugs that had been buried underneath the Statue of Liberty almost two years ago. Instead there were three giant, metallic birds. From head to sharp talon they stood five and a half feet tall, which meant the wingspans were even larger. The 'wing feathers' looked like long knives, the beaks were sharply pointed also, and the only color other than silver were the robotic red eyes. On the chest of the things were three holes were the lasers had been shot from and the tails were like opened fans to help keep control in the air.
What are these things? Dev wondered. Where'd they come from? More importantly: what do they want?
When the birds landed the baseball team yelled in surprise and ran for cover while Dev ran for his backpack. He slung it over his shoulder and made it out of the dugout right before the place was bombarded with lasers, the chain link fence didn't stand a chance. When he turned to face his attackers all three birds were moving towards him, claws digging into the dirt as the robots walked.
Let's see, show everyone my wings, get shot to death, or run on foot… The decision was obvious as Dev took off for the exit. The robots took flight behind him. One tried to land on top of him but he dodged at the last second, the second one shot at him from the sky, and the third landed outside the exit, blocking his escape route.
Dev skidded to a stop and looked around for a plan B. The three birds were coming forward, forming a tight triangle. There was no way to get by them now without getting caught by one of the sharp looking wings.
"Aw crap," he muttered and ripped the back of his baseball uniform with a pair of dark brown feathered wings. With a jump he took off for the skies. "No pile of circuits beats me in my element!" he yelled as the robots took flight after him. But he wasn't expecting a fourth robot waiting for him from above the clouds. While the free experiment was looking down the metal bird dove down and grabbed one of his wings with a talon.
"Ah!" he exclaimed in a mix of surprise and pain as the claws dug through the feathers and cut through the skin underneath. He kicked and struggled trying to pull away while the free wing frantically flapped so his weight stayed off the trapped body part.
The robot that had him didn't know gentleness as it tried to get a hold of the other wing. In hatred to all robots Dev grabbed a pocketknife from his shoe, flipped it open and jammed it into the joint of the leg. The robot-bird jerked as sparks flew from the injury.
God, if I didn't know any better I'd say it could feel pain… he thought as he pulled and wrenched trying to free his wing. That was a mistake. His wing finally did come free from the jammed talon, but not without the sound of a crack and searing pain. The boy tried to catch himself from the fall, but flying wasn't all the great with only one good wing.
One of the other robots tried to grab him, but missed creating a long gash going down the length of his arm.
The ground came up fast. He slowed down a few miles per hour but the landing was still painful as he rolled across the dirt. When he finally came to a stop his arm stung and was making a red mess as ribbons of blood flowed over his skin, and his wing pulsed with agony as it hung at an odd angle, each slightest movement sending more pain to his brain.
With sharp breaths he rolled over onto his uncut side, quickly pulled his bag off his back and dug through it. Well I was saving this for an emergency… he thought regretfully as he pulled the laser gun he kept from his escape from the labs, the eternal battery good for another hundred years. With accurate eye hand coordination he shot at the robots that were coming back for him. A few lasers missed, but the majority of them hit their mark. Within moments the birds were nothing but sparking hunks of metal lying sprawled on the ground.
Gasps made up Dev's breathing as he watched his baseball team come out from hiding. All of their faces shared the looks of astonishment, disbelief, and lingering fear.
"Shit, shit, shit, shit, crappy shit," he hissed under his breath as he forced himself to his feet, each movement seeming to jerk the broken bone. He backed up from his so called 'peers', even though he was around seven-eight-nine years older than them.
Scenes from movies flashed through his mind. There were a number of different reactions that could happen at times like this.
Then the coach came forward. He was a team member's dad who had volunteered to coach, and looked like the average dad: short brown hair, shaved chin, and a whistle hanging around his neck by a string, rough hands from fixing things around the house…
Dev watched him with a careful eye, searching for the first sign of a threat. As time seemed to stop Dev could feel his blood drain from his face to exit through his arm along with the bleeding tears in his bad wing. The pain from the broken bone was dulling his mind to everything else around him. Within the minutes of shocked silence the teen swayed, fell to his knees and blacked out.
Dun, dun, dun... Poor Dev, first chapter/prologue and he already has a broken wing and a torn up arm. Dev: (evil glare and holds up laser gun) You got to the count of five. 1...
Wow, I didn't mean to get this out as fast as this chapter, but what can I do? I write to much and I already had this idea growing so I just started it.
4...
Um, I gotta go before I get blasted, I'll see ya guys later!
