The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything into perspective. Take right now, for instance.

Run, Max, run. Come on! You know you can do this.

I gulped in air, my lungs desperately straining for the oxygen to sustain them as I raced for my life. My mind had exactly one focus right now: to escape. Nothing else mattered, not the pain of my chest seizing as it struggled to breathe in, not the sting of my arms being scratched to ribbons by the brush or the ache of my feet filled with rocks and sticks. I could deal, as long as I put as much distance as I possibly could between me and the Erasers.

Erasers: giant wolf-human hybrids, usually armed and always bloodthirsty. I knew they existed, I knew they were dangerous. I hadn't known they would come after me so quickly. And if they caught me?

Yeah, that snaps everything into perspective. Just one second of being a priss meant my swift, most likely agonizing death in short order. A little scratch here and there doesn't matter so much with that in mind, does it?

Run. You're faster than they are; you can outrun them!

I'd never been this far away from 'home' before—if you could possibly stomach calling the laboratory I'd come from home—and I was completely lost. At this point I could be in New Zealand and I wouldn't know. I was just running, running far far away from my own living nightmare. I could outrun them, could find a clearing with enough space for me to—

Oh, no. I heard the unearthly baying of dogs through the trees as they picked up my scent, and my stomach did a backflip. I'd probably been tracked before by the Erasers, but I could outrun them. My whole family could, even the six year old. But we couldn't possibly run faster than a big dog.

Erasers were bad, but they'd just shoot me. I'd be taken back and dissected alive most likely, which was terrifying, but that was nothing next to being torn into by a dog, teeth sunk into my flesh and ripping me apart while the Erasers just leered at—Enough. Running was my priority. There was one thing I could do to escape the dogs, but I needed to get to a place where that could happen. Thinking about my imminent death was much less important than actually avoiding it.

See? Perspective!

Except the more I ran and didn't find a clearing, the closer they seemed to get. And then I saw it: dim light filtering through the woods in front of me. A clearing! I could see it! The trees were thinning out a little bit and there was light and…

I burst through the treeline, chest heaving and a cold sweat on every inch of my skin. I was ready to jump, but then:

No – Nooooo!

I skid to a halt, arms flailing as I leaned back far enough to plant my butt on the dirt. This wasn't a clearing, not at all. In front of me was a cliff, a sheer face of rock that dropped down to a bottom I couldn't see at this angle. Way far down.

Behind me were Erasers and dogs, both psycho and dying to take me down.

In front of me was a canyon that I could definitely die jumping into.

Neither option was great. In fact, they both stank utterly and truly. The dogs had started yelping instead of just howls, and probably the Erasers were yipping a bit too. They'd found their prey: moi.

I stood up and peeked out over the deadly drop, my heart speeding up more if that was even possible.

Yeah, I'd freaked out and lost precious running-away time avoiding running right off the cliff. But this wasn't even a decision. If you were me with the same shitty options, you probably would have done the exact same thing.

So I held out my arms, closed my eyes, put my toes on the edge of the rock… and I jumped.

There was an angry shout from an Eraser and a kind of hysterical shriek from one of the dogs. It would've been funny, had I been in any sort of place to find humor here. And then all I could hear was the sound of air whistling past my ears as I fell.

You might think I'm a little crazy. I probably could have run along the cliff for a while, ducked back into the woods, and kept my lovely little life going. Instead I committed suicide and bailed off the edge of a cliff.

Nuts, right? Wrong.

I took a deep breath, and then unfurled my wings as hard and fast as I could.

Thirteen feet across and pretty as the day is long, they caught the air like they were supposed to. I was suddenly yanked upwards by the force of the air like a parachute had been opened, jerking on my whole body and nearly pulling the whole wing out of its socket.

Wincing, I pushed downward with all my strength, then pulled my wings up, then pushed downward again. And I was flying.

I jolted upright in bed, hand over my heart. I know, it's so painfully cliché and damsel-y that it hurts, but I'm just telling things how they were. Hand over heart. My nightgown was free of tears, my arms and legs unscathed. I was safe.

I fell back on my bed, limp with relief. I hated that dream. It was always the same: running away from the School, being chased by Erasers and dogs, the cliff, and then suddenly wings, flying, escaping. I always woke up just like I had two seconds ago, feeling like I was an inch away from death. It happened once a week, minimum, and it sucked.

I needed to have a chat with my subconscious about that.

It was chilly outside of the covers, but I forced myself out of bed anyway and put on clean sweats. Clean as in only-worn-twice-so-far, anyway. Shuffling out of my bedroom, I noticed that everyone else was still asleep. I got some peace and quiet this morning, time to calm down from my little dream adventure and get a jump on the day.

I glanced out the hall windows on the way to the kitchen. I loved this view: the morning sunlight breaking over the crest of the mountains across the valley, the clear sky streaked with orange and pink, the deep shadows, and best of all, the fact that I couldn't see any other people. Here on this mountain, in our house built into the mountain, my family and I were safe. We could be ourselves, be free. And by free, I mean free as in not in cages.

You see, as you might have guessed from my dream, my family and I aren't exactly normal. In fact, we're not actually a family by blood, even. None of us have one of those, as far as we know.

There are six of us total. Me (Max), Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel. We have strange names because we chose them ourselves. And we chose our names ourselves because we didn't really have names — or at least I didn't — until I was nine years old. We'd once had a 'father', but he disappeared a long time ago. We assumed he was dead, killed by the same people that wanted us kids. The same people who made us.

Long story short, we aren't human. There's a lot of scientific gibberish that I could spout to explain, but I'll skim it down to this: we're part-human, part-bird. And all awesome, but that's not the important part here. What's important is that the bird bits in our genes have a very interesting impact on our genetics. What most people care about the most is that we can fly.

Yeah, remember that dream? The wings I always whipped out at the end weren't just the product of an overactive imagination (though I have one of those, too). I actually have a pair of them, and I know how to use them. So does everyone else in our little flock.

We were created by a group of sicko scientists at a facility in the middle-of-nowhere Nevada known by nothing other than 'the School'. The same people made the Erasers. We were raised there also, but it wasn't a normal upbringing. Because I and my family were raised in dog cages.

To these scientists, we weren't people, even though there's more human DNA in us than there is bird. Instead, we were experiments, inhuman things to be tested, inspected, and dissected if they ever had the chance. They did horrible things to us, stuff that I honestly don't have the stomach to go over here. Just know that it was bad. That is, until we were rescued.

One of the scientists actually had a conscience. Jeb Batchelder decided that we deserved more than to be tortured experiments our whole life and somehow spirited us away one night and brought us here. Here, in this E-shaped house cantilevered over the canyon, we would be safe.

He was the closest thing to a parent any of us ever had.

A few years ago, Jeb left the house to get groceries one day and never came back. There was only one thing that could have made him abandon us: death. But we're still here, me and my five 'siblings'.

Without Jeb, we're on our own, and the responsibility of the family had to fall to someone. That someone was me. I'm the oldest, so I try to keep things running around here as much as I can. It's a hard, thankless job, but somebody's gotta do it. At least I kinda liked it sometimes, which made up for how much of a pain all the kids could be.

I was rustling around in the kitchen when I heard sleepy shuffling behind me.

"Mornin', Max."

I turned around to see Gazzy climbing into a chair and slumping down on the table. I went over to rub his back and dropped a kiss on his head. The Gasman was the only one who didn't really choose his own name. He'd been called the Gasman since infancy for self-explanatory reasons, so when the time came to pick his own name he just rolled with it. We usually abbreviate it to Gazzy though, because calling a kid Gasman is just, well, weird.

He blinked up at me with pretty blue eyes, trusting and dependent. He almost always looked at me like that, like I was a mom. And I guess, to some extent, I kind of was. "What's for breakfast?" He sat up a little and I backed away, resisting the temptation to smooth his hair. The fine blonde strands stuck up every which-way, like a fledgling's downy feathers. Gazzy's actual feathers seemed pretty smooth, though.

"It's…" I glanced furtively behind me at the mostly-empty cabinets. I'd have to figure out groceries again soon. "A surprise," I finished weakly. I had no idea.

"I'll pour juice," he offered, and my heart swelled. He was a sweet, sweet kid, and so was his six-year-old sister, Angel. They were supposed to be twins, but someone messed up and the scientists ended up with two very similar bird kids two years apart. We still considered eight-year-old Gazzy and Angel biological siblings, anyway. They're the closest thing to it, given what we are.

Soon enough, Iggy, the tall and pale, slouched in. Eyes closed, he fell onto our beat-up couch with perfect aim. The only time he has trouble with being the blind one (more on that later) is when one of us forgets and moves furniture or something.

"Rise and shine, Ig."

"Bite me," he muttered. I couldn't help smirking; on a different day, I might have said the exact same thing. I'd rubbed off on the kid — kinda. After growing up together, we all had the same sense of humor.

I was looking in the fridge with naïve hope — maybe the already-near-expiration-date eggs we swiped from the back of the grocery store hadn't spoiled? — when the back of my neck prickled. I straightened quickly and spun around.

"Would you quit that?"

Fang always appeared silently like that. Chalk it up to a combination of genetically-modified stealth and his whole emo kid vibe. He looked at me calmly, not even cracking a smirk. He was the most fully-dressed out of all of us so far, in black from head to toe. Like I said, emo kid vibe.

"Quit what?" he asked calmly. "Breathing?"

I was two seconds away from retorting and giving him a smack, but just then Iggy staggered upright, mumbling. "I'll make eggs."

I guess if I were more of a fembot, it would bother me that a blind guy a couple years younger than me could cook better than I could. But I'm not. So it didn't. I surveyed the kitchen quickly, checking up on how breakfast prep was going. Aside from Iggy shuffling around for ingredients and pans or something, Gazzy was pouring juice. Breakfast was going pretty well.

"Fang, you set the table. I'll go get Nudge and Angel."

The two girls shared the last bedroom at the end of the hall. It was the same size as the rest of them, but it felt much smaller because there were two of them in there. I pushed open the door to see eleven-year-old Nudge passed out in her bed still, tangled up in the covers and wings splayed out all over the place. She was barely recognizable with her mouth shut; when she was awake, it was the Nudge Channel: all Nudge, all the time.

I hated to wake her, and not just because she talked so much. She looked cute like that, so completely zoned out and dead to the world. Obviously she didn't have nightmares like I did, and good thing, too. Still, breakfast was here.

"Nudge, up and at 'em." I gently shook her shoulder, finding a place to sneak my body and arm through her tangle of limbs. "Breakfast in ten."

She blinked, her brown eyes struggling to focus on me. "Wha?"

"Another day," I announced. "Get up and face it. Or you could miss breakfast. More for me, I guess."

That did it. Groaning, Nudge levered herself into a bent up but technically upright position. I smirked at her curly mop, the tight twists of hair puffing out on one side and pressed flat where she'd slept on them. It would all be arranged perfectly before she left the room and the sleep wiped out of her eyes, revealing the pretty and very talkative girl we all loved.

Turning across the room, I picked my way through the messy floor to the curtain that was draped across a corner of the room. Angel always liked small, cozy spaces. Her bed, tucked behind the curtain Fang tacked up a few years ago, was like a soft nest—full of blankets, stuffed animals, and most of her clothes.

It was quiet, so I pulled the curtain aside and smiled. Perched inside like a chick was Angel, a sweet six-year-old technically the most 'advanced' out of all of us.

"Hey, you're already dressed!" I leaned forward to hug her. She squeezed me back tightly.

"Hi, Max." She leaned back and pulled her blonde curls out of her collar, turning around a little bit to show me her back. She unfolded her wings a little, revealing the line of open buttons between the two slits cut for her fifth and sixth limbs. "Can you do my buttons?" I turned her around a little more and obliged.

I never told the others, though maybe it was obvious, but I just loved, loved, loved Angel. Maybe because I'd been taking care of her since she was just a baby. Or maybe because she's just so cute and loving herself; anyone would be hard-pressed not to like her, in my opinion.

"Maybe because I'm your little girl," she murmured, turning around to look at me. "Don't worry, Max, I won't tell anybody. I love you best too."

She threw her tiny arms around my neck and planted a somewhat slobbery kiss on my cheek. I hugged her back, hard. Angel's special already, what with how tiny and cute and lovable she is. But that's not the only special thing about Angel. She can read minds.