I'm so writer's-blocked, I'm posting some old stuff that's been sitting in my computer for a while now. Yeah. That's pretty much my only excuse.

Disclaimer: Not JP. It's as simple as that.

Kisses,

{--Inky--}

Age Eight

The sealed metal door, painted white to match the rest of the sterile-looking walls, opened dramatically, spilling dazzling florescent light into the otherwise dark room. Every hybrid in the room winced, curling back towards the walls of their crates and covering their eyes. All except one. The blind one, Subject Eight. He stared at the door with sightless, milky blue eyes, listening to the approaching footsteps. He could pick out the heavy, lumbering gait of several Erasers, a soft, yet purposeful and confident, carriage of someone much smaller than an Eraser, and an achingly familiar stride of someone they all knew well.

Jeb.

His keys clinked together in the pocket of his white lab coat, which still madethe experiments recoil, no matter how kind he was to them. In the crate next to Eight, Subject Nine opened her eyes and immediately clamped a dark hand over her mouth. She could see the hem of Jeb's lab coat resting just above his knees, and she recognized the fancy, Italian-looking shoes that he always wore. Nine liked Jeb a lot, ever since he had given her a larger portion of bread than usual, and a hairbrush to tame her wild brown curls.

She wanted so badly to ask what was going on, but she was sure that if she opened her mouth, everything she was thinking would spill out in a relentless torrent, and the whitecoats didn't like them talking. Jeb let her babble on to him when he came to see them, but he usually came alone. He wasn't alone now. Nine cautiously reached a finger through a gap in her crate and poked Subject Seven in the side. When he looked over at her, she tilted her head, hand still over her mouth, at the legs standing next to Jeb's.

Seven examined the legs. They were thin, he guessed, probably a girl's, and wearing sweatpants, which was unusual. Usually the experiments were given pants made out of a thin, crinkly blue material and a plain white t-shirt to wear. The mysterious person was barefoot, though, so they might be a hybrid like him. The whitecoats always wore shoes. He raked a hand through his shaggy black hair, a nervous habit he'd picked up from an intern who was assigned to check their daily vitals.

Jebpulled up his pressed tan pant legs and crouched down to peer into the five dog crates. Subject Nine had shuffled over to lean on the wall closest to Subject Eight, their hands clasped together through the tiny spaced in the plastic. The harsh edge was pressing painfully into Nine's wrist, but she refused to let go. She was scared. They all were.

Next to Eight was Subject Eleven, sitting cross-legged and staring out the cold metal bars with wide, equally cold blue eyes. The tiny girl wasn't afraid of Jeb; she hardly knew him. He had never ever taken her for any tests. He hadn't hurt her. She knew he wasn't here to harm her, or any of them, and she knew this because she'd plucked it out of his head, from his thoughts.

Without tearing her eyes away from Jeb's form, Eleven reached through her crate and placed a small, reassuring hand on Subject Ten's arm. He was her older brother, she knew, according to a whitecoat. Ten was curled up into a ball, hands over his spiky white-blond head, and tears leaked out of his clenched-shut eyes and made tracks down his dirty cheeks. He remembered the last time that a whitecoat had come in with armed Erasers. He remembered the needles, and the pain, and he didn't want it to happen to him again.

Jeb calmly met Seven's dark, inscrutable eyes, holding them for a moment before standing abruptly and breaking free from the boy's level, accusatory stare.

Turning his attention back to the girl he had brought with him, Jeb frowned. She had her back to him and her arms crossed tightly, stubbornly refusing to so much as glance at him. That was the last straw for him. Frustrated, he grabbed her slender shoulders and roughly spun her around, forcing her to face the row of caged children.

"Is that what you want?" He shook her. "To be like them? Useless and confined to a tiny cage, nothing more than a number. Virtually obsolete." Nine winced at his words. She didn't feel obsolete. She didn't want to be obsolete, ever. Eight squeezed her hand reassuringly. He had felt her flinch.

"You know, for someone who keeps insisting that he's different from the rest, you sound an awful lot like Ter Borcht," the girl snapped back. "We're not numbers. We're people, with or without the DNA splice."

"But you are numbers," Jeb said quietly, almost sadly. "Subject Six."

"Who?"

"You. Subject Six is you. The first permanent success in Itex's history."

"Well, whoop-de-do for me," Six snorted. "Can you get to the point? Before I die of old age?"

"You're slated for termination. Sometime next week."

"So I should stop poking fun at Ter Borcht just to see him turn purple?"

"Yes. Now focus, this is serious. I think I can pull some strings, buy you more time to prove you're worth saving, but you'll have to cooperate with them." Jeb let go of her to pace across the small room, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"No," Six said automatically, tilting her chin up in defiance. Seven decided her like her style.

"For a little while. Not forever."

"No," she insisted. "Is that my only option? Play lap doggy for the sicko scientists?" Six frowned, clearly unhappy about this.

"You could join them," Jeboffered, gesturing to the crated mutants. Six's gaze flickered over her shoulder, locking eyes with Subject Eleven, who stared solemnly back. Huge bruises colored one side of the little girl's face yellow, green, blue, purple, and cuts ran up her thin arms. Dried blood and dirt matted her blond curls together. Tears sprang to Six's eyes, but she beat them down. Whitecoats did that, she though. They're monsters. Heartless, cold monsters.

"Order me a dog crate, then. I've jumped through enough hoops for you people. Find yourselves another lab rat," she said evenly, seeming calm and sure of herself. Really, she was crying like a baby on the inside. But no one needed to know that.

Jeb sighed heavily. "You'll change your mind." Before Six could object to his statement, he motioned to an Eraser standing by the door.

"Nighty-night, piggy," he grinned, reaching a hairy paw behind its back and pulling a gun. Six spun, and caught a round-and-a-half directly in the abdomen. Her mouth fell open in shock.

She swayed unsteadily on her feet, hands clutching at her midriff like claws, and then she slowly lowered herself to her knees. Jeb watched with an apologetic look on his features as she collapsed in on herself, coming to a rest with her cheek pressed against the cold floor. Nine and Eleven were screaming, their eyes trained on the older girl's unmoving body.

Six landed directly in front of Seven's cage, her back to him, and he couldn't see and pool of crimson red leaking from and staining the ground around her. He felt it safe to assume that she had just been hit with enough sedative to down an elephant. He noticed how her dirty blond hair was cut short and haphazardly, not quite brushing her shoulder, and how she wore a blue t-shirt instead of a white one, but mostly he noticed one major thing that he would remember all his life.

There, protruding from slits cut into her shirt, were two graceful, speckled brown and white wings.

Wings.

Like his.

Oooh, dramatic ending!! I love writing those. . . sigh. . .

But yeah.

I like the way this piece turned out. Don't judge me.

Just tell me if I'm retarded to like it, or dead on.

In. . . dun, dun, DUHHNNN. . . a review!!