Disclaimer: Overall idea, places, and concepts are originally from the mind of James Patterson.

''''The character is my own creation and might not actually ever meet up with the flock, I don't know yet, so this story is loosely based upon the Maximum Ride series.

Lab Bat

Chapter 1: Caught and Escaped!

I remember those conspiracy stories of the children with wings, six of them if memory serves right. Just let me tell you, it's not a conspiracy; it's true.

Want to know how I know?

The same thing that happened to them happened to me. Only, I didn't become a lab rat until the age of 14. You see, I was in a car accident, and the scientists took me away and told my parents I had died. They claimed my body was lost when the engine blew and they handed my parents my cindered school ID. But really, I was shipped to their secret lab somewhere in the middle-of-nowhere, California.

I always said that I wanted to start life over, who would've thought my new life involved being tested on by freaks. I'll never be able to go back to my family. If I did, well, I could imagine it now. I would walk up to my parents and say "Hey, I never really died. Those doctors lied to you and they took me away." Then my parents would admit themselves into the loony bin. Yeah, like that would go over well.

Anyway, it seems I've gotten slightly off topic. During the majority of tests performed on me, I was on anesthetics since I was actually healing from that car crash. Even while I was in that chemically induced, dreamless sleep, I still felt a distant pain, and if I was 'under' during that pain, and I still felt it, if only slightly, it must have REALLY hurt.

I woke up one day in a large dog crate and when I looked around I saw kids much younger than I in crates next to me, but upon closer observations, the kids were not all human. I screamed at the top of my lungs and nearly barfed my stomach.

I began frantically trying to find a way out of the cage, but my fingers would not fit through the holes. Just as my fingers were about raw from rubbing them against the bars in my desperate attempt to break free, a door opened into the room and footsteps were heard coming towards my general direction. A pair of legs stopped in front of me and the man bent over and unlocked my cage. I tried to push past him, but to no success. I felt a pinch against my back and everything went black.

When I woke up again, I was in an all-white room with a single wall of 2-inch thick glass. Looking out through the glass, I saw those scum scientists working with their machinery and on one computer screen I could see something that probably had my vitals and whatnot on it. I banged against the glass, but they took no notice of me and stared intently at their screens.

Just then a puffing noise whirred around me and a gray, misty smoke covered the white walls and filled my lungs and seeped into my pores. My eyes watered and I choked on the gas. A great pain filtered throughout my entire body and yet I was unable to scream. I opened my bloodshot eyes only to see those idiots still gazing at their screens. Oh how it made me want to beat the living crap out of them.

The pain seemed to fester around two points on my back and again I had to close my eyes because I could no longer see a thing. The next thing I knew I was being dragged along and dropped back off in what I think was my crate. I felt and heard my stomach growl. I guess with however long I've been here in this place I haven't had a substantial meal. It's like I was just some kind of experiment and I guess that's what they consider me, even to this day.

I slept painfully that night, because I could not find a comfortable position to sleep in, it was like the crate was smaller or something.

I woke up the next morning to a bright light fluttering through my closed eyelids, but when I opened my eyes everything was a giant blur. Being quite freaked out; I assumed fetal position and hugged myself closely. As I wrapped my arms around myself I felt something strange emerging from my back. I turned my head to its side and tried to look at what it was, because whatever it was, it was big. And there were two of them. But all I saw were two black blurs. Mentally freaking out, I avoided thinking about it and was forced to close my eyes, because it seemed as though everything was spinning.

I heard footsteps, but a door never opened, and I heard words, voices, but there was nobody around me, except those poor little deformed kids, but I had only ever heard them make strange inhuman sounds. All around me I heard food, or scared or something along those lines. And as the footsteps resonated in my mind, I also heard an adult's voice, or… something like that. Test subject 284035 seemed to react well to the tests placed upon it last night. The DNA mutation was a success. The bacterium in the gas seemed to replace and manipulate its original DNA strands. I wonder how long this one will last.

Okay, I had to have been hearing things, I mean, that was obviously from one of those scumbag scientists, but he wasn't in the room, and again his footsteps became louder and louder. Every little sound bounced inside my head with a loud resonance until eventually it seemed I reached my limit and I threw up my guts. I needed food and nourishment, desperately. Then the door opened and the footsteps and that voice grew louder than ever and I had to cover my ears.

I heard the scientist stop in front of my crate, I heard the harsh metal against metal as he unlocked the door, and I heard the creaks of the small hinges rubbing. Only everything was amplified at least 100 fold. He grabbed my wrist and forced me out of my cage. I could barely stand, and I had to force my eyes open and yet I was able to yell at the top of my lungs.

"What have you done to me? Why is everything so blurry and what the hell is coming out of my back?" I yelled. As I mentioned my back, I felt whatever the two things were move in response to my thoughts and I felt them kind of, catch a breeze. It was then that I realized what they were. They had given me wings. WINGS. I felt behind me at my newly grown wings and felt the leathery membrane in between two sets of bones, and as I traced the line of my wings, I felt little claws at the top of them.

284035 seems to have realized the wings and her changes. I should make a mental note of this. So she can't see, hm, it seems as though the bat DNA has altered her quite a bit.

"BAT? You mean to tell me that I am now part bat!" as I yelled this, the glass window on the door shattered. Great, now I'm like real-life Batgirl. All I need now is Batman and Robin, Boy Wonder.

The scientist grabbed me by the wrist again, obviously trying to take me to some room and get me to perform other various 'tests', but I removed myself from his grasp and ran through the door, desperately making twists and turns until I found a way out. I ran, surprisingly well, and I didn't even run into anything. I heard the sounds bouncing off of everything and it was like I could still see perfectly… only not. After a few moments of running and lucky turns, I reached a kind of courtyard outside the building. But things went downhill from there. Apparently there were these other creatures there, they sounded like wolves. And they seemed delighted to see me. It was like they considered me some kind of treat. I felt their malice running through my bones and I just wanted to high-tail it out of there as fast as I could.

Then one jumped at me.

I dodged it surprisingly quickly, astonishing myself and the wolf-creature. Another one jumped right after the first and again I dodged. There was no escape for me, no hope at all. I felt a breeze blow through my hair and practically blow me over to the side. Then an idea hit me. Well, actually, one of the wolf-creatures hit me, but I knew what I had to do.