A/N: Hello everyone, and Merry Christmas! Almost Christmas and I still need to make a couple of gifts… yikes! Hope you all have your shopping done, haha! But if you don't… good luck with that! Hope you all have a great Christmas (or if you don't celebrate it, a great day) and a Happy New Years!

I wrote this little one-shot awhile ago, shortly after reading The Angel Experiment, but finally decided to edit it and post it!

This is my first Maximum Ride fic, but certainly not my first fanfic, so please don't go easy on me on the reviews. Any mistakes or OOCness you find, please tell me, along with any tips on how to better My writing! I'd really appreciate it =3

(Sorry if this isn't in continuation with the rest of the series, I've only read the first book xD And it takes place before the events of The Angel Experiment, if that's not clear :)

Everything Goes Black

It's just another day at the School. You know, pain, experiments, crappy food, and more experiments. It just wouldn't end. These sick monsters never stopped hurting us, never stopped hurting me.

By the way, the School is pretty much a lab, torture chamber, and prison, all rolled up into one. The scientists that worked there, the guys in long, white coats, are what we call Whitecoats. They're all bad people, creating creatures like us.

By the way, I'm part avian, part human. More so human, though, if that makes you more comfortable. Me and the rest of my family. Well, I say "family..."

I looked through the bars of the dog crate I was sitting in and saw Max. She was leaning against the bars of her cage, probably wondering what they were doing to Nudge. She caught my eye and gave me a reassuring smile, and I mustered a smile in return. We would eventually get away from this prison. We had to. And we would. I saw it in her eyes. I saw Fang, and he was sulking to himself as usual. His long, dark hair was in his eyes, a slight pout on his lips. Gazzy, poor kid, was hugging his knees to his chest. I noticed that he had done that a lot lately. And Nudge… Nudge was the victim of the most recent experiment. And I hoped she came back okay…

I suppose you're wondering our ages? Max is the oldest, and she's about eight. Maybe she was nine already… I don't really know. Fang is also about eight, same as me. The Gasman—as we also call him, Gazzy—is two. He's the youngest out of the five of us… And Nudge, the one in the hands of the madmen, is five. But of course, the ages are all pretty much just guesses.

Just then, a Whitecoat came back with Nudge. I looked her over, top to bottom, to see that she was fairly alright. It didn't look like she had any broken bones, or really bad bruises. Just some fading burn marks from the electrical shocks she had received a couple of days ago. But was I able to relax now? No, not even close.

A Whitecoat bent down by my cage, and I immediately tensed. Was I to be their next project? Would they still care to keep me alive? What would they do to me? These thoughts always went through my head. Every day, for the only eight years of my pitiful life, these thoughts were a very common occurrence.

"You're next," the man in the white lab coat said coolly as he unlatched my crate. It was the same as every time, but I felt just as scared. What they did to me, I could never get used to. It hurt, most of the time. Always hurt. And though me and the rest of the "Flock" experienced it daily, the experiments still hurt just as bad. Perhaps even worse.

They walked me into one of the many rooms, and one of the Whitecoats picked me up and harshly set me on a white hospital-like table. The Whitecoats strapped me in, not bothering to be gentle. This was definitely new… The strapping me in on table part, not the insensitivity. That was still the same.

I looked around, taking in my surroundings worriedly, as a Whitecoat walked up to me. He put some sort of IV into the crotch of my elbow, and a different Whitecoat put some sort of plastic cup thing over my mouth and nose. I could hear them talking. I heard one say something about "laughing gas," but I couldn't focus on that, because my vision started to get fuzzy. Unfocused, unidentifiable shapes would become people's faces, then go back to shapes. Their voices started getting really low and drawn out, and the room seemed to get blurred left. The only thought I remember thinking is "this feels funny."

I don't remember falling asleep, but next thing I know, I'm waking up. It's dark where I am, and I figure I'm in a different room.

I hear worried voiced fade in and out of my hearing as I drearily blink my eyes open. I close them, however, as opening them hurts. I have a sharp pain in the back of my head, right by my neck, and a burning pain in my eyes. My arms are now not strapped to the table. When I bring a hand up to rub my eyes, I realize there's a cloth covering them. The voices start becoming clearer, and they sound angry.

A scientist rips away the cloth from over my eyes. I feel a bright, hot light shinning down on my face, and blink my eyes open again. I see a couple of weird colors dance around like fireworks for a few seconds, but then everything's black. That's weird… I could have sworn I felt a light shining at me. Then the voices became even clearer.

"Experiment!…You idiot!…Enhance his vision!" I heard one of the madmen say. So they had enhanced my vision… that must be why my eyes stung like crazy. But why was everything so dark?

Then I heard the worst words ever, the dreaded sentence no one would ever want to hear. The words every living person fears.

"You were supposed to enhance his night vision, not make him blind!"

"Not make him blind!" echoed in my head. Was I really blind? Would I be blind forever? How would I ever escape, if I couldn't see my way out of the School? My hands began sweating like crazy, and I wiped them on my lame excuse for pants. I tried looking around. Everything was black. Black was everywhere… everywhere. Looking up I felt a light shining on my face, but I couldn't see anything. I closed my eyes and opened them, despite the pain that followed, only to realize I still couldn't see.

I yelled. I don't know why I yelled. I was afraid, confused, sad, upset, in pain, and totally lost all at the same time.

I tried nervously looking around again, grasping for any proof that I wasn't blind. I couldn't be blind! I couldn't… I couldn't!

I felt tears trickle down my cheeks as a Whitecoat forced me to sit up. "Why can't I see?" I asked in worry, fearing the worst. One of the scientists wordlessly picked me up like a sack of potatoes, and I assumed he was carrying me back to my crate. "Wait! Answer me! What happened?!" I yelled out, demanding an answer. I couldn't stop the tears from falling down my cheeks.

I assumed we had gotten to the crates, because I heard Max's voice. "Iggy, Iggy," she was saying. But she sounded older than her nine-year-old self. And it sounded far off, almost like an echo.

Her voice got louder, and it was as if it wasn't coming through an old radio anymore. "Iggy, it's just a nightmare, wake up!" she shouted, and the pain of the nightmare started to fade. Was it a nightmare? Or was it reality? Maybe it was both. I couldn't tell, until I felt a cool hand wiping my hair away from my sweaty forehead.

"M-max..?" I asked in surprise, taking a deep breath. I reached my right hand up to my cheek to wipe away some of the tears I felt trickling down.

"I'm right here, Igs," her calming, commanding voice informed me. I hated looking so weak in front of her, in front of anyone. "Was it that dream?" she asked.

Okay, I'll admit, I've had this dream more times than I'd like to remember. But as far as she knew, I'd only had it three times in the four years we'd been away from the School. "Reality," I admitted, agreeing with a nod. I sat up, looking forward. Her voice was coming from the right, so I knew where she was.

"I'm sorry…" she started, though she knew by now how much I hate that.

"It wasn't your fault," I replied flatly, the nightmare still processing. I gave a sigh, letting out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.

"I know," she admitted, standing up to leave. "I just don't like any of my family screaming in pain," she added, more sentimental than usual. Maybe it was that time if the month for her, whatever that meant. If female avian-human mutants have those. Maybe she was just tired. I started rubbing the end of the quilt between my thumb and index finger, calming myself with the fact that it was only a dream. This time. It felt thin and worn out, like almost everything we owned.

I heard her leaving, heading for the door, and turned my head so my eyes face the back of her head, or at least that direction. "It's too late for wishing that, the School already ruined us," I thought silently to myself as I heard Max shut the door. She somehow knew just when to leave.

It was true, though. The School had ruined my eyes, making me see nothing forever. They had ruined the Flock's chance of a normal life. Ruined six innocent children…

And they weren't even sorry.