Hi everyone! New story! This fanfic was inspired by The Winter Soldier, and kind of the Avengers. Basically, it's the Flock instead of the Avengers, and there's a lot more Fax...The story is centered around the relationship between Max and Fang, but the setting is still pretty action-packed :) I hope you guys enjoy!

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Maximum Ride or any of its characters. I do not own Marvel (wouldn't that be great, though?)

Max POV

I laid, half-awake, on the awfully familiar steel bed, my arms, legs, and neck strapped down by thick metal cuffs. By this point, I was already familiar with the process. The Whitecoats would poke and prod at my body, plucking feathers off my wings, make me run never-ending tests-you get the idea. The School is the only place I've ever known, so I'm used to my body always feeling like it's on the verge of dying, or my outer feathers shriveling from lack of nutrition.

A Whitecoat strolls into the lab room and peers down at me tauntingly.

"So, what's the schedule today?" I ask in a saccharine voice, "Maybe, electrocution, or… suffocating me underwater… or, Ooh! My favorite, cracking all my bones to see how fast they mend?"

Unaffected at my sarcasm, the Whitecoat coolly replied, "Your attitude won't save you today, Maximum. We'll be trying something new today."

I'll admit, that made me a little apprehensive, but I knew they wouldn't kill me, since I was the only subject they had to experiment on. But there are much worse things than death. (A/N Lmao Hunger Games reference) The Whitecoat wheeled me out of the operating room and into a giant warehouse-looking area. I strained my head upward to get a good look around. At the center of the room was a gaping square hole with a sturdy chair and box next to its edge. I just lolled my head back; nothing good ever came out of anticipating torture.

The Whitecoat undid the cuffs with a key, and two of the School's soldiers grasped me by my thin arms and half-dragged me towards the giant hole.

"You know, if you drop me down that hole, I can just fly back up?" I smirked. The soldiers and Whitecoat ignored me. As we approached to giant hole, I peered down into it. It seemed to be a hole that went through the multiple levels of the complex down into what seemed to be the basement. The soldiers forced me into the chair that had its back facing the hole, and it's back legs were an inch from falling into nothingness. The Whitecoat pulled out a long syringe filled with a dull green serum from his chest pocket and prepared to inject me with it. After 18 years, I stopped asking what they were injecting me with. The Whitecoat ruthlessly plunged the syringe into the bone in my wings and I immediately felt me wings relax. They hung uselessly, paralyzed by the serum.

The hole looked a lot more intimidating now. The soldiers took giant metal chains from the box and secured them all around my body onto the chair and attached a steel cord that ran into a machine.

"Today, we'll be testing your strength and problem-solving skills under stressful, timed environments. You will have to escape from the chair within 15 minutes before this machine tugs and releases you and your chair into the abyss"

I peered down peevishly into the hole. Just perfect. It was deep enough to reduce me to a bloody mess of broken bones and crumpled wings, but not nearly enough to kill me. The Whitecoats were calculated in this way.

"You will start when the timer starts to count down."

The Whitecoat and soldiers proceeded out of the room and into the observatory that watched over the warehouse.

I glanced at the digital clock, mocking me with its bright neon greenness. It made a grating beeping sound, and the countdown began. Used to panicked situations, my body didn't start producing adrenaline right away. I squirmed around for a bit, hoping the Whitecoats had put the chains on too loosely. No dice. I realized there was no way I could break the chains without strength fueled by adrenaline. After all, I wasn't a freaking magician who could magically poof out of bonds.

The timer read 6:00. Shit. If I fell down that hole, they'd probably leave me down there just to measure how fast I could self heal. No thanks. My heart started race, my vision narrowing and hands shaking. Good, my adrenaline was starting to kick in. I managed to slip my hand under one loop, but it chafed the skin so hard it began to bleed. The blood slicked my grip as I tried to pull the chains loose from my other hand. The timer was at 3:00 now. Breath coming in shallow gasps now, I knew I had to pull out both my arms now. But before I could, the observatory glass wall of the observatory room shattered as a chair was thrown out of the room, and then following, a shrieking Whitecoat. Ah, it was music to my ears. The Whitecoat that was flung out of the observation room formed a perfect arc that ended up right at the bottom of the hole. His death came with a sickening crunch.

Extremely disoriented from the adrenaline and from this new development, I confusedly glanced up to the observatory. To my utter surprise, the people that had apparently hijacked the School looked surprisingly young… and they had wings?! Did the School possibly have other subjects as well as me? This was impossible, the School was a small concentrated complex, and I had never seen another mutant there.

I didn't spare another thought to this enigma. The countdown now read 1:37. They always say, the enemies of your enemies are you friends.

"Over here!" I shrieked hoarsely at the bird kids. They seemed to be engaged in their ransacking, so I clanged my chains against the metal chair. One of them with raven black hair whipped his head around. He shouted something to the strawberry blonde one. They unfurled their wings just as soldiers flooded into the warehouse. His powerful black wings were in much better shape than mine, further proving that he clearly was not a subject at the School.

The School's soldiers aimed their greasy rifles at the hearts of the mutants, but they were too quick. The timer was at 30 seconds now.

"Not to be rude, but can I have some help?" I exclaimed. The dark-haired boy glanced at the timer and smirked, as if this were a game. He ran over and whipped out a sharp knife and began sawing away at the cord that would pull my chair backward when the timer reached 0.

"Ahem, not like this is imminent destruction for me or anything, but could you saw just a teensy bit faster?" I said nervously. He just kept sawing away at the cord. I was about to take the knife myself at 5 seconds left, but he threw the knife to the side and broke the cord using his hands.

The cord zapped backward, pulling what could've been me and my chair. I laid my head back in relief, sweat glazing my forehead. I glanced back up and saw a soldier preparing to pull the trigger on the black-haired boy. Too late to say "duck," I reacted with natural reflexes and used my momentum to swing the chair around and knock the bird kid over.

Bad idea. My chair tilted over, and with arms and legs bound, I couldn't stop the fall, and my head landed on the glass that fell from the observatory. Needless to say, the sharp glass and cold concrete were not a good combination for my skull.

Thanks for reading! Please R&R to meet the flock in the next chapter... :)

- Jessica