Disclaimer: I DON'T OWN PJO. OR MAXIMUM RIDE. THEY BELONG TO RICK RIORDAN AND JAMES PATERSON. However, I do own Raven, Rue, Dusk, and Dawn, kind of. Like, halfway. I own them up until they find out who they are. Or, to be more accurate, who they were. Then, they too, are owned by Rick Riordan, like halfway. Enjoy the story!

Prologue

My name is Raven. I'm 14 years old, I live with my family.

The four of us were created on purpose- by the sickest, most horrible scientist you could ever imagine. They created us as an experiment… an experiment that completely changed us. We weren't originally human. And now… where 98%.

That extra two percent… has had a huge impact.

Now, normally, jumping out of the mouth of a cave at the top of a 500 foot mountain would be a bad idea. But, if you were in my situation… you would do the same thing. I was being chased by half human, half wolf creatures called "Erasers"… they erase us.

The thing about facing sudden death: It really makes you notice things. Little things, like the fact the sharp rocks you're running on are cutting into your bare feet, or the sharp holly bushes your running through are pricking your arms. He could manage that, for now. He just had to get away from the pack of Erasers. If he could just get to a clearing…

Then Raven saw what looked like a decent sized clearing ahead. He crashed through the bushes and… NO!

A sheer 500 foot drop-off.

Well, he could face a pack of Erasers, or jump 500 feet.

Raven took a deep breath and glanced behind him. Erasers were closing in. 50 yards… 40 yards… then one leaped at him suddenly. He ran forward and allowed himself to fall over the edge of the cliff. The Erasor landed, claws out, in the space Raven had been a split second earlier.

Half way down, a pair of black wings (with a 14 foot wingspan) unfolded as he nose-dived into the forest below, turning his free-fall of terror into a steep glide. Landing on one knee, holding one arm out to brace his landing, he stood up to meet Rue, Dawn, and Dusk.

"Nice landing, Raven!" Dawn said.

"Thanks… we should get moving before the Erasers come back." He tilted his head up towards the cave. The other's nodded and unfurled their wings. Two pairs of gold and two pairs of solid black wings shot up into the night air.

Since you're probably confused by this point, let me explain.

They had been born in a lab and put on a "medically induced coma", while a group of the sickest, evilest, and down-right cold-hearted scientists you could ever imagine worked to cross-breed them with avians. Basically, an avian is a bird."

And now, Rue, Raven, Dusk, and Dawn were all 98% human, and 2% bird.

It was a science that couldn't exactly be explained, but I'll try anyway. The four hadn't been born human; in fact, they had been born in a lab 14 years ago.

Then, a rather painful procedure: they stuck them in these pod-things in their infantry, and used something to make them human, stripping away every trace of their old life. And they couldn't do anything about it. This process went on for about a week, until they were absolutely, 100%, without a doubt, human.

Then, on the second week, their memories had been taken away. This is a bit harder to explain. Even at a young age, even at two weeks, they knew they were different, even though they couldn't put it in words. Their names, their identities, everything they knew… all gone. Forever. They never knew later on they hadn't been born human; the scientists stole that knowledge from them. Basically, they wiped their minds clean. The only thing they had left were human instincts and basic knowledge.

Then, they grafted avian DNA onto their new human genes.

When they woke up, they were the spitting image of angels. If you believe in that kind of stuff. They were three months old by that time, and due to genetic enhancement, they were intelligent. They could talk fluently, and had logic and reasoning down pat. They also knew that the scientists, AKA Whitecoats, referred to them as "it" or "them" or "they"; sometimes "Subject" and their number, if they were lucky.

Dusk and Dawn had light brown wings. Dusk had wings from a falcon; Dawn had wings from a hawk. Dusk's wings had a touch of grey and Dawn's had a touch of yellow.

Same thing for Rue and Raven, wings of a falcon and hawk. But their wings were pure, midnight, raven black.

They didn't know their original names, but that didn't matter. Theoretically, they weren't even the same people.

They knew didn't have names. So, they came up with their own, after they found out.

Rue had said one time, after reading a book called "Hunger Games" when she was two, that she liked the youngest character in it: Rue, and that she hated the way she died. She named herself Rue to honor her, even though she knew Rue was a fictional character.

Dusk chose her name based on how she felt a special connection with moon. Her wings also were the color of dusk.

Same for Dawn, who enjoyed every moment of sun he could get. The touches of yellow in his wings lead him to name himself Dawn. It also matched his twin's name.

(Dusk and Dawn were the only two people of blood relation in their "family". But they were all family anyway.)

Raven had gone by the way he felt at night, when he felt like something he had read in a book: A ninja. He named himself Raven, because of the wings he had. He could blend in at night, his jet black hair, raven-colored wings, and dark clothing.

However, they were children, nonetheless. They didn't understand everything, or see everything the way everyone else did. They thought that giving themselves names was more like a game than anything else, then. That had happened when they were two.

They had grown up in the lab. Raven could remember when he was four years old, living in a giant cage made of glass with the others, when he was testing his raven-black wings to see if he really could fly. He didn't know he was different then, he assumed that the Whitecoats had wings, too, or that people were used to seeing kids with wings of a hawk. Those childhood beliefs had shattered, however, when a whitecoat's teenage son had called them "freakish mutants that didn't belong".

It had been a rude awakening, where, in Raven's mind, he had been pulled out of his safe, childhood fantasy world and placed in the cold reality of things: He was a freak, kept here because he was an experiment. Those people who took care of them, who he had originally thought of as his many parents who would gently talk to him as they gave him what he thought were shots and vaccines, had suddenly turned into strangers in white, who poked and prodded him with needles and took his blood. Dawn and Dusk, who he had thought were his brother and sister, were suddenly not related to him. And Rue… the girl he had a crush on since he was three…

Raven blinked back a few tears that were threatening to spill over. He was Raven; he didn't cry over stuff like this. He knew there wasn't any shame in crying when your hurt, but this was just a bad memory. He took off his backpack and pulled on his black hoodie. It had wide slits in the back, so he could fly in cold weather.

"Is it just me, or is it getting seriously cold?" He asked, trying to take his mind off the bad memories.

"Well, tomorrow's the winter solstice, so get used to it, Rave." Rue said.

"Don't call me "Rave". My name is Raven."

"Rue and Raven sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, and then comes-"

"SHUT UP, DAWN!" Rue and Raven shouted simultaneously.

"Listen, we have more important issues than Rue and Raven." Dusk started. "We still have to get to the School-"

"I hate that place." Dawn said.

"We all hate the School." Raven pointed out."

"Noted. Anyway, we have to get back to the School to rescue… the others…" Dusk finished. In reality, none of them knew who "the others" were. They just knew that they were like them, experiments, freaks of nature, people who shouldn't be alive, et cetera.

"Earth to Raven!" Rue said suddenly, disrupting Raven's thoughts. That was a good thing, because they were bringing up more bad memories- more things he wanted to forget.

"Yeah, Rue?" Raven asked. Then he realized what was happening. About half a mile away, he could see the empire state building, and he was hurtling right towards it. And when you're going 60 miles per hour… he narrowly avoided being smashed by a metal pole.

"You need to stop spacing out when where flying!" Rue said. "If that were to happen in battle…"

She didn't finish her sentence. She didn't have to, Raven knew what would happen. He looked down at the regular humans. They all looked so tiny… almost like ants. Ants with cell-phones.

"Hey, Rue?" I asked.

Rue looked up. "Do you think this place looks… familiar?" I asked.

Rue nodded. "I feel like I've been to the Empire State Building before." The other three nodded.

They had been born and raised in a lab, as it says above, so they knew they hadn't ever been to New York.

"Maybe we've been here before." Dawn suggested. "Maybe the School brought us to a science convention to show us off."

"Then why were we still in the School? The Humane Society would have jumped right on that." Raven pointed out.

"Maybe they didn't know." Dawn said mysteriously. Or, he tried to sound mysterious. He failed epically.

"I don't think it's too likely that we've been here before." Rue said. Dusk glanced at Dawn like she was worried about his mental health. Gods know Raven was.

Gods know I was? Raven thought, landing in front of the Empire State Building for a rest. Where did that come from?

He didn't have time to find out.