Author's Note: Well, inspiration sort of struck, so I'm making another FanFic! Yay! This one's going to be parallel to Maximum Ride, but it doesn't actually talk about Max, Fang, and the main Flock characters. Hope ya like it anyways!
For you people who started reading this because of Falling in Love and Other Complicated Things: NO WORRIES. If you like that story, I am still continuing it. In fact, I have more than 10 prewritten chapters I have not yet posted, so! For those of you who just happened to stumble upon this FanFic, check it out!
As always, reviews are really appreciated!
Oh, and a question: How would you guys feel about a Hunger Games FanFic? Ideas? Thoughts?
Well, that was a superlong author's note, so…
Disclaimer: I do not own Maximum Ride, even though I am not technically writing about Maximum Ride, it is still more-or-less the same scenario.
Well, you know what they say: Curiosity killed the cat.
That's what I got for poking my nose into places it didn't belong.
The whitecoat chuckled behind me. It was a deep, ugly sound, and for a minute I felt compelled to attack his ugly face. Hadn't he messed up my life enough as it was? Did he have to purposely antagonize me?
But I'd fallen for his trap. So I guess he was almost justified. Almost.
I was grabbed roughly from behind, steered back to my crate, flanked by Erasers. They might be a nightmare to any normal human, and they might be a living nightmare to any other experiment. But to me, they were a thousand times worse than that. Canines and felines are natural enemies, you know?
You lost yet? 'Cause I sure know I am. Ha ha. I'm funny.
But seriously, let me explain.
You've probably heard of Maximum Ride. She and her Flock—they're the best-known experiments, especially around here. The Flock are raptor-human hybrids. Me and my peeps? We're cat-human hybrids.
There's four of us, and we're more-or-less the same age, which is around fourteen. We—well, I'll start with myself. I have curly black hair which has never been cut (I live in a freaking dog crate, and yes, I get the irony, what with me being part cat) but stays roughly the same length. It's a cat thing. If you choose to look really closely, you will see two tabby ears poking up through that hair. Two cat ears.
I have gray eyes that look normal by daylight, but that reflect light in the dark. Like a cat's.
I'm not super tall or super short, either. I'm about average, but my frame is lean with tightly coiled muscle. My legs, especially, seem to be always ready for action. Action that never comes.
My fingernails extend into retractable claws, when I want them too.
Oh, and the tail. Of course.
I'm part tabby, a dark tortoiseshell tabby, and my long, fluffy tail—which I'm rather proud of—helps me keep my balance, like, when I run and climb trees and stuff.
Yeah.
Like I said, there's four of us. Me—Tess—Hash, who has an unruly mess of brown hair and dark tabby ears and tail, Cleo, who's blonde, but for some reason has black ears and tail, and Levi, who's a solid dark brown. I'm the mouthy one, Cleo's the pretty one, Levi's the mischievous one, and Hash is the… well, the normal one.
You don't even know how much it pains me to admit that.
Anyways. Back to the present.
I was forced roughly into my cage, passing rows of others. Cleo was, as always, looking chique in her tattered hand-me-down lab clothes, her light, fluffy blonde hair nearly covering her ears. She tried to give me a smile as I passed, but cowered in sight of the Erasers. Hash raised his eyebrows in a way that's always pissed me off—slightly sarcastic, slightly questioning, and slightly holier-than-thou. And yet reassuring all the same. Levi was asleep in his crate, drooling slightly on his worn hoodie. It almost made me smile.
Almost.
The crate door latched behind me, the click having a sound of finality to it. I wouldn't get to leave the cage, not unless someone decided to run any more sick experiments on me. And for the day, I was completely tuckered out. I'd been resisting physically and mentally for the past five hours, give or take. I'd like nothing better than to curl up into a ball, my tail brushing against my nose, and take a catnap. So to speak.
I half-closed my eyes, looking around at the lab room. There was the four of us, of course. As far as I could tell, we were the only completely successful—and by successful I mean with an un-suffering human IQ—experiments. There were some that were complete abominations. For example, the human-squid mixture. They'd made several of those before they realized that it wasn't that great of an idea.
Oh, and the Firenzes. A Firenze is a—shudder—completely terrible creature, a mutation so wrong and horrifying and crazy that it could just possibly be successful. A human-fire hybrid. Its skin is cracked and black, like Lava-Girl. (How do I even know about Lava-Girl? *Shrug*) It—the skin—is always lightly glowing, like an ember in the flame. When it wants to, though, a Firenze can always burst into flame, throw fireballs, the whole freaking spiel.
They're considering letting them loose, like Erasers.
And they're considering making a human-water combo. Ha-ha. (I'm a cat, remember?)
How do I know this? Well, I've got cat ears, which are vastly superior to raptor ears or whatever other ears you may have heard of, maybe short of dog ears. Maybe.
My eyes wandered over to Hash and stayed there, even though I willed them to move on. Hash. I've been thinking about him way too much lately. Well, it's not like he's bad-looking, even though he's not technically super good-looking either. And it's not like I'm not a teenage girl with raging hormones. I've known Hash for, like, ever. I've known our whole kindle (that's apparently what you call a group of kittens, which is what we technically are, being human kids with cat characteristics. You call a group of full-grown cats a clowder, though, and I am definitely not looking forward to that! Just another thing my sonar supercat ears picked up) since I was old enough to remember. It's not like we're best friends or brother-sister or anything. I mean, we live in the lab. Doesn't really present you with bonding opportunities, other than the mutual hatred of evil whitecoats. But.
I'm not the kind of girl to have a crush and get all giggly. In fact, I'm not the crush-y kind of girl at all. You'd think Cleo's more that type, with her ability to look supercute in, like, anything—even the tattered clothes they give us. But no. It was me looking at Hash at that moment.
Anyways.
Suddenly, the door opened, flooding the night-darkened room with light. My brain fired off panic signals. Light in the middle of the night meant one of two things: An experiment had died, and they were taking care of it, or someone was slated for extermination.
Extermination: Death by Eraser. In the dark. Alone. Most likely outside. Always painful.
From my position on the floor (the heavier, bulkier experiments get crates on the floor, the smaller, animal-animal—as opposed to human-animal—experiments get crates on top) I saw a whitecoat's black dress shoes slowly pace the floor. His knee-length white coat billowed behind him, just in my line of sight. He paced closer.
My heart pounded. What if they exterminated me? What if he picked me? What if worst came to worst and our story had to be told from Hash's point of view?
The horror.
No, but seriously, I was terrified. There are thousands of better deaths than death by Eraser. Such as? I don't know. Heart attack in bed, surrounded by your loved ones? Freezing to death? A bullet to the head? Death by Eraser is definitely not a death I'd ever dream about.
Not that, you know, I'm such a nutcase that I dream about death. But sometimes it seems like the easier choice.
The dress shoes came to a stop in front of my crate. I saw three pairs of wide cat eyes, reflecting the light, looking at me. I was praying to every deity I'd ever heard a whitecoat mention that he wasn't going to pick me.
His knees bent.
I sucked in my breath. The room seemed to drop, like, twenty degrees, even though with the Firenzes, it wasn't ever really cold.
The whitecoat dropped into a crouch in front of my crate. I swear, I stopped breathing, my heart stopped beating, my hair prickled on my head, and my tail did that struck-by-lightning thing cats always do when they're scared.
Maybe, some random part of my brain thought, I'll die of fear before they even get me to the Erasers.
The whitecoat was now peering into my crate. He had thinning dark hair, black eyes, thick eyebrows drawn in concern. I couldn't quite make it out, but I thought maybe he was of Mexican descent. Then again, I thought I was going to die. I wasn't thinking about the whitecoat's heritage at the moment!
"Hey there," the whitecoat said, in a sort of tone you would talk to a child or a pet in, "Don't be scared!"
Don't be scared? Don't be scared? Was he out of his freaking (to put it mildly) mind!
I moved into the most inaccessible corner of my crate, showing that I clearly was very scared.
"I'm going to get you guys out of here," the whitecoat continued softly.
Now I recognized him. Everybody called him Sanchez, though I'm not sure what his first name was. He treated us the best, but he still didn't have any qualms about putting us through scarring ordeals. But that was because he was the leader of our Experiment.
How did I know this?
Well, if the scientists had wanted to keep any of this secret, they wouldn't have fitted me with freaking cat ears.
Knowing that he was the head of my Experiment didn't do anything for my fearing-for-my-life terror. If it was possible, in fact, the knowledge increased it.
Anyways, I managed to choke out, "Why?"
"Because you are too special to be in a cage. This is not the right place to develop your full potential. You are one of very few successful experiments! And because I care for you. I have watched you grow up. I hate seeing you go through all of these painful experiments."
Right. So now you're putting us through another one?
"Just me? I'm not going without my friends," I said forcefully. I wasn't as scared now. I knew what was going on, and I could put a stop to it. Unless, you know, it was part of the plan for me to know what was going on and they knew that I knew and they wanted to see how I handled it. Or…
Yeah, well, chew on that. It's confusing. I'll explain later.
I swear, the whitecoat chuckled. "No, all four of you. I feel the same towards the rest of you, too. Almost like I'm your father."
I gritted my teeth. Something bad was happening: I was starting to…almost…trust him. I'd seen him be gentle to us, I'd seen him try to put a stop to the experiments before we were almost unconscious with exertion, I'd seen him sneak us extra food we weren't supposed to have. And… You know how cats can kind of pick up on people's emotions? I could feel his sincerity.
Before I go on: Each of us has a different cat "power". I have feline empathy (the emotion thing), Hash can run way faster than a cheetah when he wants to, Levi has cat-like stealth (and, since he's the troublemaker, that's not always the best thing!), Cleo has feline poise and grace and the ability to charm almost anything out of anyone. Even a whitecoat.
So. Back to your regularly scheduled experimentation.
Sanchez unlatched my crate and let me climb out. It was a new experience, being out of my crate without at least a pair of Erasers and maybe a Firenze guarding me. Before the whitecoat could, like, change his mind or something, I popped Cleo, Levi, and Hash's latches too.
"Okay, now, we've got to be real quiet so they don't catch us. What I'm doing is kind of against regulations," Sanchez said. I exchanged glances with Hash. Yeah, right. We know this is part of the Experiment. But maybe we should keep on pretending we don't.
Cats also have an ability to communicate using subtle body language. We can almost understand each other to the syllable without actually opening our mouths. Or reading minds. Or using any pre-determined signals.
He snuck us through several fire doors and out into the parking lot. Weird. This place has a parking lot? I interpreted Levi to be saying. That's a typical Levi thought for ya!
The whitecoat led us to a red convertible car. And I knew there was no going back now.
The Experiment had begun.
Do you love it or do you LOVE it? How to tell me this? There's that little itty button right down there, but…
PRESS THE FREAKING BUTTON!
Get the picture? :)