For those of you who recognize the first chapter, it is the same as my other story, DNA Mix-up. But I had to continue the story. I just loved the characters.

One year later…

I looked around, eyes peeled for any sort of movement that might endanger Drin and myself. The green forest was motionless except for the movement of trees when wind whipped through them. It was not a good day for flying. The wind might be a breeze down on the surface, but it was a full-fledged gale up a hundred feet or so, where I flew. I would be great if I was flying where the winds were blowing, almost nothing's better than coasting on strong winds, but I had to go the opposite way, and carrying Drin as I would have to, I just couldn't do it.

"You see anything?" Drin called up to me. Shaking my head no, I coasted down from tree. As usual, Drin looked at me with envy. He flexed his tiny stunted wings, and looked around, then up at the sky. Poor Drin. He had every flying instinct that I had, but none of the things that made it possible for me.

I was excited today, and none of Drin's droopy mood could spoil that. After months and month of breaking into libraries and other information centers, and even a dangerous trip back to the lab, I had found my DNA's parents, or, I thought I had anyway. I had looked just like a picture of their deceased daughter, minus the wings and larger chest area to accommodate the larger heart, wings, and air sacs.

I told Drin to follow me, and took off at an easy jog. Hybrids as we were, we could keep a steady jog for hours. We weren't quite sure how long we could keep it up, as we always stopped for meals, jogging for no more than six hours continuously. We reached the small community by sunset, deciding to sleep about a mile into the forest.

We were slightly alarmed a homeless man and his family came to join us. I made a quick lookover. A year fending for ourselves had made me and Drin very paranoid. When we had decided that the homeless family presented no immediate danger, we wearily laid down beside them, grateful for the extra warmth in the chilly autumn weather.

Drin and I took watches, and I took the first one. I climbed up into a previously selected tree, and kept my eyes attentive. When I awoke Drin for his watch, I went out flying for a while. Stretching my wings was really what I wanted to do. The stars twinkled above, and a shooting star passed overhead. I didn't believe in magic, or even luck really, but I made a wish to find my family, and maybe get a new home.

Drin and I left the homeless family the next morning, and after picking some pockets, got some food at a 7/11. As we munched on candy and powdered donuts, Drin and I made our way toward the address I had looked up and poured over so many nights. We made it to the address about two, at which time breakfast seemed years ago and I was starving again.

I told Drin to go and knock first, because if this was my DNA's mother, then she would recognize the girl that shared her daughter's DNA. Drin knocked, and my heart thudded. When the door opened outward my heart thudded to a stop. It was the woman in the photographs I had looked at. Slightly older maybe, but definitely her.

The woman, my DNA's birth mother, asked politely, 'Why are you here sir?" He looked toward where I was crouching behind some bushes. The woman walked over, looking at the bushes, waiting patiently for me to reveal myself.

I took a deep breath. Now that the actual moment was here, I was scared. I wondered what would happen. If I moved now I could probably move quick enough to be out of there before she saw me.

But that wasn't why I was here. I hadn't done all that research to back out now. Knowing that I was probably about to give this poor lady the shock of her life, I stood up.

The woman's breath choked off. Her eyes widened. Her hand came up to touch my cheek. I held myself still and tried not to cringe back from the physical contact. She whispered, "Barbara?"

I shook my head, and muttered, "It's a long story."

The woman, my DNA's mom, whispered in a shocked voice, "Come inside." We trotted in. Something collided with the back of my head and I blacked out.

I woke up on a bed. My eyes jolted open and I flew to my feet, instantly alert and in a battle stance. Drin was seconds behind me. My eyes darted around, cataloging the room. I gasped. This was my old room, from the lab!

"We're back at the lab," I muttered, only tightening my pose. That was when a bunch of figures covered in black burst into my room, looking for all the world like ninjas. They attacked. We attacked.

I learned martial arts when I was seven. I was something like a fifth degree black belt if you want to put it in relative terms. But those terms don't take genetic engineering and fury into account. There were twenty ninjas. Drin and I finished them in less than five minutes, which can feel like a long time when you have to calculate your movements millisecond by millisecond.

At some point, when Drin and I were standing back to back, waiting for a new threat, a scientist walked into the room. I whirled, the scientist smiled. "Welcome back Ave," She said.

I fought to keep my emotions under control. This was the scientist who had raised me, taught me almost all I knew. She had protected me from the scientists who might perform harsher tests like they did to Drin.

And I launched straight at her, fists curled, muscles tensed. She made a gesture, and I had time to spread my wings and swoop out of the way before two tranquilizer bullets would have hit me. My head jerked back to look at two body guards and two other scientists who I hadn't noticed before. They were very obviously gaping in shock.

I fought the urge to snigger.

I landed next to Drin, wings still out and ready to carry me away. I cursed quietly. Low ceilings and a tiny doorway. Not at all good for flying.

"Ave," The female scientist murmured. "I need to speak with you. I won't tie you up or restrain you in anyway if you promise not to attack."

"Sorry," I snapped, "You see, I have a moral. Don't make promises you can't keep." Drin snarled at the scientists. They took a step back before a small Asian scientist asked, "The boy is the less successful one?"

Drin's eyes widened in fury. "Why you..."

I caught his shoulder. "Drin," I warned.

"Yes," The female whitecoat, using Drin's term for the scientists, answered. "Ave is our successful hybrid."

"She is incredible," The other scientist, a tall black guy murmured. "All my life I've been trying to create one such as her with no success. My experiments have failed."

"Mine as well," The Asian whitecoat murmured back.

The female whitecoat told them, "Ave was not an intentional experiment. We were trying to clone a human being, but hawk DNA got in the mix. After that, we tried to create another such as her, but their DNA had unraveled, or they died in the first few hours because of horrible mutations. Drin was one of our most successful intentional experiments."

Drin's and my eyes widened in horror. "How many failed experiments are there?" Drin gasped.

The whitecoats ignored us. "Can we conduct more tests on the subjects?" The black whitecoat jerked a thumb at us.

"We are planning to clone them both and conduct experiments on the clones," The female whitecoat answered, "We wish to keep the originals in decent condition."

"Oh," The Asian whitecoat nodded. "Makes sense."

Drin and I backed up. "No one's cloning us," I growled. This was not good. I flared my wings, fourteen feet of wing beating the air. Drin beat his smaller, less impressive four foot wingspan.

The black whitecoat frowned. "The less successful one has wings?"

"Potentially," The black whitecoat said, rubbing his chin, "We could graft larger wings onto the boy and see where that took us. I have been experimenting with that at my lab." He frowned, "My problem was that the humans I grafted wings onto were too heavy to leave the ground. What are the boy's physical statistics?"

Seeing where this was going, the female whitecoat answered, "He has everything that Ave has as far as flying goes. Hollow bones, air sacs, nuclei in his red blood cells. His only fault was that he did not have the wingspan to get off the ground." She brushed some unknown substance off of her clothes. "He was much more successful than our other experiments. Their mutations were too severe for them to survive more than a year,"

She ran a hand through her hair remembering. "There are two experiments that you might be interested in seeing. They are a bit younger than Drin and Ave. They have survived despite the odds against them. Bring the hybrids."

There was a thwip sound, and something slammed into my neck. I pulled away a feathered blue dart, before the tranquilizer hit me and I passed out.

Review please!