Chapter 2: Freedom- The Avian American Dream
I woke up the next morning, surrounded by trees. Flobie was nowhere in sight, but by looking at the newly lit fire and heaping pile of berries she had been here recently. I ate the berries without complaint. My stomach had basically never been near full of any kind of food. Let's just say where I was raised didn't care how healthy I was.
Obviously the School didn't care about me dying either. Apparently I wasn't very important. If I wasn't so important you'd think they'd let me possibly go to a normal school, or maybe know who my parents are, or hey- this is a crazy one, live in something besides a dog crate! But I guess I'm just not that good of a person to be respected. Not even fully human, so maybe people should just call me a freak. Yep. That's me, Flips. My real name is Emma, but only rarely do the scientists call me my real name. They usually call me "Subject 11". Pretty fancy!
So are you still pretty shocked about the whole "not fully human" comment? Well, we're not human, it's true. We have some bird DNA thrown in with our human DNA, resulting in Flobie and I being bird kids. Also fancy. And it's also insane. Pretty much our entire lives till about 3 this morning we've been living at the School, a horrible lab where scientists create DNA recombinants and do gross and totally abusive experiments to them. I don't even know how I can put a whole sentence together sometimes considering how much I've been through.
The only other experiments that were successful are the Erasers; at least that we've ever seen. Who knew a human with some wolf DNA mixed in could be such a nightmare? They work for the School, usually as our baby sitters as well as our punishers if we don't listen. We aren't the best listeners, unfortunately.
A big difference between the Erasers and us is how long life expectancy is. They usually last about 5 years while Flobie and I are 16, which is ancient for the School's experiments that usually don't last a week.
But yeah, Flobie just got a new power and I'm not complaining. Maybe we are in the middle of nowhere, but at least no one is pricking at me with needles and making me completely sick just to see how my body reacts. But now Mason will definitely come looking for us, although it might take him awhile to count to two.
A half an hour later Flobie returned with a backpack in hand. She sat down on the grass besides me and started taking out snacks.
"Wow, what is all this stuff, how'd you find it?" I asked, already biting some sort of granola bar thing. It was amazing!
"Um, there are hikers a couple miles away from here. I really don't like stealing but what else can we do? Die?" she said, looking at the ground not at all liking the fact that she took from someone. She had such a big heart considering the people who made her were so evil.
"Awe, Flobie, don't worry about it. I mean, I don't think stealing is great either but we have to survive. Apparently that's why they made us anyways. All they talked about to us was surviving in the world, not that we've ever been outside the School before."
"Whitecoats are too evil to listen to, Flips. Don't ever listen to Mason either because he's full of lies. I should know." She pointed to her head, indicating hearing his thoughts at will. Shocked by that too? Might want to get used to it, we're some talented kids.
"So when did you learn you could teleport?" I asked, my mouth spewing crumbs everywhere.
"Well last night when I heard your thoughts about dying I kind of teleported out of my dog crate and into the courtyard. I'm not sure how, but I guess your urgency for me just took over my freakish instincts? Who knows? Nobody does! Not even the humans that created us know, as twisted as they are." Flobie answered, not even sounding happy about her new skill.
"I sure am glad you did get a new skill, Flobie. And now we are free!" I stated.
"Free at last, free at last!" she agreed wholeheartedly.
"Yeah, well, what is the plan now? Fly away from here? Anything but go back, I'd rather live in a sewer system or something." I replied, already picturing it. Home sweet home!
"Well, I say let's get out of the country. We're in America, right? What other countries are there? Geeze, they never taught us anything there."
"Let's fly east, anywhere east." I stated, feeling the rightness of the direction.
After breakfast we took off, our wings extended to their full sizes. Wings! To fly with! It still shocked me, and what really got to me was we were free. We weren't starving, we weren't in crates, we weren't being experimented on, but we were free to do whatever we want. On the run of course, but it was way better off that way.
At the School they had only seen if we could fly, but never taught us how. So much for instincts, they just strapped electrocuting collars on us if we disobeyed orders. We got to go out to the field where Mason had almost killed me and fly, but only once a year or so ever since we were about 5. We were still choppy on the "how to fly" thing, but we would get the hang of it.
In the air we got a good look around at where we were. We definitely could tell where the School was, and to our disappointment we could still see the huge building with our raptor vision. Yes, we have better sight than humans too. Just pretend we ate our carrots at dinner time every night.
Considering the School was so close, we flew as fast as we could by catching air currents to cruise a few miles faster. I'm guessing that we could go over 100 miles when we were flying and almost 200 when we tucked our wings in and dived towards the ground. Flying beats a car ride any day. It was amazing to be out of the School, but it was also horrible to be so close with Mason tracking us. Fortunately he can't attack us in the air.
"So considering we don't know anything except English and we have no resources besides the clothes off our backs, how the heck are we supposed to survive?" Flobie questioned, yelling above the wind.
"Uh, instincts? Maybe we'll find a bunch of worms and build a nest in a tree if we go too crazy." I snickered, already picturing us in a fifty foot tree. Good thing I have a sense of humor, or I would probably be losing what was left of my sanity a bit more.
"Seriously, how are we going to get food? Are we going to live on the run, or underground, or just in hiding, what?" Flobie rambled persistently, always wanting to know the plan.
"I don't know, Flobie. We have to adapt somehow though. Survive. Maybe we can get jobs or something and live in a motel with cockroaches all over the floor and keep our identities secret in some huge town far away from here."
"I'm not a fan of cockroaches, how about crickets?" she smirked.
"Whatever floats your boat."