Edilio opened his eyes, a door had just slammed. He jumped out of bed and pulled a faded orange t-shirt on. He had slept in his trousers.
Barefooted, he walked over to his door and out into the corridor. The hall was silent, empty, but something was wrong. The door slamming was nothing; he could sense something was off. Something was here that wasn't meant to be. A cold draft making the hair on his neck stand on end.
He went past Astrid's room, the door that had slammed, down to the end of the corridor. At the end there were a door and a flight of stairs leading to the roof. Open. They never left it open.
Edilio wondered if Astrid had slammed her door and gone up to the roof. He closed the door silently and climbed the stairs. The dark sky loomed over head, he looked around. There, sat on the low wall that surrounded the roof with her legs over the side was a thin pale girl.
Edilio stared, she honest to god had wings. They were the lightest blonde, like her hair, nearly white. The wings had to stretch twice her arm span on each side, they came out at the bottom of her back.
She was wearing a short dark purple soft leather jacket and a thin white knitted jumper with holes ripped in the back for her wings; black skinny jeans and black converse trainers with thin lilac socks.
'Who are you and what are you doing here?' The girl nearly fell off the roof, she glared at Edilio. Her eyes were emeralds; she wasn't wearing makeup, and didn't need it. 'Phoebe,' there was no way she was telling him her full name 'and can you really not guess why I'm on the roof of a secret freak base?' she stood up, her wings moving slightly in the wind.
Quickly she folded her wings up and walked over to Edilio, 'I didn't want to wake you lot, I was waiting up here till morning.' Edilio muttered an apology.
Phoebe put her fingerless gloved hands in her pockets.
'Come on, I'll find you an empty room- we have tons of them' he lead her down the stairs and closed the door.
Caine's eyes flew open. The tranquilizers had worn off, his mind was clear. 'Oh my God, Astrid kissed me.' He rubbed his eyes and leapt out of bed. He ran to the door, he would ask her right now why she had kissed him.
Caine sped out into the hall and slammed into a girl he had never seen before. 'You have wings' well done Soren, she thinks you're an idiot. The girl nodded and walked on by, rolling her eyes. 'Hey, what's your name?'
She turned to him, 'Phoebe' she offered him her hand and he shook it,
'Caine Soren.'
'The guy that put freak's hands in cement?' Caine looked at his shoes, sighing 'that's me' and went to look for Astrid.
Phoebe got straight back to what she was doing. Caine Soren being here didn't bother her one bit, he seemed changed for whatever reason, and he wasn't as evil as he had been described.
Phoebe had never met Caine or Sam before. She hadn't known anyone really in the FAYZ. When she was twelve her wings had started growing, she ran away, too afraid to tell her parents.
Eventually Phoebe went home, having built the confidence to tell her parents. But her parents weren't there anymore, they weren't anywhere. She came home to find that her parents had died.
Her parents hadn't been very nice people. The Dylan family had to many secrets. When Phoebe was three she had stumbled along her family's cocaine farm. When she was five she watched her father kill a man because he was black. Her mother had cleaned up the crime with him while Phoebe sat next to them. At the age of seven her father started teaching her about white-supremacy, at nine he was telling her why she needed to hate black people.
That was why she hadn't wanted to tell them about her wings, her parents liked staying within strict race barriers. She knew that if her parents hated a difference in skin colour, they would certainly hate humans vs. bird girl.
The day she ran away was imprinted in Phoebe's head. Her father had started making a bomb in the house. Her parents were members of secret white supremacist group in California; the gang was planning to put a bomb in a street in a black neighbourhood.
The bomb had been a factor in her running away. She came back to find that her father's bomb making skills were lacking. Her house was blown to smithereens along with the half of the houses on either side. Phoebe was presumed dead, along with her mother and father; the blast had vaporized both of them. Luckily the neighbours had been out.
The street was rebuilt at her family shamed as the investigating officers found out about the racist cult and the planned terrorist attack.
Phoebe had lived in the wood, fending for herself, stealing thing from shops, learning to fly. Until the day the FAYZ happened. She had been living miles from town, stealing camp supplies from the ranger base in Stefano Rey. There was no warning, to sound telling her it was happening, the barrier just popped up.