"Have you ever felt like you weren't loved? Like you were just a mere object? Well…that's all I really am…an object…an experiment…" ~ Unknown
I couldn't remember how long it's been…how long I've been trapped in this hell hole. My whole life, I think? The only thing that kept me happy was the only company I had. My little brother… Neither of us have names; at least I don't think we do… If we did, no one ever told us them. I was the oldest of us both by two years, but I'm only seven years old. Not to mention we never wore any shirts…at least we had our feathers to keep us warm.
Right…you don't know…See, me and my brother aren't normal. Our mother, who we never knew, was forced to have us. Before we were even born, we got injected with some DNA. More specifically, bird DNA. Mine was a blue crane, while my brother got a golden eagle. Lucky…I think the best part about being half bird is that we technically have wings for arms. Of course, they haven't fully developed yet, so they had patches of feathers. As for flying, I'm not sure if we can…but we had no way of knowing since we're almost always kept in a small cage. It barely let us both fit, so we were constantly squished together.
Normally when I looked up, I saw hundreds of other cages with other halflings in them, whether they were half bird, half lizard, or half rat. But today…I only saw twenty cages. For the past week, they've been taking cages and moving them. I don't know much about why, but I overheard them talking about the "FBI" closing in on them, whatever that means. But despite this, halflings that were grouped together in one cage were being put into separate cages. That meant it wouldn't be long before me and my brother were separated. We could both sense that.
My head jerked upward at the door opening and I held my little brother closer. I sighed in relief when the movers walked further away from us, but flinched when they started loading fifteen of the remaining twenty cages onto a mover's cart. Shrieks and hisses of terror rang out as they were pulled to one of the two lifts. My heart sank when I saw which one. The furnace lift…they were going to kill that batch…I guess they were too weak to make the ride to our new home. The cries of terror were soon silence by gun shots. They didn't have to suffer anymore…
My little brother started to sob, shaking from the gunshot sounds. He hated those sounds. He often had nightmares of being shot. I grabbed my blanket and wrapped it around us, as it always helped him calm down. I chirped softly as well, as that calmed him down too.
"W-Will they shoot us…?" He asked, shaking from fear.
"No, they wouldn't dare…" I replied, "We're both the strongest out of everyone here…we're too valuable to them…" I wasn't lying. We were the "prized" experiments, thanks to the fact that unlike everyone else, we had the intelligence of our human half, not our animal half. Not only that, but both of us were even smarter than the average human, with both of our IQ's being higher than 180. So I knew that we were both heading on the lift that took us outside. I also knew we would be getting a special house soon, one where our creators would let us walk around, and maybe be outside. Maybe…
The movers came in and loaded up the remaining five cages and got them to the furnace room. Odd…normally they would do the rest tomorrow…why were they speeding up? I didn't have proper time to run through all the scenarios as two moves approached our cage. I puffed out my feathers, even if it was a fruitless effort to scare them away. One opened the cage while the other grabbed my brother and pulled him out. He flailed his arms and let out shrieks of terror as he tried to get back to me. He was thrown into another cage while I was pinned down in mine, as I too tried to reach him. They locked our cages up and wheeled my brother away while other of us called for each other. "LET HIM GO!" I shouted at one of the movers. They ignored me and rolled my brother onto the other lift, disappearing from my view. I let out a wail of agony as I sobbed. My brother…my only family…we were going to separate houses…I would never see him again…I lay in my cage and cried, grabbing the bars with my strange hands. I knew this would happen. But it still hurt…
That's when I heard the lift move again…now it was my turn…I was terrified, so I hid under my blanket and peeked out through a small hole I had made with one of my talons on accident. Something was off…they weren't movers…I've never seen anyone like them before…they had guns, and vests on that said "FBI" on them…wait…FBI! I remember those initials! They're actually here…were they good guys, or bad guys? But they're the reason my brother and I were separated…so they had to be bad guys…right?
Spencer looked around the room, analyzing everything he could. "It appears that there was more than just one cage in here…" He said, seeing stains of at least fifty cages throughout this odd basement. The unsubs managed to escape with all but one cage.
"Holy shit…I knew there had to be at least ten missing women…but fifty?" Morgan said as he wiped the sweat from his head.
"Actually, I think there was more than fifty cages in here," Spencer said as he walked up to the only cage left in the room, "This one looks as if it had a second one on top of it. If we take that into account, I'd say we're looking at a hundred cages at least."
"A hundred?!" Prentis said. SSA Emily Prentis, once an undercover agent, and whose mother is an ambassador. She was another close friend of Spencer, and even helped him when SSA Gideon left the agency.
"At least and that's not taking into account the…" Spencer was cut off by a sharp pain in his ankle. He yelped and jumped away, looking down to see what attacked him. He was completely stunned when he saw it. Talons…