Wow, this is an all-time worst. NO reviews since I posted last? :( This makes me very sad.
3 – Iggy's Discovery
It had started out as normal trip to the grocery store.
Iggy had been in the canned goods section, looking for beans. Grocery shopping was taking him longer than he'd planned on—they had rearranged the produce section of the store, so it had taken him twice as long to find everything he wanted. He could've broken down and asked someone for assistance, of course, but Iggy was always reluctant to ask for help with these things. That's why he'd turned down Ella's offer to come with him, as much as he enjoyed her company. He liked doing these things on his own; it made him feel self-sufficient. Fortunately, the cans were still arranged the same, so he found the beans easily. Shopping without sight wasn't so hard, as long as you had a great memory.
It was while he was picking out the canned beans that things got very strange. Iggy didn't pay too much attention to it at first—somebody was talking too loudly at the front of the store. Despite his superhuman hearing, the voice was lost on him, nothing but background noise. But when he heard footsteps coming his way, he paused. The steps were strong and paced, almost like a march. The person was wearing heavy boots.
"Please abandon all un-purchased items and return home immediately," he shouted, sounding very soldierly, "Remain inside your house until further notice, and watch your television for additional information." Though puzzled, Iggy did as the man said and headed towards the front door. He could hear the man, and several other men who sounded just like him, patrolling the grocery store aisles, repeating the same command to everyone they encountered.
A large crowd of confused people had pooled at the front doors of the supermarket, and were now trying to exit the store and get to their cars. The sudden rush of people threw Iggy off, and he stumbled slightly as he struggled to regain orientation and find his way out of the parking lot. He needed to circle around to the back of the store so he could take off unnoticed.
"Excuse me," another commanding voice commanded, stopping Iggy in his tracks, "You're going to have to come with me."
"What?" Iggy asked, muscles tensing. "Why?" He wanted to bolt in the other direction, but he decided to play things cool.
"You're severely visually impaired."
Rub it in, why don't you. "Yeah, I'm blind," Iggy snapped, "So what?"
"I have orders to take any and all severely disabled individuals into custody," he stated, "you will be relocated to a comfortable and humane processing center, where your unique needs can be met."
Over my dead body, Iggy scoffed. "Yeah... no. Sorry, I'm not going." He tried to walk away, but the guy grabbed his arm with a big, muscled hand.
"I can't allow you to do that," he droned, "You are a potential danger to yourself and others."
Iggy tried to jerk away from the man's grip, but he couldn't—he was too strong. Too strong for the marvels of genetic engineering? Iggy's heart rate quickened. Whoever this guy was, he wasn't your average G.I. Joe. "I'm sick of this," he growled, swinging his fist at where he guessed the guy's face to be. His target caught the blow with his other hand, and then tried to pin Iggy's arm behind his back. However, Iggy swung his heel back into the guy's shin, and his grip loosened enough for Iggy to pull away and put some distance between him and his assailant. He took on a defensive stance, waiting for muscleman to pull something else.
Then one of muscleman's buddies showed up. "Do not resist," he recited with an identical voice. Iggy scowled; two mega-strong supergoons versus one blind bird guy? Definitely not a fair fight.
"Look," Iggy said, trying to stay out of their attack zone, "I don't want to cause any trouble."
"Then surrender peacefully," one of his would-be arresters (Which one was it? They both sounded the same) suggested.
"Um, I'm going to have to pass on that." Even as he was speaking one of the goons tried to rush him, hoping to catch him off-guard. Iggy, however, had other plans. "Nice try," he said, side-stepping the man and shoving him into his partner. As the two collided with each other and stumbled about, Iggy threw off his coat and spread his wings, taking off as quickly as possible.
"Hate to leave so soon," he called to the two of them, who were surely gaping, "but I'm really not big on the whole prisoner thing. Maybe some other time, huh?" then he took off as fast as he could, anxious to get out of there as quickly as possible. Something was going on around here. Something big.
The flight from the store to the Martinez' house was relatively short, but Iggy spent extra time flying in the other direction and doubling back, just in case someone had tried to follow him. He didn't want to risk bringing back any unwelcome guests with him. When Iggy finally arrived he landed in the front yard and then walked up to the house, itching to tell someone what had just happened. He darted up the porch steps effortlessly, and was startled to find that the front door had been left open. Had he forgotten to close it all the way when he went out? Inside the TV was turned on at full blast, but nobody seemed to be around.
"Ella!" he called, "Where are you?" But nobody was around. Then he heard the mumbo-jumbo that was playing on the TV, and he frowned. Who were the Supremacy, and what was all this talk about a new civilization? This did not sound good. For a moment his mind darted back to Max and Fang—were they somehow connected to this mess? He turned down the volume on the TV, and then checked the phone lines. Dead. Ella had left her cell phone on the kitchen counter he noticed, his hand brushing against it as he put the phone receiver down, and when he tried using it to call Dr. M's cell he couldn't get through. She wasn't answering her phone, it seemed.
"Ella!" Iggy called again, hoping perhaps she simply hadn't heard him over the noise of the television. "Ella, it's me! Where did you go?" Something was wrong here; Ella wouldn't just go off on her own without her phone, especially not when she told him she'd be here when he got back.
I need to find the Flock, he thought to himself.
As if on cue, Nudge, Angel and Gazzy all barged through the front door. "Iggy, did you hear about—" Gazzy started.
"Heard it on the television," Iggy confirmed, shaking his head, "These people are insane." Then he remembered, "You guys didn't happen to see Ella on your way in, did you? She was here when I left, but when I came back the door was open and she was gone."
"Oh." An unusually short sentence for Nudge.
"What?" Iggy asked, impatient. There was a silence in the room, which Iggy guessed meant that the other three were shooting each other looks. But what was happening?
"Iggy," Angel explained, "We found a note taped to the front door."
A note? "What does it say?" Iggy asked.
Nudge read, "'Your contribution to the United North American Empire is greatly appreciated.'" Her voice was stiff, as if she was coming to a sickening conclusion as she read the words. Iggy had a feeling he was coming to the exact same conclusion: Ella had been taken.
"On TV," Gazzy murmured, "they talked about people getting arrested or disappearing. But I thought... don't they only take, you know, different people? Why would they take Ella?"
"I don't know," Iggy muttered, deeply upset, "I really don't know." But whatever the reason, it definitely wasn't something good.
I woke up with a start, not knowing where I was. Why wasn't I at home, safe and sound in my room? I was lying on the lower half of a bunk bed, except, it was more of a bunk table. There was no mattress or pillow, just a thin wool blanket that covered the plywood surface I had been laid on top of. I looked around, and saw that I wasn't alone. There were other girls huddled on other bunks, and still others who were pacing anxiously between the two rows of bunk beds in the room. The room itself was a strange set-up, with the back wall made of concrete, the side walls made of what looked to be plastic panelling, and the farthest wall was a stretch of fencing that looked a lot like chicken wire. It made the room seem a little like some sort of kennel.
I blinked wearily a few times and slowly sat up, moaning softly as my memory returned. I had been kidnapped by a gang of bozos in bike helmets—and here I thought I was the un-endangered member of the family! But now I didn't know where I was, trapped in a room that felt like a giant cage, away from my friends and my family and—
"Don't cry," a voice next to me said, startling me from my deluge of self-pity, "They don't like it when you cry."
"W-what?" I turned to see who was talking to me. It was a girl my age, with long, sandy hair and a curvy figure. "Who doesn't like it?"
"The guards," the girl explained, pointing towards the chain link wall. Sure enough, a man in a dark uniform strolled past our barrack, a stern expression on his face. He reminded me of the men who had grabbed me out of my house.
"Where am I?" I asked, my fear temporarily replaced with curiosity.
"I don't know exactly," she answered, "but we're in some sort of lab. I'm Meagan, by the way."
A lab? It looked more like a prison camp. "I'm Ella," I replied in turn, "and why are we in a lab?"
Meagan cast her eyes downward. "They came and explained it to us earlier. You're the last one to wake up." Now she looked like the one who was going to cry.
"What did they say?" I asked, a foreboding feeling entangled with my intestines.
"Well you know those bird kids, the ones that used be on the news a lot?"
I know them a lot better than you think. "Yeah?"
"They're going to do that to us," Meagan told me, "or at least try to. Give us wings, I mean." I tried to speak, tried to respond to what I'd just heard her say, but my mouth was numb and I'd lost my breath. When I didn't speak, Meagan continued, "They've developed some sort of virus that's supposed to put the mutant genes into our cells. I guess the idea is that if enough of our cells get mutated, our bodies will change. Or something like that. They've never tested it on humans before, so they don't know what will happen." I could see the fear brimming in Meagan's eyes. "Pretty wacked out, huh?"
"We're going to be experiments," I whispered to myself, as horror stories popped up in my head about the Flock's days at the School.
"They're going to start giving us injections tomorrow," Meagan kept explaining, "but first you have to fill out this form they left—" but I wasn't listening anymore. My gut skyrocketed into my throat, and I looked around desperately for a bathroom. Sure enough, in the corner of the barrack there was a toilet and a sink, and I jumped up onto my feet and ran towards it. As soon as I reached the toilet bowl I doubled over and puked up the contents of my stomach, but even then I couldn't shake the utter terror and disgust that was fermenting inside of me.
They didn't want us to cry, but nobody said we couldn't throw up.
