Thanks everyone for putting up with me and waiting for me to start writing. I had a major case of writers block, but I'm over it... so thanks again.

Previously:

"Who the hell are you people?" Beckman snapped from her screen. Everyone whipped around to face her and they could see that she was spitting mad.

"We, General, are the people who are going to rescue Chuck from Itex."

Sarah POV

"If you're going to do that, do you know who took him in the first place?" Beckman replied scathingly. As she spoke, she pulled up a photo of the men that had taken Chuck. The picture was grainy and dark, having been pulled from the security cams, but you could clearly make out the faces on it.

The reaction the strangers had to the photo was shocking. Nudge leapt away from the computer with a hiss and a look of fear on her face. She backed toward one of the walls and crouched, hissing and growling at the picture. Max sprang backwards and stood stiff and waiting, braced for an attack and the nameless man placed himself in front of her defensively. His face showed that he would murder the men in the picture. All of the strangers' faces held a mixture of fear, hatred and anger. That had definitely not been the reaction anyone had expected.

"How the hell is he still alive?" Max spat. She was practically vibrating with anger (or fear) and Sarah could see that her hands were clenching and unclenching into fists. "They were all killed 12 years ago!" She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then she reopened her eyes and looked straight into Sarah's.

"If you do love Chuck, you're going to have to learn some pretty gruesome things about your government. Are you o.k. with that?"

Sarah paused. Then nodded resolutely. Beside her Casey did the same (after some internal deliberation) and Morgan murmured a quiet, "yep." Max looked surprised by Morgan and Casey's answer but she shook her head and started to speak.

"28 years ago, Itex created a lab called the school. Itex was one of the largest companies in the world. It created and manufactured anything from diapers to computer. It was basically in charge of the world. Then they started in genetic experimentation. They created hundreds, if not thousands of hybrids, ranging from almost any kind of DNA possible. Only about 4% of the experiments were viable and even less then that lived past their first year.

The two most common hybrids that survived were lupine-sapien and avain-sapien mixes. The wolf-humans were completely under Itex's control and they were the wardens, the torturers at the school. They were vicious and cruel, not caring about the pain that Itex created. Then there was us. The birdkids. Well, that's what we called ourselves. We figure that the school only managed to create about twenty of us. We've found almost everyone in the past few years.

Anyway, originally, there were four of us. Me, Fang, Iggy and Stone. Stone was two years older than the rest of us, but it was us four until we were about two. Then Nudge was made. After that, it was Gazzy then Angel. We don't know who many experiments before or after us but there are still some out there. From what we've found, all of us were born from human mothers, but the school managed to get avian DNA into us before we were even born. We grew up in the school, in hell.

Then a scientist that actually seemed to care snuck into the room where we were kept and took Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gazzy, Angel and myself and he left Stone behind. We never knew what happened to him until a few weeks ago. We've been searching for his exact location nonstop ever since we heard he was alive. But the worst part of this story was that the government knew about these schools, about the experiments, about the pain we went through. And they did nothing. They wanted to use us for their own personal use. They wanted to use as weapons. So you'll have to excuse me if we don't automatically trust you, but we will do anything to get Stone…Chuck back from Itex." When Max was finished, Sarah felt tears in her eyes, Casey looked positively miserable, Morgan just looked shell-shocked and Beckman was weeping. Nudge had removed the photo of the men who had taken Chuck and was back to typing something into the computer. The man, who Sarah assumed was either Fang or Iggy, had relaxed a bit and was studying the layout of Castle. (A/N: Sorry for the long explanation, but I needed for Sarah and them to know more about Chuck's past… ^.^)

"You mean…. Chuck's a…. a-" Morgan trailed off.

Max narrowed her eyes. "A- what? What were you going to say? A freak? Or a miracle, or something along those lines? We've heard all before. And then some." Sighing, Max shrugged out of her jacket and Sarah froze when she extended her wings.

"Take a good look. I don't know if you've seen Chuck's, but these are my wings." They were beautiful, Sarah thought to herself. Along the top, they were a perfect blend of brown and speckled feathers and the primaries were a pure creamy white. Max folded them to her back after a few seconds.

"So, back to the point. We can save Chuck from Itex, but we need your support. As in weapons and backup. You alright with that?" Max asked quietly. Casey looked over at Sarah. Their eyes met and each understood that they would do whatever was needed to save their teammate.

"Yes." Sarah murmured.

Max nodded. Then she produced floors plans to the school and laid them out on the table.

How did I do?