31 days.

Damnit, damnit, damnit, how the hell could he have forgotten?

The night air was cool against his face, but it did little to disperse the tears.

31 days, 31 days, today is the 28th of March that meant he had three days to get from Arizona to New York…

The murmuring tapestry of light and dark that was the lightening forest screamed around him as he blurred forward into the updraughts, the wind colliding with him head on, keeping pace bizarrely with the memories…

"Do you remember the day you left?"

They were standing on a sea of broken tiles, and his whole body was taut.

He answered her.

"No, I don't."

Her smile was feral, rows of gaping teeth and thin lips. "Yes, you do."

He knew he should have felt sad he was leaving, but it was fine, it was okay, he would only be gone for a few days. In a way it was good he was leaving, since that would give the flock enough time to decide whether or not they wanted him around or not…

A chocked sob was hacked free of his throat and snatched away by the wind.

He told himself this because he didn't want to hear the alternative. He didn't want to hear the side of him that hissed in the back of his head, he didn't want to feel the headaches…

"I want it out!" he screamed at her. His voice reached a keen so loud he couldn't hear it anymore. "Get it out! Stop it now!"

Her smile sank to a glower. "It would have been out already. What do you think we were holding you and the flock captive for?"

His rage slowed, condensing and cooling to blind, nudging confusion. "That was… for me?"

Her demon smile was back again. "Not for you, for him."

"It's a him?" His jaw trembled. "What do you want him for?"

Her smile was white and sizzling red. Her eyes stretched in a face distorted through the glass. "Why, for tests, of course."

He sure as hellwasn't telling anybodyabout the meaning behind the thirty one days.

His body trembled. "How much longer?"

She shrugged disinterestedly. "Oh, about thirty one days."

Which meant he had to get there fast.

Iggy powered forward, feeling the pull and stretch of his wing muscles and bones, the wind scraping and flaming against the tattered membrane. The tears were gone now, the sticky iciness clinging to his eyelashes, fleeing across his cheeks as he flew.

Marian Jensen was sitting by her desk when she first heard the flap of leathery wingbeats in the air outside. Sitting up straighter in her high-backed chair, she cleared the desk of the stacks of paper and errant files, sweeping them unceremoniously into the paper shredder beside her desk. She tried her best to ignore the mechanical whirring – she had backups on her computer files.

Iggy alighted awkwardly on the side of the building, clambering with difficulty through the large window. Even before he had fully made it onto the safety of the white tiled floor, Marian could tell he was exhausted.

His hair was tangled and filthy and looked like it hadn't been washed in quite some time. His clothes fared no better. Dark shadows lined the hollows of his eyes, the whites shot through with veins of red. The membrane of his wings were ragged and torn, several bunches of white feathers still clustered around the bone-claw.

Iggy pointed at the desk with a shaking finger. "You knew I was coming."

Marian nodded and stood up. "What happened to your wings?" her voice was level and emotionless – they weren't friends, nor were they completely enemies.

Iggy cleared his forehead of several stringy strands of hair with a hand, avoiding her gaze. "I had to disguise them some way." His voice held a tinge of defiance, but for the most part, his voice was mainly shaking with exhaustion. "Where is he?"

Marian coughed pointedly. "You remember our deal. I would agree to let you see him as long as you give yourself in for further experimentation…" it really was a stupid deal, she reflected. Her mouth thinned into a taut smile. Even more stupid was the bat-hybrid who agreed to it. All those years of covering up his true self must have psychologically affected him.

Iggy waved her comment aside. "Yes, yes, I know." His legs trembled and nearly gave way – he lunged forward, grabbing the edge of the desk for support. Marian watched unblinkingly from the opposite side, mentally trying to figure out if Iggy's apparent exhaustion would hinder the tests in any way.

Marian exhaled and walked away from the desk, towards the door. Iggy watched her with narrowed eyes.

Marian held the door open and gestured for him to follow. "After you."

Click…

Click…

Click…

The heels of Marian's black shoes clicked against the black and white chequerboard tiling of the corridor as they hurried down it, causing Iggy's head to throb unpleasantly. The walls were bending and flexing like reflections in one of those trick mirrors at a funfair, the throbbing of his heart acting as a twisted beat.

"Are-are we nearly there?" he asked, stumbling along in the whitecoat's wake.

Marian's eyes were like chips of flint. "Yes. Keep up. The boy is nearly waking."

Nearly waking… Iggy tripped over his trailing laces, but managed to catch himself before he hit the ground. He continued forward, thinking. He would nearly be awake… awake to face the whitecoat's experiments, awake to face the risks, the starving, the hunger…

Rage spiked through him.

Eventually they stopped at a plain white door. Marian keyed in the passcode, unflinching despite the harsh beeps and grinding of the automatic lock unlocking that made Iggy's headache pound and throb terribly.

Marian opened the door, gesturing for him to enter. "Wait here. There are certain measures that need to be authorised before the bat hybrid can be awakened. Wait here in this room – I'll go."

Any other time, Iggy would have felt wary walking into a room that could be locked from the outside, but he was just so tired.

He walked in.

31 days ago

This was definitely not a normal day.

The bat watched from inside the strange, hard substance at the chaos that blurred outside. It looked, and was confused.

Pale, naked, furless faces with eyes like giant suns loomed at it from out of the fog that seemed to inhabit the outside.

Shapes flitted around outside and shrill beeping sounded, making the bat cringe and cocoon its wings around itself for comfort and protection against the burning eye-suns that glared at him.

Large, squat white things blurred and wobbled unsteadily outside, tiny lights pulsing on them. The naked, furless faces moved their strange, long legs, huddled into strange, shiny white fur.

Outside everything was strange. Inside, things were even stranger.

Strange, white vines bit deep into the bat's flesh and the bat whimpered in discomfort. Why were the vines moving? Why where the furless faces making high, gabbling noises?

Pain… agony… pain in its wings; pain everywhere… burning, ice-cold objects pressing against its skin…

The bat squealed as the vines tightened their hold on it and blinding agony swept through the mammal's small, delicate body.

The pain was bewildering. The bat was bewildered, looking blindly around at the chaos of the outside as the gabbling and beeping noises increased. Why wouldn't the furless face's help?

The bat squealed again as flares of discomfort lashed its body, pain surging through it. Its head pounded horribly and the outside wobbled unsteadily as pain lashed the bats body again and again.

Darkness growing inside it, dark spots forming in its eyes, and worst of all, death was calling it. The bat faded in and out of consciousness so often it became its entire existence…

Thirty-one days later

Awake.

The boy's eyes opened wide, inky pupils reflecting the scattered fragments of light within the room. In the absence of a fully developed mind, instinct seized his brain and refused to let go.

Strange, sore, not blind, tall, small, new, strange…
Incoherent fragments of thought raced around his feverish brain in his body's attempt to make sense of his surroundings.

The strange, furless faces he vaguely remembered seeing before had gone. The strange, hard thing he had been trapped in was lying in glittering pieces on the floor.

How did she know all this when he had been so ignorant before? The new words, the sudden understanding of what was going on frightened him.

Cold. Scared. Agonized.

Agony rose to his awareness in a flash of neurons and a small whimper escaped him as he felt the ice-cold objects against him naked skin, burning like ice. Something sticky and red dripped onto the table.

Hunted. Bat. Not bat. What was he? Not bat. Not anymore. What was he?

Memories rose to his awareness in a flash of neurons, making him whimper and cringe down onto the smooth surface that held him. His brain made the connections between touch and sight and sudden understanding blazed into his mind, like lightning in a dark cavern.

The hard thing that was lying in pieces before him had been a glass cage. The strange, furless faces he remembered seeing were people. The hard surface he was lying on was a table. The ice-cold objects against his skin were electrodes. The burning sensation and the red, sticky stuff was pain and blood.

The bat/human hybrid rolled off the table, landing with an undignified thump on the floor. For a second he lay, curled up like a shrimp before he pushed himself to his feet and moved with tottering steps around the room. The scratch of his long nails echoed around the room.

Slowly, the room came into dim focus. There was the table he had been lying on and the shattered white machines stood around the room. The room was dark wood paneling and the door was thick steel. He looked up. Several fluorescent lights on the ceiling.

There was a tickling sensation on the back of his neck. The boy grabbed a tuft of his blonde hair, staring at it hard before letting it go.

The door opened with a clang and the boy jumped in surprise, only to topple over onto the floor with a crunch of glass. Catlike, he leapt to his feet as a tall woman entered the room, fingers poised on the door handle.

"You're awake," she said calmly, shutting the door behind him with a clang.

The boy tried to sculpt his thoughts into words, only to fail miserably. Instead, he pulled back his lips in a snarl, baring sharp little teeth.

"Walking and talking at barely an hour old! I knew you'd be full of surprises," the woman continued, tapping something on the wall behind him.

The fluorescent lights turned on in a blaze of light and the boy squealed, scrambling backwards until he stopped, quivering underneath the table where it was dark. The dark was safer. The dark was his friend.

The woman in the white lab coat crouched down to examine him with wintry eyes. "You look… ready."

He snapped at her hand as she attempted to touch him and she hastily withdrew. The boy curled his little hands into fists, ready to attack if she came any nearer.

The woman didn't seem to notice his hostile stance, only turned and beckoned. "Come with me." With unhurried steps, she walked out of the room.

The boy scrambled out from under the table and followed her, turning off the light and shutting the door behind him.