Ten days.

It was now ten days since I had become a peregrine falcon and just a few days since I had left the eyases to their father, named Spirit, before going away to find a new nest for myself.
Nevertheless, a lot of things happened during these few days.

Firstly, I had found my own nest and claimed a territory for myself.
Even if it wasn't as good as Spirit's nest, I could still consider myself lucky to have the nest I had. The nest, placed on the roof of a sky-scrapper, offered me a good view of the surroundings and allowed me to see Spirit's nest and my old apartment. It also featured an air conditioner next to where I slept which, thanks to how those things worked, meant I had a warm breeze of air around me when I slept. My territory offered a vast amount of easily catchable pigeons and was free of any possible competition from another predator.

Secondly, the Spirit's third egg had hatched to give a male, named Colin, and all three eyases were fine. So far, Spirit didn't seem to have a lot of trouble when it came to take care of his eyases; I was regularly dropping a pigeon or two near his territory to help him a bit.

Thirdly, I had finally managed to accept my situation.
Of course, I still missed my human life but, unlike the first days, I was able to live without feeling like I needed to cry every ten seconds.
Strangely, even if I knew I should consider this acceptance as the best news, knowing the three eyases were fine made me a lot happier.

Fourthly, I had been able to decide on my new identity, which made it easier to be in peace with my new situation.
Before today, I wanted to be a human only and to have nothing in common with the "real" falcons.
However, and I had only realized it yesterday as I tried to sleep, this wasn't possible. I couldn't reject the "falcon" aspect of myself. It would simply drive me crazy to force myself to ignore I was partly a peregrine falcon.
All I had to do now was to decide how much of a falcon I was and how much of a human I was.

Finally, I had decided to continue the investigation I had stopped ten days ago.
At first, I had been stopped by my inability to invest and take care of the birds at the same time. Then, after my suicide attempt, I had stopped because I was scared. I feared what I might have done if I was exposed to something related to my previous life.
Fortunately, this fear was over. I was finally fine with my life.
That absence of fear made the investigation possible.
I knew it wouldn't change anything at all for me but it would give me something to do when I wasn't hunting or trying to help Spirit at a distance. It would also satisfy my curiosity: my love in science was too great to ignore all the questions raised by what had happened to me.

I walked to the edge of the building and placed myself so my back faced the "outside" of my nest.
I then closed my eyes and, after a few seconds, simply pushed myself away to let myself fall toward the ground. I always enjoyed that moment. I always enjoyed the sensation of free fall during the first few seconds of the dive. Of course, it wasn't as exciting as it would have been with a human body, but it was always amusing to think I was jumping off a sky scrapper on a regular basis.
After a few seconds I rolled a little to make my belly face the building, pulled up and headed toward the forest. I wanted to have an aerial view of the Path and, hopefully, notice clues I might have missed before.
I knew the construction site was a lot closer but, somehow, I found the forest less threatening and scary than any other place I could go to investigate. Plus, the forest wasn't in Spirit's territory. As unintuitive as it might seem, being attacked by another falcon can be very distracting.

It took me about half an hour to get there.
I could have made it there faster without any effort but, since I wanted to enjoy the beautiful weather, I wasted a lot of time flying in some thermals longer than I needed.
Once I was above the Path, I almost "laughed" in my head. There were so much details and clues I missed the first time I went there to investigate! So much clues I had missed when I was a human, either because I didn't have a good angle of vision or simply because they were too large for me to see as a whole were now obvious to me!
Investigating that place as a human was like if trying to read a book when I was only allowed to see one character every five seconds without taking any notes; doing it as a falcon was like if, suddenly, I was not only allowed to take notes but also to see the whole page at once. I could see exactly where the gillette had noticed me and started to chase me. I could easily see where I was when I had spotted it. I could, without difficulties, understand why the hawk had told me to run in a certain direction instead of another.
I could even see where the gillette had walked before he saw me.
Hoping it would lead me to wherever he lived, I decided to follow its tracks. It would be hilariously easy to do it. Even if I knew long before now the importance of air reconnaissance during a disaster, I only fully understood it during this flight. From up there, I could see everything on the ground and inspect a much larger area than if I was on foot.

After a few minutes of flying, the track led me to an area surrounding a nice lake inside the forest.
There, I could see several other gillette tracks, all of them sharing a common point: they all disappeared at the same place. It was like if a large group of gillettes had all climbed in the same helicopter before it took-off.
It was quite ironic. I had just acquired a wonderful way to continue my investigation but all the clues I collected thanks to it only raised more questions than it solved.
Disappointed, I decided to turn around and head back home. I knew there was nothing more I could do here and, honestly, I just wanted to enjoy the weather and fly in my territory.
A few seconds later, as I had completed my turn, I saw it.

I saw the dead body of a bird of prey, already eaten by another predator. I wasn't an expert in bird anatomy but I was a bird for long enough to know exactly what had happened.
The poor bird had lost a wing mid-air and crashed violently on the ground; I was sure of that because, sometime, I had to let the body of my prey fall on the ground if it was too heavy for me.
The strange thing the dead bird was how clean the wound was. It didn't looked like any wound a predator might do. It was so clean it could have passed as a chirurgical amputation made by a laser cutter.
It wasn't natural.
Pushed by curiosity, and the hope I would discover something useful for once, I slowly lowered my altitude until I was less than 50 meters above the ground.
What I saw will probably stay in my memory forever.
It was a slaughter.
A lot of animals were dead all around the area. They all had wounds as clean as the bird's wound; some of them even had their bones slightly charred. It was like if someone had used a giant laser cutter and aimed it at every animals unfortunate enough to be there. Whoever did that hadn't killed for his survival. He had killed for the sake of killing. He was a monster.

I suddenly felt extremely vulnerable.
I felt as if an invisible danger was somewhere nears me and that I would be unable to react in time if the danger attacked me.
I felt like if some kind of invisible super-owl was flying on my six o'clock while wondering the best way to kill me.
I felt weak.
Too weak.
I didn't want to stay here. I didn't want to see the slaughter. I didn't want to be anywhere near this lake anymore.
I quickly turned toward my house, which now meant my nest, and flapped my wings madly. I wanted to be as fast as I could be. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep such a speed all the way back but it was irrelevant. I didn't want to use a high cruise speed. I wanted pure speed. I wanted to be a Spitfire on war emergency power (or WEP, for short). I knew I would use a lot of energy and that my style of flying could almost be seen as the definition of inefficiency but it wasn't important. Just like a fighter pilot using the WEP, I wanted to be fast for a few moments without regard to the huge fuel usage. I would only slow down to a "normal" speed once I would be out of danger.

After 30 seconds or so of flying like that, I became too tired to maintain the pace and had to slow down to a more reasonable speed.
I still thought about the slaughter. I couldn't stop thinking about those poor animals shot for no reasons apart from being there.
I still thought of the poor bird who had been shot in the air. I had been a bird long enough to know exactly what had happened to her. She had seen her left wing burn off. Then, she had started to roll rapidly and fall toward the ground. She had, obviously, tried to regain control but aerodynamic had made it impossible.
She had seen herself fall toward the ground without being able to control anything until it was too late to recover even if she had both her wings. She had been alive to realize she would die whether she regained control or not.
It was a horrible way to die.

Hoping to stop thinking about it; I started to calculate a rough estimate of how far I was from home. If I rounded up (a lot) and assumed I sprinted at 120 km/h for 30 seconds, I should have travelled one kilometer by now; which put me about 34 kilometers from my destination. Assuming I had a cruising speed of 70 km/h, it would put me about 30 minutes away.
It was too long for me.
I just wanted to go home and rest in the warm breeze of the air conditioner.

Ten minutes later, I was still far away from home and the air conditioner. Despite my attempts, I was still thinking of the slaughter.
It was too much for me. I mean, why would anyone do this? How could someone wake up and decide it would be fun to go near a lake and kill every animal on sight? What kind of…
BAM!
Wait, what?

It took me two seconds to understand.
Some kind of human was trying to shoot me down, just like someone took down that poor bird.
I looked, franticly, on the ground and tried to find whoever was shooting me. Thanks my eyes, I only needed a few seconds to do so.
BAM!
He was on my two O'clock low.
Without losing sight of him, as it would result in my death, I started to fly in the most random fashion I could. My goal was to be a difficult target while I tried to figure out what to do next.
I felt like a spitfire trying to avoid the anti-aircraft shells above an enemy airfield.

On my side, I had the ability to fly speed, maneuverability and a human intelligence.
BAM!
On his side, he had… Well, everything a human have.
I reviewed all the options I had.
What if I turned and took a dump on him to distract him? No… I would need to go too slow and fly straight; anyway, there was no way I could hit him.
Simply going as fast as I could in straight line and get out of range? No… I would be an easy target.
Gaining some speed with a good dive and go away? No… I was too low to build up enough speed.
No wait… It was obvious. Why couldn't I think of it before?
I had human intelligence and so he had. But he didn't know it.
He though I was stupid and incapable of deception.
I would use this lack of knowledge to my advantage. I would prove him wrong and survive to tell the tale.
I just had to wait for his next shot and hope he would miss again.
I slightly made my flight more predictable. I flew in a slightly straighter line and kept a more or less constant altitude.
I wanted to be a more interest…
BAM!
I swear I saw that bullet passed in front of me.
I immediately folded my right wing and, without unfolding it, tried to regain control.
To any humans, I looked like I had just been shot in my wing.

I was rolling quickly and falling down like a rock.
I knew I would be able, unlike the bird I had seen, to recover from my dive. All I had to do was to unfold my wing and pull up. But the shooter didn't know that. He was already smiling at what he though to be a successful kill.
He had no idea of how wrong he was.
Seconds before reaching the point at which I couldn't recover in time, I unfolded my wing and leveled my flight. Before he could overcome his surprise and do another attempt, I was already out of range.
I had survived my first "combat" of my new life.
My opponent had been a human.
He had made the first strike. For no reasons whatsoever.
All he wanted to do was to kill for the sake of killing.

When I landed on my nest, I was disgusted of my own specie.
I couldn't believe a human had slaughtered innocent animals and that another one had tried to shoot me down.
I didn't mind the killing in itself; I killed at once or twice everyday since I ran out of bacon. I minded the absence of reasons for the kills. I would have understood, and agreed, if they had done that to eat and/or to protect themselves, but those monsters had no such reasons. They had shot for the sole purpose of killing because they could.
I knew the majority of the population, including myself before the Change, wouldn't have cared about what I had seen. Even worse, some would have enjoyed the whole thing.
I didn't really like my (old) specie anymore. It seemed like the human values and mine were incompatibles. They saw me and the other falcons as some stupid animals and thought it was OK to kill us without reasons; I saw the other falcons and I as… well, as you can expect it.
I couldn't claim to be a human and a falcon. Both of these were incompatible.
I had to decide if I was a human with the body of a falcon or a falcon with the mind of a human.

I took-off and flew back to my old house.
I wanted to know if I was a human or a falcon. The test for that was simple. All I needed to do was to do something I liked as a human and see if I still liked it. If I did, it meant I was a human with the body of a falcon. If I didn't, it meant I was a falcon with the mind of a human.
I landed on my bed and lay down. Back when I was a human, I liked to sleep in this bed. I closed my eyes, just to make the experience closer to what it used to be, and waited a few seconds to see how I felt.

I didn't like it. The bed was too soft and too low for my taste. The room was too small and too oppressing. I only had one way to get out. I couldn't see anything useful around me. I couldn't feel the wind around me.
I missed my real home. I wanted to be high above the ground. I wanted to have a clear view of my territory. I wanted to feel the wind in my wings. I wanted to be able to takeoff in any direction I wanted. I wanted to see the sky. I wanted my home to be open.

I stood up and flew back home.
I was now sure of my identity. I wasn't a human with the body of a falcon. I wasn't some strange mix between a human and a falcon.
I was a peregrine falcon.
I wasn't a human and proud of it. I was proud not to be the member of a specie taking pleasure in killing for the sake of killing.

I was a peregrine falcon with the mind of a human and I was proud of it.