We slept the majority of the train ride, well, mostly I did. I was still recovering from the bullet wound in my side. I ate my peanut butter sandwich as Speck tapped away on the laptop, occasionally groaning and tapping even faster. I asked her what she was doing, and she told me she was trying to put up a protection wall to keep us undetected by ITex.

"And once you do that, they won't find us anymore?" I asked, nibbling on the crust.

She nodded, stretching her arms behind her head and yawning, "But we should still be careful."

I nodded back. They must be tracking us through the laptop... but how? It made me think. I rested my head against one of the boxes behind me and thought some more. How did they know we had it? Speck was holding the laptop when we ran into them, but how did they know where we were before then? I glanced at Speck furiously typing away. Is it because of her? My tail flicked a little, grabbing my attention. Or me? The more I stared at my tail flicking around, the more it started to make sense in my mind.

"Hey Speck-"

"Got it!" she cried happily. "Now we are free from their clutches!" She placed the laptop on my legs. It greeted me with a success sign that the firewall was up.

"Wow," I awed. "You did this? All of this?"

"Eyup!" she beamed.

I whistled, smiling at her and completely forgetting what was on my mind earlier, "You are a little genius." I quickly exited it out of the windows, and tapped on the internet browser. Google instantly popped up. I let out a deep breath I had been holding in, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. "Alright, here goes nothing," I started typing.

"This doesn't make any sense!"

Speck was fiddling with her knife, spinning it with her hand like it was a fidget toy. I was pacing the car, grabbing my hair and trying to make sense of what I found. Turns out, I didn't have a twin. But it also said I did. My parents weren't expecting twins. But it also said they did. It made zero sense, and the more I went deeper into the idea of how I was even alive, the more confused I got. The random numbers weren't making any sense either.

"If I even did go to them, would they even believe me?" I spurted out.

"Well you'd just have to convince them," Speck pointed out.

"How?" I scratched my head, "Say 'oh I'm that lost twin you once had that you expected but also wasn't expecting'? Or- hah, remember your son? That got kidnapped? I'm his twin, if you didn't know. I would tell you we look alike, but I've never seen him, have you?"

"Hey- don't be like th-"

"But will they? Will they see me? Will they ever see me as their lost daughter? Will they ever see me as somebody important?" Somebody not meant to be cooped up for a good heft of their life stuck in the cage and prodded like an animal?

"You are important Amber-"

"And that's not even my name!" I cut in again, throwing my hands up into the air. "I know that's not! I chose that name based off of my stupid experiment name. Is that all I am? An experiment?"

"You're not the only one, you know!" she shouted at me. I flipped my head to stare at her, her soft brown eyes trying to talk to me. I huffed and turned around, fingering my bandages.

"At least you had a purpose," I spat.

"You do too," she bit back.

"But at least you're not stuck in a lab."

"At least you're not the one having to end up kidnapping kids and killing them if possible," she muttered, obviously wanting to put me in my place. And as much as those words hit home for me, I couldn't let it slide. She was right, but I needed this right now. I needed somebody to take over this for me. I was tired of running circles to find the answers.

"I know I just-" I replied, wanting to tell her how I feel but it just felt too much. I needed to find them. I wanted to know if they knew about me, cared about me. But what would that accomplish? If they did, they would probably want to watch over me, but with all of these freakish additions? How could they accept that? And let's say they didn't, then I would know they never cared and I'd still feel the same. I finally sat down and put my head in my hands, sighing and rubbing my eyes, "I just want to know without getting hurt. That's all I want."

"I know," I heard Speck, not looking up at her.

"Ugh," I rubbed my temples, a headache settling in. "What's the point? I just know either way I'm going to get hurt, and I don't think there's a way of me not getting hurt. I don't-" I paused, swallowing a bit of fear and making my voice a little shaky. "I-I don't want them to see me as something different."

"But we are. We are different," her voice trailed off a little bit, but I took no notice to it. I was trying to put a brave face on but it was difficult.

"I wish there was a way," I choked. "I wish there was a way that I could just go back to the beginning and change things. Like Harry Potter with that time thing."

"Mmm," I heard her say as I continued.

"They could go back in time and change things without being seen... hell, I don't think I could even do that. Look at me now- or if I went back in time would I look like this? Maybe it's different in our world? Hell I'm different, but ITex likes different."

"Mhmm," I heard again, now noticing she wasn't paying attention. I looked up at her hunched over the laptop, typing away like mad. "Speck? What are you doing?" I leaned forward and noticed that she wasn't on the files anymore. She was scouring the web for something. She got to a page and started scrolling. I wrinkled my nose.

"'Fang's Blog?' Really, Speck?" I raised an eyebrow at her. Has she been lured into his weird trap of a fandom?

"Yeah," she mumbled, eyes glued to the screen as she skimmed through the answered questions, finally getting to some original posts of his. She started reading them thoroughly as I rubbed my temples again.

"If you start rambling on how much you want wings or that he's h-"

"Here," she stopped me. She started reading one of his posts, "'We, the flock, I mean, should be working toward something besides just trying to eat enough every day. For a long time, our goal was to find our parents. And look how well that turned out for us.'"

My eyes widened, "What?" Then they narrowed. "Are you pulling my leg?"

Speck shook her head, "That's one of his posts, and that's just one."

So of course, I had to read it. And I did. Then the next one. And the one following that. And I ended up reading all of his posts, even the comments, the ones that stood out to me the most (there was a girl who was fairly interested in the guy, Fang, and this other girl in his flock, the leader, Max, having babies... yuck), all the way to the current one. Currently, they were in Antarctica, and were helping support saving the world due to climate change.

"Antarctica?" I asked aloud. "I don't even understand how I could even be there. It's... freezing there! And with their wings too!"

"I know!" Speck chimed in. "And they're doing it to support the climate change thing!" For a second it felt like I was stuck in a little cute movie where Speck and I were two girls gossiping over a hot magazine model. So, I quickly snapped myself out of it.

"Wait- wait- why were you so focused on this rather than listening to me? I know his blog is interesting and all but..." I couldn't even continue. Strangely enough, by reading through all of their experiences, I could tell why she leaned towards it. It was all about these mutant kids, like us, well almost, living a crazy life, as a group, and they were trying to just survive and find answers, just like us. And they managed to find information about their parents whereas I'm stuck with the golden key to Mount Olympus and don't know how to get in.

Something clicked in my brain and I looked at Speck, "You think they can help us."

She shamefully nodded, fiddling with her jacket a little bit, "They've already gone through more than us, out on their own, I mean. They might be able to help us find your birth parents."

"And maybe even my brother," I added, my heart fluttering a bit with excitement.

"Let's hope so-" we both froze to notice that the landscape outside started dramatically changing. It wasn't the original brown, barren, landscape we were used to seeing throughout the train ride. We both stood up and pressed our faces to the little glass window at the end of the car, peering out towards the sides. It was green, lots of green, and I could see tall buildings, cars, and more town-like land ahead.

"We must be close to Chicago," I muttered, feeling Speck nod against my shoulder as she looked out to the greenery.

"But what are we going to do now? It's not like we can go to Antarctica. That's the other way," she wondered, her face in awe at seeing the landscape. I bet she hasn't seen this much green until now. I was also starting to feel some humidity building up inside the car. I took the rubber band from the old bread bag off my wrist and threw my overlong hair up in a ponytail, trying to think. She was right. Going more south will just delay us even more. And I doubted that I could fly with this injury, let alone run that well. The more I thought about it, the more I realized there was no other choice. I had to face them sooner or later.

"We're going to see my parents, otherwise I'll regret it if I never see them."