The sun was just beginning to rise up over the horizon in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
The stainless steel clock bolted to the wall reached 5:00 am. The harsh sound of the get-up bell sounded tinnily through the public-address system, slapping awake the occupants of Dormitory B.
Sarah forced herself awake and sat up in bed. She could not afford the luxury of weariness; there were bad consequences for that. Her head swam as she looked out of the window, obscured greatly by a foolproof iron grille. Iron grilles were good for covering windows; windows were good for flying out of.
Most of the sky was a dark purplish azure, a few stars still glittering coldly; to the east, a bit of gold was staining the sky lighter.
She quickly jumped off the bed; if Uncle Thomas saw her still in bed, there would be consequences.
The lights were still off, but most of the children had unusually (one could say abnormally) keen eyesight. The bubblegum-pink carpet was soothing on Sarah's bare feet. She stumbled over to a small plastic chest of drawers and exchanged her nightgown for a generic white smock made of cotton. It was humiliating to wear this thing, thought Sarah; why, it's no more than a chemise, an undergarment! The narrow white dress was getting tight around the chest and reached only to her upper calves now, but the scientists at the School had much more important things to do than to worry about a specimen's wardrobe.
Sarah un-Velcroed and re-Velcroed the slits in her smock around the base of her wings, where the humerus connected with her shoulderblades. She shivered in the chilly early-morning air and spread and refolded her wings, the strong muscles flexing the supple bone. The feathers of her wings were smooth and stiff, a soft smoky gray color banded with dark brown. A few very dark brown- almost black- feathers, the color of her hair, nestled among the varicolored ones.
File No. 4: Lindiaci, Sarah R.
ID Number: 4A
Code Name: Hippolyta Velma Dinkley
Date of Birth: October 14, 1990
Sarah's full name was Sarah Rebecca Lindiaci, but the other kids at the School sometimes called her Hippolyta, after the Amazon queen they had read about during General Humanities Studies. She was strong-willed and prideful, and the other children sometimes feared for her safety. There were consequences for being strong-willed and prideful.
Sarah was the only child who had not been named at the whims of the scientists; her first and middle names were known by the prematurely filled birth certificate.
She feared being put to sleep as much as any other child, but she had not accepted the School as her home and Uncle Thomas and the others as her family. Perhaps it was simply her nature, and in any other context she would have been an unpleasant brat; perhaps it was because she had not been favored like Maximum or coddled like the twins, Wendy and Peter. It's too late to know now.
Blood type: O
Skin color: Pale, very little melanin
Eye color: Dark brown, eumelanin
Hair color: Dark brown, eumelanin
Feather color: Gray w/ brown bands, a few the same as hair color
The other children were getting dressed too, silently, as fast as they could. They lived bleak lives of drudgery. Their greatest fear was being put to sleep; their greatest ambition was to live the next day. To Sarah's left was Bifrost, a four-year-old who had a life expectancy of two hundred years; to her right, six-year-old Polydorus, who was one of the "lab rat" controls. In the far corner of the room two children with blue-tipped white wings were getting dressed without a word, and in the neighboring bed resided a boy who communicated lazy defiance in the way he carried his brown wings.
Sarah made her bed quickly and efficiently. She looked at the clock. Forty seconds to the breakfast bell. She wasn't quite ready yet. On went the dirty-pink, too-small ballet slippers, chilling her sockless feet; on went the black horn-rimmed glasses. There were many specialists at the School, and it had been no trouble for the opthalmologist to order a pair of glasses for Sarah when she was found to be nearsighted. They had looked at her pale skin, dark hair and cold intelligence and said laughingly, "That one gets the horn-rims." Sarah had jostled over to the book of frames and squinted at the thick-frame Velma glasses and shrugged, her feathers tickling the cardiologist's breastbone. "Whatever pleases you, so I may accomplish my tasks," she half-recited.
Defects/attributes: Nearsighted, allergic to mold, dust, pollen and pet dander
The lock to the door clicked open and harsh white electric light flooded the dormitory. The bird children made small noises and shielded their ultrakeen eyes, as did the completely human ones like Bifrost and Polydorus, who lacked the others' senses. The source of the light lay in the halogen lights in the ceiling, which had been turned on by the dark figure standing in the doorway. It was Uncle Thomas. He was dark because of the army fatigues he wore, so different from the pathologically sterile white coats the scientists flaunted. His winsome grin didn't jibe with the black leather-holstered tazer gun at his belt, either.
"Get up, miracle children! Time for breakfast!" he crackled merrily, before moving on to Dormitory A, which contained Adam, Icarus, and the Marshall children Maximum and Matthew. The other inmates of the school, the non-voluntary inhabitants, were either babies or non-humans. They resided in the Nursery or labs like the Mickey Mouse Room, respectively.
Sarah spread her wings and wrapped them around herself. The airtight feathers made her feel warmer at once. She was forced to return her wings to their furled position at her back, however; else she could not walk.
She filed out of the room along with the others. She could taste the fear in the air. There was no talking.
Harry Potter curses and spells ran through her mind. Maximum was crazy about Lara Croft and Tomb Raider, but it was Hermione Granger that Sarah loved. How she wished she had a wand, that she was a witch at Hogwarts instead of this place...if she were a witch she knew exactly what she would do.
The Stunning Spell—Stupefy, she thought to herself and smiled. That one would be for incapacitating the scientists.
Petrificus Totalus. Even in her mind the quasi-Latin words sounded good. That one's for you, Uncle Thomas.
Alohomora. Her heart leapt, she could taste the freedom, hear the locks snapping open and the doors creaking ajar.
She would hop on her Firebolt, and...
"Hippolyta!" It was Ozymandias.
"Oh, hey, Oz." Sarah was always happy to see Oz. The brown-winged, brown-haired boy was like a brother to her, and the only times they got to talk were in the halls on their way to classes and meals, like right now. There was very little talking (or "fraternizing," as the scientists called it) in the dormitory.
Ozymandias' grin faded as Uncle Thomas advanced on them. He automatically folded his wings across his back as tightly as he could, but Sarah spread them in an act of defiance. The grey-black feathers fanned out and wavered slightly, her straight dark brown hair disturbed by the draft. Her brown eyes stayed placid but lost all their warm amber tones.
Uncle Thomas' eyes narrowed. A hand slipped reflexively to the black tazer gun.
Now is not the time, Sarah realized. Not now, you idiot! She furled her wings with a soft swish and gave Uncle Thomas a half smile that made her burn with disgust.
Uncle Thomas gave her a condescending grimace-grin. It was quite terrifying, but Sarah was used to it. She had grown up with it, after all. The only home she had ever known was the School; her fate had been sealed when the doctors at the clinic had successfully stolen her away via C-Section and convinced her parents that it had been a stillbirth...
Sarah didn't know that, of course. She had been told that her parents didn't want her.
She was a specimen. A human with avian DNA in her genome, she had been genetically engineered when she was still an embryo. Not a girl, not a bird-girl, but a living breathing specimen to be poked and prodded and tested and carefully guarded and watched and made to live in fear of being put to sleep. Like Cosette had been last year.
They were alone in the hallway, the three of them. Sarah muttered a few words to Ozymandias and scrambled towards the mealroom.