Hello again! Final chapter, and it is quite long, for one of mine. Enjoy the final installment of The Devil Experiment!
We all split up, Angel waiting by the door with Wrorgon. Wrorgon, lacking regular fingers like the rest of us, had trouble opening cages. The rest of us ran around unlocking cages, their occupants going to stand by the others.
I eventually came to the last cage that had not been open, examining it with sound. Inside were actually two mutants. Tiny teenagers, one a boy with shoulder length hair and hard eyes and a younger girl with extremely long hair and wearing what seemed to be a white dress. Their most distinctive trait, however, were tiny wings. Unlike the Flock and I, they weren't bird or even bat wings. The boy's looked like jagged dragonfly wings, the girl's precise and elegant butterfly wings. They were fairies.
I opened the cage and stuck my hand inside.
"Hurry," I whispered, "I'm helping you escape. We need to get out of here quick." The boy jumped on my hand first, and then, after waiting about ten seconds, motioned for the girl to hop on.
"I'm R.C.," the boy said after I had taken them from the cage. "And this is N.C., or Eny."
"Garret," I said, turning to walk back. "Nice to meet you." As I went to go meet with the others, Wrorgon came to me.
"Tino wasn't with them," Wrorgon said, meaning his brother. "He must be somewhere else. We have to find him. I already told the others to go on." I nodded and held my hand to face level to talk to R.C.
"If you guys want to leave now, you can. We may not be leaving for a little bit."
"That's okay," R.C. said boldly. He looked warily back at the large group. "I think we'll stick with you." I didn't blame him. As big a group as that was, and as small as R.C. and Eny were, they could get hurt. The two of them fluttered off my hand and landed instead on my right shoulder.
"We'll stay here, for now," R.C. said in my ear. I nodded slightly and headed off with Wrorgon to a door on the opposite side of the hall of cages.
Strangely enough, as soon as we emerged, we came upon a large tube filled with what I guessed was water, since I couldn't see inside but I heard gurgling. Wrorgon went forward and tapped on the glass with a talon. What happened next, since I was unable to see exactly, was told to me by combination of Wrorgon and R.C.
A transparent human shaped blob was floating in the middle of the tube, like in one of those weird alien movies. After Wrorgon tapped the glass, he stepped back, as did I. Yellow slits that appeared to be eyes opened around the face area of the creature. Suddenly, bolts of electricity flashed around the inside of the tube, soon completely surrounding the creature inside. It glowed bright white for a moment, then exploded. Broken glass flew everywhere, somehow not hitting any of us. From the wreckage of the tube stepped out a boy- Tino. As Wrorgon later informed me, Tino was a crossbreed of human, jellyfish, and electric eel. The combination of human and jellyfish gave his skin a sort of molecular instability, allowing him to change his general appearance at any moment, although he could not change his insides. The combination of electric eel gave him power over static electricity to a higher scale than that of any eel. He was the best assassin the world would ever see- if he wanted to be, of course. Tino was actually barely ten.
Tino ran over to Wrorgon, hugging and clinging to his fur.
"I knew you'd come back. I knew you wouldn't leave me." Wrorgon cooed in a motherly way and in some way hugged his brother back. It was all very touching until the Erasers came.
Apparently, some kind of alarm went off, and we were soon surrounded. Not that it mattered much. While Wrorgon and I ripped Erasers apart, Tino fried them. To my surprise, even R.C. and Eny could fight them, little as they were.
They both jumped off my shoulder and began to fly around each other in tight spirals, gaining speed and altitude. They had created a miniature cyclone.
Without warning, they both broke free, zooming like bullets. They singled out an Eraser, both flying on opposite sides of its neck. They were so close that their wing tips touched. Instead of crashing, however, their wings went through the Eraser, cutting the head clean off. Their wings were made of some kind of light metal or plastic. They circled around to go again.
Between us all, we'd killed the Erasers. We ran back the way we had come, aiming for the door. After a few more minor skirmishes, we made it to the door and ran out before anyone could stop us. We all jumped into the air, Tino, the only one of us who couldn't fly, on Wrorgon's back. We jumped into the sky and away.
About a mile of flying later, R.C. was zooming around my face, looking at me funny.
"What happened to your eyes?" He asked me. I had had them closed since my fight with Wrorgon, seeing as they were no more of any use.
"It was an accident while we were there," I explained. "They were torn out while fighting." I didn't realize quite how close Wrorgon was until Tino said something.
"Who did it? How can you see to fly?"
"An Eraser did it," I said hurriedly. Wrorgon didn't say a word. "And, I can see because I have special powers because I'm part bat. You see, bats see at night with their ears. They use ultra sonic sound waves that can only be heard by incredibly sharp ears. The sound waves map out what is in front of them, although it leaves out color and anything inside something clear. It is mostly used for navigation, not sight." Tino nodded.
"Oh, I get it."
"I'm not sure I do," R.C. said. I had noticed that Eny was quiet and never talked. I was wondering if the scientists had messed up like with Iggy. Maybe she couldn't speak.
"That's okay," I said, grinning. "All you need to know is that I can see almost as well as you, but kind of in black and white."
By that night, Wrorgon said he needed some rest, carrying the extra weight. Tino just giggled. I grinned. I was getting kind of tired as it was. It was strange, not being able to open my eyes. Having to constantly use echolocation. I really wanted to see my surroundings clearly, full of color... But I couldn't. But still, everything seemed better than it had been. I had gone far since when I had first broken out of the Institute. Hurt, alone, driven by anger and sorrow... Now I was different. I had friends, maybe even a flock, of my own. Everything was better, even if I had to pay with my sight. It wasn't like I needed it as much as most people anyway. My mind drifted back to the thought of all of us being in a flock.
Nah, I thought. It wouldn't be a flock. Not to me. A flock is of birds. I'm no bird. I'm part bat. A group of bats was a colony. Maybe we're a colony. Maybe.
End of Book One
Hello again! Just so you know, the sequel will most likely be posted sometime in January. As always, R&R! Until then, bye!