I don't remember much of the next month. I was woken up periodically by the nurse, who checked my vitals and made sure I wasn't getting sick, then zapped me unconscious with an electric shock. As the weeks went on, my back felt heavier and heavier with each time I woke up. Finally, the nurse got distracted for a minute and I got a chance to examine myself. I was painfully thin, my cami now loose and saggy as it hung from my shoulders. I guessed I had lost at least ten pounds since I was captured. Something tickled my leg and I glanced down, just to see a massive, jet-black feather brushing against my calf. I reached down and tried to lift it up to eye level, but the feather was attached to others, which were attached to a wing, which was attached to…me. I craned my neck, trying to convince myself that this wasn't really happening, that I didn't have two massive, midnight-black wings sprouting from my shoulder blades. A scream escaped my lips, which caught the attention of the nurse. She took one look at me and sent the electric current through the water.
At long last, the day came when the when Mr. Sacs returned. By then, my wings had doubled in size, taking up most of the tank. He looked me over approvingly.
"She has developed well. Is the mutation complete?"
"Yes, sir. All her tests say she should be completely capable of service at any given moment."
"Good. Consider the moment given. I want her ready in an hour."
"Are you sure…?"
"Yes. I am sure." Sac's voice left no question of his determination. He left just as suddenly as he came, his trench coat swishing around his ankles. The nurse, obviously flustered by his sporadic appearances and disappearances, tried in vain to smooth her hair down before turning to me.
"Looks like it's your lucky day, Angel wings." She pushed a button on her computer and the liquid in my tank started draining.
'Why does everybody keep calling me Angle Wings? That's not my name!'
The test tubes, which had stopped working several days ago, extracted themselves from my body, leaving tiny open wounds all over my legs, arms, chest, and neck. Tiny drops of blood streamed from a few of the cuts, leaving bloody trails as they ran down my bony body. Within minutes, the pink liquid, so long my prison, drained, and I was left struggling to stay standing up in a puddle of my own blood. The nurse came over to my tank and pressed her hands against the glass. A key pad appeared on the glass surface. The nurse carefully entered a pass code and the glass sank into the ground, leaving me standing on a metal pedestal raised a foot off the ground. With wary eyes, the nurse reached down and picked up the chain wrapped around my ankle. She pulled a key out of her pocket and undid the shackle around my ankle. The metal, which had been rubbing against my skin over over a month, had bitten into my skin and rubbed it raw. An ugly ring of raw, bleeding skin circled my ankle. I never took my eyes off the nurse as she slowly straightened and reached up to take off my mask. I let her remove what had been my life support for the past eight weeks and watched her place it on a nearby table. I took my first breath of fresh air in weeks and shuddered at the unpleasant smell that filled my lungs. The air smelled of chemicals, blood, and something I couldn't name. The nurse shifted nervously from foot to foot as she watched me get used to my new body.
My wings hung limply from my back, dripping pink sludge onto the floor around my metal altar. My body was painfully skinny, my shoulders sharp and bony. I'll admit, I was a mess.
"Come with me, please." The nurse's voice shook as she spoke. Why was she so afraid of me?
"Come with you where?" I heard my voice crack from lack of use, but the lack of trust contained there was evident.
"To a different room. We'll get you cleaned up a bit and run a few tests. The mutagen now contained in your blood had done some miraculous things to your body."
"Like what?" I was feeling really dizzy and felt like I could collapse at any moment, but I refused to show any sign of weakness.
"Like superhuman strength. Like an acute sense of sight, hearing, and smell. Like a heart three times stronger than any human has now." The nurse looked me over as she spoke, no doubt marking off a mental checklist of some sort.
"You mean, I'm a…a mutant? Like those giant turtles that O'Neil lady was talking about a few days ago?"
"No!" The nurse's head snapped up and her voice went up several octaves. "you are not like those..those beasts. They grew up wild and untamed. You, you shall be groomed to utter perfection. You will be a servant to a noble cause. You will help Mr. Sacs purge the city of evil and get rid of those vile turtles once and for all. Despite what you may think, those creatures are an enemy to mankind. They will stop at nothing to ruin the human race."
The nurse was practically screaming at me now, ranting on about how awful those wretched turtles were and how I was going to work for Sacs and about how thankful I should be that I have the chance to serve Sacs Industries. My anger built up slowly at first, growing slightly with each word that left that evil nurse's lips. She had imprisoned me and tortured me for months and now she was telling me I should be grateful?! All at once, something inside me snapped. My wings, still dripping pink fluid, shot into the air, lifting into a menacing arc behind me. My fists clenched and my heart pounded and I resisted the urge to scream back at the nurse.
"Who do you think you are?" I said quietly. "What makes you think that you can even talk to me? Why should I listen to you? I am not grateful and I never will be." That shut the nurse up. Finally, I had a chance to speak my mind. "You have beaten me, abused me, and changed my entire life without asking me whether I wanted it to change. I don't know where I am, who you are, what happened to me, or what's going on. I want you to go away. I never want to see you or anybody else ever again. I want to know what happened to my family, and I want to know NOW! Do you hear me?! I am sick and tired of being treated like an experiment!" I leapt off the metal pedestal and stormed toward the terrified nurse as she backed away frantically. My wings pushed over tables and chairs as I approached her, but I didn't even notice that I was leaving a trail of destruction in my wake. "I want you to change me back! Get this mutagen out of my blood and change me back, you witch!" I shouted in her face, my eyes filled with terror and rage.
The nurse was backed up against a wall. I was three inches away from her face, wings spread out around me so she couldn't escape.
"P-please!" she stuttered. "Do-don't hurt me! I never w-wanted this to happen!"
Suddenly, an alarm went off. Another soon joined it. Within seconds, the entire room was filled with screeching alarms and spinning red lights. The sudden noise made the nurse jump, then she fainted. The intercom blared at me: "BREACH IN THE FRONT GATE! ALL SUPPORT GROUPS TO THE FRONT GATE! BREACH IN THE FRONT GATE! ALL SUPPORT…" Here I was, dripping wet in pink goo, in nothing but my underwear and a tank top, with fully fledged jet-black wings sprouting from my back, and an invasion was going on. My day just kept getting better and better. I grabbed a long white lab coat hanging on the back of a nearby chair and threw it over myself, hiding my wings a best I could. To my surprise, they folded neatly against my spine, arching just above my shoulders and continuing down to about mid calf. The lab coat covered the majority of my wings, leaving just the top few inches and bottom feathers peeking out. I ran to the door and peeked outside into the hallway, which was filled with red light as the alarms screamed. I saw no one, so I took a chance, threw the door open, and bolted.
