Chapter 5
On wing and prayer

Max, adjust your heading 4 degrees east.
Max banked slightly and the flock followed her round in near perfect formation.
They had been flying for nearly 4 hours and so far all they could say about their destination is that it was in the east. Somewhere.
Anything you ought to be telling me Voice? Like where we're going.
It's me sweetheart. Oh great, Daddy was in charge of this particular venture. And you're heading for an airport.
The tickets are waiting for you at the desk.
Max noticed the second Voice enter the conversation. One was bad enough and she didn't know who this one was.
Excellent, we should all be meeting up soon enough.
Not me however, I have to stay at my post as long as possible. Max rolled her eyes.
Hey, my head isn't a telephone exchange.
Sorry sweetheart. Jeb actually sounded sorry, even with his expressionless voice.
I've got to go, we should be moving soon. Meet you soon honey. Honey! The Voice called Jeb honey!
Honey? You have got to be kidding Jeb. Max heard what could probably be the equivalent of a telepathic nervous laugh.
I've got to go; I'll see you at Heathrow. Well that sorted out where they were heading.
"We're going to London guys!" Cheers greeted this little announcement.
"Can we go to Harrods?" Total poked his head out of the baby carrier on Gazzy's back; he'd been holed up there since he'd got tired of flying. "I would love to get a new scarf."
"Oh and what about that toy shop, they have a stuffed giraffe in there that's like 20 feet tall!" Max looked over at Nudge and raised an eyebrow.
"Ok, you can carry it then."
"It would be cool though." Nudge looked pleadingly at Fang who raised his hands in submission. The little swot.
"Max, I'm hungry. Can we rest for a while?" Gazzy sidled up beside Iggy and let their wing tips brush so he knew he was there.
"Ok, next town we grab a bite to eat then keep going, I want to get to London ASAP." More cheers at the prospect of food.
You can't keep stopping Max; this is your most important assignment yet. The Voice, not Jeb gave this little nugget of wisdom.
Well I'll make you a deal, you tell me what's going on and I'll hurry up. And knowing who is messing with my family would help. The Voice sighed, suddenly losing the expressionless robot voice. When it spoke again it was a woman who replied
I'm afraid it's still too dangerous to tell you that Max, but your father and I are so proud of you. You're going to save the world.

Somewhere in the Chiltern Hills
England

It took 3 weeks for my fever to break. Those three weeks were the worst of my life to date.

Cold sweats were replaced with blistering temperatures that felt like they would melt my brain from my head. Migraines followed hallucinations of nightmarish landscapes crawling with monsters. Muscles and bone twisted and fused beneath my skin, pain ratcheting through with each twist of tissue. The two protrusions in my back continued to grow and every time I woke after a few hours of snatched sleep downy feathers covered my pillow and covers. My back sent spasms of pain around my entire body and it felt like it was rebelling against itself, fighting with the new part of me that I still couldn't see.
Mum came in every now and again, tipping water and some kind of gel down my neck that helped to take some of the pain away from my back, it also substituted as food. She sat on the edge of my bed and rubbed my face with a wet towel, trying to keep me in the land of the living. She spoke to me but the words didn't reach my ears. Sometimes she'd sit there laughing, others crying, others just looking at me as I lay in the bed. She spent a lot of time outside my small room where ever we were holed up, somewhere in the woods, I could smell the woods outside when the window was open. Something in me wanted out of this tiny room and its bare walls, it wanted air and space and freedom.
But now I needed rest, just rest.

My eyes were the first things to switch back on; unfortunately my brain took a little while to catch up. The ceiling came into view and for some reason I could pick out the tiniest cracks in the ancient paintwork. My senses booted up like an old computer, being dusted off after years in an attic. But keeping with that image, my brain had been overhauled. Every sense was sharpened to perfection. I lay there, my brain caught up with every new sense and processed it through sluggish synapses, I could hear the mice beneath my bed, someone breathing in the next room, could see the room it was day even if the world outside was pitch black, my skin felt electrified. I tried to move and though my joints ached I kicked the covers off. I was naked beneath the sheets but a set of blue scrubs were thrown in one corner. I dropped my legs over the edge of the bed and sat on the filthy mattress, trying to bring my body up to speed with everything else. There wasn't a mirror in the room but I looked myself up and down on my bed with awe. My shoulders had broadened out and my previously flat belly had been replaced with reams of muscle. What the hell happened to me while I was out of it? I stood up and went over to the scrubs, throwing them on and heading for the door over the cold stone floor.
The door opened before I even got close and my mother stood there, eyes red but a warm smile on her face. She wrapped my up in her arms and squeezed the life out of me.
"Air, oh my baby. I was so afraid you were never going to wake up." I slowly returned the hug and she let me go. "Come on, you need to drink." She turned away and left me trying to work out what she had touched on my back. Something that was part of me but I couldn't make sense of. The living room of the house was at best ram shackle. The walls were riddled with cracks and water marks covered the ceiling, a few were looking in danger of weakening the already rotten struts. A log fire provided the only source of light and heat. Mum was leaning over it, filling a battered kettle with water and hanging it over the fire. "Sit down; you don't want to be doing too much already." She sat down on one of the moth eaten sofas and I joined her, the fire warming me up. An awkward silence stretched out between us.
"Where's Dad?" She tried to keep her face but her hand rose to her cheek. "Where is he?"
"Your father won't be with us for a while." She smiled at me, I didn't smile back.
"What did he do to you?" Her face plummeted. I didn't miss the light scar on her lip that hadn't been there before. "Did he hit you? You can tell me." Suddenly her face hardened.
"Derrick did hit me. And he won't be getting away with it." I stared at her, one second she was playing the defeated wife, the next she looked ready to tear my head off. "Your father abandoned us Aires. Don't forget that,"
"What do you mean abandoned? And what the hell happened to me? Why are we in the middle of the woods?" The kettle began to whistle but neither of us made a move to take it off the heat.
"Listen to me very carefully Aires. Me and your father did something terrible to you but I am going to fix it. I swear to you." Crack. Both of our heads turned toward the door. "Douse the fire. Now!" I snatched up the kettle and threw it over the fire. The cabin was thrown into instant darkness and I pressed myself into the wall beside the door, waiting for whatever was going to come through the door. "Aires, move." A vice like hand pulled me from the door and threw me to the back of the cabin. With my improved night vision the outline of my mother standing between me and the door with a pistol reached my retinas but not my brain. Silence reigned the cabin. The door flew off its hinges and slammed to the floor, scattering dust and fragments of wood everywhere including at me. Shapes moved through the doorway, flashing torches.
"There he is!" A voice yelled. Mum raised the pistol and fired in rapid angry bursts. Shapes flew back out through the doorway and didn't get up. Another shot was fired from a different gun but only succeeded in blowing a hole in the ceiling. In less than ten seconds she was turning her back on 4 dead bodies. She snapped open a Zippo lighter and her stony face was illuminated by the flame.
"You killed them!" That was all I could manage.
"They would have killed us first." She said fiercely. "We have to split up, you can go places I can't. Take this." She pushed a leather-bound book into my hands and a wallet. "The card in there is untraceable and will give you all the money you'll need. The PIN is in there too. Go to London, The Savoy Hotel. Be there for 10:30 tomorrow, look for a man called Alan Atridge, he can keep you safe." She left me standing there staring at the bodies, all piled up on the steps. In the dim light I could see she had shot one of the men in the face, his right eye was a pulpy mess and blood was running out of the back of his head.
"Oh God." I felt bile rise in the back of my throat. "Why did this happen to me?" Mum took my face in my hands.
"Because your unique, and I will keep you safe, even if I'm not there." She reached over her head and lifted her rosary off her neck. She pressed it into my hands. "We will see each other again. I swear it." She held me tight and I choked back tears, the beads of wood held tight in my hands. She pulled away and held out the pistol. "Now run!"

The trees raced past me in a flurry of mossy trunks, I ran barefoot over stones, branches and God knows what else. The pain in my feet was nothing compared to the terror that pursued me through the slowly lightening woods. It had picked my scent a little while back but now it was right on my tail, pounding through the woods after me. When I caught a glance of the freakish half woman half wolf I had poured on the speed, racing faster than any human could ever run. But the other creature was just as fast and more relentless then a bloodhound. The rosary was clutched in one hand and the gun in the other, the book and wallet forced into the now torn scrubs. I came out into a clearing and skidded to a halt, gulping in each breath as my body screamed for oxygen.
"Getting tired little birdie?" A cackle that sent a shiver down my spine came from my left, just inside the darkness of the woods. "Lie down, rest." This time from my right. I raised the gun and held my ground, even if my hands shook and my knees threatened to buckle beneath me. "And let me have you all to myself." I couldn't hear where the voice was coming from. I was frozen on the spot. "You must be special from the others, to let me out of my cage they must have....a reason." I clutched the rosary in my hands and twisted the beads. I'd never been religious but I'd had my moments when I would sit and think about if there was someone looking over us. Well there better be; because thats who I needed.

The Lord is my Shepard; I shall not be in want.

"What makes you so special? Hmmm. You smell like all the others, you have the wings."

He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside clear waters,

"I do love to have a little fun with you avians, try to fly away with broken wings but you don't get far."

He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness, for His names sake.

"But maybe, I might choose to miss hear them this time. Bring them a body instead of a bird boy."

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death,

"And accidents do happen."

I will fear no evil.

A noise to my left! The gun drew up in a perfect arc and brought its aim up to bare on the creature as it flew from the trees at me. Its mouth turned into a surprised 'O' and I fired. The things head snapped back, the bullet traveling faster than sound struck it at a range of no further than half a metre and reduced its skull to bloody pulp. The body hit the ground and rested at my feet, blood began to pool at my feet and between my toes. I turned way from the cooling body, expecting to feel some kind of release from the killing of this monster. I didn't.
All I felt was terror, and fury.

Far away, deep in the side of a mountain that held no name and according to maps and charts didn't exist, the Uber Director observed the hybrid through his nano-cameras as they hovered in the air over the woods.
"Interesting, he is quite a specimen." The man in the other view screen nodded.
"I did say that Maria wouldn't stop him, this one is different from the others, more strategic, more robust." The Uber Director replayed the movement the hybrid had made, his buffers could barely handle the optical data and slow it down sufficiently to actually see it.
"What is your view of the situation?" Derrick King had got used to giving the UD advice, his brain functions hadn't handled the transfer into the Mainframe very well.
"I think we should let him intercept Atridge, I don't see why Angela sent him to Alan, after all, he's corrupt to the core. And we may have a chance to pick the hybrid up once Alan has had his way."
"I don't think that we will need him actually. I believe that you collected a seminal sample from him before you left your post." Derrick's eyebrows raised into his neatly gelled hair.
"You have been thinking about this very well Sir. Shall I inseminate the one we have in holding?" He was going to enjoy this.
"Yes, immediately, with any luck we will have a replacement catalyst in less than 10 weeks!" The computer voice became a wave of static that Derrick interpreted as laughter.
"The growth formula is still in the experimental stages."
"Then it looks like we will be beginning trials early." The UD snapped off the visi-screen and the bank of computers within the mountain shut down.

Half way across the world, Derrick sat in the conference room of the England branch of Itex and thought. That was going to be the last little communiqué that UD was going to receive from Derrick King, or anyone for that matter. And what was that excuse for a human being going to do to him when he realises that he has just been locked in his own home? Complain to the Human Rights Committee?.
Derrick King, Acting Director. It had a ring to it.

Right, you've read that much, now some reviews would help me write the next bit. Thanks for reading so far!