Sorry I haven't posted in a while, the homework has been piling up and a case of the flu hasn't helped. Righto, thanks are going out from across the pond to girlytown for my first ever Fanfic review *Clapping*. Ok, its a smiley face but still cool and thanks :) Now, lets get down to business, there is flying to be done. ;)

Chapter 7
Learner Badges for Angels

I sat in St James Park, the sun was just starting to go down over the city and behind me Buckingham Palace was lit by floodlights. Below me the last of the days tourists were filtering out of the park and into the city, some pushing prams, many more holding hands in the crisp evening air which shifted the branches of the tree I was sitting in about 15 feet off the grass. I had spent most of the day here, hidden in the crook of a split elm tree, reading through the book I had snatched from Atridge before he put a hole in my chest. I had always liked reading books but this one was enough to put anyone off any illustrated storybook forever. Alan's neat handwriting filled the book from cover to cover, Polaroid photos stuck in beside diagrams and complex formula for I don't know what. One photo I had taken out of the book was of a small girl curled up in the bottom of a cage, head turned from the camera as two hands opened a set of downy wings on her back. The image held me captivated for a long time, who are you, where are you now? I could only hope for the best for my counterpart and worry about myself. I huddled my coat around me against the cold and turned to one of the pages marked 'Flight'

After initial testing of each subjects instinctual nature I have finally reached a conclusion as to how they are capable of rudimentary flight, even in a confined space. The presence of genetic memory is the only avenue of thought that I can conclude to be the souse of their knowledge. However, this genetic memory is a trait that is more prominent in some of the subjects than others. The Batchelder child has already mastered rudimentary flight principals but the Griffiths subject is more clumsy during primary tests. It appeared to take a combination of either perseverance or gift to be able to fly, of course once this phase of the testing is complete I will ensure that this genetic memory is removed. No need to have our own subjects flying away.

I wasn't even next to the man and I wanted to kill Atridge, the worst thing you can do to a bird, clip its wings. Around me everyone was leaving, and the main gates were due to shut in ten minutes. A small smile crept onto my lips, despite everything that had happened today. Well, here I was, in one of London's biggest parks, hardly anyone around, the gates were about to shut and I had the Flying for Idiots guide in my hand.
This was going to be really interesting, or it would hurt.
Last I heard, the ground doesn't like it when you crashed into it.

Brian Crofts had been a guard at St James Park for over 16 years, it had been his entire working life after loosing his job in the mines. It wasn't the best job in the world but it wasn't the worst either and he did have a love for gardens. He knew every inch of the park, able to walk every path in the pitch darkness for hours, a warm flash in his pack and a torch in his hand. So when he had turned from the gate and headed into the park he wasn't expecting to find what he saw just off from the east end of the lake. He heard the boy before he saw him, scrabbling up the trunk of a tree, snapping off a few branches on his assent. The entire tree shuddering as he scaled the tree with apparent ease once he was in the higher branches. Just as he straightened up on the upper reaches of the tree Brian opened his mouth to yell up to him. The words never left his lips and instead his mouth dropped open in shock.
The boy jumped, arms outstretched into space as he fell.
He's going to kill himself! The thought had just enough time to cross his mind before the extraordinary happened.
A twin canopy of feathers spread out on each side of his body, catching the air like a red kite that would circle overhead on a clear day. The tan wings depicted perfectly in Brian's night vision, each feather a unique pattern as reams of muscle locked the amazing wings in place. The gamekeeper was in shock. A boy that could fly! An Angel!
However up in the air it wasn't clear sailing.
Apparently the boy was a surprised as Brian was and forgot to flap before sliding face first along the grass to a painful but harmless halt. Brian slid down behind a tree, scrabbling franticly in his pack for his camera. The super sensitive lens zoomed in on the boy as he sat up and rubbed his face free of mud and grass. He turned the dial to video capture and started shooting as the boy returned to the tree for round two, the state of the art camera picking out every feather of the boy's beautiful angel wings. The gamekeeper left twenty minutes later with a full data card and ran home. This was like nothing no human had ever seen and the world would know about it. Brian Crofts was going to change the world.
Well, actually, his eleven year old daughter would.

Meanwhile, half the world away, The Flock, minus Akila unfortunately, was sitting in Norfolk International Airport waiting for the next flight to Heathrow.
"I still can't believe we're going back to London!" Nudge hung on the edge of her seat and rocked back and forth beside Total as he rested on the next seat.
"You've already been to London." Max pointed out, dropping a Burger King bag on the table and it suddenly vanishing into the midst of the Gazzy/Iggy huddle going on the next row.
"The boys haven't."
"You think Iggy, one of your heroes lived in London." A slightly glazed look passed over Ig's eyes.
"Guy Fawkes, can you imagine all that gunpowder going up? BOOM!" He demonstrated with various arm movements.
"Shame he tried to blow up the King." Max sat down next to Fang. "Hows the blog?" She lent over his shoulder and looked up and down the page.
"I just got this reply from a kid in England." He turned the screen. The words 'READ THIS NOW!!!! URGENT!!!' painted quite a large picture of urgency.
"You read it yet?"
"About to." He clicked on the link.

From FeatherGirl2009
To the flock, major urgency!
My dad saw one of you here in London! Everyone is talking about it over here! Look at this!!!

Below the text was a video file. Fang clicked on it and without a word the entire Flock was soon looking at the film of a boy as he glided from tree to tree, a massive grin on his face, wings outstretched on each side. There wasn't any doubt that this was real, no CGI could match a real person that accurately.
"Get the news up." Max managed, fixated on the boy as he laughed, wings dipping and swerving through the trees. With a few taps the BBC news was up and the live stream was running. A weather report was just finishing.
"Thanks Alex." The reporter turned to the camera again. "More upcoming news now as we turn to Joan in St James Park where she is going to meet the boy we have all been hearing about this morning. Whether this is a trick or something we have never seen before, we are about to know. Over to you Joan." The camera changed to a woman in Prada clothes as she tried desperately to stay behind the armed police as they moved through the gates of the park.
"Sam, as you can see we are the first into the park since the video was shot late last night. We are having to go in with police as we don't know what we are dealing with here but I assure you all, I have no doubt in my mind that this is something amazing." The officer in front motioned for them all to crouch down and the sound of clasps being released on weapons sounded like breaking ice. "There is something in the clearing up ahead. Men! Metal men are standing just a few feet from us round the corner."
Itex was already there. Apparently the Flock weren't the only people to realize the significance of the film.
"They're saying something." Joan extended her microphone toward the bend in the path. A tinny but none the less accurate voice was sent out across the airwaves.
"Come with us or be incapacitated." There was a slight pause before the response.
"Piss off!" The sound of something hard hitting the mechanical suits of armor sent a clang over the television. There was a whoosh as something huge shot over the trees before being intercepted by a net and brought crashing into the armed police and knocking them flying. The panicked face of a boy shot across the camera's view and Max's breath caught. The camera man trained his lens on the boy as he jumped up and tried to remove the tangled net from around his left leg. The robots were pounding round the corner after him just as the net fell away.
"Stop now!" The suits surprisingly enough stopped at the ragged line of rifles and regarded their prey as it ran for its life, thinking it was safe behind a barrier of gun wielding coppers. The camera couldn't make up its mind who to look at, robo-men or bird kid. The sound of wings unfurling made the decision for him as 14 feet of tan wings with blood red tips shot out of the boys back, bearing him up into the air and to safety.
The robots suddenly stiffened as new orders were beamed into their processors. The leader raised its forearms and two panels slid back to reveal two neat cylinders with bright blue nose cones. Bullets slammed into its delicate circuitry but with a last instruction the two tracker missiles launched after the boy trailing deadly blue smoke in their wake. The lights in the robots head dimmed but across London, the boy raced over the sky for his life.

Max looked at Fang as he shut the lid of the laptop.
"We need to get to London."

I however wasn't having a very good time.
My ankle had been torn up by the sharp edges of the net and was bleeding a lot. My left arm was limp and useless as I ducked and dived over the skyline. Oh, and two smart bombs were after me, that too.
The blue smoke darted behind me as I banked sharply, pulling at my muscles like pitbulls fighting over a chew toy. The Strand lay out below me and I dived, hoping to break the lock the two missiles had fixed on me. Banners snatched for me, masonry rose up as I skimmed the walls on my belly, avoiding gutting myself by the barest of fractions on century old stone. Whoosh! Charring Cross Station. Whoosh! Kings College. I nearly broke my back as I arched round Fleet Street. I looked back and saw the winking nose cones of the missiles, about 10 feet behind me.
Pull up! Nearly ended up as jam on the side of a lawyers flat. Wing tips brushed chimney pots, barrel rolling under a balcony, just trying to shake the missiles off me. St Paul loomed in front of me, the dome glistening in the early sun. People on the top balcony pointed in shock as I blew past them all, the missiles nearly knocking the heads off anyone not quick enough to duck.
Back into the streets, these were filled with Christmas decorations that stretched over the road. I nearly garroted myself on an electrical cable and missiles nearly made the same mistake. Maybe this was my chance, snare them in the wires and wing like crazy.
But what about the people below? How can I ensure they won't get hurt? I yelled and pulled up, damning my conscious and flying free of the streets, the missiles behind me.
I hadn't eaten in 12 hours, I was tired and with each pass I was getting more likely to make a mistake and the blue smoke of the missiles haunted me. The situation was hopeless. I climbed sharply, slowing down a fraction but thats all it took for one of the bombs to shoot up beside my leg, the nose cone turning red and the jet stopping. With a yell I kicked out with my injured foot and sent the bomb spinning away before it reignited its engine and sped up to meet its partner. That was it, the detonation command overwrites the fuel, now how to contain the explosion in a city. The answer lay below me.
A winding snake from up-above, stretching on to the sea in the east and the hills in the west, the backbone and beating artery of the entire city. The River Thames. And I was about to use it as a really big air bag.
I folded my wings and plummeted, adrenaline flooding every pore of my being. For a second I wanted nothing more then to cry like a hawk, diving in for the kill. The pain that shot across my entire body as I pulled up made tears spring up into my eyes and the calm and deserted surface of the river would be as nice to fall into as concrete. The missiles was close behind, their ice cold blue cones filling my vision. They set on another burst of speed and drew level, the lights blinked red and the fuel cut from the engines, nothing but momentum keeping them moving. I heaved down with heavy wings and hit them full on, jarring my shoulders painfully but the two bombs plummeted into the water. I didn't have any time at all to run from the blast.
A column of water 30 feet high rose out of the river like a grabbing hand, with me at its center. Thousands of gallons of water pounded into my wings, sending me crashing down into a world of water and churned mud. Every ounce of strength had been used up, my brain was playing tricks with my scenes and my body was beyond its limit, bird DNA or not. I floated on the current, listening to the deafening silence as the river returned to its calm after such a massive disturbance. I shut my eyes and thought of my normal life, before the wings, before the carnage and the hurt. I was ready to go, even if it was to a sub-standard grave.
Then as usual someone has to spoil it all.
A rough hand grabbed the back of my shirt and hauled me from the river. Sunlight! I retched up lungfuls of fouled river water onto the deck of the boat.
"Its alright lad, we got you." Someone wrapped a blanket round me as I shivered and held me in a bear hug, trying to radiate some heat into me. "Get us back to port, this kid needs serious help."
"Message from control, they want him at Grosvenor road."
"What do they want with him?"
"Dunno, but if they've got a warm bed for him its as good as he's going to get there." The boat turned back up river, waves lapping at the sides. The river swept past, people lined the wharfs and walks, staring at the little rescue boat as it headed up stream. I shut my eyes and slipped into dreamless sleep.