Chapter 8
Meeting the New Kid

"This is unreal." Nudge murmured, looking at the screen mounted on the wall of the cafe in the arrivals terminal of Heathrow airport.
"The blog is going nuts." Fang looked over the top of the laptop and and glanced at the news as it was repeated for the third time in as many minutes. "Five thousand hits in the past half hour."
"And a new development in the Angel Incident this morning." The reported took the piece of paper offered to him and read it through, his eyebrows slowing advancing up his head. "A group known only as The Flock have been located on the Internet hosting a blog." Max looked round at Fang who slammed the lid of the laptop shut suddenly. " According to the blog a group of children who match the description of the boy rescued from the Thames early this morning have been on the run for over 3 years from a company called Itexicon. The secret services have been able to provide these images of the children in question." Six rather detailed images appeared next to the reader, each of the Flock relaxing at Anne Walker's house. Max did a quick three sixty, several people in the cafe were looking at them curiously and one suddenly whipped out a mobile phone. "Our researchers have assured us that this site is legitimate and we shall from now on be following it closely. And to the Flock if you are watching, we hope to be hearing from you soon. The time is now six in the evening."
The Flock were dumbstruck, every bit of their cover had just been picked off by the BBC newsreaders in about thirty seconds of footage.
"Lets get out of here." Max grabbed Total and cradled him in his arms, much to his dislike and made for the door.
Max, go to the taxi rank, there will be a black BMW, get in.
And we'll be carted off to God knows where? I don't think so. She ploughed through the crowds to the exit.
"Miss Ride, come with us please." A hand rested on her shoulder and around her the Flock was surrounded by men in suits, about 15 of them. Total started to growl a little. For a brief moment Fang looked ready to beat the snot out of the nearest suit but when Jeb Batchelder materialized on Max's arm, he thought better of it.
"Shall we go Max?" He rested a hand on her other shoulder and steered her toward the car parked in the taxi rank.
"Do we have much of a choice?" She looked up into her father's face and received his trademark sad smile.
"If we're not quick no-one on earth is going to have much of choice."

"So, pops, whats the story?" Max had decided to bite for the moment. This kid was big and the entire Flock knew it and if it meant working with Jeb to get to him they would deal. The car went over a deep pothole and they all bounced up and down.
"Right to the point then." Jeb looked from each of the Flock in turn, they didn't return the smiles. "There is another person out there like you."
"Really? I didn't notice that." Max turned to the flock. "Anyone else notice?"
"We don't have time for wise cracks Max, this is serious. This boy is dangerous in more ways then one." Max's eyebrows raised.
"Most people are dangerous Jeb."
"This one is, take a look." He took a file from the seat next of him and handed it over. "His name is Aires, and its more than likely he's going to change the world and not for the better. Geneticists found a way to make normal people into recombinant avian lifeforms, Itex stole the research and employed it on him."
"Whats so bad about that? A world not full of complete jerks and like us." Iggy said. "Sounds good me."
"Ig, it isn't all that good." Max leafed through the file. "97.4% kill rate? Thats nearly everyone."
"Kill rate, that doesn't sound good." Fang took the file and began to read it through with The Gasman.
"The formula isn't perfect, it took months to find a suitable test subject. And if it was released into the atmosphere right now, without an antibody to fight off its deadly effects, 6.6 billion people would be dead in three weeks with our current world population." The car fell silent.
"Six billion? Everywhere?"
"Thats not all, those who are kept alive will be like you, but they won't be the same. They'll have their memory's scrambled, they'll be like drones, no will or personality. Thats why Itex want to use it, a world reduced to a handful of people who will do their bidding, able to start from the ground up again. Keep alive those who they want with an antibody and leave the rest to rot. Its an apocalypse of free thought.
"Not to mention the 97.4% who'll die." Angel muttered miserably.
"What about us? We're already different." Nudge said.
"You would survive, you have the genes to fight off the loss of thought and death but how long you'd live in a world of nothing but Itex I don't know. The virus only effects humans, animals won't even notice a thing and Itex has a Atmospheric Cannon to burn off the pollution in the air once they have their 'New World'. It would be like rebooting the world, except humans become something else." The car came to a stop. "Come on. Its time you met him."
They stepped out into the darkening street that backed the river Thames and stood outside the building with its nondescript archway leading into the lobby, the words "Semper Occultus" carved into the stone above them.
"Whats that mean?" The Gasman pointed at the words as they passed beneath them.
"'Always Secret', its a motto." A woman in a trim suit appeared out of nowhere, making Fang jump out of his skin and nearly hit her. She just smiled at them as The Flock took in the woman in her suit and gun holster on her hip, the grip worn smooth with use. "Welcome to Grosvenor Road, MI6 head quarters."

"So who are you?" Max looked the tall woman up and down as they walked down the whitewashed hallway, the maze of hallways designed to keep those inside lost if they tried to escape.
"I take it you've not seen many Bond movies?" The woman looked over her shoulder at them, not breaking step. "I had quite a like for Ian Flemming, there was some truth in his work with 007, there is always a SIS Advocate. Thats me. You can call me M."
"Just M?"
"Yes, its a randomly assigned letter given to the Advocate to keep his or her identity secret. The SIS, MI6 to you, is the most advanced secret service in the world." She turned into a dead end with a single door at the end.
"What about the CIA?" The Gasman received a pitying smile off M.
"To be perfectly honest, the less you know about a secret service, the better they tend to be at doing what they were made to do. MI6 is one of 13 devisions, am I right in guessing you don't know that?"
"No but..."
"Secret being the operative word here, not many people know that MI6 is the tip of the iceberg. Now, shall we meet our guest?"

I had been stuck in this room for nearly four hours and I was bored rigid. The door on the other side of the room remained stubbornly shut and I was in desperate need of a shower. After waking up in this cell I had been told I was safe and someone would be coming to see me soon. Soon had been and gone, along with my patience. Even if my arm had been put back into its socket and my ankle bandaged, I was still a prisoner in here.
"Would it hurt for someone to give me some food!" I hammered my fist into the two way mirror but didn't get a response. Failing that I sat down on one of the chairs and took another look at my surroundings. The cell looked like it had been used as an interrogation room and someone had thrown a bed into it for me. A table was bolted to the floor along with the two chairs and the bare concrete walls were far too clean, I could only wonder why this place would need cleaning after a period of 'Interrogation'. The opening of the door made me look up and I stood, trying to look as threatening as possible. The man who entered with a girl my age didn't look very threatening and for a moment I thought about rushing them until I saw a woman on the other side of the door with her hand on a pistol.
"Don't worry," The man said, raising his hands. "My name is Jeb Batchelder, this is Max. We're here to help."
"I'm not saying a word until you tell me where my parents are." I growled.
"To be honest Aires, we don't know. But we're here to help you." Jeb's warm eyes were warm but I could see his hidden agenda like it was dancing the fandango in front of me.
"Why do you want to help me? So you get a nice warm cuddly feeling inside. And whats this." I went up to the girl, Max he said her name was. "Bring your kids to the asylum day? She's quite pretty, shame you saved none of your own looks." Wow, I could really put them away when I wanted to. One-nil to me.
"I'm sorry, can we say sexist?"
"Feisty, how I like my women. so Jeb, buddy. What is your lovely plan that is going to put my life back on track? Some group therapy maybe, a relaxing massage from blonde here?"
"You'd need a quack." Max sneered.
"You'd need a bath sister, maybe a dose of fashion sense too." I spat back.
"You can talk!" Her face was in front of mine in nanoseconds. "Last I saw you were taking a swim in the river."
"Enough!" Jeb's voice cut through our verbal sparring. "Sit down!" I sat opposite Max and grinned in the most annoying was possible. "Right. Aires, you are not what we call normal." I barked a laugh.
"Really?" I reached over my shoulder and felt the tip of my wing. "Hmm, that wasn't there last night."
"When your finished." Jeb looked like he was trying to talk me down. Sooooo not in the mood. "Max is like you and I was part of the team that made you. Now what..." I didn't let him open his mouth.
"Oh I get it! Your making a little family of freaks. Does putting us to bed at night give you a nice warm feeling inside after you've wreaked our lives? Your own daughter too, some humanitarian."
"I will never be able to forgive myself for what I have done but I'm trying to put it right." He looked at me with a sad smile. I just sneered, I didn't owe him my sympathy for wrecking my life. "Take your shirt off. Show Max."
"I think she should, I've been the one locked up in here while you've been outside playing happy family's." The look I got back wasn't promising. "Alright." I stood up and unbuttoned my shirt, tossing it onto the bed and extending my wings. The tips scraped the walls and Max had to duck underneath to look at where they joined my back. I squirmed uncomfortably as her hand traced where the wing met my back and fused with the flesh. She examined each feather and after a while I folded them back in and grabbed my shirt, feeling sufficiently weirded out by Max's inspection.
"Can you fly yet?" She asked, joining her father again on the other side of the table.
"I was chased through London by two missiles. Yeah, I can fly." I fumbled with my buttons on my shirt.
"You learnt to fly in a day?"
"Pretty much. How long did it take you?" I looked at the window in the wall briefly but all I saw was me.
"Weeks. What makes you so different?" Max shared her frown with her father.
"I'm no different from you." I shrugged.
"We will have time to think about it another time but at the moment Itex it out looking for you. We will need to catch them off guard if we are to catch them off guard."
"I take it this plan requires my obedience?" I asked. No brainer really.
"Yes. If you want to stay in our protection. But if the plan works it will plough Itex into the ground. The world at the moment have no idea that you were manipulated by Itex to what you are today and all we need to do is unmask them, the human rights organizations will topple them in weeks and nearly everything about Itex has got something illicit about it. And who else to do the unmasking then the boy the world wants to see." My finger slipped on the button of my shirt.
"I'm sorry?" I wasn't comforted by the look on Jeb's face and I could tell that this was unpleasant news to Max too.
"You are going to bring down Itex from the inside out. Publicize their greatest sin and accomplishment. You are going to be the worlds first asylum seeker."
There was a moment of stunned silence.
Its never a good idea when they get poetic.