I almost fainted.

Really, I did.

"Oh my God…" I murmured, running my fingers along my… erm… feathers.

That sounded so weird.

The ones that I could see wee a very light brown colour, with a few white here and there. They still hurt to move, but there wasn't enough room in my dog crate to extend them anyway. To think, not too long ago I was just an ordinary girl, walking out of an ordinary school, and now…

Wait.

How long ago?

I realised I had no idea whatsoever how long I had been in this lab place. Surely it couldn't have been more than a few hours… right? It struck me that the whole wing-attaching process must have taken ages, I could have been here for days, even weeks. Tears welled up in my eyes for the second time that morning, or afternoon, or whatever, I couldn't tell. Just when things had been starting to go well for me… this happened.

I might never get out of here. I might never see my family again. Why did it have to be me? What did I ever do to deserve something like this?

However, I didn't have any more time to think about that sort of thing, because someone was coming. I crawled forward and looked out of the bars of my cage. Two people in long white coats - scientists - were walking towards me. I pulled back as they looked into my cage.

"It worked?" one of them, a younger man, said.

"Of course it did! The experiment was a complete success - just like I said it would be," the other, an older man, replied.

Experiment? I thought. They're talking about me! I wanted to say something, to tell them that I wasn't an 'experiment', I was a human girl! But then again, maybe I wasn't, not any more.

But, even if I had wanted to, I didn't have time to say anything. The two men had unlocked my cage, and were reaching into it. They grabbed me and pulled me out. "Get off me!" I said, trying to pull away. But as I did so, I felt a strong electric shock, and yelped in pain. I noticed that one of them was holding something, it was that which gave me the shock. I didn't resist any more.

They brought me to a room with a treadmill, some expensive looking computers, and a whole lot of wires. They grabbed the wires and started attaching them to my wrists, my forehead and my neck. Then they pushed me onto the treadmill. "Run," one of them said.

I started to run - I had no choice, the treadmill had started to move. I watched in horror as the speed rose, higher, higher, until I was running faster that I had ever thought possible.

Then I realised something.

I wasn't struggling.

I was running flat out, faster than any human ever could, and yet I wasn't struggling. I felt a small feeling of hope, maybe this would be easier than I had thought.

But, as the minutes dragged by, they didn't stop. I kept running, as fast as I could to keep from being thrown off the treadmill. I felt a sick feeling. They were going to keep me running until I collapsed. In that case, I shouldn't be running so fast. I started to slow down, but let out a cry of pain as I felt another electric shock. It hurt like hell, and I knew there was going to be a burn mark. Immediately I speeded up.

There was a clock on the wall in front of me. I had been running for ten minutes now. I watched the minute hand. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. Twenty-five. Half an hour. I had been running for half an hour. This was longer than I had ever run before.

One hour, and three electric shocks after that, I was still running. My lungs were burning like hell. The minute hand was still moving, unaware of my pain. The scientists, however were aware of it, and worse, they liked it. They wanted to hurt me, wanted to see my reaction. I was drenched in sweat, I wanted to stop so badly. I tried slowing down again, but I just got another shock.

Ten minutes later though, I knew I couldn't go on. I closed my eyes and stopped. I collapsed, and went flying off the treadmill. I felt two more electric shocks, but they were more annoying than painful. Someone put a straw into my mouth, and I sucked hard. Water had never tasted so good.

I was faintly aware of having the wires ripped off my skin and of being lifted and put into my cage, but after that I was finally left along. Thankfully, I sank into unconsciousness, the only place left to retreat to.

The next few weeks were torture. It was tests - day in, day out. They made me swallow radioactive dye to study my circulation system. They took x-ray after x-ray. They injected me with chemicals to see how I would react. They took blood samples at least once every three days - I sometimes felt dizzy from lack of it.

One of the most shocking things was when they took my weight and height. Before I had been about five foot three, now I was five foot seven. And I weighed so little it shocked me. I wasn't anorexic, I knew I wasn't, so how was this possible?

I was shoved into the same dog crate every day, once they were finished with me. I hurt all over, I threw up, I was completely miserable. I just wanted to die, even death would be a thousand times better than this.

At the end of yet another day of experiments/tortures, I was lying in my cage, when I noticed something, no someone, new in the lab. A girl, about my age, was in the cage next to mine. Unlike the other experiments, who were all babies and had obvious mutations, she looked normal.

"Uh… uh, hi," I said nervously. I had tried talking to some of the others before, but none of them had responded.

However, the girl looked up, startled. Her eyes scanned the room before locking onto me. "You can talk?" she said.

"Uh, yeah," I said, just as shocked as she was.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, crawling forward in her cage to get a better look at me. "You look… normal."

"I'm… I'm an experiment," I replied, looking away from her for a moment. An experiment. An 'it'. I didn't think I would ever get used to that.

"Why? What did they do to you?" she asked.

"They… they gave me wings and stuff. I have bird DNA," I replied, thinking about how weird it must sound to this stranger.

"You're kidding," she said, a shocked look on her face.

"No, I'm serious," I said. "Why are you so shocked? I mean, look around you! It's not that hard to believe when you see all these other mutants."

"Yeah, I know, it's just… well… me too." she said.

My eyes widened 'me too'? But, I had thought I was the only one! "You mean, you have wings? Like me?" I asked her.

"Yeah, like you. But why haven't I seen you before?" she asked.

"I've only been here for about a month," I explained, my green eyes locking with her brown ones.

"You… you mean they put the DNA in after birth?" she said, a note of shock in her voice.

"Yeah," I said simply. She looked down, and there was silence between us for a minute. "I'm Cassie," I said, to break it.

She looked up at me, and gave a small smile. "Max," she said, "Maximum Ride."