They took Angel first.
The hardest part was watching them handcuff, gag and blindfold her. They held back her wings to make sure she wouldn't try to fly away as they forced her off the ground. One of the Bieber Hulks prodded her back with a sharp rod when she refused to walk, and she yelped in pain. They took my baby away for whatever God-awful tests they had planned for her and shut the door loudly behind them.
The Bieber Hulks had slumped Fang against the wall opposite ours and chained him down, too. It was agony not being able to touch him.
"What did they do to you?" I asked when it was just me and my flock. I couldn't bear to know, but I had to.
"I was blacked out for most of it," he said, fixing his obsidian eyes on mine. "Don't remember much."
"Did it hurt?" I whispered.
He shrugged and smiled bravely, trying to hide his pain from me. I managed a smile back.
"I love you," I mouthed to him. He mouthed it back.
The hours while we waited for Angel's testing to finish were agony. It was the worst when I could hear her screams. I strained against my restraints on the wall, trying with all my might to break free. But this room was built to keep us in. We were trapped here.
We started to get hungry. They wouldn't feed us or give us anything to drink, and our stomachs were growling. I was getting exhausted trying to break free. Gazzy tried to amuse us by using his special talent of imitating people's voices. First he did Morgan Freeman, which I have to say was pretty entertaining. I mean, it's Morgan Freeman. But after the third Britney Spears song, things started to get pretty bad for us bird kids. We yelled at nothing and pounded on the walls, demanding to be let out. A few times the Bieber-Hulks came in and threatened us, but they didn't bring Angel back in and we didn't see Dr. Leslie again. My worry for Angel was through the roof. God only knew what they were doing to her, and I couldn't wait to get out of here and bust their chops for hurting my baby.
My anger was rising with each second, and my flock could tell.
"Uh-oh," Nudge said after a few hours. "Max has her angry face on."
"I thought that was just her normal face," Gazzy said, and I narrowed my eyes at him.
"They all look the same to me," Iggy said, and I had to smile at that one. Even Fang cracked a grin.
I let out a deep breath and leaned my head against the wall. "We're gonna get out of here, guys."
"How?" asked Nudge. "I mean, I really want to get out too, but I just don't see any possible solutions. I mean, if we-"
"Nudge," I stopped her before she got too far into babbling mode. She shut up. "I don't know how we're getting out just yet. But we. Are getting. Out."
The plan came to me spontaneously.
It was when the Bieber-Hulks came back in, this time – thankfully – towing Angel with them. My heart broke at the sight of her. She was battered and broken, and she could barely stand on her own two feet. Her face was bruised, she had bandages over her arms, and her wings were dirty. A few primary feathers were missing.
I got even angrier over how carelessly the Bieber-Hulks tossed her around. They shoved her to the ground and handcuffed her to the wall again, kicking her when she wouldn't sit up straight.
"Hey!" Gazzy shouted. "Don't kick her like that!"
One of the monsters got close into his face, but Gazzy wouldn't budge. He stared the Bieber-Hulk in the eyes with steely resolve. My pride soared.
"You," the other monster said, pointing at me. "You next."
One of them unchained me, keeping my arms locked behind my back. I shot a glance at Fang, and he nodded. On the count of three.
One.
Two.
"Three!" I shouted, and I kneed the monster behind me in the groin. I didn't know if that would actually work, but he crumbled like coffee cake to the ground. The other monster tried to take me down, but I whirled and landed a roundhouse kick to his face. The others couldn't do much from their chained positions, but they cheered me on heartily.
"Max, I think you got them," Fang said just as I was about to land another kick on one of the Bieber-Hulk's faces. "Get us out of here before they find out."
I paused, my boot above the monster's nose, and nodded. I searched their bodies for a key, anything that might get us unchained. After some rigorous searching, I finally found a small silver key wedged tightly into a small pocket in one of the monsters' pants. Praying that it was the right one, I tried it on Fang's restraints.
It worked.
He rubbed his wrists as I worked on Angel's chains, Iggy's, then Gazzy's, then Nudge's. Once we were all up, I cracked my knuckles angrily.
"Let's go kick some Bieber-Hulk ass."