Shay grimaced as she stepped on another pointy rock. Her plan to escape the school in upstate New York had worked perfectly, until she realized that in her haste to be relieved of her torture facility, she left her worn sneakers in her dog crate. But she was so happy to be out in the open, to feel wind in her brown hair, to feel the freedom outside the small yard that had served as her only connection to the outdoors for thirteen long, painful years. She was through with the endless needles and endurance tests, the dog crate that she had out grown a year ago, the sickly looking lab coats and most importantly, the death. She was sick of having another crate set down next to hers at night, occupied by a younger experiment that probably wouldn't make it through the night because its genes were messed up so badly, and often times, it wouldn't. She would wake up the next morning to find the experiment lying on the floor of its cage, eyes wide, mouth open, stone dead. She was convinced she was going to die in this awful place, like so many others. But it changed one day when she was thrown back into her crate after a day of "Lets-see-if-this-one-will-die-if-we-inject-it-with-enough-poisin-to-kill-an-elephant". She was still alive, but she felt like she had been run over by an eighteen-wheeler carrying a large shipment of bricks. She didn't feel like moving, she had just stared at the newspaper lining the floor until as blurry picture caught her eye. It was of six kids with wings flying out of a stadium. Sure the picture was pretty old, but it still gave her the same thought. Are there others like me out there? Could they really have escaped? That picture had brought her the thing she needed most at that moment. Hope. And now, running through the woods faster then she ever thought possible, that was the one thing that had flourished.
The only thing about hope flourishing, is that it can very easily diminish again, Shay thought as she heard the inevitable. Gunshots. Plus, as an added bonus, the School had also sent a brand new batch of flyboys with special adjustments. Shay had seen them.