Chapter 2

Even though Jeb had said he wanted to talk he didn't start right away. Instead he quickly led me down a hallway I had never been down before. Every time he went to a cross hall he looked around, like he was doing something wrong, but I had to be imagining it because Jeb was a white coat and he couldn't break his own rules. Could he?

At the end of on hall there was an empty room and Jeb pushed me inside. My mouth started watering immediately because there was a ton of food laying on the table, without waiting for Jeb's permission I started instantly stuffing my face, putting all the stuff that wouldn't make a complete mess away so I could latter give it to my family.

Jeb sat down across from me and looked at me seriously. "I'm going to talk and you're going to listen, then do everything I tell you to do. If either you or anyone in your family makes a mistake then you will all die."

I froze and opened my full mouth to respond, but Jeb shook his head. "there is not enough time, you cant interrupt." I nodded and he continued.

"Our boss is getting upset because nothing more unusual is happening with you guys and he wants to move on to bigger and better experiments. I have tried to talk to him and tell him that you guys are as far as we can get right now but he wont listen. He plans to see how long it takes for the Erasers to kill you at dusk, then start on something new. I wont let you be killed though," he said hurriedly at my horrified face. "so tomorrow I will get you guys out. We have 10 more minutes and I will tell you how I plan to do it, memorize it and tell the Flock, then you all might survive."

Jeb talked for the next 10 minutes like he had said and I listened intently, while stuffing my face. When he was done, I took all the food I could carry and stuffed more in a pocket created by my wings. Jeb this time took my arm, because my hands were filled with food and led my quickly back to the room with the cages. I then passed out all the food to my excited flock and climbed into the cage that Jeb held the door open to.

"Good luck, sweetheart" he said, locking the door behind me. Then he left without looking back.

All the flock dug into their food so I planed to wait till they were done to tell them what was wrong, but Fang caught onto my tense mood.

"What was that about?" he asked in a hushed voice, which I appreciated, because it meant that I could tell him without worrying the rest of the Flock.

I quickly told Fang everything, the rest of the Flock would only be told what to do, not the whole you fail and die thing. Fang ate while I talked and he agreed on my plan to not tell the rest, but he still looked worried and sick.

They finished fast in case white coats came in, then they all looked at me expectantly. I couldn't tell them out loud because anyone could come in at any time but since we had been here for years we had developed a technique of talking with our hands and everyone understood the entire plan just after an hour of me going over it.

Dusk didn't come fast enough, but in some ways it had. In one hand we were about to escape, but on the other hand we could all possibly die. I had a feeling though that if worse come to worse, I could distract the white coats and Erasers long enough to let the rest of the Flock escape, even though I would die.

Fang was just about to throw up and was sweating at the bottom of his cage in a painful heap when the white coats came in, and not too gently threw all the cages on the cart. I really hoped he would be ok, I knew he would try as hard as the rest of the Flock but no one was going to be left behind.

The cart was harshly wheeled outside and if I hadn't kept still at the center of the crate I would've tumbled off. The place where we were brought was definitely the place the chimps were hunted. It was a side yard that was fenced in. Three big hairy men, the Erasers were left, while the white coats went inside. I felt a little mad because three, really, we were better then that, we were stronger then average adults, hadn't they done enough testing to realize that.

The Erasers, grinning wickedly opened all of our cages, doing mine last. Just like was planned we huddled in the back, pretending we were terrified, well maybe we weren't pretending. When the Erasers leaned over to take us out we were ready to begin.

"NOW!" I yelled, and all of us pushed out from the back of the crate and into the Erasers face. We were designed to fly so we had a lot of momentum. That and the fact that it was completely unexpected, pushed the Erasers back and vaulted us over them.

"RUN!" I screamed, and Iggy, handing me Angel and taking hold of Gazzy's hand didn't slow us down at all.

The Erasers were right behind us though and I knew that if Jeb had lied, then we were dead. He hadn't though and the hole in the fence was exactly were I was told it would be. We shimmied under it just as the alarm went off and we set off again into the woods.

Jeb had told me where he was going to meet us in the car, but in the woods was when we came across a major problem.