I should explain—Chapter 1

Note how I said flying seems to make troubles go away. I'm still a batgirl with no family. Still mute, condemned to forever live a life of silence. Still a freak, still having no possibilities to ever have a normal life. Still, still, still. No amount of airtime is going to change that. But hey, seems is good enough for now.

I drop a while to coast above the smooth, silky waters of lake Powell. The first slices of sunrise leaves a trail on the water, a peachy blend of orange and pink. I let myself slide further and further, until my bare feet brush against the icy lake. A tingle shoots up my spine at the touch of the cold water. I retract my toes, and shoot upward to a deep and narrow cave. Carefully navigating around stalagmites, stalactites, and tight corners, I reach my camp in a bit under a minute. I beat my wings a few times slowly to brake, and softly land on the rocky, copper-toned ground. I don't bother with shoes as I walk around the hard caves. I'm used to pain far worse than a stubbed toe. I toss my jacket, soaked through with cloud vapor, into a corner. My wings are kept out, allowing them to relax and regain power. A day of hiding them tightly against my back has made the strong muscles ache. If it weren't for the Whitecoats at the School, I wouldn't have to deal with this. I wouldn't have to hide my wings and live in a cave. My family would be alive . . .

You may have heard of others like me. They call themselves the "Flock." A group of six bird kids. My family and I were the originals. The first mutations made to fly. A team of whack-job scientists called Whitecoats at the School, a prison facility slash torture chamber slash science lab, created us. Sounds like a cheery place to grow up, now, doesn't it? Anyhow, they fused ten percent bat DNA with our "enhanced", ninety percent human genes. The result? Four flying kids with a superhuman IQ and bad attitudes. A few key differences in our design were made, the first painfully obvious: We're bats. They're birds. Another: I'm the only bat kid left. There's six of them, plus about ten extra that didn't make it past the first few months. And yet another: They're revered as gods among Itex. Bat kids were considered the lowest of the low because we refused to cave in to their "training" by acting like idiots. We were the original team to save the world. I, Onyx, with the aid of Gala, Ruby, and Holly was supposed to save all of you, sitting there reading this on your chair, comfortably nestled in a safe, warm house. Due to our refusal to obey, the bird kids were produced instead. Our expiration dates were kick-started, so that we could be quickly disposed of. My family dead, I somehow survived the expiration date and pretended to die instead. My ability to stop my heartbeat for up to five minutes convinced them I was dead. When they brought me to the back of the School, I managed to fly away. Unable to save my family, I was forced to grow up on my own from the age of six. It's not a problem, though. I don't need anyone's help. I've made it ten years away from the School, dodging away from towns, taking scraps of dried fruit from unwitting hikers, soaring above clouds, and just living.

I escaped from the lab relatively unscathed. Besides my mental scars, one major incident would change my life forever—my loss of speech. It occurred during a spar with three Erasers—wolf men, for those not in the know—at the school. I was beating them badly; they were so pathetically weak, especially considering that I could fly up, make myself invisible, and pounce down on them. Superhuman strength probably helped out too. Anyways, the fight was going well—for me at least. As I was overtaking the third, he raked me with one clawed paw, all the way from the bottom of my jaw to my collarbone in a crooked gash. I staggered back, and collapsed from the searing, uncontrollable pain. The Whitecoats patched me up so I wouldn't bleed to death, but my rarely used speech was gone forever. But, enough of the history lesson. These things can't be fixed, so there's no real point in going into the details.

I find a place where I can hang from to sleep—laugh if you want, I'm a bat, what do you expect? Of course I sleep upside down. The downside—resting in any formal dwelling is nearly impossible. Part of the reason why I slept for only a few hours a day while at the School was the dog crates, clearly having no hanging posts.

Gripping the small rocky ledge with my feet, I cross my arms across my chest, and tuck my wings tightly around my body. My breathing slows, and the world goes black.