FINALLY UPDATED IT! Sorry for the long wait everyone!
"Frii! Wait!"
"No! I will not be put into a cage again!" I growl, finally giving up on ejecting my wings and just turning to run full speed away. "Go tell the media! Your best friend is a freak! I'm sure they'll pay you a lot for the story! But I won't stick around to be experimented on again!"
About a mile later, I finally slow down. Glancing around to make sure there won't be any spectators, I remove my hoody and spread my wings. I move them around a bit to stretch them out, and then do a running take off. As I race the breeze to my tent, my mind takes me back to the previous night.
Man, how could I be so stupid?! I mean, yeah the people who live on that street just hide all night, so they generally don't see me, or if they do, then they run and hide. A rogue Eraser tried to attack the town once, but he wasn't much of a fight. His wings were lopsided, oversized, and missing several feathers, and one of his legs looked like that of a chicken.. The patchwork dummy wasn't any sort of a match for twenty-something people with kitchen knives and golf bats (it was the present-day version of a mob with clubs and pitchforks). He escaped, with a last remark of "Wait until I get my pack! We'll come when you least expect it!" Which, of course, the humans were dumb enough to believe. Itex would never have purposely kept one Eraser like that alive, much less use an entire group of them.. Anyway, I was waiting around in a nearby alley when I heard the shouting. Since the people pretty much had it under control, I decided not to make myself known. Now they're all inside well before sun down, so I've gotten a bit lazy, I guess—
Which, again, is very very stupid! I live most of my life in a cage, endure years of torture, and watch both of the people I cared about die, and yet I still haven't got the sense to make absolutely sure nobody's watching! Jeez!
Punching a branch in frustration, I land in the woods that are my "home". Or was my home, I should say. The minute Tiffany tells everybody about the escaped genetic experiment from the recently-destroyed Itexicon, there's going to be hunters and journalists and picture-seekers and scientists and vets and who knows what else strip searching the entire state for me. Considering the speed she runs and the nearest phone, I have about…an hour before the helicopter gets here from the big city.
I dump my textbooks and homework out of my backpack (I'm obviously NOT going back to school, so why keep them?) and start stuffing my clothes, edible stuff, and money haphazardly inside. After zipping it closed, I wrap the blanket around the pack, and then the tarp around the blanket. Lastly, I use bungee cords to tie it all together. The sheets don't exactly fit, and this way the cloud water won't soak everything inside and rot what's left of those burgers. This isn't exactly my first time blowing the secret on a foggy night. And when I say foggy, I mean fifteen hundred feet above ground. The humans are going to experience about seventy- to eighty-degree temperatures, with very slight drizzle and few winds. And no, I did not get that from watching TV or listening to a radio. Meteorology ain't got nothin' on me. I've flown through many a different weather condition, so I've developed a few animalistic senses, including weather prediction. I can feel the slightest change in air pressure, I know how humid the air is getting, and after a few uses of Dark Wing's power, I also learned how to estimate the amount of electric charge in the air. But unlike cows and stuff, I don't lie down when I sense rain. I'm still 95% human, after all; I do have more brains than instinct, whatever the scientists may say.
Tiffany POV
Puffing from exhaustion, I stop and stand in the street. I'll never catch up with her. When I brought up my idea that Frii isn't human, she freaked out. Her sweatshirt was moving around like when she had started growing wings last night, but nothing stuck out. Then she ran off faster than a race horse. I don't know why she didn't fly this time; maybe she couldn't. I don't know if it would take a large amount of energy or time to change on purpose. I'm no expert on magical beings.
Anyway, beyond having animal parts, something really weird I noticed is that even though she has wings and may even be a werewolf, she didn't act like she would or even could hurt me. She looked all terrified, and fled both times before I got a chance to say or do anything. And the last thing she said before she disappeared really confuses me. What did she mean, "again"? Who would put her in a cage? I mean, yeah, she sometimes has wings, but she's still a person! And why would her family let anyone treat her that way? She hasn't said much about them, but what she has told me makes it seem unlikely they would ever let someone treat her with anything less than kindness and respect. It just doesn't make any sense!
Growling in frustration, I start for home. At least this time I have an idea about which way to go.
Fifteen minutes later, I move the doormat and put the retrieved key in the lock. Yes, I know it's not the safest place to hide it, but I tend to lose small items if I carry them around with me. I go inside and yell, "Anybody home?"
"Doo bro'sh and ta shish!" The answer comes from the kitchen. "Pikza's almosht gone." I walk in and grab an apple. I never was one for cheese or excessive grease.
"Hey, Tyler."
My brother ignores the pizza sauce dripping down his chin and replies, "Hullo." He swallows, then continues, "Where've you been? You missed Millionaire!"
"I was at Rob's house watching a movie. Why?" I take a bite and chew for a bit.
Ty shrugs. "Meh. I was just wondering."
Tossing my half-eaten fruit in the trash, I tell him, "You can get back to stuffing your face now."
"Laker." I roll my eyes, leave the kitchen, and head up stairs.
"Tina? You in your room?"
"Yeah," my little sister says as she opens her door. "I'm just watching the news. Did you need me for something?"
My eyebrows go up. Generally when elementary school students have their own personal televisions in their bedrooms, they watch Nick and Disney. But Tina… "Since when did eleven year olds watch the news?" She turns around and sits back down on her bed. I go in after her and close the door behind me.
"Since a web journal I've been reading started a revolution that's become famous in the whole world." She motions for me to stop talking and turns the volume up. I follow her gaze to her TV and watch with her.
"…Very sad day for a very large group of recently rescued genetic experiments. Records obtained from the company, Itex, show that almost half of these children's families were killed when they were first taken to the facilities. Only two percent have living family members that show chances of caring, much less loving them. Twenty-three percent were sold to the scientists by their own parents, averaging for between fifty dollars and fifteen thousand dollars, and the rest were the children of the scientists themselves, bred for the specific purpose of being turned into super-soldiers. What is worse, these percentages only account for the living captives. The records also indicate that more than seventy-nine percent of all experiments created in the past eighty years either were killed, purposefully or accidentally, or committed suicide. The pain endured by these captives is inestimable, and many of the living are still unwilling to even consider the idea that not all humans wish them harm. Marrian Janssen, the Director of Itex, is facing a life sentence for infinite crimes against humanity and nature. By her own admission, she is known to be part sea turtle, so she is expected to spend the next three hundred years or so in captivity very similar to that which she kept her experiments. Please dial the number on your screen if you wish to make a contribution to Provision for the Involuntarily Evolved, a new charity organization aimed toward helping these unfortunate souls, who number to over five-thousand known experiments. I'm Karie Martin, International News."
"See?" says Tina. "Fang already said a lot of this stuff, but he couldn't say the exact numbers. He started the revolution against Itex, and now we finally get the details."
I blink, and try to shrug away a sense of foreboding. "Fang? Who's that?"
"He's a birdkid that escaped from Itex a few years back." I jump at the word birdkid. "He and his flock have been flying around the world trying to stay alive and trying to stop the scientists from taking over the world."
"Birdkid? Flock?"
"Ya. He's ninety-eight percent human, two percent bird. He has black wings, bird bones, bird eyes, and other bird-stuff. Part kid, part bird. Bird-kid."
My head starts reeling with the information. "And his flock?"
"Five other birdkids that escaped with him and made their own make-shift family. The leader is Max, Maximum Ride. She's the leader. And there's Iggy, the blind one. And the Gasman. And Nudge, and Angel. Since they're all part bird, they call the family the Flock."
"Do any of them have real families?"
"They are a real family. Just a different kind than most people are used to thinking about."
I shake my head, "No. I mean, do they know who their parents are?"
Her face takes on a look of concentration. "I think Max does, but I don't think she likes them. I'm not really sure. Fang didn't say much about it on his blog. Iggy ranted about how horrible his family was once. I'm not sure about the rest." Suddenly, she turns and stares at me. "Why?"
"No reason!" I probably said that too quick… "I'm just trying to wrap my head around it all. It just seems like something out of a science fiction book. Too crazy to be real, you know?" Please believe it…
She nods. "Yeah, I know. But it is real. It's horrible what those scientists did to the kids, but now they can't hurt them anymore, so that's good."
"Yeah," I say distractedly. It's all coming together now… "I'm just gonna go to bed now. Good night."
"Night."
As I slink down the hall to my room, I continue to mentally connect the dots. Every time I asked Frii about her family, she always got defensive and vaguely told me her family wasn't worth talking about. Maybe that's because she didn't have a family, or even because she was one of the children sold to the scientists. That would be horrible. And all those drawings…the angels… Those were probably pictures of her flock. But they all looked like they were young enough to be in school too. How come I never saw them around?
I close my door behind me and look around. Pink walls, white metal bed and dresser, purple sheets, and lots of animal posters greet me in their usual colorful chaos. My sea shell collection on a shelf in the corner shimmers from the moving light above it, and a gentle aroma drifts over from the scented, plastic flowers on the windowsill. I never had the patience or attention span to keep real plants and animals alive, so I make do with pictures and models.
I plop down on my bed and continue thinking about Frii. Pieces of information come drifting back: "Flying around the world and trying to stay alive"… "Either were killed or committed suicide…" Killed or committed suicide… Frii's flock… That's why I've never seen any siblings. They probably died before I even met her! She's all alone in the world. And the terror when I told her I found out… "Many of the living experiments are unwilling to consider the idea that not all humans wish them harm." What she said before she disappeared… "Go tell the media! Your best friend is a freak! I'm sure they'll pay you a lot for the story! But I won't stick around to be experimented on again!" She was honestly convinced I would turn her in for fame and fortune. She thinks I would let her become a guinea pig for another curious and higher-than-thou scientist just because she isn't 100% human… And I didn't really give her a reason to believe otherwise. I saw her wings and automatically assumed she was a monstrous werewolf that I should be afraid of. I am ashamed of myself. She only wants to stay out of a cage or even just a lab in general, away from staring people. She wants to stay free—
Wait a minute! Free… Frii… Dowel? Free Dowel? Maybe her parent's last name was Dowel. No, that doesn't make sense. If she made up a first name, why keep the original last name? Free Dowel… Free… Freed Owl! Her bird genetics must come from an owl! Fang… Angel… Maximum…The Gasman… Regular words used as simple names there. Why—oh wait. Freed Owl is simple enough too. She probably just changed it to Frii Dowel to make it less obvious when she signed up for school. That makes sense.
But why would an escaped experiment, who fears for her life and has the ability to fly where ever she wants, go to school in the first place? Staying in one area for very long would make it easier for the scientists to find her, probably. Tina said something about Fang's flock trying to stop the scientists—Itex?—from taking over the world. And the news lady said that the experiments were created to be super soldiers. So they would most likely want to stop any and all escapees from telling anyone about their plans. They would want to capture and/or kill any experiment that got out. So she definitely wouldn't expect them to just let her go and not try to find her. Why stay in one place for so long?
Oh, hey, now that I think about it, it's possible she couldn't leave. When I finally got the courage to talk about it, her back was shrugging around, but she didn't eject her wings and fly away. She turned and ran instead. Maybe there are only certain times she can actually fly. If that's true, she probably couldn't walk from town to town or hitchhike without catching the attention of the police and truancy officers. Going to school would be the easiest way to blend in and stay off-radar.
Stretching, I pull out my pajamas and get ready for bed. I'll ask her about it in the morning. I hope I can find a way to keep her from panicking again.
As I drift off, one last thought jumps into my mind: She thinks I'm going to turn her in. She thinks her life is in danger. How do I know she'll even come to school tomorrow?
Crap.
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