A/N: Yay! Chapter One! I know this chapter is a bit slow, but I promise I'll kick up the action once I get through the introductions.
Disclaimer: I do not own Maximum Ride, though I'm pretty sure I own all my original characters. (ex. Nari, Pan, ect.)
Nari Streeter
Chapter One: Project "Enhance"
The heart-rate monitor jumped frantically, etching a thin green line across the screen in a wavering path. Flaring numbers at the bottom of the screen scrolled crazily, tinted with the warning colors of red. Somewhere in the corner of the dark room, a forgotten buzzer hummed quietly.
The green line suddenly fell flat.
A tall white-coat with rapidly thinning gray hair leaned distractedly against the table, making a small note on his clipboard. He glanced up at the small boy with bowl-cut black hair laid out across the metal sheet. The boy's face and arms were covered with sickly green skin, blotched and faded like mold.
He was dead.
"This tallies up to…" the gray haired white-coat counted down a long column of etchings on his paper, "…the fifteenth fatality this week," his eyes flashed humorlessly, "a new record."
The other white-coat in the corner of the room stayed silent, his hand placed thoughtfully across his jaw-line. The shadows at the edges of the room snuffed out as the lights hummed back to life, casting a shimmering veil over the dead boy's face. His flat, white eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling, as if pondering a question that was never meant to be answered.
The silence pressed in harder as the gray haired white-coat slowly began pulling various tubes and needles from the boy's body, tiny drops of blood welling up over the puncture wounds. The white-coat drummed his fingers against the tabletop, peering curiously over his half-moon glasses at his associate in the corner.
"Do you think we're making any progress?"
The man kept quiet, his hand moving thoughtfully across the stubble on his chin.
"Jeb?"
Silence.
"Dr. Batchelder?"
Jeb looked up, as if just noticing the other man and blinked, "No," he said firmly, folding his arms across his chest, "we're not making any progress. None at all. The data confirms it."
He rubbed a hand over his tired face, easily looking ten years older than he really was. "Fifteen," he muttered in disbelief, watching without blinking as the boy's body was dumped down a metal chute and sucked away, "Fifteen experiments. Wasted. Gone. Dead."
The gray haired man smiled half-heartedly, rubbing an antiseptic wipe over the surface of the table, "Chin up. We'll get a breakthrough eventually. Perhaps even another Max. She's always been the favorite in you eye, hasn't she?"
Jeb smiled under his hand, glancing at the ceiling as if recalling a distant memory. In seconds his smile flickered away and he shook his head, "Yeah. She always was my maximum priority," his voice turned gruff as he ripped a paper from his clipboard, "but she's gone now."
"Ari will find her," the gray haired man said confidentially, "he's always pulled through before. After all, your boy's right up there on the top of the scales with Max and the others."
Jeb stayed silent.
Realizing he'd hit a tender spot, the gray-haired man cleared his throat uncomfortably and shuffled through a stack of papers in his hand.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, pulling a single sheet from the mass of type, "Project Enhance! I thought this was abandoned months ago. How 'bout we give it a shot, eh? What say you?"
With a new smile on his face, Jeb peeled off the latex gloves he'd been wearing and threw them in the trash bin, "Sounds good. Perhaps we'll get something from this one."
The gray haired man grinned, "Maybe even another Max, eh?"
Jeb Batchelder laughed, "Sure. Why not?"
Nari pressed herself back against the crate, the bristles of her feathers digging into her back. The sudden light from the open door made it almost impossible to see them clearly. The white-coats were nothing more than dark blotches in the blinding white.
There were seven of them, and this time…they came armed.
The guns were small, holding a faint resemblance to a long-barreled pistol. A slightly luminescent green capsule was fastened against the top; it's contents swishing hypnotically as the white-coats moved.
Nari gritted her teeth as they began to unlock the crates.
The first crate held a boy several years older than Nari. His face was blotchy and red, like half of it had been burnt in a bad fire. His cinnamon colored wings shivered uncontrollably as the white-coat let his lock clatter to the floor. The white-coat stepped aside, letting the crate door swing open on its own accord.
"Come quietly, and we won't hurt you," the white-coat said, gesturing with his hand. The boy froze for several seconds, his eyes darting between the countless crates lined up on either side of him, to the faces of the white-coats on the outside.
Nari watched, breathless, as the boy slid out of his crate and slowly stood up, his wings shuffling quietly behind him.
"Follow the hall down to the room with the windows. Stay there. Don't give us any trouble," the white-coat that had unlocked his cage said, his voice hard and tense.
The boy hobbled past the on-looking white-coats, his arms wrapped tightly around his chest. Nari watched him walk until the whiteness from the doorway swallowed him up. The white-coats seemed to breathe easier once he was gone.
All together, they spread out across the room, unlocking crates as they went.
The man who opened Nari's crate was smaller than the rest; his hands shook slightly as he slid the key into the padlock. He shoved his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose and set the lock down on the floor, carefully opening the slats.
"Please follow the hall down to the room with the windows," he said in a unsteady voice, gesturing with shaky hand, "Stay there…d-don't give us any trouble."
Nari didn't move. The poorly developed muscles in her legs and arms tensed. The white-coat was so small…she could easily overpower him. One good kick to the chest…he'd go flying like he weighed nothing.
Suddenly and explosion of noise erupted from the far side of the crate room. A younger boy with a clean-shaven head and rusty colored wings burst from his crate. He landed a good punch to one of the white-coats and leaped bodily over several of the wooden boxes, his wings unfurling like a paper snowflake.
There was a small popping sound and the boy fell flat to the floor, his eyes rolling back into his head. Nari watched, horrified, as the white-coat who had fired his gun rolled his shoulders and popped his neck. The unconscious boy twitched unpleasantly on the floor.
"Please…"
Nari snapped her head back to look at the timid white-coat who had unlocked her crate. He was shaking violently now, his glasses slowly sliding off the bridge of his nose.
"Please, follow the hall down to the room with the windows. If…don't give us any t-trouble…or I'll be forced to shoot you."
Nari crouched down as low as she could and slid through the tiny opening in her crate. She stretched her arms out, wishing she could do the same with her wings. The white-coat swiped a hand across his forehead and nodded toward the open doorway, his grip on the gun relaxing.
"Thank you," Nari whispered as she stumbled past him, not realizing the words had left her mouth until she reached the bright doorway.
She squinted against the fierce light, her legs wobbly beneath her. It had been so long since she'd been allowed to walk; her muscles were starved and weak. Not trusting her feet, Nari placed her hand against the plaster wall and glanced down the corridor before her.
Several other bird-kids were carefully picking their way down the hall, their wings stretching and bending in a way they'd never been able to before. Nari swallowed the sandpapery feeling in her throat and followed after them, stretching her own wings high above her head.
It was a feeling that she'd never expected.
Now, with her wings stretched open as far as they would go…she wanted to fly. The slight breeze of air under her feathers as she slowly stepped forward; the urge to just push downward and lift herself into the air. The feeling was almost overwhelming.
Nari reached the room with the windows before she knew it. The room was pale gray in color, and completely circular. Blackened windows stretched all along the walls, curving slightly to fit the bending shape of the room. In the center, a group of bird-kids had gathered, they're bodies pressed tightly together as if to ward off the cold.
Shaken, Nari glanced around at the windows as she slowly made her way to the group in the center. Dark outlines of white-coats could barely be seen behind the black glass, shifting and moving constantly like restless shadows.
Why were they doing this?
Jeb scribbled a quick note on his clipboard and glanced up to the group of experiments gathered in the testing room. He watched as a smaller girl with dark blonde hair cropped raggedly around her shoulders lifted her gaze to stare straight at him. Her wings rustled as she folded her arms across her chest and shifted from one foot to the other.
Curious, Jeb tapped the shoulder of another white-coat standing next to him. "That girl," he said, nodding to the one staring into the glass, "which one is she?"
"She calls herself Nari Streeter," the white-coat said, "project 67-B9. She's infused with Aquila chrysaetos. Golden Eagle. Why do you ask?"
Jeb shook his head, watching as the door sealed behind the last of the bird-kids. "Just curious," he muttered, turning to address the intercom pounded into the wall.
"Eight-oh-one P.M. Project 'Enhance'. Test one initiation. Begin."
A girl standing next to Nari screamed, her eyes widening in sheer terror. Nari shot a glance over her shoulder as a flow of men spilled out of a hidden doorway across the room. She stifled a scream of her own as the men's faces began to change, hair sprouting from their skin rapidly.
Dozens of razor-like teeth flashing in the light…