It was dark, and all Angel knew was pain; pain in her limbs from being forced to fight tougher and tougher opponents, pain in her throat where the tube rasped every time she swallowed, pain in her mind from the probing fingers of thought that pushed their way in and pulled her brain apart from the inside. She'd forgotten where she was, couldn't remember where she'd come from anymore, and even her name was starting to become fuzzy in her head. Angel, Angel, Angel... If she repeated it over and over again, maybe it wouldn't disappear. Aside from that small fact about herself, there was very little she knew: the people in the white coats hurt her, but they also decided when the hurting stopped; her cage was a safe place, away from the needles and the hard hands and the wolf men; shapes lived in the other cages around her, and sometimes they moved or cried or shouted or growled…

Somewhere in the back of her broken mind a thought flickered, too faint to identify. In her most lucid moments, Angel could almost make it out; there were some people, somewhere. Some people who had been good to her. People who had saved her before? Perhaps. But it was hard to pick out the real memories from the manipulated images and synthetic thoughts that trembled inside her head. Everything was so fragile in there. Everything was wavering, as if it would collapse in on itself with the slightest wrong step. So when she could, Angel didn't move. She lay in her cage, and she didn't speak, and she barely let herself breathe, desperate to hold onto whatever was left of her.

She clung to that; the fact that she could still think enough to want to remember. There would come a point, she thought, when she would stop caring, and then the people in the white coats would win. Then, the nice people in her hazy thoughts, the ones who had wings like she did, would never be able to save her. In a way it didn't matter to her whether they were real or not – they were something to keep her here, to keep her alive. They were her friends.

A bright, white light shone suddenly in her eyes, excruciating after the darkness. She let out a cry, and her voice was grating from not having made any sound other than shouts of pain in what felt like years. How long had it really been? Days? Weeks? Longer?

'So, my dear, what's going on in that little brain of yours today?' The voice was deep and calm, and it made Angel relax just a tiny bit; her basic instincts took over, interpreting the voice as gentle and making her think for a moment that maybe the man wasn't going to hurt her. Then the needle was slipped into her forehead, through that little hole they'd made in her skull ages ago so that they could have direct access to her frontal lobe. There were ones just like it spread across her head, allowing entry to the different parts of her brain. Machines buzzed and voices whispered as the activity in Angel's frontal lobe was monitored:

'No difference. We're still getting a depleted reading on her.'

'It shouldn't be a surprise. She's like an animal now. An animal with extraordinary cerebral abilities, but an animal all the same. Instinctive reactions are becoming more and more prominent. Her higher mental functions haven't been utilised properly in ages, she's not using that part of her brain to its full potential anymore… It's not as if she's been spending a lot of her time here thinking about the consequences of her actions or worrying about whether anything she says is socially acceptable. The neural tracts aren't being worked nearly as much as a normal person's are. The only things she might still be doing with it is drawing parallels between treatments and tests and the like, or making the connection that she doesn't like us.'

'So the frontal lobe can be disregarded from now on?'

'I should think so. Check in on it from time to time, but don't dwell on it for too long. Let's have a look at the temporal now.'

The needle slid out of her forehead and was replaced into her temple. The voices started up again, but Angel's hearing had gone fuzzy. That was something else she knew: when the sharpness was in the crown of her head, she couldn't seem to understand what words meant anymore; when it was at the base of her skull, her vision started to flicker and colours went weird; when it was in the very top of her head, parts of her would tingle, or hurt, or go numb. And when it was in the side of her head, her hearing went fuzzy.

Angel, can you hear me? The words rang out, loud and clear, in Angel's mind. She flinched, too scared to make a sound. These brain voices frightened her; there were lots of them, sometimes coming all at once, but she only ever heard them when she was on the table. They never came to her in her cage. In her cage, she could hear quieter murmurs, ones that sounded sadder, younger. Those ones never seemed like they were pushing into her. Those ones were just there, in the background, and she just happened to hear them. Those one didn't hurt. Not like this voice now. This voice was an intruder, forcing itself in all loud and buzzing and reverberating through her.

Can you hear me? Angel's whole body gave a jerk as a stab of pain shot through her head.

Angel, I need you to tell me if you can hear me. The pain got worse, feeling like it was being spread thickly across the inside of her skull. Now she let out a gasp, unable to make any other noise through the blinding agony. She couldn't tell them that she could hear the voice. How could she tell them when she couldn't speak?

Yes! Yes, I can hear, I can hear. I can hear, yes, I can hear! She thought it as loud as she could. Anything to make the pain go away.

And it did. It drew back slowly, lessening, growing weaker, sweeping itself into a small, bearable pile by Angel's temple where the needle was being removed from her head. The voices – the normal, outside voices – became clear again.

'She definitely heard?'

'We got a positive response, so as long as Harris' technology is functioning as he said it would then yes, the subject definitely heard.'

'But no activity of the temporal lobe was recorded.'

'No, sir.'

A face came into view, suspended over Angel.

'So what's she hearing it with, then?'

More words were exchanged between the people in white coats, then hard hands grabbed her, carried her roughly out of the room and along the winding halls, and once they'd reached her Home Room they threw her into the cage. She heard footsteps moving away from her, getting quieter and quieter until a door slammed and the light disappeared, and then she moved slowly from where she'd landed; curling herself up as tightly as she could, she wound her arms around her head. It was a comforting position. It made her feel safer, like her most vulnerable parts were protected. Then Angel cried. She didn't make a sound, but her whole body shivered as the tears leaked out between her closed eyelids.

The sound of the door opening again made every muscle in her body tense. Footsteps echoed through the large room, growing louder. She willed the person to go somewhere else, to go to another cage, but the sound stopped right next to her. The small squeak of the latch sounded, and then the whole side of her cage swung outwards, leaving nothing between Angel and whoever was coming for her. She felt rather than saw the hands coming for her and she cringed away, trying to shrink into the furthest corner of the cage. But when the hands found her, they were gentle. They slid her tenderly out of the cage, cradling her in arms covered by the sleeves of a white coat.

'Oh, Angel.' The voice was hoarse and sad sounding. 'What have they done? Oh, baby girl, I wish I could help you. I'm so sorry.'

I sat up suddenly, gasping in the darkness of my room. Breathing hard, I squinted around in the dim light. What woke me up? Something wasn't right. I felt uneasy, my spine tingling as though someone were standing right behind me, breathing down my neck. Right, calm down a second. You're not gonna work anything out while you're shaking like a Chihuahua in an igloo. Think back through the day. What's got you unnerved?

I scoffed a little at my own thoughts. The day had been a whirlwind; I had every right to be feeling off centre. But this was different. There was something nagging at me, like there was a connection to be made somewhere and a part of my subconscious had figured it out, but the rest of me still needed to catch up.

Think it through, Max. You've got many of the pieces of the puzzle. Put it together.

I groaned out loud.

Okay, either help me or go away. I cannot deal with you right now if you're not going to be useful.

I don't have much time. And neither do you. I can't give you the answers, but I can give you more clues. And I can put all the information into one place for you. Hopefully this will make it easier.

Suddenly all the adrenaline that had been shooting through my body just moments before seemed to drain away. My eyes felt unbelievably heavy and I fell back into my bed. I was asleep before I hit the pillow.

Images flashed through my head, interspersed with snippets of conversation: a man ran through a forest, his face elongating and fur sprouting from his body… 'In case those bloody Erasers show up again…' Surgeons stood around an operating table, poking and prodding at the back of their patient with gleaming silver instruments… 'Alterations are not limited to being simply pre- or post-natal; both are possible…' A small, hunched figure with no hair sat in a dog crate… 'Multiple failures, right from the start…' 'Experimentation has produced a wide variety of subjects, each tested against the Referee to determine value by way of resilience…' A lake shone in the afternoon sunlight… 'Things tend to have a funny way of falling into a pattern. History repeats itself…'

The barrage stopped without warning and my eyes snapped open; I was wide awake once more, and a ball of solid lead was settled in my stomach. Because all of a sudden, I knew. I knew what the Voice meant. I knew that lake. I knew what had been playing on my mind, and I knew what our next step was, what it had to be. Sweeping my bedcovers aside, I raced out into the hallway, banging on the others' bedroom doors as I ran towards the stairs to the top floor.

'Ratchet!' I shouted, praying that he wasn't so used to sleeping with extra-sensory hearing that it wouldn't wake him. 'Get everyone up and get down here now!'

By this time, the flock was standing in the hallway in front of me, looking perplexed and agitated. I didn't even wait for the others to join us properly; as soon as I saw feet coming down the stairs, I blurted out my thoughts:

'The School. That's where it all started. That's where everything began. History repeats itself. We have to go back to the School.'

A/N This chapter was a little dark. That's probably as bad as it's gonna get, at least for a while now. Don't forget to review!