A/N Hello! I apologise for not having posted yesterday, but I was under the impression that I had dance classes on for the whole of today, so I thought I'd better get a good night's sleep. Then, of course, it turned out that I didn't have class. Which makes me sad, 'cause I like dancing... Anyways, here be the chapter!

'Just over eleven minutes gone,' he replied, and she nodded, her hands moving even faster. If they were going to get back in time to meet the others, she was going to have to hurry.

Not two minutes later, a resounding bang shook the floor.

Nudge's head snapped towards the surveillance monitors.

'What was that?' she asked, the confusion distracting her from her search through the School's database. High on the wall of screens, one of the displays had black and white dots fizzing across it, the same thing that always used to happen when the TV in the E-shaped house lost signal. Jeb came up behind Nudge, pointing towards another of the screens.

'There,' he said. 'That one's from the hallway outside that room.'

The camera was positioned on the wall opposite the doorway, facing into the room so that most of the back wall could be seen. The screen was bright with flames; flames which danced around, spreading further and further through the room as Nudge watched. Suddenly, something zipped through the fire from the doorway, speeding to the farthest corner and then immediately racing back again. Star appeared in the sliver of hallway that was within the camera's sights, looking unhurt by the flames – she must've moved too quickly for them to burn her. But her face was twisted in despair, and when she whizzed back into the room a second time, Nudge tried to track her movements, watching for the exact point where she turned around. Squinting, she tapped a few keys and transferred the image onto one of the larger screens that sat in front of her; now that it was bigger, she could make out a shape flailing in the corner, blocked off from the rest of the room by a cascade of large, empty cages which must have toppled over as a result of the explosion which had caused the fire. Nudge pushed her face even closer to the screen, trying to make out the shape. Was it human? Surely not. Who would it b-…

For a third time, Star entered the room, and now that the image was on a larger screen Nudge could see what was happening: Star was running in, racing along the length of fallen cages in an attempt to find an opening, then quickly getting out of the fire before it burned her. Nudge's stomach dropped.

'It's Holden!' she cried. 'It's Holden trapped in the fire!'

'Oh God…' breathed Jeb, peering over her shoulder at the screen.

'But he'll be alright, won't he? He can heal himself and everything, right?'

Jeb shook his head slowly, looking horrified, his eyes stuck on the screen.

'Regenerative capabilities can only work so quickly. Being trapped in a fire will mean that his body is constantly being damaged just as fast as it's healing. He'll be stuck in a state of flux until all of his energy is gone and he's no longer able to repair himself.'

'So what do I do?' Nudge shouted, tears starting in her eyes. 'What can I do? We need to help him!'

'Nudge, this is a control room, not a miracle-worker. You managed to help Ratchet, but you can't save everyone. You can't…' He trailed off, freezing as an idea came into his eyes.

'What? What is it?' Nudge's voice was desperate as she watched one of the new group members being burned alive. How long had it been? A minute? More? How long could Holden survive in there?

Jeb faltered, looking unsure of himself.

'Jeb! Tell me!' She had to do something, couldn't sit here and watch Holden die. Not caring, considered Holden with the kind face.

'Okay,' said Jeb, moving forwards to place his hands on the keyboard that Nudge had been using. His fingers tapped across the keys as he talked. 'All hybrid subjects are created with a certain amount of mutative potential. That is, there are multiple different capabilities or modifications available within the structure of the new DNA. A lot of these are programmed to remain dormant, but some can be reactivated; when the flock was made, some additional fragments of DNA from non-avian origins were included to provide even further potential. That's how you were given your various powers, and that's why a lot of them were above and beyond the abilities of any normal bird; it was never the case that you started mutating on your own.'

'Yes, The General told us that already!' Nudge cut in. 'But how is it meant to save Holden?'

'It might not. He's not a subject I've really worked with before, so I don't know what tricks he's got hidden in his genetic material. He won't have been fitted with anything more than what was already held in his starfish DNA, but maybe something there can help him. That's what I'm looking for now.'

'You think you might be able to activate a power to save him!' she exclaimed, suddenly understanding Jeb's words.

'With any luck…'

A profile opened up on a screen just to their right:

Subject 77.20

Alias: Holden Squibb

Subject was brought to the School's attention in the year-

'Not important,' muttered Jeb, searching through the page. 'Here.'

Mutative capabilities

Enhanced positional sensitivity: inactive.

[Actions: Activate. Delete.]

Restorative growth spanning all cell types: active.

[Actions: No actions may be performed after activation.]

Full limb regeneration: active.

[Actions: No actions may be performed after activation.]

Ossicle formation: inactive.

[Actions: Activate. Delete.]

Extraction of oxygen for use in respiratory processes whilst underwater: active.

[Actions: No actions may be performed after inactivation.]

Sequential hermaphroditism: inactive.

[Actions: Activate. Delete.]

Scheduled spontaneous expiration: inactive.

[Actions: Activate. Delete.]

Nudge stared at the words in front of her, not really understanding what most of them meant, but Jeb gave a laugh of triumph, quickly drumming a command into the keyboard then sitting back.

'What did you do? What happened?' demanded Nudge, hitting a little at his shoulder in frustration.

In answer, he merely pointed at the screen, where the status of 'ossicle formation'now read 'active'.

'And? What does that even mean?'

'Ossicles are the bony plates that form the outer wall of a starfish's body,' Jeb explained, looking towards the monitor which still bore the camera stream from the hallway. A mixture of guards and Erasers had arrived on the scene, and Star was doing her best to fight them off alongside a small, leaping creature with webbed hands and feet. It was clear that she was trying to stay as close as possible to the burning room, even as the flames began to spread out into the hall. Nudge noticed that she still wasn't using her left arm.

'So they'll protect him from the fire?' she asked, hardly daring to hope that it could be true.

'Probably not completely – the arrangement of the plates is generally quite loose in nature, although I don't know exactly how the ability will manifest itself in a human experiment – but they should provide him with enough protection from the pain so that he's able to move properly and get himself out.'

They watched the screen, waiting. And then a shadowy, upright shape became visible through the flames, moving towards the doorway. It was good enough for Nudge.

'Yes!' she cheered, throwing her arms around Jeb's neck before she'd really thought about what she was doing. Over his shoulder, her gaze was drawn to Holden's still-open profile on the other screen. She straightened, suddenly taking in something that she hadn't before.

'What's wrong?'

'"Scheduled spontaneous expiration",' Nudge quoted, eyes skimming across the words. 'Is that another way of saying "expiration date"?'

'It is,' Jeb replied sadly.

'How much time do we have?'

'Less than five minutes. Why?'

Nudge waved him out of the way of the keyboard, her mind buzzing as her gaze fixed on that one word: delete.

'I think we're gonna be a bit late getting back to the others.'

'Iggy, Gazzy, and I will go to find Ella and get her out…'

I swung at a guard, knocking him out of the way as I ran down the corridor. This was the kind of thing that I was good at. Emotional sharing? Not so much. Fitting into normal society? Big no. Running for my life whilst fighting the evil underlings of my brainwashed mother? Sure, where do I sign?

Iggy ran alongside me, his hand brushing lightly against my jacket as we ran; the alarm that had started up a couple of minutes ago was making it difficult for him to listen as closely to the things around him as he usually would, meaning he needed that extra contact to make him feel secure about where we were going.

'Take a right!' I shouted to Gazzy, who was a few paces ahead of me; I wanted to make sure that I could see him, that I knew he was okay. He veered off to the right, speeding down the corridor that, if we were to trust Jeb's directions, would lead us to the room where Ella was being kept. As the door came into sight there were no guards in our way, but I could hear shouting in the hall behind us and knew that a good fight was going to go down on our way back to the meeting point. Speaking of, we really needed to get a move on – over half our time had gone, and we still hadn't freed Ella yet. ¡Ándele, genetically-altered freaks! ¡Ándele!

We flew – in this case, not literally – towards the door, reaching it as those uniformed bozos came around the corner, running at us from the end of the hallway. I threw a kick at the door, knowing that it wouldn't work but feeling as though I needed to try all the same.

'Iggy, you're up,' I said, moving to the side. 'We'll hold the yobs off.'

He stepped forwards and crouched in front of the door, bringing out his set of picks. I didn't really want to think about where he must've hidden them to stop them getting whisked away when we were captured. I turned to face the advancing guards, ready to kick some ass whilst Iggy worked on the door, but then his voice rang out from behind me.

'Max.'

'Yep?' I said, eyes fixed ahead of me.

'Picking locks can be tricky when there isn't an actual lock on the door.'

'Huh?' I replied intelligently, moving forwards to chop the first guard that reached us in the side of the neck.

'He said "picking locks can be tri-"' Gazzy began, tripping another guy up so that he went sprawling across the floor and into the wall.

'Yeah, I got that, Gaz. Thanks. But Iggy, what do you mean?' Bam, another one down, whack, and another one down, thump, and another one bites the dust. Ha. Humans are so fragile.

'I mean that there's no lock on this door. Or not one that I can pick, at any rate,' Iggy said wryly as Gazzy and I continued to knock guards down like flies. 'Seriously, how is it that the blind guy is the only one who seems to notice anything around here?'

I turned back to him as the last guy fell back into the wall with an oomph, and saw that he wasn't messing around; there was no pickable lock on that door. There wasn't even a handle. Damn. Not really your proudest moment, Max.

'It probably has one of those weird things in the wall,' Gazzy offered, his small shoulders shrugging slightly. 'We can just borrow a guard's arm to open the door up, right?'

God, I love that kid.

It took us maybe half a minute of waving an unconscious man's arm in front of the wall before we managed to get the door open. I was just about to give up, to suggest that perhaps the guy didn't have the right clearance to get us into the room, when a red light flashed beneath the surface of the wall and the door slid sideways. Ella, who by the looks of it had been sitting against the far wall of the room, leapt forwards with her fists clenched, a fierce look on her face that anyone in the flock would've been proud of. Then she realised who it was and her eyes widened, her hands coming up to clap over her mouth.

'Max! Iggy!' she gasped through her fingers.

'Fine, I'll just leave, then,' Gazzy grumbled, hanging his head melodramatically as Iggy stepped towards my sister.

'Sorry. Hi, Gazzy,' Ella said, burying her head into Iggy's shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her. They stood like that for a moment, both of them just holding each other, and I didn't really know where to look.

'Hey,' I said, clearing my throat uncomfortably. 'Not that this isn't cute and all, but we kinda need to get going.'

They broke apart and Ella looked a little embarrassed as she moved towards the doorway. Then she inhaled sharply and her head snapped up towards me, panic in her face.

'Max, it's Mom. She did all this. It's Mom, she… It's…' Her breaths started to become quick and erratic, and I pulled her into a hard hug for a second before stepping back and bending a little, looking straight at her.

'It's not.' She opened her mouth to respond, but I carried on speaking before she could get the words out. 'I know that's what it seems like, I know that's how it looks, but it's not. Mom didn't do this. I mean, she did, but it wasn't her fault. I mean… Eugh, it's too much to explain right now. I'll tell you everything once we're away from this place, but just now we need to move, 'kay?'

She gulped a few times and I watched her force the panic down, feeling seriously proud of the way she was handling everything; this was still new to her, the being kidnapped and imprisoned and betrayed, but she was pushing it all aside and getting on with what she needed to do. I remembered Jeb talking about my mom before she was The General:

'She seemed so determined… You're just like she was.'

Looking at my sister at that moment, I decided it must run in the family.

'Right then,' I said, turning towards the hall. 'Let's get outta here.'

A/N Seriously folks, if you've bothered to read this far into the story, it really won't take much more effort to review. Even if you just say 'I liked it/didn't like it' (although if you say that you didn't then it would be nice to know why so that I can look into it). But yeah, that would be enough. Just to give me that wee boost. :) Review and I'll give you hypothetical hugs.