Chapter 5
Execution

"So your Max's Voice?" Angel curled up need to Iggy who automatically but an arm around her and Total who was sitting in her lap.
"Yeah, so is Jeb but I'm sort of her main Voice." Angela didn't look up from the keypad she was trying to dismantle with the ballpoint pen she had managed to find in the empty room.
"Are you different? Like Air?" She looked over and smiled at Angel.
"I can speak to Max and Jeb, but no, I'm not a hybrid." She returned to the clump of circuitry and swore quietly as the smell of burning plastic filled the room.
"How far away is help? None of us has eaten in ages." Max knelt next to Angela and spoke quietly, more out of habit then stopping the others hearing.
Not far, M is with Aires along with an SAS team. Jeb is at Langley now waiting for us.
From behind the door there was a scream of pain and Angela flinched.
We just have to hope that he's fast enough.
"Why?"
Jeb told you about the Aires Virus and that Itex needs a vaccine which comes in two parts; one to keep the infected person alive and the other to stop the degredation of memory. Well Aires was only one part.
Angela looked up at Max.
And you were the other.
"What?"
All Avian-Human hybrids have the gene that stops the death effect of the virus, but the only way bind the two parts is to inherit the genes. And next door, your clone is in labour with Aires's child.
"That's impossible, he never even met the other me, its not even been nine months!." Max said shaking her head but Angela was still looking at Max
Derrick is desperate, he used drugs to lower the gestation period. And if he managed to get a sample of tissue from Aires before he left...
"Oh my God..." Max breathed. "So if she gives birth..."
They will have both halves of the vaccine and everyone will be in danger.

The woods were totally silent, the trees hardly uttering a whisper as the light breeze went through them. A load of deer were off to the right of us and were blissfully unaware of our presence, above us and owl watched with interest as the shadowy forms below it made their way toward the noisy, bright group of buildings not far away.
This of course meant nothing to me; all that mattered currently was the pistol in my belt and the rifle in my hands. Despite protests from the SAS team and M I was sitting with the assault on the camp and getting ready to complete what I had set out to do two weeks ago.
There were thirteen men and women in the team and they all had been told what they were going in for and the price of not coming back without it. All in another days work for them. We had left the cave about two hours ago and we weren't far from the station.
"You think you'll hack it?" The leader of the team who only identified himself as Hawk 1 had said to me as I slung a rifle over my shoulders as we were about to move out. "You won't fly off when the going gets rough?" I didn't speak back; I just cocked my rifle back and went to the front of the cave, waiting for them to gear up.
"You alright lad?" A man with a thick northern accent crept up beside me noiselessly. God that scared the crap out of me. I nodded but didn't say anything. "Don't worry, we'll get you in. But remember, it's all up to you once your in there. Alright?"
"Yeah." I gripped the rifle tight, trying to wring some comfort from the cold metal. The fence of the station came into view far too quickly than I liked but when we advanced on the wire, the same calm descended on me like when I was dealing with Conrad or any of the other Itex monsters that I had dealt with. This was all they were, monsters who needed to be eradicated.

Alarm bells went off as the wire was cut and all hell broke loose. Someone threw a smoke grenade out and the ground around us began pattering with bullets that whizzed and ricocheted off rocks. We ducked low and ran to the side of the third building before splitting into two groups, one heading for the garage, the other for the holding cells in the building we were using as cover. To our right one of the sniper towers was torn apart as a grenade blew the roof off the flimsy tin construction. The smoke was being blown across the side of the building and soon I could barely see the person in front of me. To my right I heard the crunch of a boot and twisted to fire. The guard hit the floor, two holes in his chest.
"Charges!" One of the other team members ran forward and pulled a wrapped package from his belt before slapping it onto the side of the wall. The person in front pushed me to the floor. The wall blew out in a cascade of brick debris and dust that added to the cover of the smoke grenade.
"GO!" I was pushed through the hole and into the decimated room. It appeared to be a lab of some kind, chemical beakers and the like were stacked on shelves to the right and lines of chemical equations filled the white boards on the side. Bricks and the remains of some kind of complex machine were strewn across the tiled floor. I clambered over the rubble and through the door.
The door shut behind me and all along the corridor automatic lights snapped on, bathing the white washed walls in incandescent light. I headed along for about twenty yards then stopped outside a door. I could hear breathing on the other side. I wrenched open the door and dragged out the man by the lapels of his lab coat.
"Please don't kill me." I cringed, another worm out for no one but himself.
"Shut up or I will. Your no use to me dead."

The White-Coat took me down into the basement of the building, the sounds of gunfire and grenades slowly dissipating as we put more space between us and the surface. The flight of steps headed down to another small corridor that ran left to right from the steps. There were three doors, all made of toughened steel and with a keypad mounted on each wall beside them.
"I can open the doors." The White-Coat went to the nearest door and typed in a six digit code, I caught the first three numbers: 948. The smell of rotting flesh filled the corridor and I was repulsed, fearing the worst. I dragged the White-Coat inside despite his protests and turned on the light. Cages lined the walls and a table in the middle held scientific equipment. Dark shapes were inside the cages and my guts twisted. Please don't be them, not after all this.
I went to the cages and looked inside. There was a child inside, dead and slowly being defiled by the germs and microbes that were salvaging the body. But it wasn't any of the Flock. It didn't make it any easier when I pulled the limp form out of the cage and placed him on the floor. There were nine cages and eight of them held bodies, the last however was occupied.
When I dragged the little boy out of the cage, limp and immobile it was easy to mistake him for dead. His hair was matted and caked with grime and his body was covered in filth but as I placed him on the floor next to his other cage-mates, the cold of the floor made him stir. The White-Coat looked down at the eight bodies on the floor then looked at me.
"Cover them." I muttered to the White-Coat, trying to lift the one survivor into a sitting position. The boy had been altered unlike the others in the room, on his back a membrane of thin flesh covered a network of bones that spread across from two hollows in his spine.
"Its ok. I'll look after you." I took my canteen off my belt and unscrewed it, wetting the boys lips. He opened his mouth but his throat was so swollen he couldn't drink or speak. A tiny whimper made my heart clench. This boy was in so much pain. His skin was pale and I pressed a finger to his neck, there was barely a flutter.
"Morphine." I said to no one in particular. "Bring me morphine."
"He's too far for that." The White-Coat muttered.
"Just get it." I hissed at him. The White-Coat rolled his eyes and threw a syringe and a vial to me. I filled the syringe to the full. "I'm so sorry." I slipped the needle into his arm and pushed the plunger. I felt his heart slow, flutter one last time then fall still. I placed him next to the other bodies and covered him with a cloth. I didn't take much comfort from the fact I had saved him from further hours of pain and suffering. "Did you do this to them?"
The White-Coat glanced at the rifle in my hands.
"Did you do this to them?" I repeated, not taking my eyes off the nine bodies on the floor.
"It's all for the greater advancement of ma..." I grabbed him by the neck and threw him against the wall.
"THEN WHERES YOUR HUMANITY!" I roared at him as he crawled to his feet. "HOW DARE YOU! HOW DARE YOU KILL CHILDREN FOR YOUR PETTY EXCUSES!" He crawled for the door, reaching up for the keypad. He didn't have the same speed as last time, I had the full six digits. The door opened and he fell out into the corridor, back peddling.
"You need me!" He held his head where a large gash ran along his scalp. "You can't open the doors without me!"
"I'll think of something." I shot him twice, above and below his heart. His body went limp and draped itself over the steps like a puppet without its strings. I left the body on the steps to rot and went back to the door, shutting it tight and putting a bullet through the keypad so the White-Coats wouldn't disturb this sub-standard crypt.
I went to the next door and tapped in the code, praying that the silence behind the door wasn't the call sign of another room filled with death.
"Air!" A woman with bushy brown hair flew at me and held me tight, it took me a moment to realise who it was.
"Mum, are you ok?" I meant to say it with a warm voice but all that came out was a businesslike growl. She was in a bad way, her hair was matted and her face had lost its healthy glow.
"Yeah." She rubbed her eyes and nodded. "I am now." I nodded, sentiment wasn't high on my list at the moment.
"Aires?" Angel was looking at me with wide eyes. "Why have you got a gun?" I looked down at the weapon and I knew instantly that Angel had read my thoughts. Her face changed to abject horror and she hid behind Max, her mouth forming the word "Murderer" over and over. The Flock instantly tensed and I felt my gut clench. After all this, all I've done for them they were going to reject me.
"Come-on." Max grabbed Angel's hand and made for the door, hardly looking at me apart from frightened glances. Even Fang looked scared behind his dark eyes. "Are you coming or not?" Max muttered from the bottom of the steps. I looked at her for a moment. She wasn't celebrating the fact the Flock had been rescued and I knew I would be judged by them sooner or later but maybe I could try to redeem myself. How hard that would be I don't know but I couldn't let my only family walk away from me.
"I'll meet you outside." Mum said. "I need to make sure something is dealt with." I nodded once and headed up the steps, past Max's stony face, past the body of the White-Coat, and up into the seething cauldron of madness that was the surface world.