Chapter Seventeen

Third Person POV

"When will that baby ever shut up?" Maria complained as she gave Infant Two another shot. Infant One, the actual target of the mission, was still bawling from his last shot.

"He's just fussy because he misses his Mommy, why don't you try holding him?" The leader suggested and Maria rolled her eyes. She may be Max's clone, but there is no way that she was ever going to consider that boy her son.

"I'd rather just inject him again." Maria said with a frown as the needle in her hand got stuck in Infant Two's skin; again.

Even though the two looked nearly identical at first (light blonde-brown hair, semi-dark skin tones, and dark brown eyes), the second baby grew almost two months older over night. He was now physically four months while One still looked his normal age of two months.

"You know that that isn't part of the rules." Leader said with authority. "You inject them once a day to see how strong we can make them. Their parents have absolutely no idea where they are, so we can practically raise them ourselves. Just think, two new experiments without any of the manual labor!"

Max II just nodded. There had been a time when she played the role of the 'experiment' and a time when she was cast as the 'experiment maker.' She shuddered at the thought, being the only girl around here with not all human DNA was not a good thing. That was how she wound up with her daughter Anastasia who only Leader knew about (despite it being Gremlin's kid.)

Speaking of Annie, Maria needed to check on her soon or else who knew what trouble she would get into. That girl was too much like the original Max for her own good and Maria hated how her daughter liked to rebel against her even though she was only three and a half. Spirit is what she should have named her.

Leader caught Maria staring at the door and sighed. "Just bring her in here if it'll make you work more proficient. We need to let One out of his cage to fly anyways, so might as well let Annie play with her brother."

Maria growled. She hated when the leader made comments like that. Just because she was a freaking clone, he thought that she was the same as Max and so Infant One and Anastasia were half siblings. But she went to retrieve her daughter from their sleeping quarters nonetheless.

Annie was the spitting image of Maria, or the original Max if you wanted to think like that, with short wavy blonde-brown hair, those same threatening brown eyes, and pale skin. Heck, Annie even had the same color wings; tan with brown specks. The only thing that Anastasia got from Gremlin was his heightened senses and incredible strength.

Leader unhooked Infant One's cage and the boy started flapping his wings like crazy. He still didn't have control over his small, baby chicken wings, but he knew that flying was the only thing he was allowed to do when out of the cage and he wanted to make the most of it.

Annie joined Arian in the air and did a back flip mid-air just to warm up.

The two truly were a sight to see. Black wings and tan wings colliding together, their brown specks creating an image of what looked like a star before the two separated and Infant One followed Annie's lead. She had been inadvertently teaching him how to fly for the past two weeks, just by showing off in front of him.

Suddenly, a loud explosion erupted from the back of the room and startled the pair. Arian crash landed on the table while Annie recovered quicker and continued to flap her wings and stay in air.

Maria and Leader didn't recover from their shock in time and out of nowhere, eight giant wolves attacked each of them before the rest of the guards came rushing in the room.

Inhumanly beautiful men and women attacked the guards while the Flock ran past them and ducked into all of the rooms, checking for other mutants or scientists.

"Wolves! Stop!" Edward yelled and they paused their attack on the two kidnappers. They were covered in scratches and bite marks, but no actual damages because Jacob and Sam knew that they would need them for questioning. Mostly, they just wanted to scare them.

The Flock came back into view with Gretchen, the leading pediatrician for the experiments, Leon, Tommy, and Duncan, stupid interns, and Edgar who…well, no one was really sure what he did.

Behind them were four other reject experiments like Maria; Nudge II who called herself Nuala because she thought it sounded cool, Denver (a horse/human hybrid boy), Kirby (a frog/human hybrid boy), and Angel II who was surprisingly okay with being a clone and even wanted to be called Two-Two much to Nuala and Maria's annoyance.

Serenity spotted them and tried to get out of Carlisle's strong grip, but he wouldn't budge.

"Let her go." Edward whispered to his father of sorts, reading the girl's intentions. "She won't do any harm to our people."

Nudge frowned when she saw her clone and Serenity hugging. She had known deep down that there was a reason why she instantly clicked with Serenity when no one else did. Especially considering Serenity didn't even talk to anyone but her and Angel.

Too bad that was just the distraction Maria and Leader needed to get out of the pack's reach. They each grabbed one of the flying children, one threateningly and the other one lovingly, and placed the children in front of themselves as a bargaining thing. Maria was instantly regretted not grabbing Infant Two instead of her own daughter when she saw the way the massive attacking party was glaring at them.

Nessie ran forward and clawed Will's cage open and hugged her son to her chest while still glaring at Maria and the unnamed leader.

"Give. Me. My. Son." Max glared at Leader before recognition set in. "Oh my gosh, is that really you?…" She asked and Angel gasped.

How did she not see the kidnapper's familiar face in Serenity's mind when they were questioning her? There was no doubting that it was…


AN: Ooh, cliffy! Okay, so here are the options for Leader. He can either be Jeb playing the traitor...again, Ari back from the dead...again, or Sam from Virginia. Please review to let me know which one you think would be best.