E
By, VelvetMasquerade
Secret Santa for Ami, also known as MaximumRideFangLover97. Enjoy~
A petite girl, who looked about 16, stood on the front stoop of a lavishly decorated apartment. Cars flew back and forth, up and down the crowded city street. Well-dressed civilians concealed themselves under crisp, colorful umbrellas, walking with small steps to avoid ruining their Jimmy Choo's, Christian Loboutin's and Louis' Vuitton's.
This girl was about 5'4, with ridged brown hair that fell about halfway down her back, and dull green eyes. Her pupils were ringed with red, and her eyes looked puffy and swollen. Her clothes were top notch… if you didn't notice the holes, and the popping seams at her elbows, knees and shoulders.
Her top, although fashionable, seemed to be roughly two sizes too small, her pants were too tight, and only came down to her ankles. Her shoes were faded, chestnut-colored UGGs. Fashionable? Yes. Expensive? Yes. But both shoes had holes in them from her toes poking through them, and the buttons were gone, making the tops hang over awkwardly.
Rain poured down on her, but she hardly seemed to notice. She just stood outside of this beautiful brick townhouse, a small suitcase at her feet. She stared straight ahead for the most part, but every once in a while her eyes would dart around. She seemed to be waiting for someone.
I watched her. She seemed not to notice me, but I watched her. Eventually, a conspicuous black Jeep pulled up, and she quickly ran to it, before being helped inside.
I knew that car.
I'd been taken in one more or less the same, about three years ago. If I knew anything about this sick, twisted world, it was that we were going to the same place.
My name is Conroy Mayfeld, but I am more commonly known as Experiment Twenty Two.
It's been a few days since everything went wrong. I had planned a Jailbreak- an operation in which I break into the School, and attempt to free other oppressed mutants, even at the cost of my own life. Well, things don't always go the way you've planned, I guess. I was caught unlocking a cage for a little boy who looked like a toucan.
I squirmed, or attempted to squirm, in my toothpaste-green, rusty dog crate. After a few minutes of struggling to find the girl, who I was sure was in the same room as I, I discovered that she was in the crate beneath me. Not because I'm a stalker, or I have some super-awesome way of telling where people are around me. That'd be great and all if I had it, but I don't. Basically, the way I figured out where she was, was through her sobs. I know, I'm cliche and creepy. But hey, she's a pretty loud person.
At this point, she'd begun to mumble to herself between sobs. This isn't happening to me, this isn't happening to me, this isn't happening to me...
"Hey..." I whispered down into the cage. "Ah, are you alright?"
Oh my God, I am truly a horrible person. This girl is probably experiencing the fear and shock of being kidnapped and tested on, and I'm asking her if she's okay.
I promise you, if I could've seen her face, she probably would've been glaring at me.
"I'm fine, I guess," she responded slowly, her voice shaking as she attempted to regain her composure.
Wait for it... Wait for it...
"Where am I? Who are you? What is this? And what the hell is going on here?!"
Ha. Called it.
I took my time with these answers. "You're at the School. I'm Conroy Mayfeld, but I go by Con. This is a top-secret testing facility, and here... They inject human teenagers with animal DNA."
I could hear her sputtering below me, trying to comprehend what I had told her. Eventually, all she said was this;
"I'm... I'm Joselyn. Joselyn LaRouge. You can call me Josie, though."
Now, being the ignorant twat that I am, I burst out laughing at this. "Sure, you're a LaRouge. You almost got me there!"
"I'm serious. Joselyn Ami LaRouge." her voice sounded weary, as if she was used to people not believing her.
It was almost as if I could feel the color draining from my face. "S-sorry, Josie. It's just... LaRouge... That name is pretty rich."
She didn't respond.
Now, my next question was totally inappropriate and I probably should've never even asked, but hey, I'm not one to take the high road, or whatever you posh people say. Did I use that in the right context? I'd be surprised if I did.
"So, Joselyn... Have you been, ah, injected yet?"
"No, no... I don't think so.." She sounded hesitant, but my guess was she hadn't been. "Ha..have you?"
"Oh, yeah. A few years ago. I'm a convict who can't seem to stay out of prison, I guess. I escape one day, get taken back a month later while trying to break some other mutant out. Experiment 22 of the ACE division. Arial Creatures Experiment."
"So... You're a bird?"
"I'm only 7% bird. Painted Bunting, to be exact. So, yes, I have wings, yes, I can fly, and yes, I'm wicked good at bird calls."
There was no response to this for a few minutes. I took this time to check my pockets to see if my 'supplies' were still there.
Good News: most of it was. Bad News: the most important things were gone. Rocks, broken toothpick, some string, some paperclips... Useless junk, for the most part, now that I think about it.
"Well, when will I be injected?" she asked quietly, as if saying it loudly would bring her some kind of trouble.
"A few minutes from now, would be my guess. A Whitecoat came in about an hour ago, which is a guesstimate on my part, and announced it. You were probably crying too hard to hear them. You're in the J4G group though. I'm jealous, congratulations." I joked, my heart not really in it.
She only had time to ask another question before she was roughly yanked from her crate, pushed out the door.
"Wai-wait! Con?! What's a J4-"
I sighed, burying my face in my hands under the cover of the dim lightning. Another helpless teenager, overtaken by these horrible experiments because their parents. Poor Josie...
I was overcome by a flash of anger. I grit my teeth, and let out a scream.
"JAGUAR, JOSIE. JAGUA-" My voice cracked, and I paused. A Whitecoat with poorly-dyed blonde hair turned off the lights, sending the room plunging into blackness, and signaling to me that it was nighttime.