The Other Flock
Song: None
(sorry guys, it's been INSANE. My birthday was Easter, Family Reunion the next week, and...sorry, no excuses. Enjoy.)
(A/N: This chapter is from the bird girl's POV that Max freed in The Angel Experiment - I named her Angelika.)
She didn't trust the intruders. The six of them, with strange lumps in their shirts, opened her cage and freed her. She ran, keeping pace with them for a while before they were stopped by Ari. Yes, she knew this Ari. Once upon a time, she had been his babysitter. Then she was taking to his Dad's work. They put a breathing mask on her, tied her to a metal operating table. When she awoke, twin white wings were fastened onto her back, much larger than the other bird kids's. The screams of pain still echoed in her ears. At first, the wings were heavy. Gradually, she took little hops of flight. They tested her and gave her pills to dull the pain. More surgeries followed. Once, to suck some bone weight from her and make her lighter. Countless other times to add naturally growing feathers to her hair and mottle her wing color until it was a brown and blond mottle, like her layered tresses. Ages ago, she had forgotten her name, her identity, or if she had a family. They gave her a new name. Angelika. She could sense it that there had already been an Angel, a project gone partially rogue. Angel was easy to spot when Angelika saw her: golden ringlets, wide and watery blue eyes. Angelika had her own flock. Wesley, Devon, and Poppy were better than the older Maximum Ride. Reality joined her again when Devon spoke.
"Angelika, are you listening?" he demanded, suddenly loud. Angelika blinked her black-lashed eyes. The ceylon brown irises seemed to entrance anyone who looked at them. Even Devon had to turn when she looked at him now.
"No, sorry. What were you saying?"
"I was saying that I saw the kids that freed us. They were flying in hawk formation."
Devon only knew this because Wesley had been specifically trained to fly like a hawk. Angelika's flock clipped turns like no other group of genetically-modified teens. Even...Fang. Poppy, the bubbly redhead currently downing blue Pixie Sticks in her office chair, could read minds. Fang had been the darkest shadow cast at the time of their freeing. She knew that he had loved Maximum even then. And she relished the details. Fang was Max's one weakness. When Dylan was introduced as a breeding program, Angelika had practically screamed with delight. Perhaps the younger one, Gazzy, as they called him, could now be persuaded to join them? Yes...
"I have a plan," Angelika began. Anticipation piled up like bricks on a house. "to bring the flock down...forever."