A/N: Hey guys, if you wondered why my updates haven't been plentiful as of late, it's because I've been slaving away at this semi-massive chapter, focusing on Angelika. If you haven't yet met this murderous girl, please see the chapter "The Other Flock." If you have, your everlasting question, "Why does she hate them?!" will now be answered. Enjoy. Critiques welcome.
Angelika
I am not human, 'living' only because I sought to survive. I was surrogated by my emotionless project director, Dr. Angelina D. Geustienburg. She only surrogated for two others – brother and sister pair Angel and Gabriel. She named the girl after herself, as she did me – Angelika. I was physically carried by the scientist until my birth. I then became part of Project Maximum. I didn't know for a long time why the project was named this. Anyway, back to my life. Or lack thereof. First came training. After growing up continually shot up with chemicals and left in crates, training was a relief. Although Dr. Angelina supervised me in my training, she also had to rest – she was finishing off the project's quota by surrogating a final subject: my half-brother, Cherubim. Gabriel and Angel had already been transferred when I only three. I grew up alone, except for the non-related specimens – Devonte, Bonaparte, Celia, and of course, Cherubim. He didn't look like me –he lacked my fair locks of hair and had dark ones instead. I was trained from morning until night in the prison-esque yard. "To strengthen you as a team!" Dr. Angelina told us. Though why you would want to strengthen a group of genetic experiments, I had no idea. The training itself began when I was seven – our wings were then mature enough to allow flight. Bonaparte, who was two years older than me and the oldest, and Celia – also two years older than me, took it upon themselves to train Devonte and I, Cherubim being still too young. They would lift us up, flap their own wings, and catch us when we fell. Eventually, though, we learned. The syringe-baring doctors seemed almost to forget about us for a little while – even Dr. Angelina lacked her usual interest. When Bonaparte tried to escape, though, Angelina separated his and Celia's dog crates from ours. We were still captives, and our nightly locking into our dog crates never ceased to remind us of this. When we'd go out into the training yard – an area with just dirt for a floor covering and high stone walls with ringlets of barbed wire on top – Bonaparte and Celia would fly high up into the air, talking for hours while treading the air currents. If they were to try to escape the area, their ankle bracelets would make them fall from the sky, administrating an electric shock that would kill any regular human. At night, Celia would be taken by a trove of doctors – returning exhausted and refusing to talk about what happened. She gradually began growing scales, and her wings began to weaken. The pupils of her eyes extended until they were slitted like a cat's. My wavy blond hair turned dark like Cherubim's. By this time, he had joined our group, growing remarkably fast and being in maturity only a few years younger than me. His wings were long and snowy white. Our eyes set us apart from Celia's green, catlike ones, and Devante's brown and Bonaparte's gray. Ours were blue as robin's eggs. My wings began to increase in size, growing longer and lighter and pointed on the ends. Sleekly and tightly packed, my mocha wings were instruments of flight to be reckoned with. Celia's wings shrank, becoming smaller, weaker and shriveled. Eventually, they were naught but two nubs attached to her back. This all was when I was thirteen, and Bonaparte, fifteen. We all began to call Cherubim, Chase, because he loved to play tag. He could outrun or outfly any of us. I began to train very hard with Devante. Celia and Bonaparte would still isolate themselves, doing nothing but murmuring and nodding. One day, while training in hand-to-hand combat with Devante, Bonaparte's gaze fell on me. Hotness and sharp pain swelled into my arm. I hadn't been paying attention, and Devante had landed a blow. Angrily, I tripped the younger kid and pinned him to the dusty clay. I released him, panting and embarrassed. Bonaparte was no longer watching me. The scientists chose to reveal what bird genetics each of us had been mixed with. I was sparrow, able to spin any turns tighter and swifter than the others. Chase was swan, beautiful and strong. Bonaparte's, hawk, dwarfing my wings easily. And Celia was some unknown – a scaly, reptilian genetic splice. She talked about joining our creators in some battle against the 'regulars,' or the non-modified humans. I refused to listen to her pleads. I suggested escape from the hellhole we lived in. Suddenly, over the next few months, more bird splices were transferred. Parrot kids Amy and Quinn had exotic blue and purple wings, and sided with me on the escape. Eagle splices Jace and Jacelyn were twins, tall and big-boned as well as big-winged. We now introduced ourselves as Sparrow (me), Hawk (Bonaparte), Chase (uh, Chase) and Celia as herself. The other bird kids constantly talked about a "Flock," a group of bird kids that escaped and were trying to save the world or something. They said that we would all be freed by them. At first, I believed them. We would train harder, strengthened by the resolve that this hope gave us. Then, as the months passed, we lost hope. Whoever this Flock was, they didn't care about us. We were on our own to escape. A final bird kid was transferred: Tex, a fiery Cardinal splice that was a year older than I. He agreed to unify us and escape. Plans were made for our breakout.
But something happened that none of us expected.
The day before our valiant escape, the Flock 'rescued' us. They were a team of about five or six bird kids. When I was released, I asked why they were doing this.
"Kids don't belong in cages."
I acted innocent, confused, and puzzled. I was fuming. That day, I promised with my new Flock to eliminate our 'rescuers.' They were fakes; inexperienced freaks that were wandering and wondering alone. We were superior. So began my quest: eliminate the threat to our ascent from the Flock's shadow. After all, they didn't know what they were doing.
But we did.