Product of War

Chapter One

           A violent explosion rocked a small white cell.  It created a force powerful enough to knock a sleeping 16 year-old teen from his raised cot.  A thud and a loud groan could be heard when the boy hit the hard white floor.  As he sat himself up and shook off the drowsiness of sleep, the teen laughed.
           "Looks like good ol' Roley got himself into yet another mess.  Too bad this cell doesn't have any windows, cause I would have loved to see the look on his face when another thing blows up."  His laughter faded away as he pushed himself up from the ground and dusted the dirt off his plain white clothes.  The boy looked back up to where he had previously been sleeping.  The bed is familiar to him but wouldn't be quite normal to anyone else.  It was a rigid canvas cot with only a blanket for warmth raised high in the air--not something you'd expect a regular teen to be sleeping on.
            The boy himself wasn't anything typical either.  Even though his cot is raised almost 20 feet up a wall, he wasn't hurt by the fall.  He owes that to one of his impressive animal mutations.  On his back are two large rich-brown and cinnamon colored wings, the wings of a red tailed hawk, that protected him from the majority of the fall damage.  They took on a modest amount of damage themselves.  The boy looked back as he unfolded his wings from the protective position they had instinctively tucked themselves into.
           "Sorry guys, I should be used to that by now.  Guess I owe you yet another favor."  He didn't even bother to acknowledge the strangeness of the fact that he had been talking to his wings. 
           Shrugging, he says to himself, "Man, I really need to find someone or something interesting to talk to.  I mean, those scientists out there are interesting, but they wouldn't be caught dead holding a decent conversation with me."  He laughed to himself, causing a twinge of pain in his wings to flash throughout his body.
          "Wow, you guys are really tender today!"  The boy exclaimed to himself.  Flexing his extra limbs to remove their soreness, as one might do with his arms after a nap, he gave them a few experimental flaps.  The exercises have become a daily routine due to the frequency of the explosions and his falling out of bed.  The pain is usually still there, but the stretches always help to reduce it to only a small ache.  When he decided they felt reasonable, he stretched them out fully.  Extended to their full length, his wings reach an impressive span of 15 feet, and with one strong push he can rise from the ground to a few feet above the cot he fell from. 
Another one of his mutations, a tail, is more troublesome than his wings.  Having a sidewinder snake tail with a fan of cinnamon-red colored feathers attached to the end of it makes it difficult to sit down, but after living with one for your entire life, you get used to it. 
          Following his daily routine, Malachi gently glided to a small ledge in the wall, his favorite spot to perch.  Once there, he sets himself down and dug his taloned feet into the wall to rest.  Wrapping his tail around his legs and folding his wings against his back, he looks down at the only place he has to call home.
            As he has done every morning, the boy brushed his light brown hair from his face and scanned the white room with his dark brown eyes and diamond-shaped pupils.  In a place like this, he has to be on constant alert, but this is the one time of day he allows his eyes to become dull.  Just glancing at the room someone could tell it's not much of a home.  The domed ceiling is raised to about fifty feet, but the perimeter of the room is only the size of two parking spots.  The floor isn't carpeted: only made of cold, metal. There are no furnishings and no decorations on the walls to liven up the space, only dull strobe lights that leave the corners of the rooms in darkness. 
             After a while of looking down at the pathetic excuse for a comfy living space, the boy shook off the sadness that had overcome him.  He pushed himself up into a crouching position and readied himself to leap.  Using the strength of his legs, he propels himself off the ledge and onto the opposite wall.  Then, utilizing his momentum, he propels himself back to the previous wall, yet this time his destination is his cot and not the ledge.  He lands with only a soft thud and sits down.  Groaning dramatically, he leans backwards off the cot to hang by only his knees. 
            "Boredom, boredom, boredom.  That's all there is in this stupid room."   He starts to swing back and forth when the entrance to the cell slams open and a male voice shouts from the corridor of light below.
             "Get down here, boy!" Startled, the boy lost his grip on the edge of his bed and would have fallen to the floor if not for his wings' catching a drift of air and keeping him from crashing unceremoniously to the floor yet again. 
            "5X, stop being foolish!  Fix yourself up, and follow me.  It's time for your combat training," shouted a rugged looking man with a small beard, around 30 years of age.  He was dressed in a long white lab coat with a clipboard in his hands and pockets stuffed with pens and other oddly assorted items.  Tucked away into his ear there was a small comm set that sent and received data and messages.      
           Accompanying him was two serious-looking soldiers dressed in tight dark, navy blue uniforms with black chest plates and boots.  Both, one man and one woman, were walls of muscle and gave off an aura that let anyone who looked at them they were not to be trifled with.  They had deadly looking rifles strapped to their backs and small pistols attached to their waists.  Semi-hidden in their boots were small knives that acted as last resort weapons.  One, the female, had a mechanical hand that folded back at the wrist to reveal a laser capable of burning a hole into flesh.  To top off their intimidating look, they had midnight black helmets that concealed the entirety of their face.  The eyes of the mask glowed green and flashed repeatedly.
          The boy, however, was not scared by their presence, only annoyed.  Observing his visitors, the young mutated boy set himself gently on the ground and then sighed from the very depths of his soul.  He had dealt with this man for years, and the guy still wouldn't call him by his name.  It was infuriating to him.
         "I told you, Mikey, like a million times before, my name is Malachi, not 5X!" cried the frustrated boy. 
        The white-coated man, whose real name is Mike, looked Malachi up and down. 
         "And my name is not Mikey.  Besides, freaks like you don't deserve names,"   he sneered.  This comment got Malachi really riled up.  He was attached to his self-given name and had a short temper with anyone who refused to call him by it.
        "Yes, I do deserve a name, and it is Malachi!  And stop calling me a freak!  You and this stupid lab are what made me, so stop calling me that name!"  the boy yelled.  In his anger, he advanced on the scientist with his fists curled at his side.  His wings were all fluffed up in anger, and his tail was flicking back and forth.  Smoke could almost be seen pouring from the boy's ears.
           The scientist, however, was not impressed with the scene, and, turning to the soldiers with a flick of his hand, he said,  "Grab him."
                           
                                            ...