Lost Change

Chapter 4

A heavy bang rumbled through the floor and woke me. I kicked and lashed my tail in surprise, sending an empty can rolling across the room before I came to my senses. The bang repeated itself... then a familiar pleasant hum of electricity reached my ears.

I poked my nose out from under the shelf and took a quick peek around. I was still very tired... but the room was cold, and that was now a more pressing concern for me. I glanced upwards but the lights in this room were still off, and a quick peek into the hallway confirmed those lights were out too. I lay beneath the metal shelf and tried to think over what that had to mean.

This was the second time the generator had kicked on, which would normally mean it had been refueled from the last time it had run down... but the neglected state of the building strongly suggested nobody was around to refuel it. It was probably some sort of automatic process, like a timer, since anybody manually refueling it would have done something about the rest of the building, too. Or at least stopped refueling the generator since the building was no longer in use.

I felt my ear tufts droop against my neck. That meant I was probably still all on my own.

On top of that, it seemed like most of the building was still without power even with the generator running - which meant that the generator must only be connected to a few critical areas. The room with all the computers I saw was probably one of them... but the room with the cages...

I wiggled out from under my temporary hiding place and waddled back down the hallway to peek back into the larger room with the cages. The lights and heat lamps were all off there, too, with only the dim light from the windows giving me anything to see by. That room must not have been critical enough to require back-up power. Whoever had run this place probably felt they could take the time to move the cages somewhere else if the power went out.

But the heat lamp in the room I had woken up in had been connected to the generator.

Which meant it would probably be back on now - which meant, much more importantly, that it would be warm.

I stopped back in the storage room to grab another can of peaches, then rolled it down through the hallways until I came back to the first room. I could clearly see and hear the heat lamp humming away above the counter, and also made out a soft glow coming from the monitors. This room was definitely getting power again, even though the rest of the building was dark.

That meant this room must be important. Whatever happened here couldn't afford power getting interrupted, even for a few seconds. I glanced over the equipment again - the bed in the center, the medical supplies, the monitoring equipment. All important equipment, all things that couldn't afford to go out right in the middle of...

Surgery.

The word bubbled up from the encyclopedia in my head, but I didn't need it. It was obvious.

Whatever had been done to me had taken place here, in this very room.

I glanced back down the hallway and took in the disorder there. The haphazardly strewn objects, the disarray on the counters and desks, the lack of lights or power. And whatever disaster had struck must have happened before I could be moved, or else I would have been placed in the same room as the other eggs. The ones that hadn't survived.

I was lucky.

I was cold.

I stepped away from the can of peaches and looked up at the counters. From down here the countertops seemed to be even higher up from the floor than they had when I still was trapped in the cage. I moved to an area clear of glass and tried to jump upwards just in case... but I wasn't able to cover the distance with just a jump, and I fell back down to the hard floor.

I watched the distant glow of the heat lamp for another moment before I lowered my head to take in the sight of the silvery wings. Time to figure out how these work...

I flailed, reaching up with my hands to cover my face... and slammed into the floor. I bounced once, then again, before I finally skidded to a stop up against the wall.

Once again I reminded myself it was a good thing I had decided to practice in the empty hallway, instead of trying to reach the counter right away. Given how many times I had faltered and fallen to the ground, I didn't want to imagine how cut up I would be if I had experimented directly above the shards of sharp glass.

I lay on the floor and let out a frustrated warble as I stared back into the room. The harsh glow and the steady hum of the heat lamp seemed to be mocking me at this point. I was tired, and even worse, I was cold. It wasn't fair that I was stuck out here, just a few cruel feet away from warmth, and with what should be all the tools I needed to reach it. This shouldn't be that hard; I wasn't trying to fly across an ocean or up a mountain, just... over a floor filled with sharp hazards that I did not want to fall into.

I sighed. Okay, maybe it was a little hard. But still. I had what I assumed were two perfectly good wings; what more did I need?

Knowledge. Somebody who could tell me what I was supposed to be doing.

I sighed, feeling the gnawing sense of loneliness growing inside me... then blinked with a sudden thought and stared back up at the heat lamp. I wonder...

What little I could remember from before I woke up here had all been completely useless on the subject of flying, except for a remarkably useless saying about 'air above you, runway behind you, and fuel in the fuel truck', whatever that meant, and there wasn't anyone around to ask... but my memories hadn't been the only source of knowledge I had been getting. I tried to remember the strange encyclopedia voice I had been hearing occasionally, and focused on that feeling. How do I fly?

My thoughts were immediately flooded with information. Images, concepts, feelings - the feel of air over my wings, the instinct to angle my tail to match the airflow, the sight of the ground falling away from me, the sensation of gliding effortlessly... it all rushed in at once, overwhelming me.

I just lay on the cold floor and tried to make sense of it all. Wow. Flying seemed awesome.

I concentrated and asked the question again, hoping this time I could make sense of the answer. This time I made out more details I had missed - a short hop to get airborne, a series of half flaps to get the air moving and propel me forward, longer, slower flaps when I was moving faster.

I smiled and got to my feet. Yesss. I knew how to fly. I stretched my wings out again... and out, and out, and out, still trying to get used to just how big they felt... then when they were ready I started to move towards the room. Towards the heat lamp.

I picked up speed, moving from a slow walk to a run, 'cupping' the air at my sides with my wings in short, awkward motions - I would get better later, but for now, this was enough - and then as I neared the doors, I jumped.

No.

I flew.

I rose upwards and passed effortlessly over the glass-covered floor. What had seemed to take hours to cross on foot went by in less than a second. Everything felt right. This was how I was supposed to move - my body was perfectly built for being in the air, and everything about it felt good.

I basked in the sensation for another second... then my eyes widened, and I panicked. I focused desperately on the encyclopedia in my head and threw another question at it: HOW DO I LAND?!?

I felt the pounding in my head grow worse as I rested upside down against the wall, too winded to move out of the awkward pose I had crashed in. Information flooded into my brain - an instinct of flapping my wings in a different direction, a sensation of hovering, a feeling of slowly coming to land on a tree branch. I stared dryly 'down' at the heat lamp hanging over me, and chirped out an annoyed, "THANKS."

Well.

At least it was warm.