Wingbeats

3: Scarring Nox

I woke up to the smell of lab chemicals. The kind of scent that smashes face first into your nose, assaulting your sense of smell before burning down your throat and singeing you lungs so that you cannot breath without everything feeling like acid on your insides. Ammonia, bleach, mustard gas, popcorn fart, and some terrible fragrance I couldn't put my hoof on as my lungs screamed at me for mercy.

My little brother wasn't next to me as I struggled with the need to breathe, and I started to panic. I hadn't known him longer than a day, but he was my family. He was my responsibility to take care of. I thrashed with everything I had as my eyes came into focus, only to find that my limbs were bound at the fetlocks and my wings were clenched tightly to my ribs by a rope wrapped round my middle. I twisted my head around, searching my surroundings to find that I was strapped to a metal table in an overly sanitized lab room with several white coated scientists milling about me.

"Quick! She's awake get doctor Rook in here!"One of the small scientists said, noticing my thrashing on the table, "and get the black male in here too!"

A few moments later I was wheeled into another room, still strapped on my side to the table. I was relieved to see the small black shape of my brother when he was wheeled into the room a few moments later, though he was in the same predicament I was.

The room we had been wheeled into seemed small due to the number of scientists, and it too was freakishly sanitary, with white walls and floors and a table I had trouble seeing due to my odd head angle.

From what I could tell, on it were multiple creepy instruments I didn't recognize, except for about forty bazillion pairs of scissors.

I mean really, who actually has that many types of scissors? The answer was beyond me.

The only thing else in my view was a doorway, leading off into the bowls of wherever it was we were.

I thought nothing of the doorway until a man walked through the doorway, he had a white lab coat on and he radiated pure evil. His hair was cropped short and his face was clean shaven, offset by a set of cold grey eyes that seemed to suck all of the life out of the room as they calculated my brother and I without feeling. Every facial feature of him suggested that he didn't care what happened to use; we were experiments, subjects, not living creatures that could feel pain and understand fear.

"So you're the little beasts." He said, his voice as emotionless and calculating as I had expected. "I hear you still have a wild side."

From the doorway his words chilled me as he strode to my head, leaning in close to whisper "Not for long." His dead eyes showed no mercy. "Leave!" he barked to the other scientists who promptly bustled off closing the door behind them.

Forty five or so minutes later, Rook had tattooed us with numbers along the insides of our ears despite much struggle. I couldn't see what my own number was and my brother's was barely discernible against the black of his skin. We had been marked as someone else's, not our own anymore, and the thought filled me with a sick sort of dread in my gut. What were they going to do us that they felt the need to permanently tag us?

Rook didn't say anything as he set down the tattoo needles and left my brother and me alone in the room for someone else to deal with, merely giving us one last dead smile as he closed the door behind him.

When he was gone my little brother craned his neck to look at me.

"Angel?" His voice was surprisingly strong. "I have a name."

My ears flicked, confused. How did he know his own name? I didn't even know his name, and I was the older sibling. Maybe it was part of his Pegasus mojo, or maybe I was hallucinating (which I doubted), or maybe everybody was just crazy here and I was the only normal one. He probably thought his name was 'boy' or 'horse' or 'blackie' or something.

I was surprised when he said it was Nox.

"Nox?" I tilted my head at him.

"It means darkness or the night," was his soft reply. "I don't know where I heard it, but I know it's my name."

I decided it was part of his Pegasus mojo, but it wasn't like I really had a better name for him anyways. "Nox it is then."