Air Born | Generation Icarus #1

Tui - Random Bird Kids

"How the bloody hell did my life come to this?" I put my hands over my eyes — not that they looked like my eyes anymore — and took a long, deep breath. I was not going to cry. Jeez. Pull yourself together, girl.

The black guy from New York, who I knew as H, started getting all literal on me.

"First, you grew wings. Then you saw some guy on the news and he's got wings too, so you came to find him. And, damn, girl, making it all the way from New Zealand to the States, by yourself, while hiding said wings, is freaking impressive. Just saying."

Despite everything, I almost smiled. It was hard to believe I'd only known H a few days, because he'd turned out to be the most reliable friend I'd ever made.

He carried on as if the whole armed siege drama wasn't actually happening. "So you get to the hospital where the mysterious bird boy, Tyler, was last seen and, in a shocking turn of events, you met the equally brave and winged, much more sexy and intelligent guy of your dreams." He flashed that H-bomb smile and leaned in toward me.

"Of your dreams, maybe," I said, shoving his shoulder. His dark wings rustled. "Get to the good part."

"I am the good part!"

"Keep dreaming, bro! And get to the part where it all went wrong and I ended up trapped in here with you and two other random bird kids."

On the other side of the room, the white blond guy and the Chinese girl didn't even look up at us. They were as close to foetal position as two people can be when they're crouched on the floor. Forehead to forehead — it looked like they were whispering to each other except their mouths weren't moving. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Just another freaky thing in the life of Tui Mahuta.

H was still on a roll. "Then, proving that this Polynesian princess is also one smart cookie, you joined forces with the handsome hero ..."

"Save me," I said, groaning and rolling my eyes.

"I'm working on that part! ... and continued traveling north, following the sightings of the aforementioned mysterious Tyler bird."

"Ooh, long word," I teased.

"I can be a badass and read books," he said with dignity.

"Comics are not books."

"Yes they are and so are graphic novels which require much more interpretive ability and artistic awareness than a book where everything is written out for you, thank you very much."

"Uhuh. You still haven't explained where I went wrong."

"So when some wacko cult announced they had found not one but three so-called angels in the forest, we headed on up here where we met yet another mysterious winged couple—"

"We're not a couple," I said, wincing as the riot outside got even louder and scarier.

"If you keep interrupting, I'm never going to get to finish my fascinating story before the freak police smash their way in here."

"Enough, H." I knew the bullshit comedy routine was just his way of making me feel better but the entire bloody world was downstairs trying to get in.

I shuddered at the memory of the crazy religious guy accidentally ripping my jacket and the storm that kicked up when my wings burst out. We'd run for cover into a bookshop and then for some stupid reason kept running up the stairs to this little flat. And now there was nowhere left to run.

The blond South African guy, Marcus, stood up and moved over to the window. He was so tall he had to bend down to peer out. He was only there for a few seconds, but it was long enough for him to be seen. The screams were instantaneous and Marcus quickly jumped back out of public view.

He glanced at the tiny Chinese girl and, with barely a flicker of emotion, nodded. She shuddered and buried her face in her knees.

Not for the first time, I wondered what the hell was going on between those two. They'd hardly spoken in the few hours we'd known them. In fact, the girl, Raven, hadn't said a word. Marcus had done all the talking in his weirdly deep voice. And no way was she seventeen. She looked about twelve, max. But whatever I was now, whatever H was — they were too. So we trusted them.

"What the hell are we gonna do, H?"

His face had lost all the laughter. "I don't know, Tui," he said, drawling out the 'Too' and the 'ee' sounds of my name. "I really don't, but damn, we gotta do something."

Outside, a man shouted into a loudhailer, but his words were impossible to understand over the noise of the crowd.

H and I began prowling the apartment, trying to find something — anything — that might help. There wasn't much to see, it was tiny. The windows at the back looked down onto a two-story drop to the street below.

"If only these things worked," I muttered to H, twitching my wings under his borrowed hoodie.

"Uhuh."

And then everything outside went quiet. Not for long, but long enough to know that something had happened.

I bolted to the front window. "No way!"

It was Tyler. The boy we'd all come looking for, and he was standing on the roof across the road, big brown wings held wide. He stared down at the shocked crowd and they stared back. Hundreds of cameras and phones swung up in his direction, and then the shit didn't just hit the fan — it set it on fire.