Dark Angel

Chapter One

When people say, "It's not the dog, it's the owner," I get where they're coming from but I don't completely agree. It's funny how your perception of right and wrong can be so affected by the people you associate with... but then you still make your own decisions most of the time. Sure people can sway you or try to get you to do what they want... but in the end, your screw ups are still your own.

And it's always the dog that gets punished, never the owner.

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Daddy was a resident scientist in a place called Helxion.

Helxion was my home. According to him, my mother died giving birth to me, so I was his responsibility now and he would do his best to be a good father.

My very first memory is of sitting with him, observing how he did his job. I was such a Daddy's girl, always tagging along wherever he went. In my eyes, he was the most amazing person in the world, so intelligent, my hero... but even though I thought of him as more of a doctor... he was still a scientist.

As a young child, I never really questioned anything that he did. Not even when the "patients" screamed or cried. I once asked him why they cried and he told me that sometimes people are afraid of doctors, but that he still has to do his job.

That was the end of that.

I grew up in a medical setting, so needles and white coats never bothered me. Not when I was young anyway.

I remember having my own blood drawn every once in a while, and then once a week as I got older. Sometimes he would pluck a small feather from the end of one of the black wings that protruded from my back, "to make sure they are growing correctly," but I never thought much about it. Daddy just told me that I needed a checkup, so I got to be the patient that day.

Those days were actually my favorite days because I got a break from the physical training and the exercise that I had to do on all of the other days.

As I got a little older though, I got more curious, started to question things.

I'll never forget the first time that Daddy had to go on a trip to see his boss at what he called, Headquarters. He was only gone for a week, but that week was one like I had never experienced up until then.

Eye opening.

Since Daddy wasn't there, I had to go for my weekly checkup with a new doctor I had never met before. He wasn't necessarily mean to me but he didn't do his job anything like Daddy did. He would never look straight at me, and it actually hurt when he took my blood. He talked to me in a tone that I didn't like, and it made me feel like he didn't want anything to do with me.

When he was taking me from the infirmary and back to my room, we took a different route from the one that I always took with Daddy.

We went down a long hallway that was lined with hundreds of jail cells. I had never seen this part of Helxion before. There were certain places that Daddy told me I wasn't allowed to go when I was playing, and this hall was one of them. I had always just assumed it was just somewhere where doctors worked and I would get in the way.

Inside of each cell there was at least one person, two in a few like they had run out of cells for everyone to have their own.

I recognized a lot of those faces.

"Why are all of Daddy's patients in jail?" I asked the doctor as I looked up at the man that towered over me.

He responded with a harsh laugh and looked directly at me for the first time. His face was fixed with an expression that I recognized as disgust."Because they are all dangerous experiments, this is where winged freaks like you belong." He said.