Dark Angel

Chapter Two

"You don't look all that legendary." Said the boy who had just been thrown into the cell directly across the hall from mine. "You're just a kid."

"Hey! You can't call me a kid! You don't look much older than me!" I told him, crossing my arms over my chest and tipping my nose up into the air.

That drew a laugh from the boy. "Really now? How old are you miss...?" He trailed off, raising his eyebrows at me.

"Lucia, it's Lucia." I introduced myself and held up both hands, fingers spread out and one thumb tucked against my palm. "And I'm nine."

"Well, nice to meet you miss Lucia. The name's Malikai and I happen to be five years older than you....Poor thing, her eyes are swollen...she must've been crying before I got here."

"I haven't been crying!!" I snapped and Malikai looked at me like I had two heads or something. "What? Did you just notice my wings or something? Go ahead call me a freak like everyone else."

"No, that's not it. I like the wings, but I didn't say you were crying." That time I looked at him like he was the crazy one.

"Yes you did. I heard you." I insisted, but the next time he spoke my eyes went wide in disbelief, because the next time Malikai spoke...his lips didn't move.

'No, I didn't.'

"No way! But I heard it! How did you talk without moving your lips?!..I know, you must be one of those puppet guys."

"I'm not a ventriloquist." He laughed and drew his lips up into a grin. "It was you. Looks like you've just discovered your ability."

"My ability? What are you talking about?" I asked him.

"You can obviously read minds." He rolled his eyes.

"That's not true. I can't. No one can read minds." I denied with a shake of my head.

"How long have you been living in this lab? Haven't you realized that we aren't normal humans yet?" Malikai wrapped his hand around one of the bars of his cell and as he did, a layer of ice spread across it, fog coming from it as it met the warmer air.

My mouth dropped and suddenly, everything that people had been saying made a lot more sense.... "This really is a lab where they experiment on people?"

"Yeah. Each and every one of us can do something like this." When he let go of the bar, the ice vanished as if it were never even there.

"Does....does that make Daddy a bad man?" I asked, looking across at the other boy with eyes that begged him to tell me what I wanted to hear.

"Daddy? Catch me up here. I don't have a clue who your dad is."

"Oh, sorry.. His name is Marcus and he works here. He's on a trip right now, so another man told me that I have to stay in this jail cell."

"Your Dad is a scientist? That's pretty sick, a man experimenting on his own daughter like that." Turned out Malikai wasn't one to sugarcoat what he was thinking. It didn't look like I would need to read his mind often.  "None of the scientists are good people. I mean look at you -no offense- but you have wings. None of us have wings...but none of us have a scientist Daddy either, what does that tell you?"

Tears had welled up in my eyes and I stood abruptly, raising my voice at the boy. "That's not true! Daddy is not a bad man!! He's never hurt me, and I was born with my wings! He didn't have anything to do with them!!..." I actually wasn't completely sure about that last part, but there was no way Daddy would ever do anything to hurt me. He always said that he wanted the best for me.

I crossed my arms and stomped over to the hard bed that was provided in the cell and sat down, facing away from the boy.

"Look kid-..Lucia...all I'm saying is that you should open up your eyes. Your dad could be an okay man I guess...but I've never met a good scientist..." Even though I was playing deaf, Malikai continued to speak to me. His voice was gentle though, like he was trying not to upset me more.

"And he very well may be a good father to you but...just pay attention okay? If you're so sheltered that you didn't even realize that everyone has powers here...There are bound to be other things that you haven't noticed..."

And I did.

I took Malikai's advice.

Over the next week, I payed special attention to everything.

I listened to what the other prisoners in the cells said, listened to what the scientists said to each other during my weekly checkup, to what my trainer said when I went to train every day.

But I didn't just listen to what they said, I listened to what they didn't say.

It was pretty hard at first, but after trying as much as I did over that week, it became almost natural for me to take a peek at the thoughts of those around me. I didn't breathe a word of this newfound power to any of the scientists though, because from their thoughts, it was pretty evident that their experimentations could be pretty extensive when it came to powers, nothing like my normal medical checkups.

I learned so much during that week that it was almost hard for me to handle such an information overload. I hadn't believed anything that Malikai had told me at first, but when you hear the same thing from more than a few people's thoughts...it's kinda hard to deny. People's thoughts don't lie even when their words do.

For starters, I learned that Helxion really was a laboratory for human experimentation just like I'd been told, and that not only were test tube babies created there, but sometimes children were also taken from their homes..

I learned that though a lot of the scientists that I grew up around acted like it was no big deal, that even in this laboratory where supernatural powers were apparently the norm...my wings were not. Though none of the scientists seemed to know why I had them. Many of them were fascinated by them and wanted to examine them thoroughly during my checkups, which made me feel uncomfortable and exposed, but some of them, like the scientist who'd thrown me in the cell the first day of Daddy's business trip, were repulsed, and didn't even want to look at me, much less touch me. Thinking of me as some kind of 'abomination'... That word hurt even more than 'freak.'

I also heard thoughts of a man named Victor, who the scientists called "The Director" most of the time. It seemed like they were afraid of him, and that most of their work revolved around making this mysterious, feared man happy.

Over that week, Malikai and I became pretty close. We talked every night about the things that I had learned throughout the day. I would tell him about the things I heard and he would help me try to piece bits and pieces that I gathered together and help me to understand it, though there were always some things that even he didn't understand. After our nightly talk he would always lighten the mood by joking around or showing me the things he could do with his powers, which amazed me every time.

I asked Malikai about the mysterious Victor one night but he didn't know much. He only told me that he had heard whispers of the name and that he sounded important.

This only peaked my curiosity of course. I wanted to learn more about this place and the people in it. I wanted to find out about all of the secrets that had been kept from me in my nine years.

And I would.