Wings

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I stomp out the fire on the ground, a few stray glowing tendrils drifted upwards toward me. I fan them away and glance around me, the woods here are thick and quiet with good overhead covering, but I need to move now that it's dark. It's been a few hours since the chase and I'm still a little freaked out. They have gone after me before but never like that, they've never shot at me before; they've tried to kill me before.

I stand up brush my jeans off and take a running start. I sprint for a few meters to pick up speed and then I push off. I am airborne for a second before I give me wings a powerful stroke downward, straining the muscles in my back. It is dark blue all around me, I can see faint lights on the horizon of the slowly approaching city. They don't know anything, I think, those mundane little people with there jobs and insignificant boring lives. They don't know that the people that run their country have done unspeakable things to people like me and they won't stop. But there is still this longing inside me to be one of them, a normal person with a family and work and not know anything about the horrible things that the government does when nobody is watching.

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When I was fourteen years old I was living on the streets and surviving off garbage. One night two men in suits came up to me and asked me if I would volunteer to take an exam in return for some money. I told them I would because I was desperate and starving and would do anything if it meant staying alive. If only I knew then what I know now. Those men grabbed me and dragged me into a van where they tied me up and gagged me. I was scared , both men had guns and there probably more where they came from so there wasn't anything I could do. The van was windowless and from the uncomfortable position I was in I couldn't see the front windshield.

D van started moving and the ride became really bumpy, I knew I would have bruises on my tailbone in the morning. The men just stared at me the whole time, they had their guns slung over their shoulders intently watching me like I was their prey.

After an hour or so the truck slowed to a halt. One of the men grabbed my arm and shoved me out of the door, the blindfolded me and forcefully walked me up some steps into a building. I knew I was in a government building because in this city nobody but the government can afford air conditioning.

Once inside the building they removed the blindfold, I saw people everywhere, but what got my attention was the huddle of teenagers who seemed to have gone through the same thing I did. I was shoved into the group and the two men walked up to what looked like a lab technician. He whispered something in his ear and then the technician called out to a group of scientists, "please bring subject No.1 forward for testing". A woman came up and grabbed the arm of a small boy at the front who began crying and screaming, saying he only wanted the money but the woman just stabbed a syringe into his arm and he went limp. I let out a small whimper, you have to get out of here, a voice in my kept repeating

I made a run for it and sprinted towards the door, I rocketed over a table and toppled two people down in the process, I landed hard on the ground but kept running. I was almost at the door when I felt a hand wrap around my ankle. All my momentum was still going forward and caused me to tumble head over heels onto the floor. I landed on my stomach and tried to twist around to see who it was and was surprised to see, instead of a worker, one of the teenagers from the huddle. "Let me go!" I screamed at him trying to squirm out of his grasp. The scientist finally stopped gaping at me and ran towards us, they pulled him off me, yanked me off the ground roughly. They shoved me back into the group but this time two guards, a man and a woman, faced us so I knew there wasn't any chance of escape this time.

I turned around and spotted the kid who grabbed me, "Hey! You, why did you do that, I could've escaped!" I seethed angrily.

He looked so serious I almost forgot he was just a kid when he said "Even if you had escaped they would have found you, they always find you. Nobody leaves here and those who do get killed, these people control everything, they control the government, they control the system and they even control you, Aurora Evergreen.