Tales From the Flock

The Escape

        Everything was completely black as I leaned my head against the cage. My knees were drawn up uncomfortably to my chest, and my eyes were shut. I had never felt so utterly and completely without hope. I didn't even have enough strength to speak.

        My wings were pulled up in a cramped position behind me. I had to be careful not to crush the light, fragile bones and the soft feathers. Am I going to die in here?

        "Cheer up," came a soft voice from beside me. I opened my eyes and turned my head to see one of the other experiments, a girl a little older than me, with dirty blonde hair and brown eyes. "Don't give up hope," she whispered. "We'll get out of here."

        "How?" I whispered softly. "I literally see no way out of this situation right now."

        The girl gave a small half-smile, her brown eyes not exactly happy, but not depressed either. "Well, there could always be a radioactive lightningbolt that strikes the earth right next to the School, burn it down, and we could escape in the process."

        "We're in cages," I felt compelled to remind her.

      "Well, using our superhuman strength, we'll burst out," she declared. Depite myself, I felt a half-smile creep onto my face. "There you go," she whispered, her hair falling in front of her face.

        I sighed. "You promise you'll help me if we find a way to escape?" I knew I sounded like a needy little kid, and I hated it, but I was desperate, and overcome, quite honestly, by the hugeness of our current situation.

        "Of course," she said.

                                        ~*~

        I woke early sometime later by the girl rattling the bars of my cage. "Hey! Hey! Wake up!"

        I opened my bleary eyes and cracked my neck, which, as always, was painful after a night of sleeping on it weird in the cage. "What's going on..." I mumbled.

        "Someone's come to get us out!" The girl informed me, her voice radiating pure excitement.

        That got me out of my reverie. "What? Who?" I asked, almost jumping to my feet. That's not a great idea.

        The girl pointed out of her cage at a man I hadn't noticed before, who was crouching, his long legs tucked beneath his white lab coat. My jaw dropped. "Are you ka-ray-zee?! That's a whitecoat! He's probably just taking us for testing or something!!"

        The whitecoat shook his head. "No. I'm Jeb, and I'm here to save you."

        He unlocked the girl's cage and barely had time to move before she shot out, her wings unfurling. "Oh, God, I'm out! I'm out!"

        "Shush!" The Whitecoat - Jeb - ordered, moving onto me. "If you don't hush, they'll come. I'm risking everything for you lot."

        He jabbed a key into my lock and twisted. The lock opened in his hands. He pulled open the cage, and I, unlike the girl, came out cautiously. Jeb didn't grab me, however, and I realized that I could trust him.

        Quickly, Jeb began to unlock the cages next to and above us- a tiny little blonde boy who looked like a toddler (my heart contracted; how dare they test on toddlers?!) and the two cages next to the girl's- a tall, dark haired boy, and a taller still fair haired one. The fair haired one looked around, slowly blinking his eyes. "I- what?"

        The girl instinctively grabbed the toddler, lifting him easily. The tall, dark haired boy narrowed his eyes at Jeb. "What the-"

        "Go with it," the girl ordered. "I- I think we can trust him."

        The boy narrowed his eyes challengingly at her but didn't say anything. Jeb looked around nervously, then reached up and grabbed a little baby from a cage she had been resting on. "Hold her," he ordered me, pressing the baby into my hands. I took the little thing soundlessly. She was asleep and very skinny. Hot rage bubbled into my veins and I longed to attack these.. creatures, but the only one in sight was helping us escape, so.

        Looking around, I realized all of the kids Jeb had freed were winged- like me and the girl. Most of them were small, but the dark-haired one's were huge.

        Jeb was crouching to free another kid, when a shout came from the other end of the hallway. "Hey!"

        Jeb cursed under his breath and stood up, grabbing the fair-haired boy by the wrist. "Come on!" He shouted, and I felt a vein of fear run through me when I realized that he meant that we were about to escape.

        The girl didn't move. "Hey, what about the others?!"

        "We don't have time!" Jeb shouted. My heart clenched with uncontrollable pity for the creatures in the cages that stared up at us as we ran. The one that had almost been freed just stared at us, uncomprehending. My heart thudded in my chest. I'm so sorry.

        Jeb led us down corridors lined with cages, and all I could think about were the experiments locked inside. Most of them didn't have enough intelligence to know that they were being abandoned, but it still felt wrong. It didn't feel fair.

        I tried to push my feelings to the side as I ran, just behind the girl, who had stopped ranting about how we should save them all. She was silent now, her breathing labored, which I suspected was because of the child in her arms.

        We reached the end of a dark corridor and whirled to run down another hallway, when Jeb stopped short. He swore colorfully under his breath, and I nearly crashed into the dark haired boy. Righting myself, I peeked out from behind him.

        A Whitecoat stood there. He opened his mouth, his face crinkling in anger, but before he could make a sound, the girl stepped forward and swung her leg up, smacking him in the side of the head with a cracking sound. He went down, and she looked stunned.

        "Come on!" Jeb said, pushing past the body of his unconscious former-colleague. We stumbled past him, and I could tell we were almost home free, and suddenly the doors came into view. Jeb pushed them outward, and we burst out, nearly falling.

        It was amazing to be free. I couldn't stop to savor it, since by now alarms were blaring and people were chasing us in huge numbers, but I remember my first glimps of the sky, all swirly with clouds and dotted with stars. The moon hung far away, glowing. It was beautiful.

        Then I was torn from the sky and was being pushed by Jeb. "Run!" He ordered, steering me to the parking lot. I could feel his hand, sticky with nervous sweat, through the back of my thin hospital gown, and I ran for the parking lot.

        He stopped next to a white thing - a huge van - and jerked open the door, shoving us in haphazardly. The fair haired boy had just tumbled inside when he turned on the motor, and pressed his foot to the gas. He drove off, tearing down the road at maybe 150 miles per hour. I held onto the armrests for dear life and tried not to be pushed off.

        Jeb saved us that day- brought us out of the prison we would have been doomed to spend out lives in for the rest of our (probably short) lives.

        But I will never, ever forget who we left behind.

        Ever.