Waking With Wings

A Story Response to Maximum Ride

I blinked open my sleepy eyes, yawning. I had had a horrible night of sleep, and I had been looking forward to sleeping in. So much for that plan, I thought, groaning. I sat up straight, trying to wake myself up. It was not until I had adjusted to the light that I noticed that I was not in my bedroom anymore.

The room I was in looked like the inside of a science lab. It had bleached white walls that smelled of chemicals, and there were rows of metal crates that seemed to stretch endlessly along them. I was in the crate in the farthest corner from the door, so I couldn’t see much outside of the room except for an empty gray hallway. There was nothing to suggest how I had gotten into this building, or any way I could get out.

Examining the room around me, growing more worried by the second, I saw that there were other people in the crates besides just me. Not people, I realized, feeling my stomach clench in disgust, creatures. Every one of the cages was filled with some sort of mutated human, with everything from little girls with three arms to teenage boys without faces or hair. It was all I could do not to throw up on the spot. It was as if I had stumbled upon some sort of a twisted freak show in the middle of a hospital.

Where am I? I thought, panicked. Is this a dream? I pinched myself in the arm, feeling terrified when I didn’t awaken back in my house. It appeared that I was really here, somehow. Whoever, or whatever, had brought me here obviously must have had a reason, but I certainly didn’t resemble any of the other misfortunate people here. Did I? I felt to make sure I had all of my limbs and facial features, just in case.

I stayed huddled up in my cage for what seemed like eternity until I heard a noise coming from outside of the room. I tilted my head toward the sound, and was startled when a man in a long white coat stepped through the doorway and came to stand in front of me. Two other men quickly followed, each carrying a notebook and a felt-tip pen. Their faces were hard and sophisticated, and none of them seemed to feel any sympathy for me or the others in the cages. They simply passed their gazes over their prisoners until their eyes all stopped on me.

Trying not to breathe too loudly, I stared up at the three men in white, my eyes wide with fear. “Yes, that’s the one,” The first man exclaimed, “Our newest experiment. Would you like to see it? It’s quite an impressive version of the past human-aviary experiments we’ve done.” He spoke in a dead-sounding monotone, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Human-aviary? Experiment? The words made no sense. After all, I was fairly sure that ‘aviary’ was a word in reference to flying creatures such as birds.

The man who had first spoken reached out a gloved hand toward the door of my cage. I recoiled instantly, shrinking into the back corner. I wasn’t about to let them get at me, not when I was still clueless to who they were and what they were walking about. The man pulled the lock and the door of the crate swung open with a dull creaking noise. “Get out,” a voice commanded me strictly. I obeyed, cautiously stepping into the bright room, never taking my eyes off of the man who had spoken.

“What do you want with me?” I choked out in a broken voice. It would’ve sounded much more menacing if I hadn’t been dehydrated and terrified at the same time, but it was all I could manage.

The men didn’t reply, they acted as if they hadn’t heard my question. The three of them walked around me in a slow circle, nodding in approval and writing on their notepads. I felt like a science exhibit in a glass case under the curious eyes of the spectators. Who knows, maybe I was.

“The wings are 16 feet when extended fully, and as you can see they retract completely and flatly against its back,” The man who seemed to be leading the examination told the others. They nodded again in response. Wings? I gasped in surprise as the word echoed through my brain. I don’t have wings!

The curiosity overwhelming me, I put a hand behind my back and felt between my shoulder blades. Feeling nothing, I reached my hand under my sweatshirt and gasped at what my fingers touched. Feathers. Bone. There were wings attached to my back, just as they had said.

I resisted the urge to throw up. How had this had happened to me? Where was my family, my house? Before I had the chance to start throwing accusations at the men in the white coats, I was interrupted by a new voice, coming in from the hallway. A tall man with a disconcerting grin on his face entered the room and folded his arms across his chest, giving me an positive look. “I’m Jeb Batchelder,” he said, “and welcome to the School.”