Sorry guys, I was having troubles. Now it's up.
~Chapter 8~
As they entered the clearing, it appeared Grace’s band had already arrived. She herself sat on one of the center stumps, patiently waiting for them, the avians. The clearing was littered with stumps and a few large rocks because this was where they had cut down a few of the trees to make their homes’ platforms and railings. This would have been a problem because of how touchy some of the plant controllers were, but it had turned out that many of the trees in this area were dead. They had never discovered why, but they had to use what they had. Grace nodded to Silver, who nodded back and took the stump across from her. Hope couldn’t see Jack right off hand, but she knew he must be close by; he never left Grace without his ideas and, er, problem solving skills. All of the experiments that had been milling around the area saw that both parties were there, so they finally took stumps or stood amongst the trees. They chatted, thoroughly integrated, as the Elementals and robotic-experiments showed up, not bound to a group. Engila sat next to Hope’s stump, not caring if she had a seat or not. Once the small, insignificant talk hushed, Silver began.
“People!” She began, not really seeing a better way to relate all of them. “We have gathered here today to… oh, we all know what we’re here for; to talk, calm rumors and such. But first, I must report an… incident. Yesterday, one of us, Faith, was captured by the scientists.” She paused as alarmed gasps rippled through the surrounding crowd. Hope’s head hung low with sadness. Silver continued, “We don’t know how she stands. No sign of her has been seen, so we take that she is truly in their hands.” A list of terrible things ran through Hope’s mind. They could test her, change her, torture her, kill her…
Grace broke into the train of thought. “We mourn for Faith. This is distressing news, but so is the fact that we are running low on food.” The crowd murmured about the sudden topic change. Hope shifted. Usually, things like that can only result to two things: arguments, or awkward silences…. Grace went on. “If you hadn’t noticed, our prey is beginning to run low. They’ve stopped releasing things into the forest for us to catch. And as they say, the rabbits aren’t breeding fast enough.”
“I see your point.” Silver nodded. “We need more food-“
Her sentence was cut off by someone else. “Can we have some other name? We should discuss that.”
She blinked, startled. “What do you mean by that?”
Paige, who was leaning against a tree, continued. “Well, we’ve been calling each other ‘experiments’ for a long time, but, if you think about it, do we want to be referred to as a ‘group of experiments’? I mean, you’ve got Avians, Terramorphs, Elementals, and Robotics experiments. See, there it is again! You can just call them cyborgs, everyone gets the idea, plus it’s a lot easier to say than ‘robotics experiment’. Elementals can just be called controllers, that’s kinda what we do. But what kind of a name is Terramorph? What does that even mean, anyways? And some people don’t even know that ‘avian’ is a real word! But, we’re still people. We don’t want to be called experiments.”
Whispers sprung up, agreeing with this.
Paige thought of something else. “And why should we call scientists white-coats? That’s about the dullest thing to call them, plus I’m pretty sure somebody’s copyrighted it.” Snickers arose at that point. “I mean, surely we come up with something more creative than that. I know they all wear white coats, but really?”
Grace shrugged. “Any suggestions?”
John, another air controller, took that invitation. “How about something to do with bleach? I bet they have to use a lot of it to keep their uniforms white after we knock them in the dirt.” Hoots and laughter replied to that.
The conversation sprung up everywhere, everyone having their own speculation.
“It could have something to do with frost or snow.”
“No, that’d be an insult to snow.”
“I kind of like bleachers.”
“Bleachers are like benches, aren’t they?”
“We could make it a multiple meaning word! Besides, it’s much easier than saying white-coats.”
“Yeah…” The conversations went on without real aim. Grace and Silver looked at each other and shrugged.
Grace sighed. “…I agree that Terramorphs may be a bit awkward to say. What else can we say?”
Silver shrugged. “ Really, what we’re going to end up being called are birds, even though I was actually trying to avoid that. Some people can get touchy about that, you know.”
Her friend nodded. “But, what can you call us? Mammalian? It’s just… Wrong…”
Silver nodded. She turned and whistled shrilly, causing the clearing to quickly fall silent, because they were listening or those with sensitive hearing were cringing in pain. “Look, I realize that to everyone this may be an important subject, but right now, here,” She pointed at the ground. “We need to talk about what is going to affect us for months to come. We. Need. More. Food. And if we can’t find it in the forest, we need to reach outside of the forest.”
…Silence.
Hope shifted again. What are we supposed to do? We’re surrounded by an electrified fence, and it’s not exactly like there’s a fast food restaurant within reach. She sighed.
“We need to raid the lab.” Jack finally made his appearance, squatting in his dirty cargo pants and t-shirt on a stump right behind his leader’s.
Grace nodded. “The best solution I’ve found is to ready a full scale assault. It won’t be easy, but it should be worth it.”
Silver considered this, but another onlooker called out before she spoke. “Yes, but, how do we get in? We don’t have a plan.”
Grace smiled, her sandy, polka-dotted ears twitching slightly in anticipation. “Well now, that’s why we’re all gathered here, isn’t it?”
Jack sighed. He had never liked social gatherings.
The forest was buzzing with expectation. The meeting had gone relatively well, and now everyone was getting organized. The only one who was not actively doing something was Syron. He sat, hidden in the branches of a tree, watching several people, monitoring their actions. No one saw him; he had been practicing stealth for years, and his black clothes helped. He watched, first of all, Silver ordering the other birds around. She sent patrols out to keep the area clear, and she also kept glancing around to check things; see if Sam was there, see where Hope was, etc. Syron switched his gaze, watching Hope as she paced on the ledge outside her hut. She looked like her gut was all knotted up, when someone’s almost in pain but it only makes them terribly uncomfortable. He shrugged and looked away, to another random person who wandered into his gaze: Merlin. He walked around, obviously feeling somewhat misplaced in all the work… But why? Merlin slipped out through the trees, promptly morphing into his falcon form. Syron watched the sunlight glint off his dusky feathers and he flew swiftly, ever so slightly above the trees. He squinted as he got farther away, finally diving into the trees.
“Hmmm…” He kept staring at where Merlin disappeared, wondering. Then, he vanished.
She slithered through the shadows of the silent forest. Her dark brown scales glinted in the midday light. Rayne, in her king-cobra form, glanced across the forest floor, to where Ebony, a black mamba, moved into the agreed position. With a slight nod, they slid forward in unison, hiding among the grass as they broke from the cover of the trees. They pressed up against the cold outer wall of the lab, their part done. For now.
Matt nodded to his companions. “They’re in position. Go.”
Flynn and Payne nodded. They shifted into bird forms and took wing. They skimmed the tops of the trees, remaining hidden until they dove at the lab guards, crying and calling. Payne lunged at one’s hair as Flynn did at another’s face, thoroughly distracting them.
“Go!” Rayne hissed, mostly to herself. She slipped forward to the closest guard as Ebony snuck behind the other. Aiming carefully, she reared back before lunging forward. She struck his leg, right in the vital blood vein. He cried out as Rayne recoiled and Flynn pulled him over. The guards fell to the ground, both mortally wounded by deadly snakebites. Truthfully, they had no idea how pure the snake venom was, so either they would be dead in a few minutes, or at least out for a while… A long while. Flynn cawed, signifying that the door, their main means of entry, had been secured.
Hope, in bird form, led Squad one consisting of herself, Kate, Pierce, and Zane. They advanced to the doors and circled from above, on guard in case some scientist got smart and decided to check on the guards. Squad two- consisting of Astrid, Emily, Merlin escorting Mark and Engila- landed nearby and made their way over to the lab doors. Hope watched overhead as Engila pulled apart the control panel to short circuit or hack the electronic lock, whichever came first.
Engila pulled a cord from somewhere, though Hope couldn’t tell where, and connected it to the inner workings of the pad. I suppose that’s one of the pros about being part computer. Mark gave her suggestions about how to override the panel and squeeze past the firewalls. He kept glancing at the door, causing her to do so, too. For all they knew, alarms could be going crazy inside.
With a whoop from Engila the doors slid open. Within moments, all sorts of animals and such were pouring out of the woods. As the elementals reached the front of the line, Rachel, the best earth elemental, summoned up a boulder to wedge itself in the door, holding it open. Silver and Grace weaved in and out of the crowd, trying to keep the fragile order that they had created by trying to command a group of teenagers. They flowed with the group into the lab. The squads broke up and groups formed to ransack the place. Hope dove inside and quickly glanced around. Engila was staying near the wall, waiting for the crowd to thin out slightly as birds shot up stairs and bewildered bleachers (as the scientists were now known) began freaking out. She demorphed, sliding in next to her.
“Where should we go now?” Hope asked her cousin above the din.
“Well, I’m going to look for a computer to hack. That is my best feat, you know.” She turned to rush off into a hole in the flood, but hope placed a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m coming with you.” She informed Engila blatantly. I can’t lose you too.
Engila hesitated, then replied as if she had read Hope’s thoughts. “Alright.” They sped off together, winding around the scene of chaos; birds were diving on screaming employees, bears were ripping flimsy doors off their hinges, and cats were everywhere, swiping at shins of their antagonists and sniffing out the staff lounge. Hope held onto Engila as she passed into the staff lounge, supposedly tracking the signal of a nearby computer. Xylon and a wolf were attacking the vending machine, breaking the lock and pulling out all the bagged and wrapped snacks.
Engila kept going, as if not noticing the other commotion, focused on her goal. Hope gasped as she led her to a small door on the far side of the room. Bleachers were running out of the doors, trying to find some place to hide. A few dove under tables and chairs, others just fainted on the spot. Engila pushed through the heavy door with her cousin hot on her heels. She made a beeline for the nearest computer while Hope stopped, bewildered. There were rows upon rows of computers, most of their screens black. Engila booted it up and whipped out the files, all of them: she quickly scrolled through all the documents about the project, becoming frustrated as she was denied access to a few of the most important files. She moved on, not wanting to waste time. Hope observed that there were only two other people in the room- two scientists, huddling under a table on the other side of the room. Actually, one was out cold and the other seemed to have no intention of moving into harm’s way, even though she had a large walking stick. She watched Hope, more curious than freaked out that her own experiments were attacking the laboratory.
Hope saw Engila stiffen as she opened a file on one of the experiments. Hope saw it was hers; she must have wanted to see just what was in them.
“Hope…” Her voice relayed nervousness, as if she had discovered a nasty secret.
Hope leaned over her, reading the screen. Engila scrolled down… and down, and down. They had a picture of her house. They had biographies of her siblings, and status bars that all read either ‘dead’ or ‘alive’. Both her parents were dead. Her whole family was dead, except for her older brother, who apparently was locked up in a penitentiary. Engila scrolled down more: They had logs upon logs of her schooling, the grade of every test she did and the exact date of every assignment she turned in. It had things on all her friends, this time without the delightful ‘dead or alive’ bars. It said everything about her; what she was good at, her personality, anyone she had ever hung out with, any major decisions she had made. Finally, after what seemed like months, they saw the bottom margin, and one line. It read: ‘In good health. Fine test subject.’
Engila slowly lifted her gaze to her cousin. “Hope, they have this much info on all of us. Do you know what this means?” Hope just stayed there, in stunned silence, glancing up at the scientists across the room. The woman was still watched her pensively, as if she actually had no idea what they were talking about. Hope looked back at her cousin, who found it very hard to finish her statement. “It means that they’ve been stalking every single one of us. For years.”
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