The Sixth Lab

A young boy was dragged out of a cramped and dimly lit room that had been bolted shut only seconds earlier. From inside, the boy had no idea the group of people were coming to yank him out and into the hall, yet a group dressed in haughty lab attire -the White-coats- snagged him from the outside and quickly covered the boy in sensors. They pushed him into a giant room that spanned across most of the floor. The white-coats shoved the boy deeper into the room, the room that the boy had already seen too many times before. Looking down at his feet he remembered that three of the four walls were covered in television screens and computer monitors, and the fourth wall had been turned into a colossal sliding window. Looking up at the walls he watched as one by one the screens crackled to life as each sensor was put on his body. The boy listened to the storm outside, and the sound of the booming thunder crashed into his chest like a bullet, while the brilliant burst of lightning forced his miserable life to flash before his eyes. Two of the white-coats began to slowly open the glass wall as a different one fastened a tracker onto the boy’s neck. Another low and definitive rumble echoed from outside, and the boy’s hands quivered violently to the sound. The floor seemed to sway below his feet. Without even noticing, or caring, about the boy’s shakiness, the white-coats shoved the boy forward. His toes were the only thing keeping him from going over the edge, all the white-coats would have had to do was breathe on him in order to make him plummet to the ground below. He looked down at the cement that sat hundreds of feet below him but still seemed to close for comfort. Time became drowsy, and everything started to move as if the world was about to stop in its tracks, except... it didn’t. He looked back at the white-coats, he knew what was coming, but he didn’t want to even admit it to himself. In spite of his fear, he focused on relaxing his shoulders, which he hadn’t noticed had tensed up and tried to make sure his knees were bent so his legs would loosen up. In a final attempt to rid himself of his fear, the boy gulped, hoping it would swallow his distress enough for him to be okay. His shaking stopped for a moment, but the moment didn’t last long, for the boy was soon thrown out the large window with one final shove. The boy plummeted towards the ground, and he thought about how easy it would be to just allow himself to collide with the cement. However, just before his body made an impact with the ground, the boy focused on the muscles in his back and two elegant eagle wings appeared with a thunderous snap. His wings caught the air and he began to quickly soar upward... towards the storm.

You’re wondering what happens to that boy after that, aren’t you? You’re worried about the aberration that is the boy with the giant eagle wings living in the lab? Don’t worry, just like any other day, after the storm, he was ushered back inside and was locked back up in his room. The funny thing is, you wouldn’t presuppose that he’d actually be talking to you right now, yet that’s exactly what’s happening. Hello, my name’s Alec; however, if you’re reading this off of a medical file of some sort, you’re more likely to know me as experiment A14P6Y. I was the child created in a test tube and given just enough avian DNA to have the wings of an eagle and the vision of a raptor. I’m not entirely sure how much exactly you know, you may know about us going rogue, but that’s not till later in our story, so I’ll just go back in time to falling out the window, but this time around I’ll let you see the story unfold through my eyes.

Hypothetically speaking, of course, imagine that I didn’t open my wings before I hit the ground. Do you know what would happen? If you are reading this from a medical file you should already know, for that has already happened, but I’ll elaborate for those of you without such a luxury. A few months before that storm they had forced me to run a drill of the exact same scenario, same room, same sensors, same fall, but what wasn’t the same was how I ended up back inside. I fell and I couldn’t get my wings to open, like a baby bird falling from their nest, and I just couldn’t get my fight or flight response to kick in, and yes, that was a bird pun. I broke most of my bones in my body and had to stay on a surgery table for a couple weeks. I was supposed to start my flight training back up again as soon as my wings had healed, but instead, the storm happened and they threw me into the wind without a care of if I ended up back on that table. Thankfully I had found myself flying again before much more of me had been broken. I flew upward, and I got as close as I could to the massive storm cloud that sat above my head. More thunder sounded from the cloud, and the feathers of my wings rippled. I looked up at the cloud before looking back down towards the window I had fallen out of. The ground started to get closer to me as I realized I wasn’t flapping my wings. My shoulders tensed up again as I quickly beat my wings twice to raise in the air once more. A small electric jolt zapped through my arm, and the current suffused through the rest of my body. I looked back down at the window and took a deep breath before tucking in my wings and allowing myself to plummet towards the earth once again.

The white-coats locked me back into my compact room as quickly as they had dragged me out, but this time they left a candle on the small desk that sat in the corner. In the firelight, I examined my wings, unfolding them slowly and watching the water drip off my feathers. Inspecting the candle as the flames danced in the darkness, I waited for the white-coats to return, to tell me I screwed up, that I had to go do everything again, but they didn’t... they stayed away for the rest of the night. Folding my wings around myself like a blanket I laid down on the miniature cot that took up the majority of my room and forced myself to fall asleep. It didn’t take long to drift off into a dream, and in my dream, I find myself back in the large room, but now the window is gone. I’m locked in the room and I look around for a way out, my wing hits one of the monitors and it falls down to reveal a door behind the screen. I tear the other monitor off the wall and open the door to show that behind the secret door is the outside world. I jump outside and fly back to the underside of the storm, the difference this time though, is when I fall down to the ground I’m no longer at the lab, instead I’m on a hill that was covered in hundreds of colorful flowers. Among the flowers, I spot a brown aster, and I pluck the amber brown flower from the ground and watch as it slowly disintegrates in my fingers. I let out a small sigh as I walk down the hill, and eventually reach the bottom only to find a giant set of gates blocking my path. I saw a wondrous haven from within the gates, but I couldn’t get through the lock that wrapped around the bars between the doors. I kicked the metal door as hard as I could, but I couldn’t get it to budge. I pulled at the chain and watched as the metal began to crack; however, as I saw the chain snap and fall to the ground, I was woken up from the sound of a new storm, one far worse than the one before, and by the sound of white-coats busting my door open once again.