"Ow!" I cried, holding my throbbing forehead. Now the world was spinning in and out of focus. I unconsciously leaned against Genny for support.

"Excuse me?" She gasped in his face. "Who do you think you are?"

Genny stood protectively in front of me. While the enraged Tyler calmed his shaking fists.

"Where were you?" He demanded.

"Where were you? I couldn't find anyone after you abandoned me!" I protested, wincing as I touched the large purple bump forming.

"Some of the guards had followed us, we thought you had burned in that fire." He growled.

Genny watched our argument with growing curiosity. Of course she didn't understand why we were yapping about like chihuahuas, but it was interesting.

"Why didn't you go back to help Casey?" he accused, his voice cracking.

"She knew she wasn't going to make it out, she told me herself. It was the choice she made and there's nothing you can do to change that." I answered, my voice low.

He roared, startling the whole room before storming off to who-knows-where. I winced as my head throbbed, this was just not my day.

"Are you okay? That looks really bad." Genny fussed over me.

"I think I'm gonna grab an icepack and lie down, go ahead and enjoy your dinner." I mumbled wearily.

I shuffled my way to our mini-hospital. To my surprise I found Justin sitting in a chair, holding a frozen gel ice-pack to his eyes and tapping away on a phone. The pillow behind him had some crazy butterfly wing pattern that reminded me more of a fairy.

"What happened to you?" I asked, opening the refrigerator.

He started and look up, I could see I had scared the heck out of him. The frightened look on his face turned to a mask of curiosity.

He removed his own icepack, to reveal a swollen black eye, I winced in sympathy.

"New kid punched me, what happened to you?" There was something strained about his voice, and the worried looks he kept sending me were unmissable.

"This kid didn't happen to be about ye high with black hair and a temper to match a tornado did he?" I asked.

"You too huh? I'm just glad I won't be sharing a room with him." He commented dryly before going back to his game.

I took my icepack with me and retired to my bed. I was starving, but I wanted sleep more. So I laid down with the icepack pressed against my head, which felt amazingly good after todays events. I managed to drifts into a light slumber. Until much later when shouting woke me up.

"What are you doing here? This isn't you room."

"It is now pipsqueak, deal with it."

I groaned inwardly. Tyler had come to join the room. This was just perfect.

"Don't call me that!"

"Then try kidnapping me more subtly next time."

"What time is it?" I grumbled, leaning over the edge, my ice packs had melted and my pillow was soaked.

Tyler gave me an incredulous look. "What? You're here too? Just great. I have to share a room with skinny boy here and mister feathers."

I snorted. "Mister feathers, seriously?"

"Speak for yourself, they're all over the place." Justin added.

I glanced around and for the first time noticed indeed, there were a lot of snow white feathers drifting around. I examined a wing, it was looking patchy in some places.

"I think I'm molting." I commented, somewhat fascinated.

They both stared at me for a second. I shrugged, this was weird, even for me. And I had a lot of weird stuff happen to me.

"That's slightly grotesque, I'm not sure how to feel about this." Justin shivered.

"Well I had better not start losing scales." Tyler asked jokingly, spreading out one of his own huge bat-like wigs that were strangely generally missable when folded.

Justin's jaw dropped, but he closed it quickly and struggled to keep a normal face. Unfortunately, Tyler noticed this immediately.

"What? You think I was normal like all the boring kids in this jailhouse?" He folded his arms indignantly.

"No, I just never noticed up until now that you were, special."

"Oh that's original." He said dryly, crawling into his own bed, which was on the opposite side side of the room.

I ran my hand through my hair and sighed. "I hope you guys don't mind, but I've had a headache all afternoon and would appreciate if you stuffed it."

"Sure, everyone needs their beauty sleep Will."

I didn't bother replying, the pounding against my skull was getting harder to ignore. I found some relief in smashing my face into the pillow.

I just had to survive until morning.

When I woke up, it was seven AM. I slithered blearily out of bed and threw on a new pair of clothes. I took a quick detour to the bathrooms to splash cold water on my face, and found my bruise had subsided a lot, and was barely noticeable anymore. Then I hunted around the medical office for some pain killers, as one of the nurses suggested when I came to them with my problem.

I can generally say I felt a lot better after that.

Not that many people were up, since it was Sunday and most slept in. Genny was awake, I discovered, but she was walking around in PJ's still.

"Hey there." I greeted.

"Mm," she answered. "Sorry, I am not a morning person."

"You want some coffee or something? I bet I could find you some." I offered, joining her on the couch in the common room.

"I hate coffee," she admitted. "I bet we could convince Mr. Wales to bust open the hot cocoa safe."

"Why is it in a safe?" I asked laughingly.

"Long story."

A few minutes later Mr. Wales had joined us, and a few other who had heard of hot chocolate in the living room. I sipped my mug tentatively, it was still slightly scalding, but it was good hot chocolate. Mr. Wales had called it his family recipe.

"The locals around here call it Sukkuladi," he explained when he dropped a ball of vanilla ice cream in.

"Mr. Wales?" I asked once most people had left and it was only Genny and me.

"Yes William?"

"That thing on the cliff yesterday, I don't think it was a normal human." I explained.

"Why is that?"

"Because, I thought I saw something, so I tried to read it's mind. And-"

"And you collapsed, from some noise you said." Finished Genny.

"It's thoughts weren't human, it sounded like claws on a chalk board."

Mr. Wales rubbed his stubbly beard. "You're saying it might be another Lab subject."

I nodded. "Maybe."

"Uncle Rich?" Asked a weary looking Justin from the doorframe. Wearing another one of his stylish hats. Come to think of it, I had never seen him without one, he even slept in those hats.

"Good morning Justin, would you care for a mug of hot cocoa?"

He rubbed his eyes. "Sure, but first explain why I have to share rooms with the guy who punched me yesterday."

I noticed with a start, he no longer had a black eye. It was like it had disappeared over night.

"I spoke to him yesterday, he promised he wouldn't do it again. Meanwhile, I'm afraid we've never had so many join us at once. There is simply no more boy's rooms open until we can expand and build some more." Mr. Wales got up and left the room to fetch Justin a drink.

"Didn't he hit you too Will?" Genny questioned, leaning over to get a good look at my face.

"I heal fast." I shrugged.

Justin slumped over and tripped wearily about the room for another couch. He collapsed on it, and proceeded to lie there unmoving. I was half convinced he had fallen asleep.

"Wow," I commented.

"I've never seen him sleep in this late. I wonder if he got any sleep last night?" Genny questioned, more to herself since I had slept like a log.

She stared at him for a few seconds before poking my arm. "Maybe he can't block you while he's sleeping, try reading his mind."

"Okay, but this is the last time, I do respect people's privacy you know." I sighed, putting two fingers to my head and concentrating, it wasn't that hard anymore.

Still nothing, just dead silence. Except for the innermost chattering of the kids in the room besides us. A little girl thinking about the extravagant life of her doll. And older boy dreaming of a skateboard. Nothing from Justin.

"Nope." I sipped my drink again, finding it had cooled down enough to drink in large quantities.

Mr. Wales returned then holding another steaming mug. He smiled at the sight of his nephew knocked out on the sofa. He set down the cup on the table then ruffled Justin's hair, sitting down beside him and pulling out a book. Justin moaned softly but didn't get up.

"You want to do study buddies? I got some homework I need catching up on." I suggested to Genny.

"Me too, but after breakfast, you're probably starving."

"Aha, I'm not the only one who can read minds!"

After a hearty morning meal of being scolded by kitchen maids to stop eating so much, Genny and I hunted for a place to finish up on school work. There was a study room, but I didn't really feel comfortable in that small space with tons of other kids.

We ended up just going back the living rooms and hitting the books there. Genny had and Ipod and we listened to her soundtrack. Which I liked, she had good taste in music.

She sung softly to the song, blushing when she realized I had stopped to listen.

"You're good." I mused.

"Not that good," Genny waved
me off while I chuckled.

"You got the answer to problem five wrong Will." Justin mumbled from his bed on the couch.

I gaped at the piece of paper in my hand. "No I did not!"

"You forgot to add a zero."

I paused for a moment. "Huh."

"Told ya."

We went on like that for an hour. I kept getting math problems wrong and they would correct me. It wasn't my fault I hadn't done any schooling in what felt like forever. It wasn't until about noon Tyler decided to make an appearance.

"Where is the outside in this place? I've been wandering around for hours." He asked bluntly.

"Well there is a beach but-"

"Perfect! Take me there." He demanded.

"Why?" Asked Justin.

"I want to get out. This place is so stuffy." He sniffed.

Mr. Wales lowered his book. " I don't see why not. As long as you don't wander off, there's a mutant loose on the moors and I don't want any of you getting hurt."

Genny decided not to go, she still had homework. I needed to stretch my wings so I joined them. Mr. Wales managed to drag Justin along despite his protests.

As soon as a cold breeze blew against my skin I sighed and started running, spreading my wings out taking off after some prestigious flapping. It was harder for some reason, and when I looked back at my wings I was surprised to find several patches of feathers missing.

That's right, my mysterious molting. I could remember the last time this happened, it had been hard to carefully dispose of the millions of feathers that randomly dropped. Well then.

"Will!" Tyler called to me after a few minutes of me cruising around at high altitudes.

I started dropping until my feet skimmed the ground. Rocks flew into the air as I landed with flourish. Tyler was walking towards me, the look on his face was curiosity, instead of that smirk that meant he was going to insult someone.

"How do you do that?" He asked.

"Do what?"

"Fly, I've had these wings for as long as I can remember but I've never gotten off the ground."

I crossed my arms. "You want me to teach you how to fly."

"Yes, that's exactly what I want." He spread his wings out, large black and leathery. Tyler looked like a dragon, or a bat.

"Something I noticed is that your angling your wings wrong when you try to get of the ground. It's not back and forth, it's up and down, tip the edge forward so you push the air downward, and don't forget to jump. Otherwise you'll never have enough space to fully complete the down stroke."

He looked a bit confizzled. "Wow, it's harder than it looks."

"Not really, words make it seem more difficult. Just give it a shot, I'm sure you'll be fine."

He shrugged and jumped into the air, thankfully angling his wings downward. He managed to stay in the air for a few seconds before tipping forward and falling to the ground. He tumbled and rolled to a stop,

"That was great, you just need to get higher then cruise." I said.

This went on for the rest of the day. After a few hours I was teaching him how to properly ride air drafts. I could tell he was loving it. Flying was probably the most amazing feeling in the world.

"What's that?" He asked, pointing to the ground.

I looked to where his finger led. there was a person lying on the ground, but at an awkward unnatural angle. That couldn't be right.

"I don't know, let's check it out." I started dropping, Tyler tried to follow my lead but was going a lot faster. I sighed, he would learn eventually.

He had tripped on his landing and was spitting dirt out of his mouth. I flapped a few times before landing softly on the uneven grassy plain. Completely unharmed.

"Show off." He mumbled.

He looked towards the body, from this distance it looked feminine. Then Tyler gasped and started running towards her.

I felt my heart clench as I realized some places on her body were flowering blotches of red.

Tyler stopped just above her before stopped, then turning back to me. His eyes were wide, he looked afraid, I had never seen him scared before.

Then I recognized the body, and it was breathing. Which meant she was alive.

It was Casey.