Chapter 7: Family Affairs

Chapter 7: Family Affairs Nudge POV I was lost. I couldn’t remember whether we had come from the left or the right. Max must have seen the look on my face because she asked, “You do know which way to go don’t you Nudge?” “I know after this it will be the 1st left, second right, second left, and it will be somewhere down that corridor, but I’m not sure which way now.” I replied, trying to sound confident. “Should we split up?” “I suppose we’ll have to.” Max sighed. “You and Iggy take the left,” she said looking at Will. “Me and Nudge will take the right. Remember, 1st left, second right, second left.” “Righto.” said Will. We started to walk away when I heard Will speak. “Be careful Max.” he said. Max and I both turned around. “I will.” Max replied, sounding confused. “Why? Are you worried about me?” “So what if I am” Will said back smiling. They both looked at each other and then turned around and walked away. I followed Max. I smiled to myself. “What are you smiling at?” said Max suddenly, looking down at me. “Oh, nothing.” I answered, trying to keep a straight face. Max looked at me, and then away, smirking to herself. We turned a corner and there, on the left was a room labelled Records. We hadn’t encountered anyone on our way here. Usually there would’ve been the odd eraser patrolling the corridors, especially after we broke out. There wasn’t even any on the roof. Something was going on and it didn’t seem good. Max walked up to the door and slowly turned the handle. She pushed on the door a bit and it opened. She looked at me, smiled, and the pushed it open all the way. We stepped inside. All there was was a standard PC sitting on a desk, with a lone chair in front of it, on the wall to the right. The rest of the room was bare, painted grey, no windows and a single bulb hanging in the center of the room. “Hmm?” I pondered sarcastically. “Where to start?” Max laughed and we headed for the computer which looked fairly outdated. I sat down in the chair and loaded it up. We needed to enter a password, but after a few minutes of hacking we were in. Microsoft hasn’t got nothing on me! We loaded up on to a standard desktop, except it had folder after folder on it, all labelled something obscure like ‘4££µ(‘ and ‘ƒ7w’. Inside these folders were more folders, and more inside of those. “Well this is going to take forever.” groaned Max. “Not if I have anything to say about it.” I replied happily. I went into the start bar and opened search. I typed in ‘Avian Human Experiment” And hit return. Instantly a file popped up named ‘hae#1-8’. I opened it and instantly the faces of the flock popped up as well as Will’s and Emily’s. I double clicked on Emily’s face which sent me to another page. On it had a lot of information about Emily. Full Name, Place of Birth, then Current Location. Under it was a sentence saying ‘Due to safety reasons Experiment #8 has been transferred to Facility B in Birmingham, UK.’

“I’ll give them a buzz” said Max. She held up the walkie to her mouth, held down the button and whispered “Hey guys, we found it.” There was a slight pause when Iggy’s voice came through quietly “Ok, we’re on our way.” I had continued looking through the information and then saw something bad. “Oh no!” I gasped and held my hand up to my mouth. “What? What is it?” Max asked. I pointed, hand shaking, at a category named Parents. Underneath it says deceased. “D-Do you think Will knows?” I stuttered. “No, he would have at least mentioned it.” She replied, also putting her hand over her mouth. “Do you thin-“ Suddenly there was a loud bang and we turned our heads round to see Ari standing in the doorway. “Well, what do we have here?” he started to say “Looks like some birds have been-“ when without warning there was a loud crack and Ari slumped the floor. We looked down at his unconscious body then back up to see Will standing in the doorway, with a fire extinguisher with a large dent at his feet. Will looked up from Ari to us and laughed “Looks like we came just in time! Hey Iggy, it’s safe!” he called. He walked into the room, followed by Iggy and Max nudged me discreetly. I quickly turned off the screen. “What you got?” asked Will leaning over my shoulder. “Nothing now” I replied quickly, putting my ability to lie on cue to use. “But before it did we found out where your sister is.” “Where?” he asked, looking forcefully in my eyes. He wasn’t smiling anymore; his face had gone hard and stern. Should I tell him about his parents? “Birmingham.” Max said shortly, distracting him from me, as if she could tell I was going to tell him. “In the United Kingdom.” “In England?! Well how-“ this time he was cut off by the sound of a voice saying “Intruder Alert! All personnel to Room 108!” Uh oh! “We’ve got to split! And fast!” shouted Max over the repeating voice. She ran out the room, followed by Will. I grabbed Iggy’s hand and ran out the room with him. This time Max knew the way back. We ran down corridors and found the exit we used when we escaped quite easily. We ran outside. I counted 10 whitecoats, 20 feet in front of us, blocking us in. But they didn’t have wings. “In the air!” shouted Max. She had already started to unfurl her wings and take off. Me and Iggy followed suit and took off a good 10 feet before we reached the whitecoats. Will had a harder time. He had unfurled his wings, and was trying to take off, but still wasn’t that good at it. He got in the air, before he hit into one of the whitecoats and rolled down on to the floor. The whitecoats converged around him, trapping him. We were 50 feet in the air and looking down. “What’s going on?” Iggy hissed. “They’ve circle around him, got him trapped.” I said worriedly back. “Will!” Iggy called down. “Do like we practised! You can do it!” What was it they practised? I looked down at Will and saw him crouch down, and then, with all his force, jump up, and start to flap his wings instantly. He caught the wind and started to rise. Whoa! It had taken me months to get that right! He caught up with us and we started to

fly away, back towards the forest, somehow knowing no-one would be following us. Not yet at least. Gazzy POV “Have they gone back for Emily?” I asked Fang, watching them fly off. He nodded, and continued to walk past us. “Well what do we do then?” called Angel after him. “Get firewood, start a fire. I’m going to find us some breakfast.” He shouted back as he walked through the tree line. I looked at him as he walked away, confused. “Well what are we supposed to do if an Eraser attacks” I whispered under my breath. “They’re not going to come.” said Angel, in an everyday sort of tone. “Not anymore.” “What? What do you mean anymore?” I exclaimed, shocked. “Oh nothing, just something I overheard someone thinking.” She continued. “Overheard who?!” I asked hurriedly. “I don’t know, but they had a very low voice.” she said, thinking.” Never mind, shall we get the firewood?” She got up and skipped off into the woods. I watched her go, completely amazed. I got up and chased her. We had collected the firework and started a fire. We were just waiting for Fang to come back, but he was taking his time. “Do you think we’ll ever find our parents?” Angel said suddenly. This completely threw me off guard. “Yeah, I’m sure we will. I mean Iggy found his didn’t he, why can’t we find ours?” “I hope we don’t find them.” she said bluntly. She was full of surprises today! “Why not? I asked, confused. “Because the flocks my family.” We were silent after this. The more I thought about it, the more I started to see her way of thinking. We had spent practically our whole lives with the flock. She was right. The flock was our family. Once again, Angel surprised me, this time by making me jump, when she said happily, “They’re back!” I looked to my left to see only 4 figures landing. They didn’t find Emily then. Max came up to us and asked, “Where’s Fang?” “Hunting.” I replied bluntly. “But did you find anything?” “Yeah.” said Will, angrily. “She’s in England!” “England?” I asked. “In Europe?” “Yep!” he said sarcastically. “Great isn’t it!” “Umm, Will.” asked Max as kindly as she could. “Do you mind if we talked in private?” She gestured to the flock as she said it. “You know, family stuff.” “Yeah whatever, I’ve got to think some stuff through anyway.” He got up and walked off. He was angry. Angry that he hadn’t found his sister. “So?” I asked. “Did you find out anything about our parents?” “No, nothing.” Said Iggy quietly. Parents were always a bit of a touchy subject around him now. We were silent.

“What I really wanted to talk about was whether we were going to help him or not. Should we help him get his sister or not?” Max said looking at the three of us. “I think we should. He’s as good as one of us now. We should help him.” I said confidently. I could imagine what it was like to lose your sister. As I thought this I looked at Angel. She was staring at Max. She had that look on her face. Like when… “I think we should help him too.” piped in Iggy. “Like Gazzy said, he’s as good as one of the flock already. We can’t exactly abandon him either. It wouldn’t be fair on him.” Then out of the trees came Fang, carrying 3 rabbits, looking angry. “What do you mean help him!?” he hissed at us, being sure to make Will couldn’t hear him. “You don’t know anything about him! He could be a mole for all you know!” “If he’s a mole then why haven’t the Erasers come then?” Iggy said sternly to Fang. “You may not know anything about him but we do! The only reason you don’t is you haven’t made an effort to get to know him!” Fang looked at us, and seeing that none of us were going to be swayed, he threw the rabbits to the ground. “You can trust him if you want to, but I don’t!” At this he began to storm off. “Enjoy your breakfast!” He walked off the way he came from, and into the tree line. None of us said anything. We had never heard fang shout like that before. What was up with him? I looked around and thought I saw someone in the trees. I looked closer, and seeing nothing it, dismissed it. Angel POV “I’m going to go down to my stream, OK Max?” I said, already walking off. “Ok, but be careful!” I heard her call back. Last night we decided to help Will get to England and get his Emily back. Fang wasn’t happy. He didn’t trust him. I knew that Will was good, but Fang refused to believe it. I also knew that his parents were dead. I had read max’s mind last night. That was why I was going to the stream. For help to decide whether or not I should tell him. I didn’t think it fair that max was keeping it a secret. Then again, I had some secrets she didn’t know about. I arrived at the stream and put my hand in, cupped it, and sipped some water. Then making sure no-one was around, I bent down closer and whispered “Hello?” Then I saw it, a small trout, at least that’s what he called himself. He poked his head out the water and replied. “Hello Angel. How are you?” “I need help.” I said to the fish. “I know something about Will, but I’m not sure whether I should tell him or not?” “What about Max? Does she know?” The trout asked. “Yes, but she doesn’t know I know.” I replied. “Well then I think you should confront her about it. Tell her what you would do, what you think she should do.” He said confidently. “OK then” I sighed. I suppose he was right but I still thought I should tell Will. “Thanks. I smiled at him. “No problem” he replied. “Take care now.”

“You too. Bye!” I got up and started back towards camp. I loved how I could talk to animals. I didn’t mind that the others didn’t know. It was my little secret. Sometimes it was nice to have your own secrets. But Will deserved to know about his parents. I reached the camp and went up to Max, who was sitting in a tree across the camp. I jumped up and sat next to her. “Hey sweetie.” She said softly. “That was quick. What were you-“ “I think you should tell Will about his parents.” I interrupted. She didn’t look surprised. “I thought I saw you concentrating hard last night.” She said. “Well?” I asked. “I know he deserves to know, but what with his sister and everything, I don’t think he could handle it at the moment.” She looked at me calmly. “I will tell him, but not yet. Soon.”