Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I woke up, my heart pounding, my hand over it. It was the Dream again. Man, I hated that thing. I had it at least once every week. And I could never remember what it was about. There was only one thing that stuck with me-I crouched in a corner, and something was creeping, slowly, toward me. And in the Dream, I knew that I was going to die.

My name is Echo. Echo Eleeya Eensey. I am a bird person. I am about seventeen years old. I live…mostly with my best friends, Radar and Sonar. But sometimes we separate, for safety’s sake. And I hate every minute of it. However, it must be done.

I am the oldest. I was the first experiment gone wrong. They didn't know my mother was pregnant with twins and put too much bird DNA. Seven percent, to be exact. I was born with 5% of it (causing me to be slightly defective) and my twin brother Silence got the perfect 2%. Silence was perfect. They experimented on mostly me and figured out what went right with Silence to create Radar. She is the most perfect of them all. Too perfect, even for the scientists. That's why they made Max and the other flock.

Because I am defective I am the shortest. I am five feet, two inches with black bird eyes. They look like human eyes except they are almost all black. I have a colored ring around where my pupil would be. I can change my hair color and the colored part of my eye at will.

Originally, my hair was black/dark brown with flecks of gold and red in it. My wings are completely black except for the bits of gold underneath. I would tell you my wingspan but it would be easier to tell you that one wing is shorter than the other because during an experiment, Radar (when she was younger) distracted a scientist by breaking loose of her cage and the guy severed my wing. I was awake for this and it was the first time I had ever felt pain. I was born without pain receptors but after that day I started developing pain receptors. My wing grew into my shoulder so I can’t tuck it back all the way and it looks a bit odd.

Instead of blushing I glow, I can't see in the daytime so I wear sunglasses. My night vision is amazing. Better than Radars and I can also make a strong wind by flapping my wings a certain way. I can scream at intensely high pitches, making machines fall out of the sky. I have fang and retractable claws because apparently I am also 1% eraser. We are still trying to figure out how that happened.

But no time to dwell on past offenses! Time to get up and start making breakfast for me and Radar.

Now what should I do today, I thought. Maybe I should put hot sauce in a breakfast sandwich? Hmmm… Oh yeah. Me and Ray like to pull practical jokes on each other. You think hot sauce is ‘too mean’? Well, she once glued fur all over me, making me think that I had gone full-morph into an eraser. Yeah, hot sauce was good. Now if only I could just find it…

Finally, there it was. In the refrigerator, next to the ketchup. I love ketchup on everything. I got them both and sprinkled a little hot sauce on Radar’s sandwich. I dumped a lot of ketchup on mine and put the bottles both back in the fridge.

“Radar! You want food, come and get it!” I called. I sat down at the table and stared hungrily at my meal. Radar emerged from our bedroom in the hotel we were sharing. She was bleary-eyed and she kept stumbling. She grabbed her meal and took a bite, at the exact same time that I opened my mouth wide, took a big bite and-

“Yeow!” I shrieked. “Yahh, ahh hottt!!!” My mouth was on fire. I ran to the sink and started chugging water. When the burning feeling had subsided, I went to the fridge and liked closely at the two bottles of sauce. I opened the ketchup bottle, sniffed suspiciously, and tasted a little. The tip of my tongue burned.

“Radar,” I moaned. “How could you do this to me? That burned!” But she was gone. Oh, Radar…

Before...

You may have heard of Max and her flock. But what you may not know is that there were bird experiments before them. We were the first. They came after us. But our story has not yet been told. We will survive. We will get our story told. We’re not giving up yet.

Fly on
Fly Strong
Fly Forever

Echo Eleeya Eensey