by Kevin George
“We’re free to go now?” Love called out.
When Ms. Van Horn stopped in the doorway, the others did as well, bumping into one another. Under different circumstances, Emma may have found the scene comical had the Aviaries not been so close, their eyes continuing to bore holes into her. They scrambled aside so Ms. Van Horn’s view wasn’t blocked.
“Of course,” the Board’s leader said. “I’ll just ask that you remain in The Mountain. The Descendant is our honored guest and can be taken to eat and drink and rest. I expect, Love, that you’ll show her every possible comfort.”
Love nodded, but Ms. Van Horn didn’t hang around long enough to see it. Within seconds, the Aviaries’ excited squawking faded down the hallway, leaving only a few fluttering feathers in their wake. Love’s shoulders sagged and he grimaced while stretching his injured wing. The sudden quiet in the boardroom was deafening, but Emma was relieved to have a moment alone. She exhaled deeply, still fatigued from not just giving blood, but also their long journey that seemed to have come to an end for now.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Quentin held the syringe with both hands, staring at it the entire time the group scurried down the hallway, so focused on it that he nearly tripped over his own two clumsy feet. Ms. Van Horn sneered at him. He was surprised she hadn’t demanded him to hand over the Descendant’s precious blood. Luckily, the rest of the Board caused such a frenzied, feathered fuss behind them that Ms. Van Horn was constantly focused on keeping them in line.
One of the Aviaries rushed forward unexpectedly, insisting he could carry the sample. Ms. Van Horn’s well-formed wing exploded from her back and smacked the Aviary, throwing him back against the wall. Half of the Board swarmed their downed companion, threatening to attack but ultimately standing over him, snapping their sharpened mouths in his direction.
“You fool!” Ms. Van Horn snapped. “This is our only chance to fix what we’ve become. The guards may do our bidding for now, but do you think they’ll hesitate to attack their masters if they find us fighting over the Descendant’s blood? If they sense we’re unable to produce proper dosages of the Aviary Blast?”
Quentin joined the others in bowing his head to Ms. Van Horn. When he looked down at the vial of blood in his hands, he was glad she couldn’t see his grin. The group continued forward, a few among them muttering about how they were all trained in the scientific research of making Blast, a notion that caused Quentin to chuckle to himself. He only quieted when he felt Ms. Van Horn’s eyes turn toward him.
When the Board reached the main laboratory level, a small group of humans guarding the area approached. At the sight of Ms. Van Horn, the guards bowed but didn’t remain that way for long.
“What’s happening with the Descendant? Is that her blood? Will you be—”
When an Aviary rushed forward this time, Ms. Van Horn did not stop him. He was joined by several others, all of them squawking loudly and hissing and flapping wildly, snapping at the humans. Within their chorus of ear-splitting screeches were warnings for the humans to stay back, to keep their questions to themselves, to never question the Board about the Descendant and what they were doing with her. Quentin tried to intercede on the guards’ behalf, but his attempt was half-hearted. Whether he represented the humans or not, Quentin was no longer an actual human and had trouble sympathizing with the guard.
“We’re busy right now,” Quentin snapped at the guard, who quickly backed away from the flocking Board. “Once we learn more, we’ll let everyone know.”
As Quentin hurried away, he heard other Aviaries hiss at the humans, but without further physical confrontation. When Quentin and Ms. Van Horn reached the main laboratory’s anteroom, the others rushed in around them, knocking into metallic tables long since overturned and left splayed across the floor. The lights flickered overhead, or at least those bulbs that hadn’t burned out. Quentin stopped at the access panel to the inner lab but hesitated to type in the code, glancing back at the remainder of the Board, as if asking Ms. Van Horn if their presence was needed. If she noticed Quentin’s hesitance, she didn’t agree with it.
“Well?” she asked impatiently.
He entered the code and the door to the inner lab hissed open. Inside was brighter than the anteroom but no less messy. As Aviaries flooded the room, Quentin cringed at the sound of crunching glass beneath their feet. Long-smashed beakers and other broken equipment littered the floor, but none of the Aviaries—most of them with bare feet—felt or noticed what they treaded upon. Quentin wished he were alone, and a part of him wondered how the others would react if he pocketed the Descendant’s blood sample and insisted they vacate the premises.
They’d replace me without hesitating, he thought, swallowing hard at the sight of so many red stains covering the floor and walls. And it wouldn’t be pretty.
Ms. Van Horn snapped her feathered fingers and pointed to the refrigeration unit in the corner. A trio of Aviaries flocked in that direction, pushing and shoving one another in their haste to reach it first. Others rushed to grab various machinery, knocking over plenty of stuff in the process, adding to the mess already in place. Still, the Aviaries managed to not only retrieve the correct testing equipment, but also a refrigerated vial containing bright green liquid.
“Do it,” hissed a voice within the agitated group of Board members.
“Make the Aviary Blast,” another said.
“The right Aviary Blast, the kind that will fix us.”
“The Descendant’s blood will fix us all!”
Each successive cry grew louder and more desperate, the Board hissing and snapping, their shrill noises managing to echo throughout the lab. Quentin looked to Ms. Van Horn to quiet them, but her eyes had widened as much as the others.’ She snatched the vial of green liquid from the hands of another Aviary.
“The strongest, most potent version of Blast in our possession. The one mixed with Love’s blood,” she muttered. Her eyes sparkled as she stared at the greenish liquid, but her face hardened when she turned to Quentin, the top of her lip curling. “The Blast you were given.”
Quentin resisted the urge to swallow hard, even as he felt the eyes of Board members turning on him. He was far from the physical specimen that Love was, but by no means had he suffered the same degree of deformities—physically or mentally—as many of those around him, a fact for which he often received jealous stares from other Aviaries. Not even Ms. Van Horn, despite her inexplicable grace and power to manipulate the others, could compare to Quentin physically.
“Mix it, mix it,” one of the Aviaries hissed, a command repeated by the others as they pushed in around him.
“Please,” Quentin called out, his voice lost among the squawking. He held up his hands to silence them without realizing the Descendant’s blood sample remained in his grasp. The others gasped and quieted, quickly backing away in fear of what he might do. Quentin immediately lowered his hand once he had their attention. “I understand your urgency. This is an exciting moment for me as well, but we don’t know for certain if the Descendant’s blood will produce the results we want. Maybe we should take things slowly, increase the concentration on a slower, steadier basis to ensure—”
Ms. Van Horn’s sudden hiss was so close to Quentin’s ear that he nearly fumbled the syringe. The rest of the Board startled as much as Quentin did, though he was the only one that backed up when Ms. Van Horn stepped closer.
“You will make it more powerful right now,” she ordered, her face twisting so tightly that her taut lips no longer covered her teeth.
Ms. Van Horn didn’t stop the loudening squawks, nor did she allow Quentin more than a few feet of space. With shaky hands, Quentin grabbed the nearest mixing equipment and poured in the entire vial of strongest Aviary Blast they possessed. To that he only added a few drops of the Descendant’s blood, though with the Aviaries’ encouragement—specifically in the form of threats to his well-being—Quentin added more blood, despite warning them that they needed to proceed with ca
ution. With a sigh, Quentin stopped after pouring out half of the blood sample.
“All of it,” Ms. Van Horn said simply.
“If this doesn’t work, we won’t have any blood left to make a second attempt at figuring out the right formula,” Quentin said.
Ms. Van Horn’s face melted into an easy smile, sending chilled numbness through Quentin’s body.
“We have an entire body’s worth of Descendant blood to take if this doesn’t work,” she said with the slightest grin. “Unless you feel the life of a single human takes precedence over our transformations?”
The rest of the Aviaries pushed in so closely that Quentin smelled the muskiness of their molting feathers.
“Unless you feel the life of a single human takes precedence over His return?” Ms. Van Horn added.
Quentin’s heart fluttered. He’d never felt like more of an outsider than at that moment. When he squeezed the syringe’s plunger and added all the blood, Ms. Van Horn and the others backed away and unleashed a variety of celebratory chirps. Quentin was almost ashamed to feel good about himself. This was a bad decision, a fact that should’ve been clear to everyone. Quentin had the least scientific experience of all the Board members, yet he’d spent the least amount of time as an Aviary. With his mind having less time to degenerate than theirs, he felt more qualified to make decisions than any of them, not that he intended to convince them of that.
Either way, he turned on the spinning machine, which whirred to life. With heavy regret, he watched the sample begin to spin and mix, knowing the entire time that failure—disastrous failure—would be the likely result. As long as they don’t test the first sample on me, Quentin thought, staring at the spinning mixture, wondering how bad things might become for him as the newest Board member.
“This better work,” one the Aviaries warned after several minutes. “You better know what you’re doing.”
Quentin felt a dozen sets of eyes on him, and he had little doubt that his worst fears could come true.
“Do any of us know what we’re doing?” he asked, trying to contain his frustration. “Are any of us actual scientists? Have any of us received training beyond reading notes of a scientist that left here as long ago as the original Jonas? Maybe our collective inexperience is why Love’s blood didn’t produce a proper Aviary Blast … maybe our collective inexperience will prevent the Descendant’s blood from—”
An explosion of wild squawking drowned out his words. Common sense told Quentin to shut up or say whatever possible to appease the raucous crowd. But he found it harder and harder to simply tell them what they wanted to hear, especially knowing how foolish their collective decisions had been. He held up his hands and squawked back, louder and deeper than any noise he’d ever made, a flash of light popping in front of his eyes as he lost momentary control of himself. When his heartrate calmed and his vision cleared, he saw the other Aviaries—Ms. Van Horn included—had backed away, many of them looking at him with a combination of fear and awe.
I’m turning into them more and more, he thought with dread, though he was relieved to have their attention.
“We received reports from the hangar bay that a family sneaking into The Mountain claims to be scientists,” he told them.
“What’s been done with them?” Ms. Van Horn asked.
“They were tossed into a cell with the host mothers,” snapped a Board member. “They should’ve been tossed off the upper level ledge.”
Quentin felt the feathers bristle on the back of his neck, and the thought of such violence made his heart flutter. Still, he pushed away his rising excitement and shook his head.
“If what they say is true, maybe it would be wise to consult them,” Quentin said. Not surprisingly, his suggestion was met with hissing chirps. He turned to Ms. Van Horn. “Their knowledge of the Blast might be better than ours.”
“We shouldn’t,” an Aviary snapped.
“Only we can be trusted,” another said.
“We might need their help if this version of Aviary Blast doesn’t work,” Quentin pleaded with the Board’s leader. “We can’t afford to waste our only chance to not just transform us, but help everyone in The Mountain.”
“The humans?” screeched an Aviary, his disgust echoed by the squawks of every Aviary in the lab.
Quentin looked from one angry, grotesque face to the next, so focused on the group that he didn’t notice Ms. Van Horn’s approach until she stood less than a foot from him. Quentin backed against the wall, stuck looking up at the Board’s leader, her face expressionless, her eyes peering above his head.
“Is it still the humans for whom you are most concerned?” she asked with eerie calmness, her voice quieting the others.
“Of course not,” he snapped, his voice unnaturally high-pitched. Ms. Van Horn’s eyes narrowed; they both knew he was lying. “But I was chosen to represent them on the—”
“Need I remind you the Board’s strength is the only reason The Mountain has held together for generations?” she asked.
“No. . . I mean, you don’t have to remind me. . . I already know that,” Quentin said. “And every decision I make is for the good of the—”
“Maybe you’ve remained too close to the humans,” Ms. Van Horn wondered aloud. “Maybe the guards see you as weak—see the rest of us as weak—since the version of Aviary Blast using Love’s blood didn’t make you as strong as we’d hoped.”
Quentin shook his head. “No, they’ve said nothing of potential weakness. They know better,” he insisted, his words coming quicker and more desperate than before. “They’ve followed every order and completed every task that they’ve been commanded to—”
“The current halt to our fetal injection program had nothing to do with their complaints about how we treat their females?” Ms. Van Horn asked, inching closer.
The feathers on the back of Quentin’s neck rubbed against the wall as he shook his head.
“The humans never liked that program, and I can’t say I blame them,” Quentin said despite the angry squawks continuing. “None of you would’ve liked it if you’d seen how those children turned out.”
“Children like Love?” Ms. Van Horn asked.
“That’s not fair. He’s the only child the program had success with after creating hundreds of failures,” Quentin said. “Speaking of Love, his discovery of the City Below and the Descendant’s whereabouts made the injection program worthless. Putting a halt to it ensured we remained in the humans’ good graces. Nobody complained when we put the remaining host wombs into a locked room to have them ready if we return to the program.”
Ms. Van Horn spun and stepped away, her sudden movement quieting the rest of the Board. The tension eased in Quentin’s shoulders, but the way Ms. Van Horn steepled her feather hands beneath her chin told him he’d convinced her of nothing.
“I assure you, there’s been no mention of an insurrection from the guards, not now, not ever. They still follow orders and will continue to do so as long as I represent them on this Board,” Quentin said, not bothering to mention the guard foolish enough to voice his doubts earlier.
“We must succeed with this new Aviary Blast to prove our strength to the humans,” she said. “Not to share it with them.”
As if on cue, the mixing machine dinged, and the whirring slowed to a stop. Quentin knew that for best results, the process should be repeated multiple times, but he didn’t try to hold back the Aviaries pushing forward, nor did he try to stop Ms. Van Horn from reaching in and extracting the syringe with the newly-formed liquid. She held it up for all to see, creating a momentary silence as the Board gawked at their potential future.
Quentin wasn’t impressed. The mixture was cloudy, without the same clarity as previous versions of Aviary Blast. With so much blood having been added, the new Aviary’s color was darker than before, which didn’t seem like a good thing to Quentin, though he admitted to himself that he had no idea what it should or shouldn’t look like. I wonder if the old Weller
scientist’s notes had been purposely vague on details. . .
“Is it time to get Him?” asked a Board member. Within seconds, chants for Him passed between the lips of every Aviary in the lab, growing louder and more frantic with each crazed squawk.
“I want to see Him as much as the rest of you do, but we must have patience,” Quentin said. He wasn’t surprised when several squawks snapped in his direction. “If this version doesn’t work, do any of you want to explain to Him why he was brought back before the right time?”
The crowd calmed, angry squawks turning to worried chirps, the Board’s collective hissing and gnashing easing. Quentin even thought he recognized understanding on more than one face, a rare instance when the Aviaries didn’t look upon him with disdain or belligerence. Quentin wasn’t about to give up this opportunity to pound sense into their Aviary-addled brains.
“Before we wake Him, we need to know the new Blast works,” he continued. “That means we follow proper experimental protocol. We research, we test, we take small blood samples from the Descendant when needed. The first step in proper testing is to scrounge up some rats or mice to use as test subjects. Maybe we can check with Moretti down in the hangar bay. I know he’s complained in the past about a rodent problem down—”
“Me!” a Board member squawked suddenly. “Me!”
Those with misshapen wings began to flap and flutter them, agitation once again spreading among the Aviaries.
“You. . . what?” Quentin asked, afraid to hear the answer.
“Test it on me! Inject me!”
Quentin shook his head but didn’t have a chance to explain the foolishness of that idea before the rest of the Board echoed their agreement in the form of wild shrieking. Pushing began soon after, and Quentin yet again saw a mass of frantic feathers and snapping beaks coming in his direction.
“That’s enough!” cawed Ms. Van Horn, who’d also taken a step back while holding the syringe. After a few final desperate squawks, the noise quieted, though not a single Board member retreated or turned their eyes from the single dosage of Aviary Blast. “If anyone’s going to receive the first injection, it should be me.”