Sirens on the ceiling flared, blasting electronic wails through the slick, off-white hallways. “Hands in the air! You’re all under arrest! Anyone who resists will be shot!” Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk. Heavy boots marched out a deadly beat. The raid had begun.
     From her dimly-lit, deep-underground station, she could already hear the marching soldiers, the split shatter of delicate glass equipment, and heavy gunfire. Bang! Bang! She knew it was unlikely the soldiers would take prisoners; they were too afraid of what had been done here, what could be done.
     Her notes were scattered in now-permanent disarray, waiting for the day they’d be filed, categorized, and submitted. Every single function had to be labelled, every last sequence compared to the next. In the back, sleek, black freezers reflected the rolling lights just outside the lab, flashing white-hot into the corners of her eyes.
     Go, go, go. Papers were rolled up and collected, samples and experiments shoved under desks or crammed into the formerly-organized freezers. Part of her wanted to leave something behind, some key to her work, but she couldn’t. From the disinfectant odor to the eerie glass containers, it couldn’t be easier to point out the villain here.
     She paced around the room, click-clack, click-clack. The soldiers were getting closer, their boots hitting so hard in unison that that she felt it. She dropped to the floor, crawling low. The scent of cleaning products engulfed her, so close she could pick up the bitter, tangy taste. She needed to hide somewhere temporarily, or to climb up to the surface through.
     Suddenly, she remembered the thick steel vault that led to the incubation room. She could bide her time there behind the iron wall of the door, or, at the very least, die warmer than on the cold tile floor, almost frosty from the poorly-sealed freezers.
     Crawling there was slow and slippery. She hid behind a shelf of stored chemicals, carefully clinging to the wall so as not to knock them over. Finally, her gloved hands met the cold steel door, slipping desperately at the combination. Finally, the door clicked open.
     She locked the entrance to the room and let out a sigh. She was alone with the scent of latex and the hum of machinery… For now. The faint glows of electronic screens and heat lamps met her eyes, all too familiar, as they had been for the last two years. It was amazing they’d lasted that long. Their budget was thin, even with a billionaire as a secret sponsor.
     She began to pace, checking screens with a quick glance out of habit. Memories came flooding back, of echoing promises and half-true reassurances. She had seen the worst mankind had to offer, and accepted it. She had to to survive. She had been so young, so impressionable before, and even after, for someone had drawn her out of her guarded shell with a promise: No guilt. No pain. She could pursue her stranger interests in peace, nobody there to stop her, to judge her for her past and future deeds. (Of course, it wasn’t what she’d been promised. She was too far gone, too curious, to stop once she started, but the sick pleasure the director had with every failure, or even “success,” gave her a lurch. Besides, there was always herself.)
Of course, before agreeing to the secretive experiments, she never thought she’d be shot down by friendly fire. Now, it seemed, it was par for the course.
     Step, step, step. Waiting was never a fun game. Was there a way out? If so, where? She heard a loud beeping echo from one of the incubators. Another egg lost. She jumped up to instinctively check what was wrong, but then she remembered: The waste chute! It led to an icy storage area, where any signs of somehow-surviving life would freeze before being used as fuel for an old-fashioned heater for some of the more fancy (and antiquated, in her opinion) rooms. Of course, one had to get in and out of the freezer to collect the waste, so there were doors. This was her chance! She crawled into the chute and began a slow, careful descent.
     Crick, crack. Crick, crack. She was barely inside when she heard an odd popping noise. Awkwardly shimmying back out, she looked back at the beeping incubator. Had the systems glitched? She jumped up, staring into the glass. A tiny beak poked out of the hard shell. It was oddly twisted, like a thorny branch, but could still pop open and release a long, thin blue tongue. Raspy chirps bounced in the container as a tiny black talon squeezed out of the crack to probe the air. She looked down at the tiny creature, uncertain and a bit afraid. They hadn’t gotten far enough to actually utilize their skills, they were just experimenting, they didn’t know what would live, they thought they’d all die, this day should’ve come sooner, why was it happening now--
     There wasn’t time. The vault door was being banged on loudly, perhaps by a fist, perhaps by a weapon. It could take hours, sometimes even days, for birds to hatch, and she was in no state to review the species of this one. Pip, pop, pip, pop, BANG BANG BANG. She couldn’t take it anymore. She opened up the incubator and reached in, pulling away the eggshell callously. Dead or alive, she had to know what she- and everyone else- had made.
     Two bleary blue-white eyes stared sightlessly at her hands. Four back legs were crammed together on one torso, almost obscuring the wings completely. She began to remember echoes of conversations and snippets of dialogue, of seeing how closely different strains of birds were related, of creating the perfect messenger, instinctively directional, irregularly clever, and- this gave her pause- strong enough to defend itself and whatever it was carrying. The eerie, twisted chick stared up at her, beak gaping open. It looked up to the part… Or did it? It was just a hatchling, after all.
     BOOM! She fell to the floor, her ears ringing. They had used explosives to try to break the vault. It hadn’t busted yet, but it looked ready to. She got up, leaning on the incubator. She had to make a choice. Leave this… thing to die, or take it with her, and risk everything and everyone. It looked up, and let out a tiny caw. She sighed. Everything else was gone by now. So was everyone else. Might as well bring it along, as a “keepsake” of sorts. Besides, it still had a long way to go. What if it developed a tumor? What if it couldn’t walk, or fly, or eat? It was still unlikely to make it. She scooped it up, nestled it in wit some salvaged notes in her labcoat pocket, and leapt into the waste chute.
     It was all a blur for her from then on, until she met the soldiers stationed at the entrance. One had a familiar face, but she just couldn’t pin it down… Could she? That look of dismay in his eyes, of disappointment… He said something she couldn’t hear, couldn’t fathom in her animalistic state, shoving through to escape to the woods beyond. She made it only a few meters before- BAM!- She collapsed in the grass, blood pouring from her back. It all came back then: The cold of the freezer, the solid, snarling pseudo-faces of creatures from deeper levels, deeper incubators, worse experiments, the face of the man she’d once have fought alongside in an instant, the creature she’d created that, if it stayed still until they stopped paying attention, could scuttle away like she’d tried to do, could have a chance.
     Then, finally, as the world faded out, she remembered what the soldier had said:
     “You were always so strong, so resilient, but I guess you were just twisted all along…”
     As the gunfire faded out, a scared, clumsy bird fumbled on two pairs of legs into the forest, confused and alone. It would remember this day, somewhere in the back of its mind. It would always know its “home.”