Air Born | Generation Icarus #1

Victoria - You can definitely stay

Tyler stretched his arms and wings, and I noticed his self-conscious glance my way as his huge brown feathers flared out to either side. "Tori, you're allowed to keep your wings out now, you know."

Following their advice, I slipped my heavy backpack onto my chest and experimented with flexing my wings. At first, I felt uncomfortable with their eyes on me, but the relief of blood flowing freely through freshly-decompressed veins, easing the hours-old muscle cramp, was overwhelming. "Oh, gosh, that feels so much better!"

"One of the few tricks we've discovered," Tyler said as Miguel began walking down the other side of the hill, and we followed.

The curiosity, and longing to understand, was irrepressible. "What else have you found out?"

On the final leg of the trek to their camp, Tyler talked me through everything they'd learned and tried so far.

"... So, apart from strapping on a jet engine and keeping our wings static like an airplane's, I don't see how we're ever going to actually fly," Tyler said, only half-joking, as we stepped over the stream that carved through the bottom of the valley and pushed through the last clump of trees that hid their camp.

"I guess that's why birds have tails," I said, dropping my pack to the ground and rolling my neck and shoulders. "Nice tent. Do you both fit in there with your wings?"

"We take turns," Tyler said, grinning, then his gaze flicked around the three of us. "Uh, I don't suppose you have a tent of your own in that backpack, do you?"

"A hunter's pup-tent, so I'll be okay. And enough food for a few days."

"Wait." Miguel was frowning. "What was that about tails?"

I paused in the act of unwrapping a cereal bar. "That I guess birds need them to fly?"

The look Tyler and Miguel gave each other nearly made me laugh out loud but I swallowed it in time.

"I can't believe we never thought of that," Tyler said at last, throwing his hands in the air.

Miguel was uncomfortably shifting from foot to foot. "I haven't been growing one, have you?"

Resisting the urge to check out their butts as they paced around the campsite, I tried to defuse their sudden agitation. "We might not need them. It could just be a matter of waiting for our wings to get big enough." I privately marvelled again at the size of theirs already.

Tyler groaned and began rummaging through the tent. "I'm so sick of waiting!"

Miguel chuckled. "You've had wings, what, two weeks?" Then he glanced at me. "How about you, Tori?"

"I was halfway through growing them when Tyler had his accident, but I didn't realise that at the time, obviously." The echoes of terror and agony made me shiver.

"So you only had your wingbirth a few days ago?"

"About four or five, yeah." I bit my lip. "I can't explain how weird it is to hear you talk about it so ... normally." Behind me, my wings twitched. I tried to move one, and it responded jerkily, like I was trying to move an arm while three-quarters asleep.

"That makes Miguel the big granddaddy bird," Tyler said, finally emerging with handfuls of prepackaged meals. "You came out, what, a week before me?"

"Give or take a few days," Miguel said, catching the packets Tyler tossed his way. "Weirdest birthday present ever."

I hurried to swallow my mouthful. "You guys just turned seventeen, too?"

"Yeah, but he's from New York City, via Mexico City," Tyler said. "You already know I'm from Los Angeles. What about you?"

"I left North Carolina a few days ago," I said, "but I was born in England. London. I lived there till I was fifteen."

"Do you happen to know if your parents visited a fertility clinic in Beijing about eighteen years ago?"

"I wouldn't have thought so, but then Mum refuses to talk to me about my dad. He's in England somewhere still, haven't heard from him in years."

"Join the club," Miguel murmured, and I smiled uncertainly.

Tyler was frowning. "But do you know if you were an IVF baby?"

I nodded. "I vaguely recall my parents talking about it when I was younger but I thought that was how all babies were made. When I found out about the normal way, it seemed disgusting at the time." Blushing, I concentrated picking imaginary specks off my third cereal bar to avoid his gaze.

Tyler chuckled. "I was too. It'll be interesting if we all were, and if we all came from the same place, or if there was a connection between the clinics."

It was weird to think of ourselves as tiny clumps of cells, unknowingly floating next to each other in test tubes or Agar plates, or however embryos were formed outside of the human womb. The thought that the three of us — maybe others — might have all been together so long ago was bizarre. I inexpertly resettled my wings, swaying as my balance wavered. "You think we were deliberately created as an experiment or something?"

Tyler shrugged. "Maybe. It's the only lead we've got so far."

Miguel, I noticed, didn't look very comfortable with the direction of the conversation. His hand reached up to the collar of his shirt and pulled out a black crucifix.

We've got a religious bird kid, I realised, and made a silent promise to be more careful about what I said. Just because I didn't believe in God myself didn't mean I wanted to offend him. I needed both Tyler and Miguel to like and trust me, just as I needed to be able to trust them.

Which, unsurprisingly, I already did.

I decided it was probably a good moment to change the subject. "Now we're refuelled, shall we do some research on tails?"

"Yeah!" they said in unison.

Tyler glanced at his watch and then up at the sky. The sun was out of sight behind the top of the hill but it would still be some hours before dusk. "As long as we don't get too noisy ourselves, we'll hear anyone coming from a mile off."

Miguel had already extracted his smartphone from the tent. "I don't have any bars down here, so we'll have to get further up first."

"Let's get moving, then," Tyler said, flexing his brown wings and turning to the west.

"We should head up that way." Miguel pointed to the more eastern side of the valley. "We got the strongest signal there."

Tyler groaned. "That's going back toward the trail, and therefore the Angelists and the hunters. Let's go up there."

"But there's no guarantee there'll be any bars up there! We'd be wasting time."

I waved at them. "Take it easy, guys, I have a smartphone that has satellite coverage."

They stared at me for a moment, slow grins spreading across their faces. "Anything else useful in that backpack?" Tyler asked hopefully.

"A solar charger, first aid kit, water purifying tablets, oh, and soap and toilet paper."

Tyler looked at Miguel. "I like her."

Miguel grinned. "You can definitely stay, Tori."

As I blushed, the two of them huddled in on either side of me, leaning forward over the satphone in its sturdy case.

"I want one," Tyler said immediately. "Where did you get it?"

"I ... uh ... acquired it before I left home," I said, avoiding their gazes and quickly tapping in the passcode.

Miguel remained silent but Tyler chuckled. "Are you sure no one is looking for this? Won't they be able to track it?"

"Not anymore," I said confidently, and opened the internet browser before they could ask more questions. "What should I put into Google?"