Rise of the Uncaged
The hospital plunged into chaos.
Emergency alarms blared overhead as red lights bathed the walls in a pulsing glow. Clara could smell it before she heard it...metal, smoke, fear. The lab's retrieval team had arrived.
But they had underestimated her.
She wasn't just a runaway subject anymore.
Clara stepped into the hallway, her talons clicking against the floor with steady defiance. Patients and nurses fled in every direction. Glass shattered somewhere in the distance. In the chaos, she moved calmly, like a ghost returning to the world of the living.
Down the hall, a man in a sleek black suit raised a tranquilizer rifle. His gloved finger trembled on the trigger.
"Subject 14....stand down!"
Clara tilted her head slowly, feathers shimmering like polished obsidian in the emergency light.
"I'm not your subject," she growled...and then she moved.
A blur of feathers and fury, she lunged at him, knocking the rifle away with a swipe of her wing. He hit the wall hard and slumped to the floor, groaning.
From the shadows, a voice called out:
"Clara!"
She froze.
Out stepped a familiar face... Dr. Zina, one of the junior researchers from the lab. She'd been the only one who ever looked at Clara like a person, not a project. Her lab coat was gone, replaced with a hoodie and fear in her eyes.
"I helped shut down the security grid the night you escaped," Zina whispered. "I couldn't stop what they did to you... but I can help now."
Clara stared at her, chest rising and falling.
"You knew what they were doing."
"I was scared. But I'm not anymore."
Footsteps echoed behind them....more agents were coming.
Zina held out a keycard. "There's a secure tunnel beneath this hospital. Leads to the surface woods. But you need to hurry."
Clara hesitated, then took the card with her claws.
"No more cages," she said again.
And with that, Clara turned and stormed down the corridor, Zina at her side. Together, they vanished into the dark tunnel, leaving behind a crumbling system that had underestimated its own creation.
In the forest, Clara spread her wings under the moonlight. She was more than chicken. More than girl. She was a symbol of everything they tried to silence....and she was awake now.
The world didn't know it yet.
But Clara had just begun her rise.
THE END