The marriage of two species genes was difficult. Difficult but not impossible. It was definitely an arranged marriage. After finding a stray feather still clinging to a plucked chicken it was slightly easier. He now knew exactly what to grow and what it was made of. The only problem came from converting the raw materials in his belly to whatever-the-fuck a feather was made from. There were similarities to hair, but the structure was entirely different. And they had to be long enough for him to fly. Something he couldn’t test in a hurry. Chickens weren’t exactly pterodactyl sized either.

Connor shovelled more meat down his throat. He didn’t gag on the bones anymore. With a mental block, his gag reflex was as absent as his father.

“Zing…” he coughed.

Two angled, bony appendages stuck out from his shoulder blades through the tears in his shirt and jacket, glistening and pale in the LED light of the refrigerator and growing longer by the minute as the twin blowers cooled the room to an uncomfortable five degrees Celsius. Feathers erupted from the skin, soft and downy at first before hardening and gaining form. The feathers were brown, the colour of his hair. Also that of the chickens he had harvested for material.

As he digested another stomach full of raw meat he wondered if he was going about this the wrong way. Bats didn’t have feathers, just a thin membrane of skin stretched along the wings. Somehow, the idea turned him off. If, and it was a big if, if he was going to fly, it would be with angelic wings, not giant, leathery skin flaps.

He heard multiple doors opening outside of the chiller and the barked orders of a search party. Connor looked about the room franticly for a space to hide. The racks were tall and wide, strong enough to support his weight. He gathered his belongings and started climbing. The sounds of the search party were coming closer. He could hear their footfalls on the concrete and the rattle of their equipment against the tac-bio armour. The rack swayed as he hauled himself over the edge of the top rack.

A beeping alarm on the roller door warned him. Connor wriggled behind several pallet loads of packaged meat, slowed by his wings catching on the plastic packaging. The rollerdoor telescoped upwards. Connor held his breath and hugged his appendages, old and new, tightly to his body. Beneath him the rack shook slightly from the momentum of every movement. Connor braced a hand against the wall to stop it rocking just as several booted feet shuffled into the chiller. Connor could hear their heavy breathing through the masks filtration systems.

They stopped below his hiding spot. Connor clutched the bag to his chest, waiting for the bullets to tear through him.

“He has definitely been here,” remarked a soldier. “We’ve got empty, raw chicken containers scattered over the floor.”

“Any sign now?”

“All clear,” said the soldier after a pause. “He could have bugged out hours ago for all we can tell.”

“Hurry it up. We need to lock the building down and get the containment crew to work.”

“Alright. Next room,” said the soldier.

The soldiers filed out of the chiller and down the hall. The door whooshed close. Connor peeked out from his hiding spot. More soldiers had come to find him. Kemprex wasn’t letting up. At least they hadn’t gone with his idea of bombing the building.

Good thing I’m not in control of their operations. I’d blow me sky high, he thought.

He waited several agonising minutes under the cold wind of the fans until he was sure the soldiers were out of ear shot before clambering back down. On solid ground and hidden behind the pallet he had been feeding from he stretched out his fragile wings. They were longer than his arms could reach. They’d need to be twice as large to hold his weight by his estimates. Connor ran his bootlegged combat knife through the plastic wrap, liberating some more chicken cutlets.

“Down the hatch.”

He waited until nightfall. There was no point in trying to escape if the first Kemprex gyro spotted him on his maiden voyage. It gave him a little time to test his wings in what he previously thought of as the spacious cargo room. With fifteen foot sails on his back it was positively cramped. Now he felt like a battery hen. The first discovery was he was too heavy. The second was that he had grossly underestimated how much muscle he required to move the wings. Two failures at diving from the truck’s trailer had him meditating in the chiller once more, ditching mass in his bones and shifting it to his back and wings. After that, it was more about technique. He was still too heavy or inexperienced to take off from the ground. Until that was worked out, he needed a running jump from a reasonable height.

Connor glided to the far end of the cargo room. Tilting his wings back, he dropped to the concrete floor before he could crash into the solid wall and skipped to a stop. He was no eagle — more of a turkey with delusions of grandeur. And he was running out of time.

Connor clambered atop the trailer once more. The skylights were high above him, higher than he had flown on his practice runs. He slung the straps of the schoolbag of supplies around his arms, holding it to his chest. He walked to the front of the trailer, tucking his wings up to decease drag.

“Three. Two. One.”

Connor leapt into action, sprinting as fast as he could down the short runway and diving off the edge, his wings unfurling at the zenith and beating furiously. He climbed through the air with each massive sweep. The room rushed past him at a blur. One skylight went by. Another. He reached for the last as it sped toward him at an uncomfortable pace. He was still too low. Connor fired both coiled tendrils from his wrists. The thin lengths of sinew and muscle found their mark upon the struts which raised and lowered the window. Connor tucked in his wings, trying to slow down. Swinging on the end of his tendrils, he careened upward in an arc, slamming into the roof before falling backward.

He swung for several seconds, nursing the bump on his forehead against the inside of his bicep before retracting the taut tendrils back into his arms until the struts were within reach. Upon closer inspection, Connor saw the gap of the skylight was too small to squeeze out through, especially with his over-grown wings.

“Of course it is.”

He had come this far with this stupid plan. He wasn’t going to back down now. Gripping a strut with his left hand, he unzipped the schoolbag and removed the combat knife while hanging. Connor clubbed the safety glass until it broke then used the blade to knock the remaining fragments out of the frame, careless of the noise it made. The outside world called to him, making him reckless.

He stowed the knife back in the bag and angled himself for extraction through the glassless frame. Swinging his feet up to the open crack, Connor could shift his arms up to the frame. Grunting and cussing, Connor wriggled himself and his enormous wings through the gap and onto the roof. Flashing lights and the drone of multiple voices echoed through the night. Connor rolled to his feet, panting and bleeding from minor scrapes to his hands. He ruffled his wings, dislodging some stray shards of glass sticking to his wings.

“God, don’t tell me I have to start preening these fucking things already…”

Connor crept to the edge of the building to see what was going on below.

“Oh boy…”

It looked like an alien invasion. People in hazmat suits walked in and out of the building like a trail of brightly coloured ants. Soldiers or perhaps special agents stood on the periphery in full tac-bio armour, submachine guns slung at their hips. A giant plastic dome covered the entrance to the facility. Connor could smell the cocktail of disinfectant spray, as they hosed each person exiting the building, from his perch on the roof. Multiple agency carriers had landed on the tarmac parking lot, interspersed with a fleet of trucks and governmental sedans. Connor edged backwards, away from the mess he had created.

“I had to create a god-damned, killer virus. What was I fucking thinking?”

He shook his head, cursing himself. Was surviving really worth it? What had he unleashed unto the world? He looked to the sky, seeking solace in the celestial bodies above and whatever deity was looking back. Maybe the other Connor could redeem him. How many good deeds would he need to do to absolve his sins? He shuddered in the cold wind. He couldn’t bear thinking anymore. The more he thought, the worse he felt.

Connor ran in the opposite direction, away from the crime scene. His shoes boomed on the steel roof. He flung himself from the buildings edge, unfurling his wings as gravity arrested his jump. His wings caught hold on the damp air. Connor pumped frantically, ascending higher and higher, away from the crimes he had committed below and the people desperate to kill him.

He found the breeze and struggled against its buffeting advances until he let go and soared along the teasing currents. He checked his bearings against the North Star and pivoted himself westward toward Boise and his family.