Chapter Text
He has to get out of here... Now.
Nico dashed around the corner of the silky black halls of the Institute. The shouts of his captors followed him as he ran past the many cells that lined across the walls. He saw his fellow inmates flinching away from his chasers as they curled back into the dark. He remembered being like them, being a doormat to the horrors that they put him through. But not today.
He's getting out of here
He made it to the end of the hallway as he pried his bloodied fingers against the stainless steel doors of the elevator. His whole body shook with him as he tried to push open the doors before they caught up with him.
"Stop him!"
"Shit," He was running out of time. This was his only chance, he had to get out of here now. With the rest of his exhausted strength he finally managed to open the doors as the cold air of the empty elevator shaft blew past him. Most people would have stopped there, not being able to climb up the cords that hung from the ceiling. Thankfully, he was not most people. He jumped into the shaft just in time before his captors grabbed him. He fell down and readied himself, he looked up, and spread his wings.
For that was what the people inside this shithole were hiding. People like him. Born with a strange genetic mutation that made them grow bird like wings from their shoulder blades. They captured young children with these deformities and hid them from society. Using them for labor or just to keep the world from knowing about these strange creatures. But if you were lucky enough, you got the worst of it all. The tests. And everyone knew just how lucky Nico was.
He was taken at a young age, though he doesn't really know when. They found him hiding in a small alleyway in his little fort of torn cardboard boxes next to a couple of dumpsters. He was barely living, didn't have much to eat or drink, and he couldn't sleep most days because of the frost bitten rain. Little did he know his life was about to get a whole lot worse. He was captured by the WPCD, the Winged Person Containment Department. Their officers patrol along the lower levels of the city of Olympus, all of them run by their head officer Ares. He created their main slogan. Secrets Keep Stability. However, Nico did not know any of this when he was taken, he thought they were coming to keep him safe. Not to keep society safe from him.
When they first saw him they noticed something different about him. He wasn't like the others they had normally captured, their wings a mix of grey or brown. No. His were a pitch black. Death winged they called him. A contorted mutation of the mutated. He wasn't supposed to exist even more so than the others. He was a curse, an omen. And the WPCD wanted to take advantage of that. When they took him to the Institute he was not put in a regular holding cell like the others. He was put in a smaller sterilized environment. White walls surrounded him as they blasted him with as much light as they could fit in one room. Their hypothesis was that the light would purify his wings. But it did nothing. All it did was make it impossible for Nico to sleep.
So then they started the tests. They would take sample feathers, or burn him with light on his wings to see if closer contact would do anything. They tested his strength and agility, finding out his wings were smaller than most but he could flap them faster. However it did not just stop there. Then came the vivisections. And Nico never wanted to remember those. He still had scars tracing all along his abdomen as they searched to see if anything was different inside his body. They found nothing of course. All they did was bring Nico pain. And now he was finally going to escape.
He flapped his wings as fast as he could as he flew up the elevator shaft past his floor and he kept soaring. He flew up the Institute and all the way to the top as he reached the final floor. The roof of the building. He crashed through the door, glass and wood shattered across the roof. He tumbled down and laid sprawled out against the concrete and smiled for the first time in what seemed like his life. He had finally made it out.
That was until he heard shouting coming from across the roof. He sat up to see a whole fleet of WPCD soldiers coming at him with taser sticks in hand. He quickly got up and sped to the edge of the roof.
"Gods."
That was a long way down. A hundred floors up, could he even fly this high up? Would he be able to catch himself before he plummeted to the ground? He looked behind him as more forces came to stop him. He sighed and cracked his neck as he prepared his final step of escape. He took a deep breath in and flexed his wings out. And jumped.
He soared down the building his wings trying to catch his weight. The wind was traveling at breath taking speeds, or was it him that was going that fast? His eyes widened as he saw the floor rapidly approaching. He took several test flaps before he final was able to catch himself before he splatted against the floor of the city.
He flew away from the Institute and passed ginormous buildings on his way out of the government district. That's when he saw it. For the first time in his whole life. The whole of the city of Olympus. It was spectacular.
Buildings of all shapes and sizes flew passed him as he saw neon signs of shops and restaurants. He flew passed neighborhoods of mansions and massive lawns that were just made for looks and nothing practical. He practically laughed at the sight of the whole world. He hadn't seen it in forever. He'd been trapped in that gods awful Institute for so long he forgot what it felt like to be outside in the world. He loved it.
That was until he flew past the façade of Olympus and into the slums. This is where most people lived, where he had lived before he had gotten kidnapped. This is what Olympus tried to hide from you. That no one here was actually happy. Only one in a million people actually got to live in the spectacles that was the upper districts. Here you were left for dead and no one cared.
It was only when he was flying through a small neighborhood in the slums that he noticed a pain in his left wing. He looked over as his adrenaline slowed down to see a massive shard of glass had been lodged in his wing. When had that gotten there? Only then did he realize his flying was off and he was slowly tipping downwards. But by the time he tried to steady himself and fight through the pain, he was already crashing into a backyard and blacked out.
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Will Solace woke up in the middle of the night to a loud thud coming from his backyard. Little did he know his whole world was about to change.