Disclaimer – for all future chapters and this – I do not own Maximum Ride or anything associated with it. Basically anything you recognise as James Patterson material – It's not mine sobs silently, wishing she actually could write like that and come up with an idea like this.

I lay on the ground with my head in my hands bawling my eyes out, not caring about the dirt on the forest floor below me. A startling pain ripped through every fibre of my very being. Not a physical pain – more like my chest was being torn apart from the inside.

I've dealt with pain in my life, don't get me wrong. What with being tortured by whitecoats and being kept in a dog crate, being on the run and getting frequently attacked by erasers, which I can tell you now aren't pleasant.

But nothing has ever shaped up to the pain I felt right now, nothing can ever shape up to the pain of having your family – with whom you've spent every moment of your life so far – ripped away from you like that.

Watching them being dragged away by erasers one by one, hearing their piercing shrieks in the distance, and then worse, hearing nothing as you realise with a sickening feeling that a member of your flock, of your family, of your very self has been killed by none other than your own father.

The only redeeming thing in the midst of all this was that they hadn't made me watch, and it had been fairly quick. But watching the last go, watching Fang leave me, and hearing the always silent, never complaining - even when on the brink of death - best friend screaming louder than a human's lungs could take, it fills you with the bitterest hatred of anyone that could even dream of doing this.

And now two years later that hatred has only got stronger, mixed with the inability to feel pain, or love, or even anything remotely emotional. For a while I hoped, no, wished that the fact that I hadn't seen my flock die meant that they didn't and that they were ok. But I soon gave up that hope. That hope has long gone.

My name is Maximum Ride. I am sixteen years old. My family were ripped away from me and killed one-by-one. I live and work in a sleazy night club on minimum wage. I am a mother now, but I don't even care for my kid. Nothing can live up to how I led my life with the flock before. I am a shell of a bird kid. Nothing matters to me anymore.

A/N: Let me know what you think. This was only a short chapter as I got my ideas together. For readers of my other story, a matter of flock and death, don't worry that will continue as well. For those who haven't read it and like this, check it out. Even if you don't like this, it is very different from this story and a slightly different style so you might like.