Page 2 of Birds of a Feather

Why didn’t anyone else seem to hear the noise? It sounded like a wounded animal or someone in extreme mental anguish. Maybe both. In a hospital full of shifters and people who were experimented on, it could be anything.

Maybe they all know who it is. Did that person ask to be left alone?Lyla wondered.She certainly didn’t think the staff ignored the noise because they were cruel. The people at FUCN’A were anything but.

Once again, she wondered if she was somehow the only one who could hear it… which was why she simply thanked the nurse before continuing on in the direction she believed the sound was coming from. Until shew knew it was real and not just in her head, she wouldn’t say a word of it. To anyone.

But she couldn’t keep trying to ignore it.I need to know who’s screaming.

Suddenly, the sounds stopped. So did she. Lyla pretended to adjust her hospital sock as a doctor walked by. It would lookodd if she just stood in the hallway, staring at nothing, doing nothing.

A sob echoed out of one of the rooms up on the left. Lyla shuffled her feet forward, afraid to scare off whatever, or whoever, it was. She peeked into the room. The patient appeared to be sound asleep, their long trunk—literally, a long elephant trunk replaced their nose—quivering with a snore.Was that it? Am I mistaken?Lyla scratched at her head, ruffling up the feathers mixed in with her pink hair.

She dyed her hair pink because it was still her favorite color. When she was a child, her whole room at her mom’s house was shades of pink. The feathers adorned her head like a fluffy crown because some whacked-out, evil scientist wanted to see how to change the way shifters looked in human form. And coming out of it with only feathers to show meant she was one of the lucky ones. The sleeping patient before her didn’t appear so lucky. Their human face appeared far too small to support the elephant appendage.

Not wanting to linger rudely in the doorway, Lyla decided to press on. After some consideration, she decided the trunk snoring was not the muffled screams she’d heard earlier, so she kept looking for the source. As she shuffled down toward the next room, another nurse rushed by. It was oddly busy for the night shift.Something must be up. Maybe there was a fresh delivery of rescued shifters in need of fixing. That was, if they could be fixed. Lyla herself had stumped the docs—none could figure out how to rid Lyla of the feathers sticking out of her head.

She poked her head in the next room. There, a lump of a body lay in bed. Wavy, brown hair flowed out from underneath a pillow. Lyla feared something terrible had happened and was about to call the doctor when she noticed the person’s chest rise and fall. They were breathing, at least.

Lyla knocked at the open door, taking a step inside the dark room. “Umm...” She wasn’t sure what to say. What was proper etiquette when you walked in on someone with a pillow over their face? She didn’t know.

The person startled, popping up like a flower that’d just seen the sun after a week of clouds. Lyla noted that she wasn’t just any person. Not just one of a hundred faces that passed through these halls. This was a beautiful woman, clearly startled, and the sight of her made Lyla’s breath hitch.

The stranger’s fluffy brown hair floated around her like a storm, flowing around her face in a tangled mess that she tried to tame with her fingers. Wide blue eyes fixed on Lyla, and Lyla’s heart skipped a beat when their eyes locked. She tried to ignore the flutter of butterflies in her stomach and remember why she was actually out and about. Now that she’d discovered the source of the sound, she could return to her room. Mystery solved.

“I should go.” The words went against every fiber of her being. She wanted to stay, to find out why this woman screamed every night, but what if she was intruding?

“Okay,” the woman agreed. But when Lyla turned to go, she said, “No.”

The woman’s firm voice stopped Lyla in her tracks.

She turned toward the woman’s tear-streaked face. “Youdon’twant me to go?” Lyla wasn’t sure what to do. Which was it? Go or stay? She had to admit to herself she didn’t mind sticking around. It seemed that whoever they were and whatever had happened to them, they needed a friend.

The patient nodded her head then quickly shook it. “No.”

What the heck?Lyla raised an eyebrow. She crossed the room toward the bed, plucking the patient’s chart from the end of it. Nosiness be damned because confusion got the best of her. Okay. Maybe some curiosity, too. She hoped the persondidn’t mind. Lyla glanced up from the chart before opening it, wondering if the woman would stop her from taking a peek. The woman only blinked at her.

Though “woman” didn’t quite describe her. She looked just out of her teens, a few years younger than Lyla. Twenty-one years old according to her chart. “Broca’s aphasia,” she read off of the paperwork, glancing up at the woman who looked back at her with sheer curiosity.Right. I have feathers sticking out of my hair.“They’re my souvenir from Sandy,” Lyla explained with a snicker as she waved one hand around her head, pretending to fluff the sparse plumage. “What’s Broca’s aphasia?” she asked the woman in the hospital bed—whose name was Gabrielle, according to the chart Lyla probably shouldn’t be reading.

“Speech. N-not.” Gabrielle’s brow wrinkled up in frustration. She bit her lip, slamming her fists down on the bed next to her.

Lyla crossed the room, IV bag in tow, to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Can’t speak well. I got it.” She kept her words soft, using the same reassuring tone she used to give her younger brother when he failed a new skateboarding move he was trying to pull off.

Gabrielle’s shoulders deflated with a sigh as relief flooded her pale face. She glanced up at Lyla. “Gabby.” She pressed a hand to her chest, the shadow of a smile on her face.

Lyla noted that though Gabby struggled to talk, she seemed to understand Lyla just fine.Poor thing.Lyla heard some of the doctors talking about birds speaking words, but she didn’t know too much more about the other rescued experiments. A lot of them came from a big bust last year. A few were from the small lab where Lyla was kept. As far as she knew, both were run by Sandy, a demented scientist who thought messing up people’s lives and splicing genes that probably shouldn’t be mixed was cool. An asshole move, if you asked Lyla.

“I’m Lyla.” She decided to introduce herself to her new friend. If she did most of the talking, maybe she could keep Gabby company and frustration-free. It seemed trying to talk and having the wrong words come out led to Gabby’s agitation. Maybe even the nightly screaming. “I’m a hummingbird shifter. I’m a recent addition here. I was rescued by FUC ’n ASS a few weeks ago.”

Gabby started giggling, which was a beautiful and much-improved sound from her distraught neighbor.

Lyla chuckled herself. “So you find the acronyms as ridiculous as I do.” Lyla cast a glance at her IV pole. “I told you so,” she said to the bag without meaning to say it out loud. When Gabby stopped laughing, Lyla inhaled sharply.

Gabby didn’t say anything, but Lyla offered an explanation anyway. “I was kept alone for a while. I’m sure you know what it’s like.” She picked at the skin on the side of her fingernail before getting the courage to look back up at Gabby.

Gabby nodded. “No.” She wrinkled up her cute little nose. “No,” she repeated before throwing up her hands in frustration.

“It’s okay,” Lyla reassured her. “You get words mixed up. Sometimes say the opposite of what you mean?”

Gabby nodded after shaking her head.

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