I jumped off the top of the building. It’s not like I had anything to be afraid of. I’m one of the Strange Ones. I’m unbreakable. I don’t think that there’s anything in the natural world that could harm me.

I felt relaxed as a gush of ebony freed itself from the confines of my back. This ebony gush turned into the confined feathers of my wings. I told you I was one of the Strange Ones. Let me tell you now that it’s not just the wings that make me strange. I see things; things that come to me in my dreams. I see the past, the present, and sometimes even the future.

I landed safely on my feet. I was back on the roof top. This was not, however, the roof I had jumped off moments before. This one was much higher up, and it belonged to my so called home.

“Subject number 5-6-8-2-3!” came a sudden voice behind me. “You are not allowed to leave the premises!”

I had barely managed to keep from jumping out of my skin, though my heart still felt like I’d just finished running a marathon. I turned to face the speaker. She had blond hair and deep brown eyes. Eyes that, even though they appeared to be angry, were also filled with worry. I sauntered up to her in an innocent manner.

“Awe, come on, Chloe!’ I said with a little whining sound in my voice. “Did it look like I was leaving to you? I was just admiring the view.”

“Not leaving, coming back. I doubt you would look at the view with your wings out for nothing. I saw you, sub-”

“Chloe,” I told her sternly, “don’t you give me that subject number crap!” She had just been apprenticed to the man who ran this facility. I’d known her since my first day here, but she wasn’t abnormal like I was. “I’m more to you than that.”

“That was before, Jesse. The point is you left! Do you know what will happen if the Doc finds out?”

I was quickly growing aggravated with her. “Chloe, I don’t care about the Doc. I agreed to come here because my mother thought it would help me. I’m not letting that man run my life.

“And what if somebody out there saw you? Jesse, you have to follow the rules!”

“Why? Because the Doc says so? Because you say so?”

She squinted her eyes at me. “Number 5-6-8-2-3, you will report to-”

I could barely keep myself from hitting her and she knew it. She knew damn well that I had a short temper. “I told you not to give me that, Chloe! I’m not just some damn number on a list of experiments.”

She looked shocked. I don’t know why. She knew very well that I could get like this. Her hands were raised as if to protect her head from a blow. I had just enough control over myself not to harm her. I could see that the Chloe I had known all these years was gone. It wouldn’t do me any good to tell her that I had decided to leave. She’d only go and tell the Doc what I was up to. I stormed through the doorway that she was standing in and down the stairs. I didn’t know how much longer I would have been able to hold myself back if I had stayed.

I don’t know if Chloe followed me inside. I was too pissed at her to listen for footsteps behind me. My room was the closest one to the stairs that led to the roof. I hissed when I saw my door; my ‘number’ stamped into the cold steel. It was the same number that I had tattooed on my biceps, the same one that Chloe had recited as though it were my name, and the same one that I had been issued upon my arrival in this hell-hole. It may as well have been my name. That’s what people here called me instead of Jesse. Ever since my first day here when I was seven years old, that number had replaced my name. It had been my name for eleven years now and it was time I ridded myself of it for good.

Chloe had been the only one who called me by my name up until a few weeks ago. Her responsibilities were now more important than our friendship, apparently. I was still angry. There was no way that I was going to have a number instead of a name.

I strode into my bathroom, not caring about bumping into things or knocking them over. I could see the fury in my green eyes as I looked blindly into the mirror. I reached inside the pocket of my jeans and pulled out my pocket knife, not quite knowing what I was going to do with it.

My hand raised up to my right biceps and dug the knife into the skin jest where that damn number began. I didn’t feel anything except for my anger. The knife in my arm began to slide up, peeling that horrible number off of me. I didn’t feel the blood streaming down my arm, but I saw it.

I stared unbelieving at the tattooed lump of skin that lay bloody in my white marble sink. It was at least an eight of an inch thick, but I couldn’t be certain with all the blood. I had washed the blood away from my pocket knife and had returned it to my jeans. I read the number that lay on the two-inch long piece of skin. 5-6-8-2-3. It was no longer the number that threatened to replace my name for good.

I still wasn’t feeling any pain as I reached into the medicine cabinet and pulled out a roll of white linen bandages. I had never thought that I’d see the day when I’d need them. There’s not a lot that you could do in this place to hurt yourself. Blood was already seeping through the thick layer of linen as I tied it off.

I walked out of my room, grabbing a denim jacket and some cash from a table by the door as I went and running a hand through my mouse-brown hair. I stopped in disgust as I was once more faced with that stupid number. What would I do with this copy to show the whole place my disgust? The anger in me was starting to ebb, though I still wasn’t thinking very clearly as I once more removed my knife from my pocket and began to draw it across the steel. No one came running at the sound and I wasn’t surprised. The doors and walls were thick, being padded and made from steel and bricks. It would be obvious that I was gone, but I didn’t care.

Up the stairs, out the door to the roof, and I was ready to go. As my wings came flooding from my back, I felt a hand rest on my shoulder. I turned, half expecting to see the Doc with a tranquilizer shot in hand. But it was only Chloe.

“Please don’t go, Jesse” she told me. She looked as though she were about to cry.

“Why not? Jesse is lost to you anyway. I’m just some numbered experiment to you now.”

“You won’t be protected out there. Where could a guy like you possibly go?”

I pulled her hand off of my shoulder. “Am I being protected here so much as I’m being used? I can go where ever I need to go and I don’t need to be here. I can make it on my own out there, Chloe. I was born out there and I can live out there. I’m not a drone like the other people locked up in here.”

“Take this, then.” She held up a necklace expectantly, but I saw it for what it really was and laughed.

I knocked the piece of junk out of her hands and it fell to the ground nearly a hundred feet below. “You won’t be planting a tracking device on me. Once I’m gone I won’t be coming back and not even the Doc will be able to find me. You should know from your damn experiments that no one can find me if I don’t want to be found.”

She looked frustrated and I knew it was because I had seen through her little trick. These people here didn’t fool me. I could see past any possible trick that they could try playing on me.

“Good luck then, Jesse. I won’t tell the Doc that I saw you leave, but if he asks me about you, don’t you dare think that I’m going to lie to him.”

I stepped up onto the edge of the roof. “I never told you too. It won't matter. He'll find out anyway, but like I've said. He won't be able to find me even if he bothered to try."

I didn’t look back at her as I dived off the building, letting the wind flow under my wings and take me higher and higher into the sky. I wouldn’t go back; not ever in a million years. I would fly on to the opposite side of the Earth if I needed to, and who knew? Maybe I would find other Strange Ones who refused to stay in that place, or even if I was lucky enough, Strange Ones who’d never heard of it.