chapter 1

The 5th generation children were created and bred in the institute. A group of abnormally enhanced children drilled daily to harness their abilities.

Winged and agile, strong and deadly, they were weapons trained since they could walk. Rumored to have been a bastardization of numerous genes and human embryos placed into human women to develop.

Penniless and at desperate times, they had been approached by the institute where they were cared for until they were relieved of their bundles of joy and then moved on with their lives, well compensated and acclaimed to have contributed to the glory of science, or so they said.

The surviving children were seven in number, the remains of numerous casualties; after series of trials and experiments.

Logan was the eldest, it was when his wings became strong enough for flight that he began to manifest other powers, and then the D.R.E.G.S began to pay the children more attention than the other prototypes and specimen created in the institute.

How they came to be known as the 5th generation was because they were not the first project. The 1st generation was a sub-group of mutated rodents and arachnids, a minimal success because had it failed the institute might have dropped the project for another.

The 2nd generation were the drones and virtual machines and A.I robots upgraded with advance technologies, the 3rd, a mixture of human and android body parts, it was during the 4th stage that they began experimenting on humans and there they were faced with series of failures, accidents in which they only managed to created misshapen mutated humanoids some of which still lurked around the institute.

Then finally, the 5th generation became the peak of their achievements but they wanted more, putting the children through series of tests to accelerate them further into their full potential. It was these extreme tests that killed off the first set of the 5th generation children.

As they walked towards the rest of the team, Babybaby as she was fondly called was the first to notice their arrival. She spread her rainbow colored wings and glided towards them, a bright smile on her cute chubby Asian face, genuinely glad to see the others after a long weekend apart. She was the youngest of the children, just clocked six, a favorite amidst the staff and some doctors in the institute.

Obiora looked up to acknowledge them from where he was bench pressing, his broad face as black as coal, the biggest of them all, at sixteen was taller and more broad shouldered than every adult male in the institute, his great crimson wings spread out behind him. His twin, Orchid lounged nearby, watched him with admiration welcomed them with a smile, she was the prettiest of the children, her stark white hair and peanut butter skin, a startling contrast to her twin’s darker skin, snow white plumage as slim and graceful like a swan’s.

“Where is Logan?’’, Omotola asked her. Orchid shrugged but Babybaby answered.

“He had to check back at the sick bay again.’’

Logan at twenty two was the last surviving member of his age group, the first litter of 5th generation children.

They’d all died of overload during testing which had also left him crippled with one wing that gave him so much constant pain he had to report quite often at the labs. Despite his physical deformities, he was the most powerful of the children.

His regeneration and degeneration abilities were fearsome, he could put together a broken glass, regrow severed human limbs, heal mortal wounds, and once, he healed some staff that fell off his cubicle balcony and broke his spinal cord. He could also reverse his regeneration powers and can use it to disintegrate solid organic matter.

Obiora’s powers manifested during one of his tests. He had gotten upset when he complained he was too big for the oval shaped testant pods he was being scanned on and that it cramped his enormous wings, in a fit of rage destroyed it by setting it on fire they had to build him a bigger one, his great size which also came with enormous strength and weight so dense that when he’s on top speed the institute was yet to find something that can stop his momentum, the institute pushed him harder than the rest of the children to ascertain the limit of his strength.

Omotola looked over at Shettima as he found a corner to brood which didn’t do him much good as Babybaby went over to harass him, they all chuckled as he mildly tried to ignore her, showing no pinch of emotion, Shettima’s powers were scary, if the children weren’t aware that he adored Babybaby like the rest of them, they would have held her from trying to play tag with him.

He was a telepath, like that wasn’t enough, he could render himself intangible and semi-invisible, he could move through solid objects, his wings black as night could blend him into shadows, technically porting him from one place to another, they had jokingly compared him with the Dracula movies they had watched the rare times they were given old movies to watch but they never said it to his face, but she suspected that with his telepathy he already knew.

Babybaby was the last to manifest her powers. She was electromagnetic and could manipulate the earth’s core, as she was still young she’s had difficulties controlling her powers and it goes haywire whenever she was upset, the last time she went out of control was when her favorite doll was taken from her cubicle for sterilization, her tantrums nearly pulled down the institute building until the doll was quickly returned to her, she was quite spoilt. She also had a slight control over plant life forms, they laughed louder as she tried to hold on to Shettima with a vine she just grown as the latter tried to escape her.