Lee Caldwell

Lee is Avi's best friend and former zoomate.

Appearance

Lee is a stocky Japanese American teenager with black hair. When Avi meets him, it is long and unkempt. After meeting Skylar, it is an undercut. He has grey eyes until the Sisko Arc, where his left eye turns milky blue. His wings are iridescent blue with large ovals of white on the flight feathers.

Personality

Lee presents himself as a goofy person, but is extremely insecure and depressed. Given the chance, he will try to change the subject from himself to anything else. He values humor above all else.

Story

Lee grew up with his parents and was particularly close with his father. In his early teens, his father died in a car accident and his mother remarried. His stepfather was physically abusive to his mother and verbally abusive to them both, but they were finincally dependent on him so Lee’s mother was hesitant to leave him.

Lee finally had the final straw when his stepfather hit him and broke his nose and was angry his mother didn’t try to defend him. He packed a few things and ran away from home.

Zoo Arc

Lee’s story starts a few months before Avi’s. He was kidnapped while running away from home in Colorado and shipped down to the lab at the zoo. He was the first test subject to take to the avian alterations successfully and he was placed in a zoo enclosure when the scientists were finished with him.

Alone in near isolation, treated as an animal, Lee started slowly losing his mind. Things began to get better when Avi showed up. Lee felt incredibly guilty for being happy she was there, after all, that meant that she was to suffer the same fate as him. But he was happy to finally have someone to talk to, to relate to, to do anything with.

He tried to show Avi how to function in the zoo, what things they could and couldn’t do, but it took a few injuries for her to accept that she would be here for a very long time. During one of Avi’s hospital visits, she and Lee met a scientist named Asha, who took a liking to them both. She gifted them treats and extra food, things to keep them sane while at the zoo. One night, she broke Avi and Lee out, giving them money and supplies enough to get them out of the city and heading home.

Avi suggested they find a police station to see if they could contact their parents. Unfortunately, the zoo noticed their absence and put out a call for the entire city, asking them to help bring Avi and Lee back. The two ran from the police and split up, agreeing to meet at a nearby park.

Lee made it no problem, but was shocked when Avi arrived bloodied and with a bullet in her leg. She realized that she would just slow Lee down in escaping and asked him to leave her behind. Begrudgingly, he did, clumsily flying to a rooftop miles away.

While trying to figure out what to do, a person named Skylar found Lee and invited him into their family’s home. They realized who he was and promised not to turn him in. In fact, they wanted to help him break Avi out of the zoo.

After several days of planning, the two went to the zoo during one of Avi’s shows and broke her out, but Skylar was captured instead. Lee was distraught, but followed Avi and her new friend Will through a back exit.

The three wandered through the city, trying to find a way to leave once more. They decided to try to find help at a tourist center, but ended up getting kidnapped once more.

Sisko Arc

They woke up in a van to find out that they had been captured by a rich megalomaniac with a sadistic mind named Sisko. Lee acted out several times and was rewarded with a gallon of bleach to the face. He and Will were taken away to a different private zoo.

The two grew closer together, with Will using his medical knowledge to tend to Lee’s eyes. After cleaning them, Lee realized he was partially blind.

After weeks at Sisko’s zoo, a young woman named Dakota visited them, explaining that Avi had been tortured and put into a sensory deprivation chamber. She helped them plan a way to help break her out, but their plans were ruined when Sisko took her out himself.

Everything was too quiet until Avi killed Sisko.

When the police and ambulance arrived, they took Avi, Lee, and Will to get their health checked out and very quickly found their alterations. After everyone was interviewed, a pair of agents, Redwood and Salvador, approached them and gave them a deal: they could go with him and be safe with a place to stay and food. In return, the kids would tell them everything they knew about themselves and their alterations. Deciding they didn’t have a better option at the moment, the kids were soon on the road to a scientific facility.

Lab Arc

When they arrived, everyone there was incredibly kind. The kids received the food, care, and attention they needed and deserved. The scientists ran a few tests, mostly to make sure they’re doing okay physically and begin to check out their interesting biology.

But after a few weeks there, things became more and more sinister. Eventually, their suspicions were confirmed when their most trusted scientist friends slowly and meticulously vivisected them one by one. Lee and Will were told that Avi was sick and unable to leave their room and they believed it until they were also separated and vivisected.

The scientists dropped their friendly facade for the most part, and began treating the kids like lab animals. Redwood and Salvador, ignorant to the scientists’ plans at first, warn the kids that they’re planning another vivisection that the kids will die in the process of, as the scientists want to harvest their organs to study.

The two agents tried to help the kids escape, but Redwood was fatally injured and had to be left behind. The lab released a heavily altered Skylar with new wings, a tail, a bird leg, and a bird leg prosthetic to hunt them down. Lee managed to calm them down before they were able to do major damage to the group and they joined them in their escape. Salvador helped get the kids to a ghost town a safe distance away and stayed behind to hopefully slow the lab guards, presumably dying in the process.

Home Arc

The kids drove home, making slow progress as to not catch any attention and frequent stops, as Avi was the only one able to drive and they were consumed with guilt about Redwood and Salvador.

They finally arrived at Avi’s parent’s home and they welcomed them with open arms, inviting the others to stay with them.