It became quickly apparent to me that Xandra was not satisfied with just coiling up and running at close to a sprinting pace, even after she had said she wanted us to push ourselves more than usual. After the first half hour of running across farmland, roads, and forests (always being careful to avoid getting too close to any of the residential areas and using our powers to stay a step-ahead of any people about, of which there were quite a few), Xandra picked up her speed even more.

I didn't call her out on this since I assumed she merely wanted to make even quicker work of traversing the last stretch of our journey towards the abandoned World War Two bunker, the location of which she had memorised using her power weeks ago.

It was early evening and the sky was thick with clouds and was still spitting rain, always threatening to become a downpour again. The deep greens and browns of the farmland trailed by the way they would as if I were a passenger in a car; mostly a blur if I didn't pay attention, but crisp and clear with many minute details of my surroundings sticking out to me if I were to train my eyes on a particular spot.

I was getting better at letting the power speed up my mind enough to keep up with all the new visual stimuli and obstacles in our wake. When I did concentrate on a specific obstacle, again which I could see crisp and clear, it was almost as if time had slowed to a crawl, allowing me the time I needed to side-step, jump over, or step-on-top-of whatever was in our way.

In order to keep up with Xandra I tapped into the power and bulked up my leg muscles, particularly around the thighs. It was more than just muscle however because the bones and sinew were also toughened up and made more able to squish and take the impact of my body leaping in great bounds at high speed between bouts of sprinting.

Also like a frog I had to use the power, almost without thinking of having to do so, to open up the airways in my throat and lungs enough to accommodate the increased need for air; both the influx of oxygen and the outflow of carbon dioxide. My heart in particular thumped like a humming bird's to keep the blood pumping through my body at high enough speed. This all in turn had a knock on effect of 'clearing out the cobwebs'; it was exhilarating, though the euphoria of running and stopping to rest hadn't yet hit me, because it was all go, go, go keeping up with Xandra. I had to coil up the muscles in my arms and back to make sure carrying the bags over this first half hour at such a high speed and intensity was something the rest of my body was able to keep up with too; back when I was a normal person even holding up my arms for a few minutes would cause them to ache; it struck me as Xandra and I continued on our way just how far I had already come in tapping into the power. The days of figuring out how to coil at the Wedder Gorge facility seemed like a lifetime ago.

I focused my attention on Xandra. She was much taller than she was before, which was easy to see thanks to the way her jeans stretched around her shins. She wasn't bigger in any one area, but overall her stature had increased so that she was easily head and shoulders taller than she was before; which meant she had become head and shoulders taller than me.

She had also taken off her shoes because, at her larger size, they simply didn't fit.

The carry bags and the rucksack on her back looked that little bit smaller in comparison too.

This increase in size gave her all the strength and power she needed to run much faster. She jumped over a tall hedge which bordered a road ahead of us with athletic ease.

She disappeared from view ahead of me, obscured by the hedge she had just cleared. I had been mid bound. Boy did it feel great to hurtle from the air onto the ground. As soon as my legs hit the ground, absorbing the impact, I broke into a short sprint again and sized up the hedge in front of me.

And then, like I had done many times already in the last half hour, I put all my strength into the jump and soared up and over the hedge. I needed to hoist the carry bags up to avoid them getting stuck, and I needed also to bring my knees higher to avoid my feet getting caught on the hedge branches.

A giddy, floaty feeling like every other time I jumped took hold of me and then, BAM, my legs hit the concrete of the road.

The sound of a car horn blaring and the rapidly nearing glare of headlights told me I had about a half second to get out of the vehicle's way.

I had been so caught up thinking about why Xandra had decided to speed ahead I hadn't paid enough attention to know the car was so close; another part of me had assumed the coast was clear because Xandra had jumped first.

I could feel the shift in air beneath my legs as the car sailed beneath me. But I hadn't jumped quite high or fast enough to avoid the car entirely. A piece of the car's roof clipped my left ankle, sending me spinning over and off course in mid-air.

I panicked for all of half a second because, to my surprise, my brain was able to figure out the next best way to land. I let my body listen to the instinctual way my brain, influenced by the power, wanted me to move. When I landed on the other side of the hedge I did so deftly enough that I was simply able to land, take a half-moment to myself to thank my lucky stars for not being squished by the car; and then, seeing Xandra was still charging ahead, I forced myself to do a little jump and then, after landing, to break into a series of jumps with each more forceful and faster than the last. This way I was able to make up a good deal of the distance between Xandra and me.

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She probably doesn't want to make her body look weird the way I am, I thought, trying to figure out what Xandra had opted to grow in stature rather than have 'drumstick legs' like me.

Back at the Wedder Gorge facility Sophie had increased her stature too. She had done this to help Walter and I break down the wall that led to the sealed up exit out of the third floor.

Two wasn't exactly a pattern, but it seemed to me that girls with the power might be more likely to choose to grow in stature rather than fill out their figures; for obvious reasons.

Although she's taller, I thought, she also seems to need less overall muscle at her bigger size to leap over the hedge.

My musing on how Xandra was using her power came to an abrupt stop because she, ahead of me, also came to a hard stop. After a moment of using my heightened senses to scan ahead, I could also hear what it was that made Xandra stop.

She shrunk down to her normal size and dove down onto the ground. She looked back at me and I finished my last jump and skidded across the wet grass, coming to a stop beside her.

I slipped off the carry bags and tugged my fox hat a little so it fit on my head more snugly. The high speed had threatened to make it fall off; though Sienna must have made it well because it held on tight to my head all the same.

Without saying a word Xandra and I had an understanding that it wasn't the time to talk. Slowly, we both eased our heads over the rise in the ground and the low bushes to see further in the distance.

We had run up a hill, though it hadn't really felt that way until we both saw that we were at the edge of a drop off. If we were to fall as normal people we'd run the risk of breaking our legs, or worse.

Xandra slapped a hand to her mouth to stifle her shock at what she saw. Way off, down below, at the fringe of the farm ahead of us, a battle was taking place.

"Peepers," Xandra muttered as if it were a dirty word.

There were a half dozen Peeper vehicles tearing up earth on the farm below. They had coordinated in such a way to create a loose circle around three obviously super-human MICE.

The three MICE were obvious to know what they were from a distance because they were all greatly transformed.

One of the three glowed with a bright red intensity. It appeared to be a girl who had made her body a mixture of black stone and, between the cracks in the stone, an incredible glowing hot heat like magma. The grass around the magma-like teenager was on fire, with acrid smoke filling the air.

Another of the MICE teenagers was quite clearly some form of were-bird; at a guess some kind of eagle though it was hard to be sure. They had regular arms tipped with claws, but their back had a huge set of angel-like wings. Their legs were bent in a bird-like shape, with large talons on the ends; the shredded remains of clothing hung off the figure of the were-bird teenager; their head was the only human element remaining to them. Even with my heightened vision magnifying what I could see in the gloomy evening dark, I could just about make out the person was of a male of Asian-Indian descent.

The last of the three was another person, whose arms had become a writhing pair of tentacles, like an octopus. They had no clothes that I could see, but the transformation had rendered the person, whatever sex they were, sexless because all that remained on their human figure was a strange octopus-like skin texture. Their head, human in shape, shared the same strange texture.

There were Peeper officers standing atop the backs of the vehicles. For a moment I wondered if this might be a stand off, that some negotiation might take place; that one of the Peepers might demand that the fugitive MICE stand down and surrender themselves.

But no demand came. Instead the Peepers opened fire with huge guns mounted on the back of their vehicles.

The magma-teenager leapt in front of the were-bird teenager, shielding them from the maelstrom of bullets. The stone took the brunt of the bullets for a few moments, so much so I was in awe that the power was able to withstand such unrelenting continued machine gun fire from a huge military-grade weapon.

The magma-teenager provided a shield to the were-bird teenager long enough for the were-bird to leap into the sky.

To Xandra and I's complete astonishment the were-bird actually flew. Their huge wings beat against the air and they set off into the sky.

But it wasn't going to be enough. The trail of bullets fixed onto the magma-teenager shifted to the flying were-bird.

Several bullets landed. The were-bird, riddled with bullets, fell from the sky and was dead upon landing. Any chance that the were-bird might have survived was quickly diminished because, to Xandra and I's shared horror, a grenade was thrown by one of the officers.

Boom!

In moments just the bloody remains of the were-bird teenager were visible on the torn up earth.

The magma-teenager's heat built to the point our heightened vision hurt to look at it. The magma-teenager, still taking bullets, looked back at the were-octopus teenager; said something neither Xandra nor I could hear over the rain of gunfire; and then exploded.

Huge chunks of molten rock fired like missiles all around the area; carving into several of the vehicles, starting a chain reaction; two of the vehicles exploded; the officers in the cars, at least a half dozen between the two, were set on fire and would be dead within moments.

"We should go," I said, unable to keep the panic from my voice.

"Wait," said Xandra, "Where did the octopus go?"

Xandra's eyes widened even further as she strained her vision.

"I can't see them," she said, "I can't–"

I put my hand over Xandra's. She flinched and looked at me, her eyes removing the strain on them, reducing in size.

"We have to go," I said, "If they see us we'll be next. We can't fight all that."

Xandra nodded.

We both couldn't help but take one last look at the chaos below; there was no sign of the last remaining teenager; lots of acrid smoke and fire had built across the farm.

And no sign of the were-octopus.

"Is this what they want?" said Xandra, tearfully, once we were far enough away from everything we had just seen to feel comfortable speaking.

"Do they think they're the heroes?" said Xandra.

I didn't know what to say. It was too much. Part of me had become numb to all the madness after everything that had happened at the Wedder Gorge facility; this was more of the same.

We continued to run, both of us staying quiet and feeling a sense of hopelessness unlike anything we had felt before.