A sudden dark mood took hold of me. I wasn't aware of it right away but Tiffany's concerned look in my direction made me realise how grumpy I must have looked. It felt as if there were a pressure building inside my head and the rest of my body. I wasn't sure what it was I needed; sugar? caffeine? water?

"What?" I said, in a stand-offish tone in response to Tiffany's questioning look.

"Are you okay?" she whispered.

"It doesn't make a difference, does it?" I said.

Mike led us through and to the right of a long white corridor. The walls on either side were narrow, barely allowing for three people at the most to stand side-by-side. The ceiling too seemed low; the likes of Blain, Tiffany and Mike being able to reach up and touch it if they stood on their tip-toes.

Tiffany kept pace with me. Her eyes were trying to lock with mine. A fresh spike of aggravation took hold of me.

"Can you tell me what's wrong?" she said.

I didn't want to say anything. I just wanted to be left alone. A fresh spike of anger and anxiety climbed within me making me want to punch something. I felt the kind of anger only my brother knew the right buttons to press to get out of me. Nobody had been so talented at getting me upset like my brother had done over the years. One time, around the age of thirteen, I had realised with teenage melodramatics that I didn't have any friends at school. I had come home and the grief of this had finally worn me down to the point I flung myself onto my parent's bed and started to cry.

When Mum asked me what was wrong I simply cried, "I don't have any friends."

My brother had used that moment of me crying as one of the many things he could bring up during arguments to set me off.

"I don't have any friends, Mum!" he would say, parroting the sadness with which I had said those words but in a mocking, pathetic sounding tone.

The fights we had often ended with Mum crying and Dad being useless (and after I turned fourteen only available to reach by phone to be equally as useless in that way too). When my brother started pushing my buttons, saying the most horrid crap to me, he would do so knowing full well that I was trying to hold myself back from getting angry.

Maybe the anger hadn't come on so suddenly after all. Maybe it had been steadily brewing ever since I had been rudely evacuated from my home. I thought about the tone of the Pied Piper officer, the woman that had first knocked at our front door, banging her fist, not using the doorbell. I thought about every Pied Piper officer that had been rude or cold and, of course, the one that had even pointed a gun at my head. I thought about Alex Landly and how he hadn't even bothered to have even the slightest glimmer of polite conversation with me despite us both being in an extraordinary crisis situation.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The list of things which had seriously bothered me since being evacuated, things which I had forced myself to brush aside and to detach emotionally from; they had all sat somewhere within my skull waiting to be given their fair due.

"Burgess?" said Tiffany.

"Just leave it!" I said, sharply, my face contorted with anger.

Tiffany flinched and then looked at me with momentary disgust. She looked away and started chewing the already sore looking skin around her fingernails.

Great! I thought bitterly, Now you're made her upset on top of everything else! Great going, you insufferable twat!

I tried my best to focus my attention on my surroundings, but my dark mood was making it increasingly difficult not to feel like the world was becoming increasingly dark around the edges.

The complex that was level three was like a maze. There were signs at intervals showing where we were; B-1, B-2, B-3; and that would have been useful if the living quarter blocks were spaced directly beside one another. Instead the corridor forked left and right, not displaying clearly to which living quarter it went to next. We took a left and found B-4, then a right to come to B-6. I looked around for any sign of B-5 but we continued on.

Very quickly the corridors became swamped with teenagers in blue overalls. Some walked down the way we had just come, overs following behind us or hurrying ahead. There were no doors to the living quarters we passed meaning we had an open look inside. The living spaces were minimalist, with two bunk beds and a fifth bed built onto the wall. The mattresses looked thin and the singular pillows about as thick as a bar of soap. The blankets looked cheap as if they might provide only the most basic warmth. Everything was either gray or the same drab white.

There are prison cells in England nicer than this, I thought to myself.

The teenagers in the living quarters we passed sat around lazily, some talking to each other, others either resting or just sat alone with their thoughts.

All of a sudden a body a little taller than mine shouldered into me causing me to stagger back.

A thin but wiry-muscled mixed-race boy looked over his shoulder.

"Watch where you're walking!" he said, then kissed his teeth.

I could see in his eyes that he was the type of young man that would delight in a fight. Normally I might have let it go, but I just wasn't feeling at all ready to do that.

"Excuse me?" I said, sharply.

The boy stopped in his tracks, his eyes widening with silent fury. He swore at me and then, the next thing I knew, he brought an open hand hard into my face. It happened so fast I could only look at him in surprise, the fresh sting of the slap wiping all over thoughts from my head.

The boy bit his tongue and looked at me as if challenging me to speak up again, because surely there was a ready supply of slaps, or worse, ready to be delivered. After a moment of inaction from me the boy shoved me hard against the wall. Pain climbed up my back. Other teenagers had stopped and were looking at me and him, though none were willing to involve themselves; I even caught a few fascinated, amused looks from teenagers excited at the possibility of a fight breaking out. The boy continued on his way, walking with swagger.

The other teenagers who had witnessed what just happened continued on their way, some giving me looks and others ignoring me entirely.

I put a hand to my cheek, feeling the warmth there and the fuzzy stinging pain.

Ahead Mike, Tiffany, Blain, and Mikayla were nowhere to be seen.