Five days passed since George was murdered. I spent all of my time on the fourth floor in one of the rooms which was laid out identically to the blocks on the third floor. The room I stayed in had a door which could be locked. Not by me, but by Pied Piper security. It was a section of the fourth floor which was intended to hold any mice who needed to be held someplace other than the third floor; lockable doors meant these rooms were essentially the prison cells of the facility.

My door was never locked however. I could come and go as I pleased. The only place I could go (as I was always under the surveillance of the cameras making sure every inch of the floor was being monitored) was the bathroom.

Abigail had brought me what she could to help me not get bored in my room; a deck of cards with which I could play 'patience' (as my grandma called it) or create a tower out of them. I also had a thick stack of white paper and several pens with which to draw and write to my heart's content. I half-heartedly tried filling my time with these things but over the five day period all I did was stare off into space. I was thinking. A lot. It was as if my body was on some kind of powered-down mode and my brain was working overtime to compute every last thought into something which might help me better understand my situation.

If I wasn't staring at one of the walls I would instead take long hot showers. There was something about the hot water and the pain of it across my back which comforted me.

Each day Abigail would bring me breakfast and dinner, both of which mostly went uneaten. I was hungry but I simply couldn't eat more than a few bites. Drinking water was like trying to drink a glass of sticky syrup; my throat could barely swallow it. Abigail was worried about me, she talked to me for a few minutes each time she stopped by to give me breakfast and dinner (which was of better quality than usual because it was the meals made for the facility staff on the second floor); but I barely registered a word she said. She might have mentioned something about the last time she was in New York City but I hadn't paid much attention.

The Meter on my wrist was a constant reminder of the lies all of us teenagers had been told. Sat in the dark room with only a green light coming from the motion sensor light which was off as a means to see in the dark, I replayed back in my mind everything that had happened since I had been evacuated from my home.

I remembered the first time my Meter had turned orange, and how they had marched Tiffany and Alex Landly and I through Lintern Village to the gym. That ugly, spaceship-like gym that stuck out garishly among the rustic charm of the village. I thought about what Robert had said about the Pied Piper operation being planned for at least a decade by the powers that be, and wondered if that horrible modern gym had been built specifically for the purpose of having a place within Lintern with which to monitor and carry out those dreadful treadmill trials.

How could I have known the government, or whoever was really behind the Pied Piper operation, had been planning it all for so long? I had assumed everything they were doing was done on the fly, trying their best to carry out an operation with little time or planning. Yet, if Robert was to be believed, they had planned the whole operation as a means of finding as many powered teenagers in the population as possible.

It was honestly impressive how Machiavellian the plan was. Create a fake crisis like teenagers blowing up – which must have meant all the footage online was faked – and in the heat of that crisis watch as everyone in society willingly gives up their own children to be evacuated in the name of safety.

How many times had I considered not going along with the Pied Piper evacuation? How many times did I tell myself to stick with it for fear that I might blow up and be a hazard to those around me, especially my family? There were too many times to count because I had been constantly second-guessing my decision to be evacuated from the very start. I had trusted the government just like my friend had told me not to and now I was living the result of my decision.

Idiot. Stupid. Dumbass.

I had never hated myself more than I currently did. I was weak, pathetic, slow to action, naive, and utterly able to save George.

Every time I thought about him I flip-flopped between rage and fear. Rage because they had murdered him in cold blood. Fear because I might end up like George and transform into some nightmarish creature.

On the fifth day, in the early morning hours, I dreamed about George. It was a simple dream; we were watching Ruff Rover together back in my old family home. We were sitting on the old red sofa where I loved to watch movies with my Dad.

I woke from the dream feeling warm and happy and well-rested. And then I remembered George was dead and everything which had happened before and after. Each mounting detail which filled my mind brought me deeper into feelings of fear and rage and helplessness.

I clenched my fists and they trembled impotently and then, because I wished so badly to feel some kind of relief from the misery I was in, I let my hands burn with the rage I felt. The dark room brightened with a soft yellow glow; the room was chilly with conditioned air, so the sudden heat emanating from my fists was like being near a hot stove.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The palms of my hands were glowing like hot lightbulbs. In the dark my eyes blotched, with those small purplish blotches which occur when you look into a bright light for too long. I tried not to look directly at my hands, but at the same time I was fascinated by what I was accomplishing.

My hands are searingly hot, I thought.

My fascination with what I had accomplished with my hands overrode any trepidation I might have had pressing my hand to the floor.

Sishhh!

The area where my palm touched the floor (I was reaching down from my bed which was low to the ground) sizzled. I moved my hand back, the motion catching the attention of the motion sensor lights. I could see clearly the black hand-shaped imprint left on the floor and could smell a burnt smell.

I tried clenching my fists and found when I did so both of my fists became orbs of light, almost as if there were hand shaped light bulbs shining with bright heat at the end of my arms. My childish excitement of doing something so superhuman-like, something which wasn't just increasing the musculature of my body, was soured when the thought of George sprang into my mind again. With it came the same rage. The heat in my fists became even more intense, matching how I felt. How hot are my hands right now? I wondered.

I imagined punching a Pied Piper officer in the face with my fists like this. No, with my fists burning bright and with my body in its maximally coiled up state. Officer Black Hair would have his face simultaneously pulverized and seared like minced meat. That was the rage again. Fear followed swiftly in its wake.

What if I really did what I imagined? What if I punched officer Black Hair so hard with my heated fists that he died? What if I lost control of my power the same way George had let himself become what he became?

This is my heat, my power, I thought, the rage I feel powers these hands. I'm the intense rage which will get revenge for George.

No!

With every ounce of my will I begged whatever power I had to remove the heat from my hands. It happened immediately, the room becoming less hot and less bright. I shot up from my bed and hurried out to the corridor (more motion-sensing lights flickering on as I progressed along the corridor) and I made my way into the bathroom. When I reached the sink I washed my hands. In a way doing so was purely symbolic. My hands weren't dirty, but it felt good to feel the cold water touch my normal-again hands. I had wondered if the water might have sizzled on my skin from the heat, like putting a hot frying pan under hot water, but it didn't happen.

I pulled several paper towels from the dispenser on the wall and wiped my hands dry. I stopped and looked at myself in the mirror. The same Burgess I remembered stared back at me. Short brown hair, blue eyes, round-ish face that had some stubble on it (I had ordered an electric razor and had used it, but I hadn't thought or cared to bring it down to the fourth floor and hadn't bothered to ask Abigail for it either).

Without meaning to, I found myself staring at my reflection for over ten minutes. With the excitement of discovering a new way to tap into my power I had felt relief from the constant dread bearing down on me. That was dangerous. That was what George had done to escape his own pain. I couldn't be reckless and let myself make that same mistake.

I'm not my power, I thought. For some reason it felt important to me to make that distinction. There is a power, and that power isn't me. Which was another way of saying, I have power, but I am not powerful, I can tap into that power, but that power isn't me.

The thought was becoming repetitive but I didn't care. I had seen what Jay and Amar had done to themselves by identifying with their powers too much. They were letting themselves become freaks, pseudo-monsters, because they couldn't stop themselves from using their powers. I understood the excitement, the euphoria, the escape of tapping into the power very well myself. Coiling had and was like a drug to me. Bringing about the intense heat in my hands was very much the same drug. What I could identify with is that all of us teenagers, us mice, were addicts in the making, if not some of us already.

I could not and would not allow myself to get carried away with my powers like Jay and Amar and, to a lesser extent, Tiffany and Mikayla.

Tiffany and Mikayla were using the power to make themselves prettier, removing their blemishes and heightening what pretty femininity they already had. They were identifying with their new look and, in a way, becoming obsessed. They were craving using their power to improve their looks just as much as they craved the positive attention it brought them. This was, in my opinion, understandable as something to enjoy when using the power but also something pitiable. It had occurred to me many times to improve my own looks (more than the coiled state had done), but I resisted the temptation. I didn't want to identify as someone who felt the need to use their own appearance. Maybe one day, but not yet.

The excitement over, I returned to my room and lay back down in bed. Within minutes I found myself staring off into space again. The motion sensor lights flickered off and yet again I found myself enjoying the bliss darkness brought. In the darkness I could almost pretend like I didn't exist.

George is dead and you're trapped in this facility and you're playing with your powers like a twat, I thought, suddenly. Guilt gripped me like burning acid. How much longer could I remain passive here? I had tried to push away my doubts and concerns from the start of the evacuation and I still had underestimated how bad things would be. I needed to strike first for a change. But how?

Several ideas came to me at once.