“So I just tied them up!” Penny was saying. “Turns out you lose points if you didn’t use the approved restraint cuffs.”

Carrie giggled. Amelia smiled, prim as usual.

“At least you did not use the vines that caused a rash,” Amelia remarked.

“Or maybe I got docked points because of that.”

Lyssa returned home to the sounds of laughter and mindless TV in the background. She moved towards her room quietly.

“Hey, going to bed already?” Carrie asked.

Lyssa withheld a flinch. “Yeah,” she said.

“What’s that steampunk-looking thing?” Penny asked with her mouth full of chips.

“The Director gave it to me,” Lyssa said.

“What’s it for?”

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “It’s supposed to help me focus, I think. He and I have a similar gift.”

“Is that right?” Amelia said.

Lyssa tensed up, only for Amelia to smile in jest.

“We all know you have more going on under the hood than you are letting on, Lyssa. Relax. Come hang out for a bit.”

“Yeah, it’s not even ten yet,” Penny added.

“Well, okay.” Lyssa set the contraption on a side table and walked towards them. She did deserve a break.

She had been working harder than she had ever before as of late. Averting the voices and their unhelpful advice, and maintaining her grades had been a balancing act as of the last few weeks. The feeling of having a personal motivation felt euphoric. Like she was latching on to a lifeline pulling her out of stillness. Had she broken free from her design? She did not know. All she cared about was holding on to this existence as much as possible.

The voices had been quieter. She had worked hard to suppress them. Sometimes she had fevers. She had spent sleepless nights clutching onto sweat-slick sheets, beating them back, whispering that mantra. I am my own master. Lyssa had gotten better.

She tried not to think about the tradeoff. Before she was a star of gift application, albeit unwittingly. The Selves allowed her to make full use of her gifts. Nowadays she had been making do with one at a time, and with far weaker effects. She told herself she was honing her discipline, making better use of her stamina. Yes, that was it.

She was better. The other her never had this experience. This simplicity. Class, work, play. Watching dumb shows about people who communicated poorly, perpetuating dramas between themselves. The other her forfeited life. Lyssa didn’t even want to say ‘original’. It didn’t matter one bit who came first. It shouldn’t.

“I thought we agreed to leave him alone, Deborah,” a character on the TV in an upscale living room said with an accusatory glare.

“I am, Charlize” came the tart reply. “I spent all weekend at my cabin.”

“So this is your long-lost twin I see walking up his doorstep?”

“Why do you have a camera installed by his door? Wait- no! That’s…”

Carrie groaned. “That can’t be the season twist,” she said.

“Shush,” Penny said urgently.

“I still do not understand television here after so many years,” Amelia said.

“Guys, shut up!” Penny insisted.

Lyssa glanced out the balcony, brow furrowed. It wasn’t a noise she heard, but the barest hint of a violent thought. She left her seat, leaving behind the good-humored bickering. The wall separating the school grounds from the city rose into view, along with a thin sliver of fireflies, bobbing in the night.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Her eyes narrowed. The fireflies fell back, then jumped, following a parabolic arc, landing on well-kempt lawns and shrubbery in plumes of fire.

“Uhh, guys?” She said.

Amelia walked up beside her.

“Alright, TV night is thus concluded,” she said. “Shut off the lights.”

“There’s three minutes left in the episode!” Penny griped while Carrie ran around to flick switches off. “What the hell is going- oh, that.”

Amelia retrieved her phone.

“Shit, we have to evacuate,” she said. “The school ordered it a couple minutes ago. We must have missed it.”

“Evacuate from what? Normals?” Penny said with a snort.

“You know that is not the point.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Lyssa’s did not stop watching. There were people hidden by the shadow of night with torches trying to climb over the gates. They shook in place for a moment before falling back down. They picked themselves up, glanced behind them, and scattered. A pair of headlights transfixed on the metal from somewhere farther down the street. The cones of light grew brighter and brighter.

A loud snap penetrated the walls of their dormitory as the gates were shoved off their hinges by a garbage truck. The massive vehicle barreled through, rattling as it oscillated briefly on taxed suspensions, rolling over the speed bumps without taking the hint. It ground to a halt deep within school grounds, and figures of all sizes began walking out. Many were armed.

“We have got to go,” Amelia said.

Lyssa followed her, but not before grabbing the Director’s circlet. She would die of shame if something were to happen to it the day she borrowed it. Whatever it was.

They ran to the ground floor. Other students who had heard the notice late glanced at them.

“Where do we go?” One of them murmured.

“There is a muster point on the other side of the campus,” Amelia said. “Let’s take the back way.”

More cars were driving through the opening. Lyssa could hear the sounds of their tires. She also heard them think, though she couldn’t make out any words or even complex emotions. There was anger, resentment, fear. All familiar things. Without Bil she could manage no more clarity.

She grit her teeth.

The squeal of tires drew gasps out of the group of students. Two trucks had cut their escape from the dormitory area of the campus. Men and women in casual clothes hopped out, high-caliber submachine guns in their hands.

“We don’t want to use these,” one of them said, a larger man with greying stubble and heavily wrinkled skin. “And they can hurt your kind. We just want to talk with the Director of this place.”

The students spoke in hushed tones. Amelia stepped forward.

“Then let us be,” she said. “We are just kids.”

“Oh no you’re not,” he said. “We’ve seen the games. Been watching them for years. Studying you people. You’re all dangerous.”

“We’re here to learn how to help you, to help everyone!” A male student exclaimed.

“I know,” the man said. “You’re probably a fine young man. But we don’t know that for sure. None of us ever did. But after that…” He began to whimper. Members of his cohort came to give his shoulder a reaffirming squeeze.

“Tell us what happened,” Amelia said gently.

“My daughter married one of you,” he said. “He seemed proper enough. Then the incident happened. He filled their entire apartment building with radiation! My daughter’s skin is melting off in an ICU as we speak!”

“I am really sorry about that.”

“We don’t want to hurt anybody,” he said. He sniffed, gathering his courage. “All of us have similar stories. We just want the Director to do something for us. And we need him motivated. Sit tight, and none of you will lose a hair.”

So they held them at gunpoint. A radioman spoke with the elsewhere members of their cohort. This whole thing had been planned. Likely for years, but not seriously until the incident. Until enough was enough.

Waves of fear poured from both the ungifted and the gifted. It was making Lyssa’s eyes water. She took deep breaths, among other meditative techniques, to no avail. Why can’t I shut it out? This had never been a problem before. What had changed?

“Is she alright?” The man asked, pointing at Lyssa. Being noticed gave her a jolt. “Does she need, like, an inhaler? One of us can go to your dorms and-”

“She’s fine,” Carrie said uncertainly. She drew close to Lyssa and whispered, “Are you fine? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Lyssa answered.

One of the ungifted began to make his agitation apparent. It was a younger man, impatient, but more scared than any of them.

“I don’t like this, sir,” he said. “They could kill us at any moment.”

Amelia wanted to say that wasn’t how gifts worked, but stayed her tongue.

“We’re at an understanding,” the elder said.

“We should- I don’t know.”

“We should what, Steven? They’re kids!”

“Even the kids are dangerous! I saw one of them turn into a mini-sun! Ate up my whole neighborhood before it fell asleep in its own crater.”

“Well- they’re all unique, aren’t they?”

“No! Many of them have the same one!”

Amelia spoke up, measured and quiet. “None of us can turn into a sun. And we are just as afraid as you are.”

“You don’t look rattled at all,” the young man said, pointing at her with his gun.

“I am just-”

“No! Don’t talk to me! My parents were in there, lady! There’s nothing left! There’s nothing fucking left!”

Carrie moved just in time to catch Lyssa before she fell on the ground. At the sight of movement, the ungifted all retrained their weapons.

“Sorry! Sorry,” Carrie said, raising a hand while the other grasped Lyssa. “She’s just sick. That’s all.” Carrie whispered in Lyssa’s ear, “What is it? What do you need?”

“What are you saying to her?! Get away from her!”

“Steven,” the elder began.

“They’re plotting something!”

Lyssa did not answer. Carrie’s eye wandered to the circlet. She frowned.

“Put it on me.”

Carrie blinked in surprise, but did not react further. While the ungifted were distracted, she placed it on Lyssa’s head and flicked the switch.