Azad continued to explain more about his encounter with the Sub-Division escapees, but I stopped comprehending anything he was saying.

A feeling like indigestion started in my gut, and grew worse to the point every breath became a conscious effort.

It was cold in the den, but the harshness of the evening breeze hadn't made its way inside.

Despite this, I felt stifled in the shredded clothes I was wearing as if it were a raging hot summer's day.

"I can't – I'm sorry–" I mumbled.

I could hardly hear myself speak. Out. I needed to get out. The den around me spun dizzyingly.

Bile and the acidic touch of vomit caught at the back of my throat.

Staggering, I made it to the entrance of the den which was covered with a hanging blanket. I thrashed the blanket aside and stumbled into the darkness beyond the den. The world swayed and the ground beneath me tugged away. A sensation like falling off a skateboard followed and I fell sideways to the ground.

My breathing strained.

Dying, I thought, I'm dying.

Had the food been poisoned? Was my body falling apart because it was no longer able to heal all the damage done to it?

No air left in my lungs. A dry retching noise escaped my throat and nothing else.

Make it stop, I thought, please, anything to make it stop.

My eyes snapped shut.

When I opened them a moment later my lungs decided to work again.

HAH.

Sucking in a huge lungful of air.

HAW.

Letting it out.

My breathing steadied. The pain stopped. Relief.

I was no longer on the ground outside the den in the national park forest. Instead I was back in a place I thought I would not see again for a very long time, perhaps ever.

It was late at night, but somehow I could tell it was much later than seven PM.

To my astonishment, I was sitting in the middle of a familiar black bench; on a quiet side-street bordering a motorway. There were lots of houses nearby with the curtains drawn, some with lights still on, others without.

Further down the street a fox was biting into a black bin bag full of trash.

I knew right away this was the place near my old home where me and my friend would stop after walking the quiet night streets together. It was the same spot where he and I had discussed whether or not it was a good idea to trust the government and to go along with the Pied Piper's Return operation.

"This isn't real," I said, aloud, "This is just my imagination."

Looking down, I saw I was still wearing the same shredded remains of clothing. If this was my imagination, why were my clothes still the same as when I had just passed out?

I stood away from the bench and looked around some more. The cool night air was tinged with the smell of car emissions rising up from the motorway.

A sudden loud clanging nearby made me flinch. The fox which had been rifling through the bin bag had the remains of a roast chicken in its mouth and had started to scamper off down the street with its prize.

"Are you sure?" said a voice.

There, at the end of the bench, was someone sitting in the shadowy part where my friend had sat before on the night we had our discussion.

I knew right away however that, whoever it was, it definitely wasn't my friend. The voice was too different to be theirs.

In fact, the voice was eerily familiar.

"Who are you?" I said, "What is this?"

"Want to take a guess?" said the figure.

"You're my subconscious or something," I said, "And this place is just in my imagination."

"Sounds like you've got it figured out," said the voice.

"So, what?" I said, "Why am I here?"

I studied the shadowy face at the end of the bench in the hopes of making out any features, but the more I looked, the deeper the shadows became.

"If I had to guess," said the figure, "You were having a panic attack. You're here because you asked the power to give you a reprieve. So, following that logic, you're going to be here until the panic attack passes, and-or, you're ready to go back."

"So you didn't bring me here?" I said.

"No," said the figure.

"So you're just a part of my imagination too?" I said.

"Maybe," said the figure.

"What do you mean, 'maybe', don't you know?" I said.

The figure didn't respond.

"Can you come out of the dark?" I said, "I can't see your face."

Again, the figure didn't respond.

"Well?" I said, "Don't you have anything to say?"

The figure remained silent.

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I looked away from the figure at the end of the bench. On the one hand this all came as a relief.

On the other hand, perhaps this wasn't too far off when I had used the power to train before; the power had placed me in a vivid hallucination where all around me it appeared as if I were in ancient China, putting me within a scene from the movie Way of the One Thousand Sorrow Fist.

"If this is my inner space," I said, more to myself than to the figure sitting at the bench, "Then does that mean I can make anything I want appear here?"

"Maybe," said the figure, "But be careful."

"What are you, my conscience?" I said.

"Perhaps, if that's what you want me to be," said the figure.

"You're starting to piss me off," I said.

Then, turning to face the figure again, I said, "I want you to come out of the shadows and I want you to help me figure this out; if you're some version of me, then at least be a version that has a few bright ideas as to what the heck is going on."

The figure stood away from the bench, standing within arm's reach of me. He was wearing the same clothes as I was, although his clothes weren't shredded. Otherwise we were identical down to our blue eyes, our slightly unshaven face, and our scruffy brown hair.

"Okay," said the other-me, speaking with a confidence which took me by surprise, "Here's what I think is going down. You're using the power, we're inside your head, and right now you're speaking to your own mind. We're under a great deal of stress and, between you and me-"

Other-me paused and smirked a little, and then he said, "-you're not really equipped to deal with everything that's happening to you."

"I know that," I said, "I never signed up for superpowers, or going on the run, or losing control to some monster lurking within me."

"You're right, we didn't," said the other-me, "But us being here together means we have an opportunity to figure out how we're going to move forward."

"What do you mean?" I said.

"I mean," said other-me, "That it's about time we gave some serious consideration to improving ourselves. There's too much at stake not to."

And then, whilst I stared at the other-me with a somewhat dumbfounded look, he said, "Want to go for a walk whilst we talk about this?"

I nodded slowly, and then, together, we headed off down the street, walking along the middle of the road.

The streets near the bench were a perfect replica to what I remembered them to be. Which was surprising, since I didn't consider myself to be someone who had a good memory. Yet it was all so familiar, down to the leaves which clogged a storm drain, or the graffiti which marked a stop sign. Walking the quiet street alongside my doppelganger didn't feel as strange or surreal as it perhaps should have. In a way I felt as if I were merely walking alone with a shadow which had been coloured in.

"So we're here," said the other-me, "We have time to think, and time to talk, and most importantly, time to decide how we're going to move forward."

"Okay," I said, "You think I – or we – should work on improving ourselves?"

"Yes," said the other-me.

We stepped onto a pavement and progressed towards a huge building which had once been used for dog-racing. An unlit neon sign of a sprinting racing dog loomed above us.

Would be nice if it was turned on, I thought.

And right away the neon lights lit up in stark blue and purple colours. I stared up at the neon lights and my doppelganger did the same.

"Burgess?" said the other-me.

"Yeah?" I said.

"We're going to have to change in order to survive," said the other-me, "I know you don't want to change, but it's what we've got to do."

"What do you mean by change?" I said.

The other-me rolled his eyes.

"You tell me," he said, "Stop being passive and use your brain for once."

I shot the other-me a challenging look.

"Fine," I said, "You want to know what I think is going on?"

"Yes I do," said the other-me, "Let me hear it."

I sucked in a deep breath, then let the other-me have it.

"I think this whole thing with the power is pushing anyone who uses the power into a…"

I tried to find the right word.

"It's kind of like joining together a lot of traits into one," I said, "Like if you took the qualities of ten men and combined all of their heroic qualities into one person. You would end up with a guy like Hercules; someone tall, strong, handsome; in short, a kind-of hero. Do you know what I mean? They would be a…do you know the word for it?"

The other-me nodded.

"Well if you know it, tell me!" I said.

"You've almost got it," said the other-me, "Keep going."

"Well," I said.

I started walking again and the other-me followed. I had started leading the way, my eyes scanning the concrete pavement as if I might find the word I was looking for there.

"Let's say," I said, "That you took the evil qualities of ten men and combined all of those evil qualities into a single person. You would end up with someone that would be like a comic-book villain; they'd be like a muscled Jack the Ripper or something."

"Or," said the other-me, "If you took someone that's naive and passive, and gave them a power that brought out their unbridled inner anger to the surface, mixed with their fondness for foxes and frogs…"

I stopped walking and faced the other-me.

"You're saying it's the same thing?" I said.

"I'm just pointing out what you already know," said the other-me.

We had come to a stop beneath a harsh yellow streetlamp. The bulb within hummed and a moth which had somehow gotten inside the lamp bounced around. The other-me and I looked up at the streetlight, our eyes narrowing from the brightness of it.

"Think back to when we were running on the treadmill at Lintern's Gym," said the other-me, "We ran further and for far longer than any normal person should have been able to. Back then we hadn't tried to use the power, because we didn't even know it was there. But now we know better. We've been trying to use the power to gain an advantage. To survive the Pied Pipers. To keep up with Xandra."

I looked away from the streetlamp and fixed my attention back on the other-me.

"I know," I said, "And it's kind-of worked. But then we lost control. We became the fox-frog monster. We can't let that happen ever again."

"Exactly!" said the other-me.

He put his arm around me and, with him leading us on, we started walking again.

We started towards an alleyway, but the dark there was so dense that it was impossible not to imagine something sinister lurking within it.

Whether we heard the low growling noise and stopped in our tracks, or we stopped in our tracks and then heard the growling noise, I wasn't sure.

From within the dark confines of the alleyway something began to glow red hot. I realised right away that it was the beast; the one I had become, the one which had slaughtered those Peepers.

The beast was still obscured in the darkness but the cracks in its bone armor glowed like hot lava.

"Burgess," said the other-me in a low voice, "If we don't decide what we're going to become with this power, then the power will decide for us. When push comes to shove we're going to have to face off against the Pied Piper officers again–"

"--Peepers," I corrected.

"-Peepers," said the other-me, rolling his eyes again, "Or, if not the Peepers, then there'll be something or someone else that'll take us to the brink and we'll lose control all over again. Do you want to lose control? Do you want to let this beast loose?"

The beast in the alleyway opened its jaws, letting out an even louder growl. It was livid, and full of hate and dumb animalistic ferocity.

"Hey!" I shouted at the beast, "Get lost!"

This only enraged it. The beast must have been on all fours before because it started to rise up out of the shadows into the street where the other-me and I were standing. I no longer felt safe.

What would happen if the beast attacked me? Could it kill me? Would it take over my mind and body if it got the better of me? There were too many uncertainties for me to not be afraid.

"I don't think this is a good idea, Burgess," said the other-me.

No, I thought, maybe if I just tell my imagination to do away with this beast once and for all then it won't be the threat it appears, and I can be rid of it.

"I said BEAT IT!" I yelled.

In the next instant the beast, undeterred, swiped at me with frightening speed for its size. Its sharp claws tore at my chest, carving deep gashes there.

Even if the pain was just inside my head, it felt just as awful. Sharp, eye-watering pain sang in my chest, climbing to ever greater heights with each passing moment.

The other-me gripped my head and brought his face close to mine.

"You have to wake up! Wake up now!" He yelled.

The beast roared and I heard the sound of its bone-armor moving closer. It's jaws were wide open and its breath hot against the side of my face.

When I opened my eyes again I saw blue and purple lights above me. But it wasn't the neon lights of the old dog-racing track. It was the fairy lights within the den.

Pain. I was hurting badly. Xandra and Azad were kneeling over me, both holding me down and also looking at my chest. I couldn't stop myself from thrashing from the sheer agony of the raw, stinging pain at my chest.

The copper stench of blood filled my nostrils. I reached down and tore at the shredded remains of my shirt. There, across my chest, were three long gashes identical to what the beast inside my mind had just dealt.

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