"The hell am I supposed to do?" I wanted to hit something, break something. Retaliate against the unfairness of the world. I clenched the strap of my bag in my right hand, ready to throw it against the wall of the bathroom, smash it to pieces.

No. Don't lose control. Losing control means losing control means losing control means...

I desperately fished in my pockets and pulled out my lighters. I flicked them on and jammed their lighted ends against my cheeks, letting the flames press against my skin. I felt myself calm down a fraction, my heart slowing down, my racing thoughts turning colder, calculating as my emotions detached ever so slightly from my everyday troubles.

I was still mad as hell. At the fucking stupid girls who tried to hurt me and crush me every fucking day for no goddamn reason at all. But when I used my power to its fullest, meditating in my room, I somehow wasn't bothered by that anger anymore.

I didn't have words to describe it. It sounded pretentious, but the best I could call it was a transcendant state of enlightenment. No regret, no guilt, no shame. No stupid second-guessing trying to convince myself that I was wrong to be mad at those bastards, that I was wrong to want to burn them to death from the inside out. My anger was just there, honest and pure and natural, a part of myself that I could accept like any other.

I still knew that I couldn't kill them, of course. But that wasn't an opinion forced on me from the outside, by the guilt, shame, and fear of murder that society had taught me. It was my own choice to spare their lives, driven by the cold, hard logic of the situation. If I killed them then they'd call in the police, then the capes, then the big-name heroes from other cities. Escalation upon escalation until they called in someone strong enough to stop me. Then they'd kill me or send me to jail for the rest of my life.

It wasn't just my freedom. If I killed the bullies, I wouldn't be able to see my father anymore. He'd be disappointed in me, feel guilty, feel like he was a bad parent. He might even hate me. None of that mattered, of course, in this state I was detached from my emotional ties to my family. I wasn't moved at all by how he would feel. But the cold hard facts were that he provided for me, gave me a home, gave me a safe space to cool down and pull my self together after a hard day. If I went on a rampage and ran from the law, I'd have to find emotional support from whatever strangers I met as a fugitive. Fat chance. I'd go on more rampages, more escalation, until they tracked me down and killed me in the end.

I couldn't get the full benefit of my power here at school, of course. Starting an inferno was too dangerous - I could create flame from thin air, shape it any way I pleased, but if I set things on fire I didn't have any special power for putting them out. And every time I used my power in school, it got harder to resist the temptation the next time around. The lighters were enough, though. I raised them higher on my face, let the flames lick against my eyes, and slowly brought myself back to something approaching normality.

I would deal with this. I would-

Something struck me in the side, hard. I fell to the dirty floor of the bathroom, lighters skidding out of my hands.

Sophia stood above me. "Burning yourself in the face? Pretty creepy, Taylor. You should be glad I was here to save you from your fucked-up self-mutilation."

That bitch. She was still at it? Did she ever rest?

I held my breath. I didn't say a thing. I didn't move. If I moved an inch I wouldn't be able to stop myself, I would burn her. She deserved it, she deserved it a thousand times over, but if I took that step it would all be over.

"Self-harm is a response to stress, you know." said Sophia. "You look pretty stressed out to me. I wouldn't be surprised if you woke up tomorrow covered in brusies that were your own dumb fault."

She drew back her leg to kick me. I tensed in anticipation of the hit...but it never came. Sophia was looking at a light dancing behind me.

I didn't have to look to know what it was. I could feel it. One of the lighters had gotten jammed against my bag, stuck in the 'on' position, and now my bag was on fire.

It was then that I realized my mistake. I had used the flames as a stress relief, a form of meditation...but I had always meditated alone. The flames gave my anger a cold, honed edge and this was the first time I had ever given it a nearby target to strike.

Now, as I looked at Sophia standing above me, I tried to keep my impartiality. To weigh the pros and cons and see that I had to let myself take the hit, that if I burned her there would be no stopping until my future was filled with flame and ashes.

I tried and...I failed.

The feelings that were holding me back drained away. I didn't want to take the hit. Why should I want to take the hit? What kind of twisted society was I raised in that gave me fucked up thoughts like that? I didn't deserve to be kicked around like a toy, and this bitch from hell and her piece of shit friends sure as hell didn't deserve to lay single a fucking finger on me. Betraying me, breaking my stuff, stealing my work, pushing me and pushing me and no sign of ever stopping until they ground me into the dirt like a worm, they were the ones who should be crushed into dust, I wasn't going to take it!

No, I wouldn't take it. For once, just this one time, I was going to push back. And if that meant my future was filled with flames and ashes, I could almost believe I welcomed it.

...
...

"Hey. Hey. Are you awake?"

I felt gentle taps on my face, drops of water raining from the sky. I blinked, tried to move toward the voice, and found that I couldn't.

Oh, right. I was wet, soaked, buried up to my neck in containment foam. Five heat-sensitive water jets were mounted above me, ready to turn the drizzle into a high-pressure downpour at the slightest buildup of heat around my body. A metal grill on the floor recycled the water so they could run the jets indefinitely. More nozzles were mounted in the ceiling that would pump sedatives into the air at the first sign of trouble. The foam forced me into a cramped sitting position where I must have been stuck for hours as the PRT maximum-security van escorted me on my one-way trip to the Birdcage.

"I'm glad you're up." said the voice. "I never liked silence. Right now it's too solemn, like a funeral. I've got this feeling of, of dread in my gut for hours and I can't take my mind off it."

I blinked again, tried to focus on the voice to keep myself awake. My mouth felt raw and itchy, like it was stuffed with cotton. The voice was familiar from somewhere...ah. I forced my eyes open and saw a woman on the other side of the van, her mop of bright yellow hair and feathers peeking out under the leather straps of her restraint mask. Unlike me, she was dry.

"Hey," I managed, weakly. "I'm Taylor."

"Tailor? You're a fashion designer? I called myself Canary."

"No, no. Taylor, the name. And you're Paige Mcabee. Can I call you Paige?"

"Oh, you know me?" The woman smiled a bit beneath her mask. "Yes, go ahead, Taylor. You liked my music?"

"Never got to hear it, sorry. I followed your trial."

Her face fell.

"Hey, no. You got a raw deal. You're a good person, you didn't mean any harm. You don't deserve to be here."

"You..." Paige looked down. "You're the first person to say that to me. Ever since the trial. The way they all look at me, its like they stopped seeing me as a person. All they see is a monster."

"You're not a monster. You just made one little mistake. It's the same story for me. When we're kids they raise us like everyone else, tells us to believe in forgiveness and second chances. The two of us, we could have been good people, got respectable jobs, started families and raised kids. Then we get powers like ours, and suddenly we...we have to be perfect. We can't make any mistakes at all, because there's no such thing as a little mistake.

"I tried, I tried as hard as I could, and I still wasn't perfect enough to control my power. I ended up hurting a...a lot of people, when I didn't mean to at all, not at first. I understand why they have to put me away, they can't risk it happening again. I'm okay with that. But that doesn't change the fact that I didn't mean it. It was all a mistake.

"So listen, Paige, I understand what it's like. You did as good as anyone could have done with your power. You're a good person who just got a bad break."

Paige nodded, a hint of moisture appearing at the corners of her eyes. "Thank you. I, I...that means a lot to me. I don't know you, but you're...nice. Not like I expected. I believe you, that you're a good person, too." she managed a small smile. "Is it the same for him? They brought you in together."

I managed to turn my head partway to my right. A towering hulk of a man was under the pressure jets alongside me, the same restraint system but buried in twice as much foam. His eyes were half-open but he was watching us, moving his eyes back and forth to follow our conversation.

I didn't know whether to sob or laugh. "Lung? They put us in a van together?"

Lung made a deep sound in his throat, somewhere between a scoff and a growl. "They are prideful or foolish. Perhaps both."

Paige startled. She must not have heard him speak before, he must have spent the whole ride sulking.

I turned back to Paige. "No. That's Lung. He's a brute, as bad as they come. Trust me."

She shrank back, head pressed against the wall. "Um. Okay. If you two have a history, or...anything, you don't have to talk about it."

"No, it's fair. I like you, Paige. If we're going to be together in the Birdcage, I want to be your friend. I know your story so I'll tell you mine."

Paige nodded.

"My power is about fire. It's the opposite of yours, in a way. Your song manipulates people, but my power manipulates me. I can sense the fire around me, all the fire within half a mile. I can move inside the fire, teleport between the fires in my range. And I can make the fires grow, make more fire from my body, and craft it into shapes, anything I like. I can put on an entire puppet play with flames dancing in the air. It's beautiful, Paige, I'll show you when we get down there.

"And the problem is, the more fire that's around me, the more it kills me, kills my emotions. Makes me act without feeling love, fear, guilt, remorse, regret, pain...I get cold and rational, or almost rational. The only feeling left is this little bit of anger, when people get in my way, and this little bit of...joy, of amusement at using my power on the people around me.

"That's why I'm here, Paige. A girl picked a fight with me, she kept coming after me. I tried to burn her and she ran away. It turned out she was a cape, a 'hero'. She was fast so I had to make more and more fire to teleport and chase her.

"I only ever meant to hurt her a little bit, to scare her off. I didn't want to hurt anyone else. But more and more people kept getting in my way, policemen, heroes, whoever, so I burned them a little too, to make them stop bothering me. I finally cornered the girl and I started heating up the scenery, making a show so she'd know not to fuck with me again. Then Lung showed up and tried to kill me."

I turned to him. "It was my fault. Sorry Lung. You're a brute, a villain, but I shouldn't have been burning down buildings on your territory. Or anywhere, really. I wasn't in my right mind at the time."

Lung scoffed.

"Anyway, I fought him. I burned him pretty bad, down to a crisp even, but he kept regenerating and getting bigger and stronger. He tried to grab me but I was too fast for him, so he tried to burn me but that just gave me more places to teleport. And then...things kind of escalated.

"We went on for maybe twenty minutes, till Lung grew into this freaking firebreathing dragon with wings. We burned down a city block by the time the heroes finally decided to step in again and take us out. Well, that meant more people getting in my way, so I fought the heroes, too. Somewhere along the line Lung and I realized that we couldn't hurt each other but the heroes could hurt both of us, so the heroes were the bigger threat. Lung blasted one of the guys who was putting out my flames, then I burned the guys who were attacking him, and then Lung and I went back to back to fight them off. We beat the heroes, easy. Then the villains came after us, Nazi skinheads and the rest, so we beat them too. By that time...seven or eight blocks on fire, I think. Then they brought in a bunch of heroes from out of town, so we beat them, and then they brought in even more heroes and mechanical tinker dragon suits, and finally they brought in Eidolon and he kicked our asses in two minutes. Fucking Eidolon and his fucking bullshit Master powers."

Paige was looking a little pale. Oh. Right.

"...not that he was wrong to stop us or anything. Uh. I'm using my power a little bit right now, actually. If I let myself feel the regret for all of that stuff I'd be a useless wreck. I couldn't have finished my story for you. I would have broken down halfway through, crying out for Dad."

"I can tell." said Paige, quietly. "Your eyes are glowing."

"Yeah, that happens."

"And your voice sounds different. Cold."

"Yeah. You know, Paige, I spent a lot of time thinking about you when I was in containment. I hope you don't take this in the wrong way, but I was glad when I heard you lost your case. It meant I could have you with me in the Birdcage, we could be together."

"Uh." said Paige. She was giving me this creepy stare. "You, uh. I...I don't mean any offense, but I'm pretty sure I haven't met you before. So if you have, uh, a thing for me then, uh, I-"

I almost choked. "You're funny, Paige. I like that. Even when I'm like this, you make me smile."

She didn't seem comforted by that.

"No, I don't have a thing for you. I have a thing for your power, I guess. I'm putting on a brave face but I'm afraid, afraid of what I'll have to do in the Birdcage. I'll have to use my power on people to surive. It'll kill my emotions, make it easier to use my power again and again, and I'll lose myself, I won't be Taylor anymore, not for years and years. I'll become that other girl, the one who...who killed all those people, who liked it.

"I don't want to be that girl anymore, so I want you to help me. Use your power to bring me back to myself when I start drifting away. The power of music to heal the soul, right Paige?"

She slowly nodded.

"Can we try it out? Sing me a song?"

Paige shook her head. "My mask. It has an injector at the back. If I raise my voice or sing it'll sedate me."

"Oh. Too bad." I said. "I...I'm scaring you, aren't I? Sorry about that. I'm making it sound like I'm a scary girl, but I'm as scared of the monsters down there as you are."

"Okay."

"I mean...one of the cell block leaders down there, Lustrum, she used to be my mom's teacher. Then she told all her students to emasculate their boyfriends. Literally emasculate them. Down there I'll have to pretend to be friends with monsters like that, just to survive. It's sickening."

Paige gulped.

"Oh. Oh, damn. Sorry. I forgot. You did that to your boyfriend, too."

"Ex-boyfriend." said Paige.

"Right. Don't worry, like I said, you're not a monster. You didn't do it on purpose. That's important. You're a good person at heart, like me."

I gave her an encouraging smile.

"Yeah, uh, thanks." said Paige. She returned my smile, although hers seemed a little forced. "I've only known you for ten minutes but I already feel like we're friends. Let's stick together when we get down there."

I smiled wider. "Great! I never heard your music before, but when we get down there you can hold a concert. I'll do a performance too, with my fire. Something to look forward to-"

"Enough of this nonsense," growled Lung. "None of us wants to be confined in such a place."

I wilted, and Paige did much the same. And that was it. A single harsh truth cut through all our false attempts to give ourselves courage.

There was a long moment of silence.

Lung turned his head to Page. "You do not want to be her friend, little bird. I know your kind. You are a weak-willed woman who will say or do anything that she thinks will help her survive. You see the girl as a monster. You lie to her about friendship to gain an ally, nothing more. If you were given the chance to escape this truck you would leave her to suffer her fate alone without another thought."

Paige looked down and studied the floor. She wouldn't meet my eyes.

Lung turned to me. "And you, girl. I know your kind as well. You are denying your nature. You pretend to believe in their laws and their codes. You hope the lies you tell yourself will become truth. You will fail. You care nothing for them. If you believed it would give you freedom you would burn this bird and a hundred of their soldiers without regrets."

"No, you're wrong." I said. "I'm not like that, not the real me."

"I fought against you, I fought beside you. I know you. Many times they believed they contained you. Each time you made a plan, escaped, returned and made them suffer for their insult. This is no different."

"I...I don't have any escape plans. It's the Birdcage, you can't escape."

"I saw the fire in your eyes when they sentenced you to this prison. Lesser men would weep but you did not. You have a plan. A hidden weapon. A friend to save you. Simple courage to fight when they believe you are beaten."

"No! That fire in my eyes...that was just my power. A mental escape from my problems, from my regrets. I don't really want to escape from jail. I deserve to go down there. They could have killed me, they would have been right to, but they had mercy on me and gave me a chance to live, even if I have to live with monsters. I'm...I'm okay with that. Really. It's better than I deserve."

"Lies. Lies to yourself you don't believe."

"Don't you dare tell me what I believe!" I screamed.

Paige cringed.

"Tell me, then." said Lung. "Tell me of your first battle, on the day you fought me. Tell this little bird, who you wish to be your friend, the reason why you fight."

"It doesn't matter. It was a mistake."

"Why did you fight? Reputation? Power? Revenge? Did that girl hurt you, steal from you, insult you?"

"I...I...it wasn't like that, I didn't have a reason. I never wanted to fight, I didn't start it, I just wanted her to stop. It was wrong to burn her but it wasn't my fault, it was her damn fault, and..."

"Um, hey, Taylor." said Paige. She met my eyes, though it was taking her a visible effort. She was taking care not to look at Lung. "You, um, you don't need to say it. You don't need to say anything if you don't want to."

I would have smiled, if I hadn't been using my power. Paige was standing up to Lung for me. Showing that he was wrong about her, that she could be a true friend after all.

"Thanks, Paige." I said. "I should tell you, though. No secrets among friends, right? It's better this way. I made it sound like I'm crazy, unstable, but anyone would have done the same."

"Okay." said Paige.

"That girl was in my high school, Sophia Hess. I didn't know it then, but she was a hero, Shadow Stalker. She bullied me for months, hitting me, stealing my stuff, no one would stop her. She stole my best friend, my only friend, turned Emma into a spiteful bitch from hell who was even worse. She knew how to hurt me, knew how to twist the knife. They just kept pushing and pushing me, never let up.

"The worst was when they stuffed my locker with shit, trash, bloody tampons left rotting for weeks. Shoved me inside and locked me in for hours. I got my power then. I could have fought back, burned them, but I held back for a month. I didn't want to sink to their level, I didn't want to use my power to hurt people. I...I even wanted to be a hero, if you can believe that. But on that day they pushed me one too many times and I couldn't hold back. I couldn't keep fooling myself, telling myself they didn't deserve it.

"The worst thing is...at the trial they didn't believe me about the bullying. Why couldn't they give me that one little thing? Admit their hero was a bully, admit she was asking for it, admit she had it coming? It didn't even matter for the case, they would have locked me away anyway. But no, of course the crazy psycho killer is a liar and the precious little Ward and her school friends are innocent fucking angels."

As I spoke I felt an inner flame grow, dancing in my mind, calming me, reaching out to find...oh.

"Fuck you, Lung. You're trying to manipulate me. Provoke me. Make me think about that day, make me want to use my power."

Lung was silent.

"You're making fire right now. Inside your mouth, inside your throat. Trying to push me over the edge."

Lung turned to me and opened his mouth wide, showing a dancing flame inside. The water jets above him turned from a sprinkle to a downpour in an instant, and he closed his mouth to shelter his flame.

"You're not supposed to manipulate me. You're supposed to be the strong and silent type."

"I do not use other men as toys. Nor do I care for self-delusions. You are meant to fight. You pretend to be something you are not."

The fire inside me was growing. "That's your fault. People like you. The whole screwed up system. Every day telling me what I am, telling me what I should do, pushing me against the wall and telling me I should fight back when all I ever wanted was to be left alone.

"I thought I was learning how the system worked. When their 'hero' Sophia pushed me over and over again I took it like a chump and they didn't care what happened to me at all. Then the one time I hit back they suddenly care a hell of a lot. I take that as a lesson, I think I'm finally getting through to them. So I start hitting back more and more and more, making them understand what that pain is like. I know they're feeling my pain because they keep sending more and more guys to fight me, like they really care what I'm feeling.

"Then we fight long enough and I realize that all along they've been training me, teaching me, because I'm not acting like myself anymore, I'm acting like them, the system. I'm not just hitting back at them anymore, trading pain for pain, I'm attacking, I'm burning them ten times worse than any pain I've felt myself, giving them pain for no reason at all. Dragging them into a house on fire where they're helpless, watching them call for help and laughing, burning them one limb at a time like I'm pulling wings off a butterfly. Acting just like Emma and Sophia and all the rest.

"So I finally give in and say 'Now we understand each other! You were right all along! Now I'll be a good fucking girl just like you always wanted!'. I start really going after them. They hear me loud and clear and they send in the big gun, the embodiment of the system in all its glory. And what does he do? He doesn't appreciate my hard work at all. I go to all that effort for him and his fucked up system, roasting them alive, heating them until their bones melt, and no, nothing, no response, he doesn't fucking care. He floats there like an angel of judgement and looks at me with a dead stare like I'm the lowest worm on the earth. Then he pulls out some bullshit oxykinesis power, waves a single hand and puts out all the fires in the city and takes it all away from me. All that enlightenment and everything I've learned fading like a dream and in an instant I'm back to the Taylor I was a month ago, drowning in my tears like a useless sack of shit.

"No. Not acceptable. I'm not going to live like that anymore. So I give up. I'm done. I won't fight it. I'll join your godforsaken system. Send me to the Birdcage? Fine. Do whatever you want. Won't stop me from doing what I want. Hah."

"Taylor." said Paige. I turned to her and she shrank back, like I hit her with a physical force. "Um. T, Taylor. Are you okay?"

"I'm not worried about a thing." I said.

"You sound like a robot."

"Yeah, that happens." I said. "Another perk of my piece of shit power."

"An angry robot."

"Yeah. When I swear in the robot voice it sounds hilarious. I found out in the containment cell." I cleared my throat. "I've had enough of these motherfucking bitchsucking cockbags locking us in this cuntforsaken shitvan."

Paige gave a nervous laugh.

"It was hard keeping myself in the right state of mind in containment. Locked in a little cell 24/7. Nothing to burn, no clothes, no food but nutrient slop, no one but me and a little security camera in the corner. I finally did it, figured out how to get in this mental state without the fire. Made myself stop crying and think. The sedatives took me out of it but now I'm back again.

"Sophia was right, you know. Self-harm is a response to stress. I looked it up a month ago when I was testing my power. I was afraid that covering myself with fire meant that I had a mental disorder.

"Cutting, burning, branding. Even trichotillomania, eating all your hair. Someone under a lot of stress could do something like that in a day or two, while waiting to be sent to a maximum-security prison. The jail warden wouldn't even blink an eye.

"And the warden wouldn't be paranoid enough to check your toilet to make sure you were shitting the hair back out. Even though you can braid it together to make a rope, when you're lying down on the floor so the camera can't see what you're doing. You can fit a lot of it in your mouth and throat and stomach if you try. And hair is flammable. And I can use my power to burn it as long as it isn't growing from my body."

I licked my lips, ran my tongue around the inside of my mouth. Felt the ball of rope I had made, resting between my teeth and my right cheek, the rest of the thread trailing back into my throat. I took a few rapid breaths and coughed, coughed again, coughed hard. It took fifteen minutes of retching and hacking before I pulled the rest of the rope from my throat and stomach up into my mouth. Enough that it filled my mouth and I had to let half of it hang out from my lips, the thick ball of rope at the end.

I mumbled around the thread. "Paige. Listen. Need help. Wanna get out?"

Paige was pale, anxious, sick from watching me hack up a rope of hair. She nodded anyway. "Okay. Tell me what to do."

"Can't move through my own flame, need to set things on fire. Two fires, one on me, one outside foam. Need to keep most rope for me, harder under water, need to be fast before the jet shuts me down. Put the rest outside in a dry spot, send flame down the rope, easier with a medium. With me?"

Paige nodded again.

"Gonna toss rest to you. Hold it under your chin, spool it out. Then I'll tell you where to put it."

I rocked my head back and forth, pinching the thread with my teeth, letting the rope outside my mouth swing in a rhythm. Then at the peak of the rhythm I swung my head harder, let go with my teeth, let the ball of rope at the end swing out to Paige. She leaned her head back and then snapped it forward, trapping the ball of rope between the straps of the restraint mask under her chin and the mass of foam around her neck.

"Got it!" said Paige. She smiled behind her mask. "What now?"

"Hmm. You got it stuck in the foam. Can't spool it out now. Can't make a pile."

Paige rocked her head slightly, felt that the ball of thread under her chin wasn't moving. Her face fell. "Oh. I'm, I'm sorry. I-"

"Calm down. I'll improvise." I considered the situation. The ball of rope stuck in the foam wasn't enough, not a big enough fire in one place. I needed more material, something flammable...ah. Yes, that would work.

"Paige. Put your head back down, keep your neck against the rope. Push down hard and firm."

"O, okay. " said Paige. "Now what?"

I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, drawing as much oxygen as I could into my lungs. Then I used my power and summoned flames from my throat, igniting the rope I held in my mouth as I spat it out onto my chin, covering my face with flames. Sent another thread of flame racing down the rope, igniting the ball under Paige's chin. As the fires ignited I was already stoking them, turning up the heat, feeding on all the available material. I wasn't going for efficiency here. Speed and size, the biggest bursts I could make before the jets came on. I sensed them bloom into existence, Lung's small flame now dwarfed by two stars growing bigger, bigger, almost big enough to...yes.

The instant the water jets came on I moved, and then I was falling from the air, tumbling to the floor. I made it. The jets were futilely filling an empty pile of containment foam, gushing out water with such intensity they made a deafening, shrill screeching sound.

Oh. Right. Not the jets.

Paige.

I wrapped my arms around her head and smothered the fires on her mask, her hair, her feathers. Used my power to draw heat away from her and into my palms, then jammed my fingers into the injection device on the back of her neck. Good, the needles were melted. I probably got them fast enough that she wasn't injected with sedatives.

I tore off her mask and heated the metal buckles until they were red hot, then smeared the molten metal over the nozzles in the ceiling, blocking them off so they couldn't pump sedatives into the air. I took more molten metal from what was left of the ruins of the injection device, used it to block off three of the water jets above Lung.

Paige's screams were dying down, reduced to whimpers. I gave her a second look. Hmm, mostly intact. Her hair and feathers burned better than her skin, so she only picked up a few first-degree burns. I might have a use for her. But she was in a panic, needed a boost of motivation keep her cooperative. I wasn't in the best state of mind to handle that but I had to give it a shot.

I forced my mouth into a smile and patted her on the cheek. "Calm down Paige. You made it. Get ready to fight."

Paige drew back from me, whimpering. Oh well. I had higher priorities anyway. I turned to Lung. Flames were dancing around his body now, but they weren't doing anything to melt his containment foam.

"Lung. Your flame goes through metal better than mine. Aim through the walls and light something up so I can teleport outside." I said.

"Release me first." he growled.

"I'm not going to leave you behind. I need to get outside to open the door and get supplies to melt your foam."

"Help me melt the wall behind me."

"The walls are fabricated to resist melting. We can't get out that way. Better to heat them all the way through, get something on the outside to ignite."

"Release me!"

Troublesome.

"You dumbass. You were the one who wanted to get out of here." I said. I slapped him, then reared back and punched him in the nose.

"Fuck you!" growled Lung. The flames around him doubled in intensity.

I punched him again. Then looked at my hand. Right, not doing that again.

"You're thick-headed." I said. I stepped back as far as I could in the cramped van and then hit him with a spinning kick, breaking his nose and sending blood splashing over his face.

"Motherfucker! I'll kill you!" screamed Lung. The flames around him grew again and silver lines appeared on his face, metal scales sliding out from beneath his skin. Steam was rising above him now where the two remaining water jets were turned on at full blast. The containment foam around him bulged outward half an inch, pushed away as his body began to grow.

I kicked him in the face again, then put my hands on his cheeks and sent a wave of pure heat into his body, burning his skin and giving off the smell of cooking meat. Lung screamed and thrashed, the foam bulging another half an inch.

A small sound behind me. Paige was staring at us, shaking her head back and forth and whimpering.

I gave her a look. "Don't look at me like that. He gets power from being in a fight. It's not like I have a thing for him or anything."

"I, uh, r, right, sorry, of course not." Paige stammered. "N, not that there would be anything wrong with that."

I torched Lung again, ignoring his stream of curses.

"Are you staying here or do you want to come with us? Sing to the soldiers, make them throw down their weapons, help us make our getaway?"

Paige started at me, wide-eyed. She thought we were lunatics, knew we were about to run head-on into another fight with the Protectorate. But she didn't have a choice. If she refused, if she stayed here like a good prisoner, it wasn't like they would give her credit for good behavior. They'd still send her to the Birdcage, and they couldn't do anything to help her once she was in there. Right now I was the only person in the world willing to do her a favor.

Paige swallowed, then nodded fiercely. "Yes, take me with you. I'll do whatever you want."

"Hm." I tilted my head, regarded her. Lung was burning now, waves of heat radiating off his body. "Not sure I want you, though. It'll be a pain to keep you alive with the heat we make."

"What? But you..." Her face fell. "I, I, no, please, I promise I'll be good, I-"

I leaned forward and grabbed her chin, forced her to look me in the eye. "You'd better be. I'll ask you to do things you disagree with. Things I disagree with, when I'm not pure like this." I moved my face closer. "If you try to get out of it, if you sing to calm me down, if you make me become that Taylor again so I have to feel what I'm doing...I'll punish you. Lung's a brute, he'd kill you and be done with it. I'll make it slow."

I summoned a flame from my right hand, reshaped it into the figure of a woman in a costume, an effigy of Paige's stage persona. I made the figure writhe in place, limbs of fire tearing off its body one by one and wicking away until nothing was left but the head. Then I reached up and crushed the head in my hand, making a fist, letting tendrils of flame squirt between my fingers and run down my arm like spilled blood.

"I've done that to people for less. I'll think of something new for you. Understand?"

Paige gulped. She nodded vigorously.

"Good. Sit tight for now."

Lung reared back his head and spat a stream of pure heat through the side of the van. A small fire blossomed into being twenty feet to my left, then moved away from me at eighty miles an hour - ah. A tree on the side of the highway, receding behind us. The van must be racing to take us to the nearest containment facility, local heroes already en route. They would never make it in time, not if I had anything to say about it.

I reached out to the fire, stoked it, made it grow. Then I moved, and I was gone.