Cym had to get them out of here. He focused as hard as he could on making his family go away and made the hand gesture. The roiling feeling rose up again, and it felt pinker than it had before, but his attackers remained untouched.

“I’m going to enjoy playing with your champion, Boy. I wonder how long I can get him to scream for me?” Helen’s little girl voice was at odds with her words, and a chill went down Cym’s spine. “He looks durable. I’ll bet I can make him last a few weeks before I break him.”

Rage swept through his body, and Cym’s hands moved on their own as a giant pink fireball of emotion bloomed inside him, radiating outward from his chest. He felt hollowed out by its passage, and when he looked down, he was surprised to see his hoodie was unscathed.

A trailing scream caught his attention, and he looked up to see a gaping hole had replaced half the cemetery and the entire street behind it.

Cym’s family was nowhere to be seen. He blinked dumbly at the results of his work.

“Please tell me you missed my SUV.” Fourteen’s expressionless voice startled Cym, causing him to jerk his body around to face the man. Fourteen got to his feet slowly, but he looked more lucid than he had a moment ago.

Cym’s mouth worked as he tried to find his voice again, and he eventually managed to squeak out, “That part of the street survived,” as he pointed toward their parking spot.

Fourteen grunted. “Do you have your bag?”

Cym pointed to his shoulder straps and nodded.

“Let’s go.” Fourteen motioned for Cym to go first.

Skirting around the hole he’d made, Cym peeked inside, expecting to see ancient and possibly not-so-ancient dead bodies. However, there was nothing but a seemingly endless, dirt-lined abyss.

The ground shook under his feet, and he backed away as the edge started caving in.

“I don’t think the hole is done growing.” Cym reached for Fourteen’s hand to urge him to run, but he dodged Cym’s grasp. He understood Cym’s intent, though, and managed to keep pace with him back to the SUV.

They both looked back at the cemetery to see the rest of it crumble and vanish into the hole Cym had made. Fourteen unlocked the car with his key fob as they ran toward it. “Get in.”

“Are you okay to drive?”

“Do you know how to drive?”

Cym shook his head.

“Then it doesn’t matter if I am or not. Get in the car.” Fourteen’s tone was even, but his words were clipped.

Cym chose not to push the matter and got in on the passenger side. At the moment, haste was more important than establishing good boundaries.

The ground in front of them continued to give way at an alarming rate, and Cym wasn’t sure if they were going to make it. Fourteen threw the SUV into reverse the second Cym’s butt hit the seat and took the bumper off the car parked behind them. As they took off backward down the road, Cym had a clear view of the bumperless car falling into the hole he’d created.

When Cym noticed a light on inside one of the buildings they sped by, he realized how badly things had gone wrong.

“Stop the car!”

“Negative.” If anything, Fourteen drove faster.

“There are people in there, we have to go back right now.” Cym could hear the hysteria in his voice.

“There were probably people in the building your family blew up too, but we aren’t going back for them either.” Having gained several yards between them and the hole, Fourteen made a terrifying three-point turn and continued driving in the same direction, only forward this time.

“But they’re innocent bystanders, and it’s my fault they got hurt.” Cym dug his fingernails into his arms as the realization sank in. “What if someone got killed?”

“You didn’t make your family blow up that building, Cym. That’s on them. You were just trying to survive.” Sirens filled the air as a rescue vehicle raced toward the scene. “Let the authorities take care of it. Right now, our job is getting somewhere safe. Your family is probably sending more people here right now”

“What about the hole I made?” Cym tugged on his backpack, trying to get it off, but he only managed to get it tangled with the seatbelt he’d forgotten to put on. Would Fourteen let him borrow a knife to cut the seatbelt loose? He glanced at the shiny, well-kept interior of the SUV and decided not to ask.

“From what I observed, the hole stopped growing by the time it reached the buildings. People were inconvenienced, not hurt.”

Cym frowned at Fourteen’s callused response and continued the fight to separate his backpack from the seatbelt. Eventually, he had to remove the plastic buckle on his pack to set it free and cursed when he bent a fingernail backward trying to put it back on again.

When Cym had finally sorted himself, the seatbelt, and his backpack into their rightful places, he looked up and realized they were almost to the warehouse, so he dug through his bag and put on the tattered pair of Converse he found at the bottom. They were tight over the now-dirty bandages Fourteen had wrapped around his feet, but they still fit.

It seemed silly, but with shoes on, Cym felt more capable of dealing with the garbage life was throwing his way.

Once they were inside the warehouse, Cym made a show of looking around for a moment, then asked, “Um, is there a bathroom here I can use?”

Fourteen nodded and gestured for Cym to follow him toward the opposite side of the building they’d stayed in last night.

“Your bathroom is that far from where you sleep?” Cym imagined getting up to go pee in the middle of the night and having to go down two flights of stairs and across a creepy, drafty warehouse.

Hard pass.

Fourteen shrugged. “It’s not so bad.”

“Says the soldier,” Cym whispered under his breath.

Fourteen snorted and said, “Right through there, cupcake,” proving his sense of hearing was better than it had any right to be. He ushered Cym towards a shabby closet in the back of a small office. “I’ll be upstairs when you’re done, and we’ll talk.”

Cym needed to change his clothes ASAP. He should have done it in the car to throw off potential tracking spells, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to get undressed in front of Fourteen. His face burned at the very idea, and he rubbed at his cheeks furiously. What the heck was going on with him?

Cym dug through his bag and was glad to see a pair of jeans, but the pink tank top made him wince. It might be spring, but in New England that could mean anything from snow in the morning to a toasty seventy-five degrees in the afternoon.

It looked like a visit to a thrift shop was going to be in order so he could get some warmer clothes. He would have to get as much as he could afford to buy—the more clothes he had, the longer he could avoid detection.

Cym shucked off his torn hoodie and sneezed when the dust and debris from the destroyed building filled the air. His pants followed, making even more dust for him to choke on, and he jammed his dirty clothes hastily into his bag. Tattered as they were, in a pinch, they could still help him throw off a tracking spell. As he was stuffing them in, he found the small tin containing money. It was every dime he had left.

When Cym opened it, he was pleasantly surprised to find a hundred-dollar bill instead of a fifty. Past Cym had been very generous when packing this bag. Now he could afford an actual jacket.

He straightened and caught his reflection in the mirror.

Cym had never thought much about his appearance. Having no contact with the outside world made worrying about what other people thought of him seem silly. He examined his face in the dingy, spotted mirror. His hair was thick—something fashion magazines harped about constantly—so that was a point in his favor. He brushed a chunk of plaster out of his hair and finger-combed through the tangles.

Most of his features were delicate enough to appease even the harshest celebrity critics, with the exception of his square jaw. It gave him the appearance of being stubborn—something that had gotten him into trouble a lot when he was little. It was currently streaked with soot, so he wet his fingers from the faucet and did his best to clean it off.

He looked back up to gaze at his sky-blue eyes and wondered if Fourteen liked the color blue.

Realizing what he was doing, Cym backed away from the sink and jerked his bag up off the floor. It was long past time for him to go.

As he opened the window to the bathroom, he thought about how to use the money he had left after his shopping trip. He could use it to gain distance and improvise once he got far enough, or he could see how far he could get walking, maybe even hitch and use the money to make himself look presentable enough to find a job he could tolerate.