AUGUST IS A FEVER

2

Later on that day, the day you heard President Gray on the news from your father's laptop from his study, you went to bed. It was after dinner and you kept it to yourself that you were eavesdropping on your dear mother and father. They'd definitely could tell something was up with you. Something had been up with you.

IAAN was no ordinary disease. You didn't get sick or have a fever or anything remotely like that. The symptoms were sudden outbursts, anger, or a disinterest in a previous interest. Just abnormality in your child's usual normal behavior.

That definitely happened to you. You once liked painting, but now you despised it. You had sudden tantrums and meltdowns. You even hit your own mother out of anger. You went to sleep that night regretting what you did but also not knowing why you did it, you did it in the first place without thought. It almost felt as if you couldn't control yourself.

You didn't know it at the time, but there was a reason your anger was ten times more of a problem with any other kid who had experienced these symptoms of IAAN.

The day you were taken away by the police, torn away from your family was the day you accidentally burned the house down. You didn't even know how you did it at the time, but it happened. Unfortunately you burnt Kitty in the process as well. Burnt the toy until it was ash.

You were laying in bed, cradling Kitty in your arms. You could feel it's beady eyes pressing into the soft skin of your arms. As your eyes were closed you somehow couldn't sleep. You couldn't keep your mind from wandering either. You felt angry with yourself. There was a reason your parents were hiding it from you, they didn't want you to know. You broke their trust, disobeyed their word, and you felt awful for it.

The hands that held Kitty in them began to feel hot. Heat was building and building up in your hands, your fingertips were the hottest point. Your eyes were still closed, shut tight. You couldn't see so you couldn't realize what you were doing.

All of your anger swelled up and the heat of it all went straight to your hands. The heat was immense but it strangely didn't hurt one bit. You felt completely fine. The heat eventually overtook your whole body and you felt tired.

Just when you were beginning to fall asleep, you smelled a strong deep smoke. You quickly opened your eyes and saw the black clouds of it surround you. Flames engulfed your whole bedroom, the house had been set on fire. Was that why you felt so hot earlier?

You quickly brought your hands up, looking at them. Your heart sunk when you saw that they were a glowing hot orange. They looked like when you use a blowtorch on a piece of metal, it becoming so hot it glows a bright orange or yellow. You surely must be dreaming, right? The fire wasn't hurting you, you weren't even breaking a sweat. You could even breathe through the smoke, it wasn't difficult, the smell was just strong.

This is out of the normal, extraordinary, supernatural even. When you began to walk out of your room heading towards the door, assuming your parents would be outside along with the fire department, you tripped along the way on a piece of the roof that had fallen. The realization hit you that you weren't dreaming after all as you yelped in pain, scraping your soft skin on the roof, the sharp pieces of wood were deep enough to draw blood.

Something was off. Extremely off. First you weren't dreaming, and second, you seemed completely fine. There was no way you had caused all of this.

You pushed open the door that was halfway burnt to a crisp, ash surrounded the area near by. You saw your parents sobbing and you ran immediately towards them. Thank goodness that they got out of the house before they suffocated from all of the thick black smoke that you had apparently helped create. You prayed to God if he was even real that they wouldn't find out this was all presumably your doing.

"Oh, (Y/n)!" Your mother cried. She held you in her arms as you turned to look at the job you had done to your home.

"Mama!" You yelped for her.

You couldn't recognize your own house anymore, it all burned to ruins. The skeleton of it was all that was left when the sun rised and the flames cooled down after the fire department tried to put it out.

You were shaking violently, almost as much as Damein Connor did the day of his tragic death. Although the two of you had the same condition, he was shaking because his body was shutting down. You were shaking out of fear. You had survived IAAN and it granted you unwanted abilities. Abilities that caused you to burn down your family's house.

"Ma'am?" A police officer said to your mother.

"Yes?" She said as she desperately tried not to stutter with her voice that was just as shakey as yours when you called to her. However hers was hoarse from breathing in large amounts of smoke as she was ushered out of her crumbling home.

"We need to see if your daughter's okay, she was in there for quite some time." The officer said. Even he was astonished with how you were still breathing at all without a mark on your body. That was all a facade. He knew what you were. He knew what kind of monster you were.

"Alright?" Your mother said although it came out more like a question. She handed you off to him, the officer taking your hand and leading you into the ambulance near by.

He sat you down and ordered the nurses in it to run tests on you to see if you were truly completely fine like how you appeared to be. Apparently you were because the astonished look on the officers face was wiped away and replaced with a hateful glare.

He reached to his radio that was hooked onto his shoulder and spoke words that you didn't understand at the time but changed your life completely and permanently.

"I'm calling for PSI special forces, we've got a Red here. Female."