Flamed

Let it burn

We walked towards the exit as fast as we could, not wanting to stay any longer with these people around. Brian held the door where we originally had entered open, I stepped inside but there was something wrong with this, there had to be.

"This isn't the hallway. It's another dining room. It must be another door." I said closing the door behind me.

"I could've sworn it was that one" he said opening the door on the left side of the room. But, yet again, there was another dining room, strangely familiar to the one we were in.

"This can't be right, it's the only other door here. Are you sure we didn't go through another room before getting to this one?" asked Lizbeth.

"No, we came from the hallway" Andrea told her.

"Try the other one again" I said.

Anthony opened the other one and held it.

"Is it me or does that room look exactly like this one?"

He was right, the two rooms were identical. It was like looking at a mirror.

"Try the other one again, there has to be another way to get out of here! There can't be a thousand dining rooms" I said nervously.

And time after time, no matter how many of us opened the door the two stayed looking like mirrors to the one we were in.

"There's only one way to find out. Stay here I'll just open a couple of doors and see what I find. I'll be quick." He opened the right door and went off.

"What if he doesn't come back? What if were stuck here? What if we were left here to rot?" Andrea started mumbling nervously.

"He'll be back. And if not, were getting out of here either way." Brian said reclining from one of the walls.

He had to get back, he just had to. We needed him here, helping us. Anthony may be new but he still had remarkable abilities.

The minutes passed; first five, then ten, then fifteen, each one passing with a crushing slowness.

"Andrea, could you, like, make time go faster?" I reclined my head against the wall not bothering to look at the door for the billionth time.

"Yeah I can do that, but it'll only go faster for me. For you guys, time will pass normally." She explained.

"At least it'll go faster for one of us. Just do it." Brian said.

"If you say so..." she closed her eyes and with one of her hands swatted invisible air. She was right, everything was the same apart from the air feeling a little lighter. Andrea laid against the wall not moving a muscle, she was here, but not here. That sounded simpler in my mind... but whatever, you get the point.

We all sat on muted silence just thinking and waiting, checking our phones once in a while to see the time and going back to silence again. Suddenly Andrea opened her eyes taking a huge breath of air as if she'd been holding her breath.

"This isn't real!" she took another breath. "Their powers don't work on my time jumping eyes, so I could see everything as it actually is"

"Timed jumping eyes?" I asked amused.

"Hard to explain and way beside the point. Their controlling us, using their powers against us. They don't want us to leave, were too valuable. Most of you are pures, they need your strength. And I saw the thin kid too, Anthony, they have him, that's why he hasn't come back."

"So none of this is real? This all is just the reality they want me to see?" I asked.

"Yep"

"And what can we do then?" asked Lizbeth.

"Set fire to the walls or something, I don't know. Just something that'll interfere with the person doing this"

Brian turned and looked at me.

"You heard her. Let it burn Paige."

As if on cue I extended my arms let all of my power free. It felt amazing to use so much of it after holding back for so long. Every muscle in my body was awake and pulsing along with every nerve, it didn't feel wrong though. It felt like the most right thing in the world, not having to worry about using too much of it or too little. The fire inside of me was alive, wait no, scratch that, I was the fire. I was alive.

The flames consumed the walls and everything around us. Lizbeth made a kind of bubble around the rest of them so they wouldn't be harmed. She knew the fire would do me no harm, I was immune to it.

The walls started crumbling and exposing the hallway we had come through originally, the one that had always been there in reality. In the hallway stood twenty or more horrified and shocked faces.

They may have hybrid abilities, but we had elemental power.