After another week of taking everything they could throw at me, I was pretty sure I was finished with this. It was not running for hours while lugging eighty pounds worth of kit. It was not getting tossed around on the combat training mats by Stone or other soldiers who knew how to fight. Getting yelled at and told what to do was only part of it, though I enjoyed the looks on their faces when I yelled back.

No, I did not want this to be my life. I had no idea what my life would be outside of this place, whether I would even make it out of here, but I did not want the life they were selling. Deep down, it was not me. I was not a follower, and I knew that my mouth was going to get me into trouble at some point. And when the time came, I’d tell them that.

I slept fitfully the night before we had to make our choice. Between the anxiety and waking from nightmares, my sleep was sporadic at best. But I must have been asleep for a while when Rebecca started hissing in my face, “Wake up!”

My hand was around her throat before I knew what I was doing. Her brown eyes bulged in surprise as I started choking her. “Peri,” she gasped. “It’s...me.”

The terrors receded and I came to myself, letting go immediately in horror. “Fuck, Rebecca, are you okay?”

Rebecca fell back, landing hard on her butt and clutching her throat. After a moment of wheezing, she gasped out, “Dammit, Peri!”

I was up, and several lights came on as a few of the other girls nearby were leaning up in their cots to see what was going on. “Fuck, Becca, I’m so sorry. I was having a nightmare.”

“Obviously,” she grumbled.

“Ugh, could you two kill each other more quietly?” Kemi groaned, rolling over and covering her head with her pillow.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said, my face burning in embarrassment. Reaching out, I helped Rebecca up to the side of my cot. “Why did you wake me up?” I whispered.

Rebecca, a hand still on her throat, leaned over with a wild grin. Her wide-eyed terror was gone and replaced with bright eyes and flushed cheeks. She leaned close to me so that our noses nearly touched and I shied back from her.

“Peri, I’ve Changed,” she whispered.

“What? How do you know?” I asked.

“I can feel it. I can feel all of you now. I close my eyes,” she said, closing her eyes as she did. “But I can still feel you. Everyone in the room, I know where they are. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before! I can even sort of sense what you're feeling...it’s like...dark blue, no, purple? It’s like everyone’s emotions are a color.”

“Oh my god,” I whispered, but not very quietly. “You must be a Seer!”

“I know! Oh, thank heavens. No offense, I mean it would be cool to be like you, but I don’t want to fight. Not really. Thank god my superpowers are going to have me working behind a desk somewhere.”

“Really? Is that how they work?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know, but I kind of guess that’s what’ll be like.”

“Wait,” I said, pulling away from her. “I thought you weren’t staying in. I thought you were going to get out tomorrow.”

“Oh, well, yeah,” she said, leaning back on the cot and looking away. “I mean, that was before now. But now this,” she waved her hand over her body. “Now I guess I want to help. Before, I didn’t think I could really do anything. But if I can, shouldn’t I?”

“You want to be in the military?” I asked, unable to fathom her change in perspective.

“Well, no, not really. But Seers are mostly civilians, I’ll just work with the military.”

Crossing my arms, I said, “Yeah, I don’t understand that part. How are they not part of the military like the rest of us?”

Rebecca shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. But...I guess I’ll find out.” Her eyes lit up again. “Won’t this be great? Now we can work together.”

That landed like one of Stone’s punches. I’d not really thought about that, how I would be losing touch with everyone here. What was one more “family” left behind in my cavalcade of foster homes and school changes? I was used to being alone, right?

“I...I don’t know that I’m going to stay in. I was thinking of leaving.”

“What?” Rebecca hissed. “Peri, you can’t! I mean, like you are one of the strongest Changed there is. Don’t you want to use that?”

“Yeah, but…” I started to say when a pillow flew out of the darkness towards us. I reached over and snatched it out of the air before it could smack Rebecca in the face.

“Get a room or go to bed,” Claire growled, before turning over.

Rebecca looked at the pillow I was holding inches from her face with the wide eyes of someone who’d just narrowly avoided a car wreck. “Damn girl,” she whispered. “This is what I mean, you can’t let this go to waste.” She patted my knee, sending gooseflesh across my skin. Damnit, did all Seers do that?

“We’ll talk some more in the morning. Better try and get some sleep before someone kills us.”

“I’m glad you got your powers,” Kemi grunted from beneath her pillow. “But can we celebrate tomorrow, please?”

Frowning, I gave Rebecca a shrug. She reached over and hugged me before I could pull away. Though I immediately froze like some awkward deer, it felt...good. Not just the chills and the Changed weirdness that left me squirming, but just that moment of her arms around me as she shared her joy. Before I could relax and melt into her embrace she was pulling away, taking my air with her.

She winked as she crawled back into her cot and I sank back into mine. Flashing one more smile, she flicked off the light, plunging me into darkness. Though we could see like cats in the dark, I still felt blinded. I’d known what I was going to do, try and see if I could get out and go back to my old ways of looking after myself, on my own. Assuming they let me go, of course.

Now I wasn’t so sure.