I stepped around the corner of the alley where I'd been mugged – only a few nights ago, now that I thought of it – and took a deep breath. Could I handle being here? Was I going to break out in a PTSD attack?

"What the hell are we doing here, Mac?" Del hissed. He wouldn't go home, no matter how many times I told him I would be fine. I knew he hated being out at night, especially in parts of town he didn't know. Video games weren't just a hobby for Del. It was a way to excuse him from facing the shit the world had on offer. I couldn't blame him. Sometimes the world seemed only to have shit on the menu.

"Just shut up a second, Del." I hid behind the dumpster – the same one where the dude smashed my nose – and waited. My video game, movie-riddled brain had a whole plan in mind, something about the criminal always returning to the scene of the crime. If I could take a step back and look at myself, I'd smack myself upside the head and say smarten up. Unfortunately, when you're laser-focused on something, you won't listen to anything but the next step.

The next step involved waiting for half an hour and almost falling over when the fucker that started the whole thing wheeled around the corner and leaned against the wall.

"Is that the guy?" Del whispered. "The dude that broke your face?"

"Yeah," I hissed.

"Wait," Del said. "This guy was beating up the dude that mugged you? So you were, like, third on the beating list?"

"What part of shut the fuck up are you missing?" I waved Del back, hustling him behind me so I could see the mugger better. "Just stay here. This is going to be dumb, but I've got this."

"You've got this?" Del didn't sound convinced. "You can maybe move shit with your mind, and you shot fireballs out of your hands that may have just been an allergic reaction. How the hell do you 'got' this?"

"I don't know!" I hissed. "I just...have a feeling. I've got a hunch I need to try out, and this fucker's as good a guinea pig as any."

"Yeah, but what if your hunch ends up being bullshit, and this guy just beats the shit out of you again?"

"I told you, Del." I reached into my pocket and pulled out another six warehouse cookies. I smashed them into my face in one bite and chewed them like a beaver on a toothpick. "He wasn't the one who beat me up."

"He just got things rolling..." Del trailed off as I took off around the corner, the heat already kicking into high gear up my arms.

"Hey!" I barked as I skidded to a halt at the guy's feet. "Remember me?"

The dude just stared at me, his mouth hung open with a thin line of drool rolling out of it. He wouldn't have recognized me if I was his own mother. Whatever planet he was on, whatever drug he'd shoved into his body, it was already killing him. My fireballs of vengeance were way over the top. This wasn't vigilante justice.

"Mac," Del said. I could tell he was trying to use a soothing voice. "Look at him."

I did. His eyes were barely open, and he couldn't stand without leaning on something. His hands were all curled up, but it didn't look like he was doing it on purpose. I didn't know much about drugs, but I knew that whatever he was on was fucked up.

"Del!" The fire raged along my arms, and I had nowhere to blast the fireballs. The heat was building up to unbearably hot. "Give him some food and get the hell out of here!"

"What?" Del was always a bit slow on the uptake.

"Del! Move!" I pointed my hands straight in the air and screamed. The fireballs shot out and launched into the sky like two streaks of orange lightning. My hands smoked and fumed as tears rolled down my face.

My mugger hadn't even moved.

"Shit," Del said. "Someone's going to have seen that."

"Seen what?" I wheezed. "We didn't do anything."

I leaned against the dumpster beside my strung-out friend. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the last of my cookies. Fireballs were off the table for dealing with this guy, so I wouldn't need any more. I held them out to the dude, and when he didn't reach out for them, I tucked the cookies into his curled hands and hoped that he would soon find them and eat them.

"Poor guy," I said. "I still don't like that you hit me in the face, and I'm glad that I stabbed you in the ass with my keys, but nobody deserves this. If you ever know where you are again, find me. Mac. I'll get you some food."

I didn't know how to fix the guy's life, but I could make sure he had at least one decent meal. The smallest acts can be the kindest gestures, and even a cup of coffee can show someone that they aren't alone in this world.

"No, I mean the fireballs, Mac." Del tugged on my arm. "I'm pretty sure it's illegal to shoot fire into the sky without a permit. I don't even think they let movie guys do that."

"When was the last time they shot a movie in this stupid city?"

"Mac! Focus! Someone will come and want to know where those fireballs came from! And they'll ask all kinds of questions and do, like, experiments on you and stuff! We can't let that happen!"

"What do you mean, experiments?" I finally clued in .to the fact that maybe Del was making sense.

"Dissection, throw you into a brain machine, that kind of shit! We don't know! This is bigger than either of us!"

"Dude, you're sounding like a bad movie." A bad movie that sounded more logical by the second. "No one's going to dissect me. Maybe a brain machine. Hell, I could probably go for a cat-scan, actually. There's probably more going on up there than I want to know about. Think they can find out what's wrong with me in one of those?"

Del shook his head. "That's not how they work, Mac. What's wrong with you is beyond modern medicine. I don't think you're taking me seriously. Someone's going to have called the cops about those fireballs. People love to call the cops."

"No one called the cops, Del," I said. Was I trying to sound braver than I was feeling? "If they did, the cops would already be on their way. We'd hear sirens by now."

As if the universe itself was using its sick sense of humour to test my resolve, sirens wailed from every direction. I would have laughed if I hadn't been so freaked out. The timing was impeccable.

"What do we do?" I asked. "I can't burn a bunch of cops down! Even if I wanted to, I don't have any more cookies!"

"Good! You can't flame-broil a bunch of cops!"

"Not helping, Del!" I barked and backed up against the dumpster. "Think. Think! How did I move the shit with my mind again?"

"What good will that do right now? Shift the dumpster? Fling a garbage can at a pile of cops to piss them off even more?"

"Fuck!" I had no ideas. I rubbed my arms, trying to coax some fire out of them. "Fuck! Why is it so cold?"

"Cold? What the hell are you talking about? It's hot as balls right now!" Del hissed.

The sirens were getting closer. I racked my brain for ideas – anything that might resemble an escape plan. There were only two ways in and out of the alley – the way we came in or through the dodgiest part of town down the other. Both would be crawling with cops in just a few minutes. Del was right about one thing – the people in this town loved to call the cops – for anything.

"I can't feel my fingers, Del!" I got stupid when I got cold, and I was feeling dumber by the second. "How can you not feel this?"

"Shit, you're turning blue!" Del ripped off his zip-up hoodie and wrapped it around my shoulders. "Are you sick or something?"

"N-n-no, I f-f-feel fine, I'm just c-c-cold," I chattered. I hadn't been this cold since I walked home from school two winters ago and got frostbite on my ears.

"We've got to get you inside!" Del threw an arm around my ribs and rubbed them awkwardly. "You're full-on popsicling!"

"Th-th-that's n-n-not a th-th-thing!" I laughed and shivered all at once, but the edges of my vision were growing dark – a sure sign the cold was taking over. What the hell was going on? Was this part of the weird new powers? Or was this something else entirely?

"What the hell is going on?" Del asked. "Look at those windows over there!"

I could barely hear him over the screams of the sirens but followed his finger to some low windows across the street. They were frosting over as if the full power of winter had been unleashed on them in one cruel blow. But that wasn't even the weirdest part.

Someone – or something – was writing in the frost. I couldn't see anybody, but letters were being etched into the ice with a flowing script – some of the nicest penmanship I had ever seen.

"What does that say?" Del asked. "I'm not so good at reading handwriting."

The fact that Del could see it, too, was no small relief. It meant we were both going crazy together instead of just me.

"This way," I said. "It says 'this way.'"

The sirens roared their loudest, and I could tell the cops had finally reached the alleyway. The window slid open, moved by an unseen hand, which a few days ago would have freaked me right out. Now, between the cops and the open window, it didn't look like we had much choice.

"I say we do what the window says," Del said.

"Way ahead of you," I said and jumped into the black beyond.