As if thousands of hands were drumming against the tractor the rain outside was unrelenting. I could hardly hear it because all I could think about was the phone in my grip.


    Stupid, I thought, even a phone like this would give away your location to the Pied Pipers.


    I gazed over to Xandra who was chewing her thumb nail. I fixed my attention to my phone again.


    "What are you thinking?" Xandra mumbled.


    "If I get rid of this phone I won''t be able to get in contact with my family until we get another phone, or find a payphone," I said, "So it''s not the end of the world. But, I don''t know, it doesn''t feel good throwing the phone away knowing my brother is going to try and call me back later."


    Xandra didn''t try to argue her point any further. Maybe she could tell she no longer needed to. Or maybe she wanted to see what I would do without her having to press me into a decision.


    Before I could second guess myself I coiled up my right arm, bringing the muscle and firming up the sinew and bone in my hands; then, with a sudden squeeze, I broke the cheap phone into pieces. That likely wasn''t going to be enough so I bulbed up my hand next and held the crumbled remains until the interior of the tractor was filled with an acrid burning smell, on top of the musty stench of old leather, dust, mud, and cobwebs.


    Xandra and I coughed a little and I opened the tractor door and threw the black charred fragments of the phone onto the wet field beyond. My arm had only been exposed to the rain outside for a few moments and was already soaked. I yanked the tractor door shut.


    Xandra tapped my knee with her shoe.


    "You okay?" she said, softly.


    I sighed, "Yeah," I said, "It was the right thing to do. For a moment there I didn''t think I had the guts to do it."


    "Yeah," said Xandra, "Me too."


    For a while we both sat quietly enjoying the sound of the rain and the sense of isolation it provided. As cold as it was outside, Xandra and I were able to stay nice and warm thanks to one of us at intervals bulbing up.


    Xandra stretched her legs out, popping some joints in her knees and feet. I stretched too, doing the same. Very quickly we both started to pop every joint we could manage in a sudden ''pop-off'', seeing who could pop their joints the most.


    Xandra won. She was in a much better mood, no doubt, because I had followed her advice about breaking the phone.


    "Hungry?" said Xandra.


    "Always," I said.


    Xandra giggled and started rifling through her carry bag. She retrieved two small tins of spicy-flavoured tuna.


    "It''s got lots of protein," she said, handing me mine.


    "Protein, smo-tien," I said, "All I care about is if it tastes good."


    We both rifled through our respective bags for our forks. When we both had ours we peeled open our tins and dug in. The tuna was spicy, but just as an extra kick of flavour, far from something I couldn''t handle.


    "Cheers," I said, holding my tin out.


    "Cheers," said Xandra, happily.


    We tapped our tins together and continued eating.


    "Can I ask you something?" said Xandra.


    "Sure," I said.


    "If none of this crazy Pied Peeper stuff ever happened," said Xandra, "If you never got powers, what would you want to do with your life?"


    Like a robot that''s run out of battery charge I slowed my chewing to a stop. I stared at my right knee that was against Xandra''s.


    "Well," I said, "I guess I''ve always wanted to do something creative. Like acting, or writing, maybe even producing movies. But I guess I never decided exactly what I wanted to do. I''ve always been waiting to be good enough at something that it would seem obvious what I should do. But I was in the special classes growing up. I''ve always felt like I''ve been behind everybody else when it comes to the milestone things in life."Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    "Is that a good enough answer?" I said, forcing a smile.


    Xandra shrugged and smiled a little.


    "School''s a waste of time anyway," said Xandra, "All they want to do is brainwash you into being a normie."


    I dug out another chunk of tuna from the tin, being careful not to make annoying scraping sounds whilst I did.


    "What about you?" I said.


    "Me?" said Xandra, though I could tell she had anticipated the same question being thrown back at her.


    "Oh," she said, "I was thinking about moving to Japan. I want to learn Japanese, maybe work as an English teacher over there. Then, who knows, maybe get a job at some cool company out there. It just seems like a really cool place to be."


    "Have you ever been?" I said.


    "I wish," said Xandra, "But since those kinds of dreams are dead now, I guess I''ll just have to figure out some other way to get there."


    "Well," I said, "You''ll be able to get there eventually. Sooner or later our powers are going to get to a point where we won''t have to hide like this."


    "Do you think?" said Xandra.


    I nodded. In fact I had given the future a lot of thought whilst running. Whilst time had stretched it did allow for a certain degree of navel-gazing thought to occur; though it did require an extra mental effort to stop my brain from going into complete auto-pilot mode.


    "I don''t want a repeat of what happened at the petrol station," I said, "Next time, if I''m going into a situation like that, I''m just going to change my appearance enough not to cause a scene. I know you said you think it''s gross to make ourselves look older, but I can put up with the grossness if it means staying out of trouble."


    Xandra shivered.


    "It''s just," she said, "What if we make ourselves older but we can''t reverse it? What if we lose years of our lives?"


    "Or," I said, "Maybe we''re already immortal, in a sense."


    Xandra cocked her head to one side.


    "You think?" she said.


    "Well," I said, "The human body ages because it wears out. Our cells degrade over time and can''t keep up repairing the damage well enough. The older we get, the worse our bodies get at stopping the decay. So, in a sense, if we can already heal ourselves, who is to say we''re even going to grow old anymore?"


    Xandra''s large eyes widened into even larger whites.


    "Wow," she said, "I hadn''t thought of it that way. So it won''t matter so much if we make ourselves look older, since it''s not like we''re going to grow old anyway."


    "Maybe," I said, "It''s just a theory. For all I know maybe there''s a ''base'' level to our powers. Like we''ll just age naturally. Like, imagine we''re both eighty years old but we can tap into the power to make ourselves young again, but at some point, if we ever decide to revert back to our ''true'' selves, then we''d eventually die of old age."


    Xandra''s enthusiasm lessened. "Ah," she mumbled, "Yeah, that could be the case too."


    "Or," she said, "Whose to say we even need to stay human?"


    "I''ve seen what happens when people use the power to become monsters. It''s not nice," I said.


    "That was then," said Xandra, "But maybe there''s a way to make the power change us so that we don''t lose our minds. Maybe that''s what this power is all about. Becoming something – like – more."


    "Just be careful," I said.


    Xandra winked at me and smiled. I felt that weakness inside my chest again and decided to fix my attention on the last chunk of tuna in the tin. Even this small amount of food seemed to rejuvenate my body.


    We let our tuna tins drop to the tractor floor, since the whole thing was a big hunk of junk anyway. A part of me felt bad about the pair of us leaving a trail of debris wherever we went, but another part of me kind of liked being a little rebellious. Another, even smaller part of me resented being on the run in the first place, so what did I care about something as trivial as littering? Even so, leaving the used tuna tins on the tractor floor played on my mind a lot more than it perhaps should have. I was tempted, more than once, to pick them up and take them with us to put in a proper bin somewhere, but I managed to ignore the impulse.


    A half hour later it was pitch black outside and the rain had slowed to a pitter patter. We decided it was probably the best we were going to get and that we had stayed in the tractor for too long already. We grabbed out things and climbed down from the tractor. It felt good to breathe in the fresh field air.


    Without saying a word Xandra led the way from the tractor across the field. I kept pace. Soon we would coil up and break into sprints, but first it was nice just to stretch our legs the old fashioned way.


    When we cleared the field where the tractor had been we spotted a motorway off in the distance. The headlights of many cars headed in both directions, left and right, made me feel a simple kind of joy as if I were looking at Christmas lights. There was also a bridge which went over the motorway, which I assumed we would both soon be walking over.


    "You know," said Xandra, still looking straight ahead whilst holding her carry bags, with her hood up, and with her rucksack on.


    "What?" I said, breathing a little heavy from carrying my own bags, knowing I would soon need to coil up to compensate for all the effort of moving briskly and carrying all the extra weight.


    "I was thinking," said Xandra, "We should try pushing ourselves more. Experiment with our powers, you know? Like you with your martial arts movies?"


    "Oh yeah?" I said, "Why''d you say that?"


    "Because," said Xandra, "The next time I see the Peepers, I want to make them regret messing with us. We can''t avoid them forever."


    "We can try," I said, "But I know what you mean."


    "So," said Xandra, "If you''re up for it, how about we see how fast we can really run?"


    She shot me a challenging look and smiled mischievously. Something told me she was going to break into a sprint whether I agreed to push my body to run faster than ever before or not.