Sometime later a man calls to the door to collect us for food. Alex and I sit side by side at the top of a long table. Slowly men begin to hobble in in pairs. Across from me sits a happy looking guy with brown hair and a massive forehead. “Hi!” he chirps to me and extends his hand. “My name’s Brendon! I control the weather!”
I look up at him nodding. The whole greet and tell your greatest secret thing is still striking me as odd. “Uh, hi. My name is Frank… I can breathe underwater…”
“That’s pretty cool,” the guy beside Brendon says. “I’m Ryan,” he shuffles his chair forward. “See that cat on your lap?”
I look down and sure enough there’s a cat on my lap. I shoo it off and try to push it away when it disappears. I look back up at Ryan. “I put that there,” he smiles innocently, “I can make you see things.”
My eyebrows shoot upwards. “Wow,” I murmur, “that was fucking realistic.”
“That’s the point,” he grins.
Four guys enter from the same door as I did. They take the remaining few spaces beside me and diagonally. Beside Brendon sits the man I saw on the operating table. His face looks drawn and pale yet really handsome. I hadn’t realised from the glass room how just kinda hot he is. His hair is dyed black with brown roots growing through.
He looks up through his bangs and catches my eye. “You’re new here.”
“Yep,” I say not quite sure if I should say anything else.
“Gee, don’t,” the guy beside him says in a high voice.
“Calm it Vic I was hardly going to, it was just a thought,” he rolls his eyes and looks back down at his plate.
“He’s confused,” Vic states looking at me, “and no I can’t just tell by your expression. I can see everything you think. I’m not showing off Kellin, just saying.”
A group of people in white start bringing in dishes of boring looking food. Everything has been steamed or boiled. Yay.
A woman leans over the table beside Alex to look at me. “Hey boy,” she purrs. She’s the first woman I’ve seen here in black.
Alex shoulders her, “not the time Ash.” And then I see the most disturbing thing, the girl became a guy. I look over at Ryan to see if he was making me see this. “Ashley can change gender,” he says through a mouthful of steamed peas.
Ashley, now a feminine dude just smiles innocently at me. “okay…” I say and start filling my plate.
The atmosphere here is very odd. There’s vague comradery between all those around the table. Every now and again you’d here “Bob fuck off, leave it,” or “Vic get out of my head.” The thing that makes me uncomfortable is all the people in white lining the walls, the ratio about two to one and they had batons and thing that looked like a wire wrapped tightly around a stick. They stared at us as we ate and made me feel uncomfortable.
“You gonna eat that?” Gerard asked drawing my attention to a slice of meat on my plate.
I was going to eat it but I needed more friends than not. “No here,” I shove my plate towards him.
“Don’t worry, we won’t exclude you here,” Vic smiles over at me and winks. I remind myself not to think around him.
After all the food has disappeared we’re shoved off in another direction. I look to Alex to explain but he shakes his head. We’re led into a room with a large barred window looking over the ocean. There’s a load of couches and a chess board but elsewise the room is bare. There’s a pair of guitars in the corner that look like they have never been played.
“They haven’t,” Vic says flopping down on a couch nearest to him. The white clothed people leave the room and we hear the door lock.
“We’re left to… socialise for like an hour every evening. It’s sort of lame but for once we’re not surrounded by the captain’s staff,” Vic says and then turns to criticise someone for what they were thinking. I end up sitting with Alex opposite Gerard and a guy with huge hair.
“I’m not doing it Gee. Seriously this is getting ridiculous,” big hair guy says looking concerned.
“Please,” Gerard whimpers.
“No. It’s too like doing drugs Gee, I don’t want you to get addicted to it.”
Alex walks over to the window and sighs, his eyes glazing over. He’s probably looking across the water at Jack. Gerard tucks his knees into his chest and lies his head back against the couch. The big haired dude looks over to me, “Hi I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Ray! I can make you release a store of endorphins you have, so you’re like high.” He smiles widely.
“Hi. That’s pretty cool, can people overdose on your power?” I ask before I even think about it.
He smiles and sits up ready to talk. “Well I don’t know, see I don’t want to kill people but I think I can. I mean when I catch people off guard with it, it confuses them and they don’t know what they’re saying or thinking or doing anymore.” He grins. “Want a go?”
Gerard sits up and groans, “you’ll do it to him but not to me?”
“He’s never done it before so no matter how light I do it it’ll make him happy,” Ray smiles. Gerard sighs and curls back into a ball.
“I’d love to try,” I say and suddenly everything fuzzes around me. I see Ray’s smile spin off his face and as creepy as that should be it wasn’t. For what felt like half a minute my brain feels soft and everything feels awesome.
Slowly I’m brought back into the grey reality. “Holy fuck that was insane!”
Ray smiles. “Thanks, I can make it a lot more extreme and last a lot longer but maybe it’s not the best idea.” He actually looks kind of tired after it.
It might be Ray’s fault, but I suddenly feel a lot more confident. I walk over to the guitars and turn down the volume greatly. Then I just start playing. The room slowly goes silent and smiling faces turn around to look at me. Still confident I start playing a riff I knew from the smashing pumpkins. People continue speaking but quieter, nodding along to the guitar. From the edge of my mind I hear a voice silently singing along. I look over and Gerard is singing along under his breath. We meet eyes and he starts singing louder. Everyone goes silent again as Gerard starts singing properly, loud and vigorous. By the end of the song everyone is smiling over at us. Gerard had joined me and was leaning against the wall singing a bullet with butterfly wings perfectly.

That night Alex and I are lying on our beds staring at the ceiling. We’re pretty quiet since we got back from socialising.
“I miss Jack,” Alex says after a bit. “I’d never told him about the powers y’know. I was too scared at first and I thought it was too late…” His voice trails off.
“I didn’t tell anyone either,” I say, “No one to tell…”
After a long pause Alex speaks again. “We used to go out and look at the stars. He’d point out some and I’d zoom in on them and see them and it’d be so awesome because I love space… The one time I borrowed this telescope and could zoom in more than I ever thought possible and saw this planet and it looked like there was trees and a river but I couldn’t be sure and I babbled on about it for ages to Jack and he just listened…”
At some point I fell asleep. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t while Alex was talking and if it was he didn’t seem to notice.
We were woken up so fucking early. Back downstairs for breakfast again I sat beside Alex across from Gerard and a guy who I hadn’t met yet. Each of them had an entire pot of coffee on their plate instead of food.
The guy beside me looks at me over his mug, “I heart coffee,” he mumbles. Gerard grunts and nods at nothing in particular. #
Brendon sits on his other side. “Good morning sunshine!” he smiles at Gerard.
“If you talk to me again I’ll take away any memory you have of sex, Urie,” Gerard hisses.
Brendon laughs and looks over at me, “he’s no morning person. You aren’t either are you?”
I shake my head and down a cup of coffee.
Another new guy sits beside me. He has dyed black hair and almost as many tattoos as me. Another new guy sits beside him. They all must have been on the other side of the dinner table. “Guys! Introduce yourselves to Frank! He doesn’t know who you are and you’re confusing his morning brain!” Vic calls from down the table.
The guy beside Gerard looks up from pouring coffee. “I’m Mikey, Gerard’s brother, I’m technically indestructible.”
“Hey,” I say, it’s too early in the morning to appreciate how awesome his power is.
“I’m Andy,” tattoo guy says in a deep voice. “I can manipulate electricity,” he says and the lights above us flicker. He smiles.
“I’m Bob.” The guy beside Andy says and that’s all he says. Not a morning person either.
Back down in the direction of Vic’s voice comes, “I’m Kellin, and I can be whoever you want.”
“That means he’s a shape shifter,” Vic calls.
I nod my head. I’m probably not going to remember most of this later.
“I’m Jaime, I can control fire,” a voice says walking behind me toward Vic.
When no one else is piping up to introduce themselves I take it that this is everyone and that there are no girls. Huh.
After breakfast we are released to roam the gardens and do whatever we want until we have to go get our powers sucked. Alex is gone and I don’t really no anyone else so I go and sit on a rock overlooking a cliff. I could die really easily right now, I think, all I have to do is be pushed or jump. Jumping seems like a good idea.
The urge leaves immediately and I almost fully forget that I thought that. I look around and Vic is standing looking concerned behind Gerard.
“He told me to stop you thinking that,” Gerard explains.
Vic nods and then walks away. I really don’t like how easily people here just get into my mind.
Gerard wanders over and sits on a rock across from me. “Don’t do it,” I find myself saying before I even realise it.
He raises his eyebrows.
“I uh, know that you have the urge now that I just had… I know it’s not that strong but you have your own thoughts besides… Yea don’t jump,” I babble.
“I won’t,” he says stretching back and looking over at me. “You know all about my powers because The Captain used me as an example yea?”
I nod. He smirks, “he thinks I’m so close to being cured, idiot, I’m no closer than the day I got here.”
“Does the treatment not work?” I ask, worried.
“Oh yea the treatment works fine but I don’t want it to work on me so every time it takes a bit of my power from me I just take it back again.”
“Why don’t you want to be treated?” I ask looking Gerard in the eye.
“I just don’t”
He sits there for a while not talking to me, jus staring out to sea. After a while a woman all in white comes to get me for my first treatment session.

We’re back in the room with the giant tank. The Captain asks me to strip down to my underwear. He then has people fasten wires with little suction cups to my forehead.
“Step into the tank please,” he says sliding open the panel and motioning me inside. The glass becomes whole again and within seconds the tank is filling with water.
“Please try to relax, Frank. I just need you to breathe normally at first so I can figure this all out,” he says holding a tablet. He stares down at it as the water begins to rise. Lights dim to off and the only light is the feint glow of the tablet illuminating the crevices of The Captains face. He looks up just as the water reaches my nostrils. “Breathe in the water and hold your breath,” he demands from the gloom.
I take in a deep breath and hold it. I begin to cough as soon as I try to hold it. The water level drops and I cough the water out.
“Interesting,” the water begins to rise again, “hold it.”
I breathe in the water and go to hold it but my lungs won’t have it. My chest burns with the water.
I splutter and cough it out again.
“Very interesting… Try just breathe normally next,” The Captain said looking down at the tablet. As soon as the water is high enough again I breathe it in and out as I normally do.
The captain turns away and starts typing into a computer on the wall. A screen lights up showing waves and numbers all warped by the water and glass.
“Try drink the water and breathe…” The Captain calls. I did as he said this time easily. My chest still fucking hurt.
“Hmm… okay this might sting a little…” he pulls a lever and the wires at my temples begin to pulse. My brain numbs and stings. “Alright Frank, I think I’ll now start teaching you to drown.”

Notes

So here's the second chapter :) the next one may take a little longer because I'm only a few paragraphs in but I'll try keep up a chapter every few days x