SOLVED. YA mutant/superpowered schoolkids who were being tracked by a secret government faction that sought to exploit their gifts

[Eli]

I read this book in the 2000s, definitely before 2010 although I can't be sure of the exact year. It centered around a group of kids whose school principal was replaced with the head of a corrupt government organization tasked with investigating their hidden gifts and abducting them for some sort of experiments within a high security compound. I think its style was to swap perspectives between them with each chapter because I remember them getting split up at certain points. The most notable instance was when one of them got kidnapped and they broke into the facility to rescue him but quickly realized he had a tracking chip embedded in his forearm (pretty sure it was as a result of one of them being able to visualize electronic signatures) and he had to dig it out using a rusty key or something like that, which really stuck with me as a kid. They all walked out of the room while he did it and that was one of the more visceral grounded moments that the book was full of. This was very much unafraid to disturb its readers or put its protagonists through seriously affecting situations, it wasn't intended for very young kids, moreso mature-ish teenage audiences. Didn't stop me, though, because I was at most a tween when I read it.

One thing I remember is that the abilities the kids had were on the subtle side and easily hidden, not very powerful or immediately noticeable. I'm fairly sure that the guy who had to dig the chip out of his arm had weak psionic abilities and another one of them was fire-focused. The setting was meant to be modern and not some wildly different futuristic dystopia, it came off very realistic and current, especially since their lives seemed to be normal outside of their specific circumstances, things went wrong when they were let out for spring break at one point. It was set in the suburban United States and when I read it (physical copy ofc) the book wasn't old at all, I think the earliest it could've been published was 2000. I'm pretty sure the author was male and listed on the inside cover, but I'm straining to picture anything about it, which is incredibly frustrating to me. I remember there being some degree of continuance after their original adventure which makes me think there was more than one book but I can't be sure how many.

[Eli]

I remembered immediately after typing this entire thing out and hitting post because I had to go back to the header and realized what the government was looking for stood out to me. How should I word it? Gifts? Quirks? The kids had hidden talents. The book is called Hidden Talents. It has a sequel called True Talents. The school was actually a correctional facility and all the kids were basically in juvie. There was a pyromaniac and a techie just like I thought. I knew they all had weird nicknames, too. I'm such an absolute clown.

[Eli]

Oh, and it was published in 1999, not 2000, but I was close. Remembered more about it than I thought I did.

[Rainbowheart]

Glad you found it!

Hidden Talents for the link.