The ‘tree’ toppled, and it was only because I was already on my way toward him that I was able to intervene. I reached out for the falling tree, and my power was quicker to touch it. Phantom fingers bit into the surface, fracturing the chalky material. With flight, my bare hands, my power, and my aura pushed out to give people a little more incentive to get out of the way, I controlled the tree’s fall. It broke into chunks on contact with the ground. One of the people with new powers was pinned beneath branches, but it didn’t look like he was hurt by the contact.

I flew to the man who’d grown the tree. Even before I reached his side, I could see the damage that had been done. Jaw, throat, chest, and stomach had been torn away. Traces of the same material that had formed the tree had collected in his insides and pelvis, breaking into jagged pieces at some point before or during the tree’s fall.

He had no throat to feel for a pulse. I wasn’t about to rule anything out, even as I saw the remains of his heart in his splayed-out chest cavity. I pried one of his eyes open, and I saw no response.

I went from a crouch to airborne in a second.

That particular disaster had been dramatic and visible for a significant portion of the people nearby. Most were thinking twice about running toward the epicenter.

When was the next wave coming? The number of people to trigger all at once had seemed to double the last time. They didn’t look like multi-triggers either. One power each, some self-destructive. I could hear the screams and shouts of a lot of unhappy people and I couldn’t see one person who looked particularly happy about their new ability.

I flew to a new location, looking to see where I could get the most people away. The tree had done my work for me in one spot, Laserdream was standing at the intersection of two streets and walling them off with red-tinted, translucent fields.

I saw another group—people were pulling away from the crowd, which was actively trying to grab them and hold them back. Young people—older teenagers and twenty-somethings, that might have been a group of friends. Seven of them.

I shouted, but my voice was drowned out by the dentist-drill scream of a power somewhere nearby, by the hollers, the warnings, a dull explosion.

I used my aura again. Several people in the group stumbled, so caught up in reacting to my aura that they lost track of where they were going or how to put one foot in front of the other. Several others paused, helping their friends that had tripped, stopped, or fallen. The people at the edge of the crowd reacted too, pulling back away from me.