I flew. The two who had drawn back but hadn’t run—a boy and a girl. The boy was holding the girl, while she strove to stay on her tiptoes. Her face was turned skyward.

I flew to them, and I caught her, helping to hold her.

“Hold her steady!” the guy shouted.

I held her as steady as I could.

Another suspension?

“My neck!” the victim shrieked the words. A single glowing vein stood out on each arm, and glows on her legs suggested more of the same, but she barely seemed to care about it. Clear fluid was streaming from her nose, thinner than snot, with needle-thin streams of blood joining it.

“We got you,” I said. “We’re here, we’ll support you. Stay calm.”

“I can’t move my head!” she cried out. “Every time—my neck!”

“Don’t try,” I said. The guy was looking to me for help, and I wasn’t sure what to say or do.

“My head hurts,” she said, sounding very far away. Her words dissolved into a stream of whimpers and cries of ‘ow’.

I was supporting her weight, but it wasn’t easy to do it from a strength perspective with my feet on the ground, and it wasn’t easy to stay steady while flying.

“Laserdream!” I shouted the words, top of my lungs.

“Headache,” the victim said, her eyes wide. “My brain.”

The guy looked at me again. This time I didn’t try to hide my expression. I knew I looked grim.

Her brain. The corona pollentia, the means by which powers were operated by the parahuman. Hers had been established, but not as a fluid, functional thing. It was a nail, taking her brain and fixing it to a specific position in reality.

Laserdream appeared beside me.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Give her something to stand on,” I said. “She’s stuck.”

The forcefield appeared below. The girl no longer had to stand on her tiptoes.

“People are evacuating more now,” Laserdream said. “We need to handle the people toward the center. The waves are random.”

I turned, looking at the guy. “Do you know her?”

“Not really.”

“Can you run? Go tell people to get away, as fast as they can. This is bad.”

“You don’t want to get caught in it,” Laserdream said.

The guy nodded.

“Bye Anne,” he said. He let go of the girl, transitioning the grip entirely to me, then turned to run.

Anne.

She was making small sounds, guttural. One hand came up to touch the side of my face and my hair, clumsy, as if she didn’t have full use of her fingers.

One pat.

“I’m sorry Anne,” I said.

She made another of the gurgling sounds. She was vomiting, I realized, and with her face fixed in a skyward position, there wasn’t anything I could do. Anything I did to move her would add to the damage to her brain.