As I stood there surrounded by my friends and plagued with indecision, Colonel Baxter stood across the small space with his hand raised. He was on the verge of dropping it like a hammer to signal our deaths. In the small patch of open space between us stood Claire, who had not moved from her spot after I had pushed her forward. She just stood there with her head down. As if she was the epicenter of an earthquake, a rumbling could be heard emanating from where she was standing. A heartbeat later and the rumble could be felt.

I focused on her with my ability, and I was nearly forced to look away. Her body radiated with a neon purple glow. It didn’t come off in waves or shaped in any way. Her whole body simply glowed with the color.

“How. Dare...You!” Her first two words could barely be heard above the rumbling sound. Her last word caused an explosion of force.

I barely had time to react, even moving as fast as I could. I thrust my hands in front of me to shield myself from the blast. Unlike her attack in the colonel’s office, which was quick, this one lasted as she continued to scream the final word in rage. I could see everyone on my side of the blast topple over like trees in a hurricane. I could feel Victor’s limp body pressed against my leg, the pressure having rolled him into me. With my power activated and the bright glow coming off Claire, I couldn’t see what was happening on the other side of her, but I knew the soldiers and Colonel Baxter couldn’t be fairing much better.

Even above Claire’s screaming and the deep rumble she was causing, I heard the creaking of wood and then a loud crack that sounded like a giant breaking a tree in two. The ground shook even more violently than it had already been. I fell to a knee as I struggled to keep my balance. Her power was pushing my arms back to my body. I could feel the pressure licking my face as my hasty shield began to falter. Then the attack stopped.

My power immediately turned off. I didn’t know if it was because I had used it too much, I was exhausted, or if it was some type of subconscious desire to see my surroundings more clearly, but I was glad it did. I had watched a couple war movies with my dad before I was taken into the camp and when I looked around me, the scene was what I would have expected from the aftermath of a final battle, only perhaps multiplied by ten. All I could see in front of me was a cloud of dirt and dust, which had been kicked up by Claire’s outburst. Even though she was only a few feet in front of me, I could only see her silhouette, which was currently kneeling on the ground.

I wasn’t able to do much as I protected myself from Claire’s attack. In the aftermath, I looked around to check on my friends. I noticed they had all been pushed back, and they were almost at the wood line. The small bushes and unruly grass that covered the back yard had been ripped from the ground. The ground itself looked like a tractor had ripped it up in several places. I expected the trees to be broken and destroyed, but other than a plethora of pine needles still fluttering to the ground, they didn’t seem to take too much damage.

I checked on Victor to make sure that he was okay before checking on the others. He had a few scratches that I didn’t think were there before, but he was still breathing evenly and didn’t seem injured. I looked up as the dust settled, and I discovered what caused the sound of wood creaking and breaking.

The house had been turned to scraps of timber and rubble. I still couldn’t see clearly into the cloud of dust, but there was quickly clearing sky where I expected the roof of the house to be. As the house’s airborne detritus continued settling, I could make out slivers of its frame, but it all gave way to a mass of crumbled wood that made me truly glad we weren’t in there.

I scooped up Victor and ran back to check on the others. I didn’t want any of us to be there when the soldiers or Colonel Baxter woke up. I was relieved to find that no one was seriously injured and that they began to wake up when I tried to rouse them. It wasn’t long before I could get everyone awake and, at the very least, sitting up. Everyone else had been in a hypnotic daze during the whole encounter, so the only thing they remembered was running from the house and into the woods before they woke up on the ground feeling as if they had been in a fight.

I had hoped to get everyone up and moving before the soldiers got back up, but rousing them from what Claire had done before her attack had taken too long. I was so concerned with making sure everyone was uninjured that I forgot to pay attention to the soldiers at my back. We heard the metallic click of weapon safety switches being flipped, and we all tensed. I turned, and there was a line of soldiers only a half-dozen yards away, while we were all lined up and in their sights. I slowly turned and stood, but they didn’t let me do anything else before they started barking orders for us to “get down” and “shut up.” I was so sick of it all; I activated my power and prepared to rush in there to deal with them for good.

Before I could even move, a tree branch swept across the line of soldiers. It knocked them all away into a pile of camouflaged limbs and rifles. I looked over to the direction of the attack. I saw a few of the kids working in concert to control the tree. Their power, a mixture of olivine green and umber, branched off their bodies and flowed into the tree, infusing it all the way down to the tips of the branch. The branch elongated and wrapped up the whole heap of soldiers in a tight ball of wood, leaves, and flesh. Once the soldiers were secure, the tree was turned into a living trebuchet. It flung the ball off above the canopy of trees and into the deeper part of the forest.

With that particular threat taken care of, I was about to give the order for us to all move deeper into the forest for protection until we could recover a bit more. It was then that I noticed the dust had all settled, and there were no more soldiers visible, no more enemies that I could see. There was just the lithe figure of Claire kneeling on the ground in the same exact place she had been before her furious assault. From my distance away from her, I could see the swath of destruction she caused with her sonic attack.

From what I had seen of the house before the dust settled, it was as I had suspected, the house was nearly wholly rubble. The ground directly in front of Claire was ripped up in an expanding wedge. I could see her shoulders shaking, with what appeared to be sobs, but no sound could be heard. As I slowly walked forward, I could see that her body had been blocking the prone form of another.

“Aidren, what are you doing?” Sarah hissed as I moved forward.

I turned and raised my hand to her in a placating gesture, but I didn’t say anything. I just started moving to Claire again. She didn’t move or even acknowledge me as I moved beside her. I could see tears running down her face. Colonel Baxter’s prone body, or at least whatever was left of him, lay before her. The scene was a gruesome one. He had been the recipient of Claire’s attack, taking the full brunt of it without any protection. I was actually surprised there was anything left of him, considering how far everyone else was blown away and the crumbled building. I ignored Colonel Baxter’s mangled corpse the best I could and focused on Claire as I kneeled down next to her. I wanted to comfort her and help her. I knew that we could use her help. While I was still upset at her, I also knew that she was a victim just as much as the rest of us.

“Claire,” I began.

She didn’t give me time to say anything else, though. Her head whipped to the side. I could see her puffy and bloodshot eyes and hear a soft whisper of contented sleep.