Hero Born: Project Solaris by Chris Fox

doesn't feel right about this place," Kali said from the backseat. I glanced back at the teen. She dropped her gaze immediately, waking her smartphone and acting like that was what she'd been focused on all along.
    "Kali, have you experienced anything strange since the grey men returned you?" Jillian asked, blunt as usual.
    Kali paled, straightening her glasses. She licked her lips, voice just above a whisper. "Yeah. I haven't really talked about it much, but things have been strange since I came back."
    "Strange how?" I asked, glancing back at her again. We crested the summit, slicing into the dense mist. Pines loomed all around us, silent sentinels watching our approach.
    The smell of burnt leather filled the car. I looked back at Kali in alarm. A thin plume of smoke curled from the seat where her hand had been resting. She recoiled in horror. "Omigod! I'm sorry...I didn't mean to ruin your seat."
    "Pyrokinetic," Jillian said, giving a tight nod as if this was the most normal thing in the world. I was still staring at Kali, blinking.
    "Pyro-what?" Kali asked, voice quavering.
    "You're a pyrokinetic. You can light things on fire with your mind," Jillian explained, guiding the BMW smoothly down the road. A pair of headlights passed us from the other direction, the first we'd seen in a while. "It's one of the more common lineages, but also very powerful."
    "So you've seen this before? Are there other powers too, then?" Kali asked, leaning forward.  
    "Yeah, from what I can tell we all have different ones," I answered, gesturing at the radio. I concentrated for a moment, feeling the components inside. The radio came to life without me needing to touch it, blaring a Kansas song. I gave a triumphant smile, but it was muted by the spike of pain now stabbing into the back of my skull. I shook my head, and the pain faded slightly. When it had abated I turned back to Kali. "Apparently I can control machines. Jillian is something called a Phasic."
    "David," Kali said, shrinking back against the leather. "Your nose."
    I reached up, feeling something wet and warm. It was blood. I gave Jillian a level look. "You know more about this stuff than I do. Please tell me this is normal."
    "I know a lot less than you might think," Jillian said, stopping the car while she examined me. She tilted my head with a hand. "Maybe take it easy on your powers for a bit. This isn't something I've seen before."
    Jillian guided the car down a narrow driveway. The fog was so thick that I had no idea where we were going until we emerged onto a wide gravel driveway. There was no house I could see, and nothing else that suggested why we might have come here.
    "Oh my god," Jillian said, throwing the parking brake. She all but leapt out of the car. I followed, trotting after her into the mist, swiping at my nose with the back of my hand.
    She stopped at the edge of a massive crater, easily a hundred feet across and just as deep. The sides were almost perfectly smooth, as if they'd been bored by a laser. They still smoked and smoldered, and I could feel the heat rising from the crater.  
    I was dimly aware of Kali approaching behind us. "Listen. There aren't any birds. There should be ravens all over these woods, but I don't hear a single one. Or any squirrels. It's like all the animals just...left. And the trees around the edge are bent away from the crater, maybe from the force of the blast."
    "What the hell happened?" I muttered. My head continued to throb, building to a crescendo that spiked down into my gut. I sank to one knee, vomiting noisily into the pit.
    "I can't imagine anything human having this level of precision. The grey men must have done this. We've never seen them intervene directly, not on this scale," Jillian said, staring down into the crater. She rested a hand on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze as I rose to my feet. "This is where the resistance was gathered, almost twenty of us. Only our members knew about it." She paused and reached out to