Dr. Cecelia Cobbina is working with Doctors Without Borders in the Central African Republic. As Cecelia is performing surgery to try to save a child, revolutionary soldiers break into the clinic and insist that Cecelia tend to their wounded. The threat of violence and urgency of the dying young patient all create such a high level of pressure and stress that it causes Cecelia to “ignite.” Time freezes and Cecelia’s awareness fractures into nine different types of intelligence, her avatars, that appear in different colors for each type (based on Gardner’s Intelligence types). Thinking at an incredible speed, she takes immediate control of the situation, gives commands to the soldiers in their language, guides her assistants, uses unconventional techniques to save her patient as well as several wounded soldiers, stunning everyone, including herself. The holistic insight seems to last only a few minutes to Cecelia but in actuality it happens in a flash of a second. Cecelia is both elated and terrified by her new ability.
Cecelia starts to track down other “ignited” people and helps them along the way. The first person she finds is Antony who has the ability to allow matter to pass through him. Antony was shot by a cop, ignited and the bullet passed through him, hitting the cop behind him. Cecelia helps clear his name. She then helps a group of kids who are detained at the border and have taken over the detention center with their ignited abilities.
She is recruited to run Omni, an organization that wants to find the Ignited, but she doesn’t know what their motives are. We’ll later come to find that a mysterious wealthy group installed Cecelia to head up the facility. She has topline medical equipment, a helicopter, cars and a ship at her disposal. Unbeknownst to Cecelia, OMNI wants to “bottle” Ignition for profit.
Another group which is interested in Cecelia is the CIA. They want to understand and control Ignition for security purposes. They send Gary Herrick to track and potentially recruit Cecelia. What complicates matters is the mutual attraction between Cecelia and Herrick that they both resist.
As Cecelia continues to help people including a veteran in financial trouble and a group of women who are able to control water, she begins to believe the Earth itself has ignited but the question is why? Worldwide disasters are increasing, many exacerbated by mankind. She believes people igniting may be a form of evolution for people to be able to survive on Earth.
A synagogue is bombed and with the help of Rabbi Cohen, they discover a white supremacist group behind the attacks. Cecelia’s sidekick Mae decides to use her “superpower” of being a white woman to infiltrate the group, but her cover is blown.
They are able to successfully rescue Mae but Cecelia finds that she’s becoming angrier and is having trouble controlling her temper. She wonders if this is happening to the other ignited. Scared that she may be losing control, she goes home to Atlanta. Herrick sees footage of the Ignited being killed off. Tornados touch down in Atlanta and Herrick arrives just in time to get Cecelia and her family to safety.
Whoever has been killing off the ignited in a well-coordinated attack also poisons employees at Omni HQ and later blows up the building. Thankfully Cecelia had a plan B and was able to get the ignited to safety on a cruise ship and away from their enemies. They are going to rebuild, figure out how to help their fellow humans and the planet, and find a home in this world.
