Gifted
The military wanted a super soldier. They procured the services of a highly respected viral engineer to create a mutation virus for that purpose. Infected by one of his early failures, the man's sanity slowly deteriorated--a fact he managed to hide from his superiors.
Finally, he created a virus that caused seemingly random mutations to most people who came in contact with it. It only had a few problems: The mutation was random, so no one could control who got what powers from it. The effects were often minor or useless, such as those who, upon exposure to the virus, became able to change their hair color without benefit of a dye. The effects were, in some very rare cases, detrimental, such as those who were blinded by the virus. In addition, a few people were simply not affected at all. Also, the thing was contagious. VERY contagious. The only good news was that the virus didn’t hit until puberty.
Disregarding these problems, the scientist, who was by now quite the lunatic, released the virus into an unsuspecting society. The result, for all intents and purposes, was the end of the world, as societies were reduced to the level of small city-states. Large cities generally devolved into war zones as rivals with powerful Gifts vied for control.
