The meeting with the Council went about as expected. There was a time when Whitworth would have been bitter over the idea of youth giving him orders. As he got older that annoyance became a matter of inevitability, and he learned that real power was not behind a desk. He briefly extended his telepathic reach to monitor the situation on campus.

The narrative was an accidental gift discharge. Automated maintenance crews were mending the damage in the moment. Cordon machines formed borders around the area. They gave the story to a news purveyor in their part of town. Their version of it would be the first one on the web; that was all that mattered. How well was Jackson containing the issue? He would have to wait for the report. All part of learning to let some things go. He was still monitoring the present situation in the Middle East. He was racing to find lines of credit to fund his black project with Hegemon. He was running a school. He was just told by the Council they wanted him to work with Apex on their vanity program. The one those shadowy figures favored over his idea. In time, he would need to speak with them more candidly.

All in due time. For now, the last appointment of the day was attending a meeting with the mayor.

Mayor Alan Howard was a man who spoke well and looked the part of a kindly man with an air of generosity. He certainly projected it far enough with his belly. A man who could comfortably slip on anyone’s shoes despite not being able to see his feet. Though with the recent events he just might see them soon.

Whitworth called a cab to the Langshir Mansion. He could stare out the window listlessly as the meter slowly ticked upward. The cab was a staple of the big city, a diametric thing to its inherent urgency. The vehicle had no priority over any other, and moved as quickly as traffic allowed. It gave him time to look out at this world of gifts he had helped forge for nearly a century. He didn’t even mind when the cab driver deliberately began a path that would add a few kilometers to the journey. If he had not seen New Langshir rise from civil plan to its current physicality, he might not have noticed. And being away from HQ gave him an excuse to nap. While at work he telepathically drained five minutes of wakefulness from any passing staff member every day. It was a part of their contract, not that they could feel the miniscule loan of mental acuity in a nine hour workday.

He watched the hypnotic concrete flora and human fauna roll past, phasing through the translucent glass reflection of his face as he leaned against the window. The mismatched architecture. The colorful billboards and signs. The ruthless law of yellow, red, green. The people, like counting sheep, but with complex histories each…

A young teen obsesses over his performance in his gifted baccalaureate program. An academic life his parents had nudged him into at a formative age. Older now, he thinks that choice had been his the whole time. He takes pride in the stress it gives him as evidence of hard work. The pedestrian light turns green, and he leaves his phone to cross, passing by…

A middle-aged woman who is living off the military death gratuity of her three children and husband. She had married a man with category 2 strength. Too weak for heroism, but made a very effective soldier. They all did. She has been living happily for years after visiting a psychotropic psychiatrist who convinced her to see her life through a different, irreversible lens. Though for reasons she could not understand—and kept her up at night—she sometimes shed tears at the sight of young men, and the idea of remarrying made her nauseous. She enters a café and sits close to an…

Old veteran. There were plenty of those around. Gifted, physically able, and has lived for more than a hundred years. The current generation had no lack of living perspective into history’s wars. He had survived the ubermensch, lost a grandson to the Vietcong, and now spend most of his days reading. His great-great-grandchildren spent weeknights and weekends shooting other youngsters and yelling into their headsets, roleplaying as the Allies or the Axis. Sometimes they visited him, if prompted to by their parents—his great-grandchildren. On those days he would put on makeup to hide the scars from the gas and the grazing wound from a 7.92mm Mauser round, and he would smile.

Whitworth woke up just as the cab was pulling up to the parking zone of the mansion. He paid the fare and took a deep breath. His dreams had been uncomfortable. He ought to stop sleepreading minds.

He could feel the mayor’s anxiety even from outside the house. The moment he entered, the house servant led him to the living room to join the other arrivals. He recognized the police commissioner and his assistant, a couple FBI people dressed casually standing like invisible wallflowers, and the mayor’s personal host of employees. Mayor Howard himself sat by the unlit fireplace, seemingly ready to jump out of his skin. His daughter stood next to him.

“What took you so long?” He exclaimed.

“Traffic was hell,” Whitworth said.

“Couldn’t you have taken a teleporter or something?”

Whitworth could explain why he couldn’t just wrangle one up as his personal taxi-slave.

“What is this about?” He asked instead.

“About?!” Howard said. “Megan could have died! In this city! Under all your protection!” He pointed at all the men before him. His daughter squirmed uneasily, embarrassed and nervous at the same time.

“I read the report,” Whitworth said. “A lot of details don’t add up. I’d like to know what your detectives have found.”

“Inconsistency of motive,” the Commissioner said. He was an older man whose worn face could age the people sharing a room with him. “The clowns we caught didn’t have much mettle, or mental training. Our resident ‘paths only got that they were hired for this silly kidnapping job. They were to hold her there and do nothing.”

“Or they were mentally tampered with!” Howard said. “To hide their true motives! God, at a time like this. It’s gotta be my opposition. Re-election is coming and-”

“What category and training level are your telepaths?” Whitworth asked.

“I have a 5 on my roster,” the Commissioner said. “Studied at Külpe. I am told it’s a good school.”

“One of the best,” Whitworth said. “It’s unlikely that our kidnappers had any other motive than what your people found. Though ulterior motives are definitely at play.”

“But not impossible?” Howard said.

Whitworth ignored him. “You feeling okay?” He addressed the daughter. She nodded.

“Can I call you Megan?” Whitworth asked.

Another nod.

“Megan, do you mind if I see what happened that day?”

She turned away.

The Commissioner crossed his arms impatiently.

“It just might help,” Whitworth said. He stretched his lips ever so slightly into a smile. It was an expression made deliberately unsure, maybe even a little scared. Just like her. “You’d know exactly where I am in your head. I won’t see anything you don’t want me to see. Help me catch these guys and we just might delay your old man’s heart attack, how about it? Do it for him too.”

Seconds passed. Megan sighed, and then finally nodded once. The Commissioner’s brow raised. Whitworth extended a hand. He did not step forward and did not beckon. Eventually, she was the one to step forth and accept his hand. All symbolic of course; Whitworth could read her from outside the house if he wanted. With gentle finesse he silently slipped into her memories.