Early the next day, gritty-eyed from lack of sleep, Miriya strode into Alex Saunders’s office.
He looked up. “Miriya. All done?”
“Almost,” she confirmed. The heels of her boots clicked sharply against the hardwood floors. “Everyone has checked in. The alpha mutants have been relocated to our North Carolina installation, per your orders, and everyone else is comfortably ensconced in guest suites here or in the Baltimore office.”
“Then what’s the problem?” he asked, anticipating the “but” in her sentence.
“We caught the power signature of an alpha mutant who has not checked in. Actually, we saw it once last night, just after midnight, but for a variety of reasons, thought it might have been just an error in the readings. It flashed again, just a few minutes ago.”
“Who is it?”
“Danyael Sabre.”
Alex’s eyes narrowed immediately. “Danyael? What is he doing here? He’s based in New York City. When did you say he came down?”
“Likely last night. I went back through our records here and in New York, and searched his energy signatures. There’s strong evidence that he was in New York City until late yesterday evening. The machines recorded strong traces of his secondary power signature in Brooklyn, at the free clinic where he works. But after midnight, his primary power signature showed up here, in McLean, followed by a secondary flash. We thought it might have been a mistake with the machines. They do screw up every now and again.”
“Not with an alpha empath though. Their signatures are too powerful to be a machine glitch.”
Miriya acknowledged the implicit rebuke with an incline of her head. “And then his primary flashed this morning, once again in McLean.”
“Damn.” Alex leaned back in his seat. “What could he be doing here?” he mused aloud.
Miriya did not offer a response to his rhetorical question. “I’ve contacted his controller in New York, who is in a bit of a panic that Danyael somehow managed to get out of New York without her knowing. She insists he has been historically easy to manage and responsive to the requests of the council.”
“He is.” Alex’s mind was shielded, but something flickered in his eyes, something disturbingly close to fear. “Find him, Miriya, and bring him in.”
“Or put him down?” she asked explicitly.
Alex winced. For several moments, silence filled the space between them. He finally nodded. “Only if there are no other options available to you.”
She did not have to be a telepath to sense his unease and his reluctance. Danyael Sabre was just an empath, wasn’t he? “Do you have any advice for me?”
“Just be careful, Miriya, and don’t get overconfident. There are depths to Danyael’s power that he doesn’t typically draw from, but they’re available to him. If you need to take him down, do it fast, because if he actually cuts loose, he’ll most certainly drive hundreds of unprotected minds to suicide.”
She blinked. Surely Alex could not be serious. Hundreds of unprotected minds to suicide? Just who exactly was this Danyael Sabre?
Well, she would soon find out. She nodded, turned on her heel, and strode out of the office.
Either way, she knew she had nothing to fear. The alpha precognitive’s vision wanted her in place within the council by the end of the year, which meant that the pivotal battle would not take place until the following year at the earliest. Whatever the outcome of her meeting with Danyael Sabre, she would survive it. The meeting, even Danyael, was insignificant in the grand scheme of her life.