Legacy(18)

“We have to do something to try and protect them,” I said.

“Rounding them up like you’re suggesting just makes them easier to kill,” she replied. “If you want to protect them, disperse them further.”

“Century will wipe them out a cloister at a time,” I said, “then go after the spares with mercenaries or some of their other members.”

“Let’s table this part of the discussion for now,” Foreman said. “You mentioned a second reason to start sniffing out the metas in the U.S. What is it?”

I felt myself blush a little. My idea was starting to sound stupid, and my first instinct was to get flustered, just like I always had when mother called me out on something I was doing wrong. “Well, uh ...”

“‘Well, uh,’” my mother said. “Spit it out.”

I didn’t look at her. “We speculate that Century is tracking down uncloistered metas by using telepaths. So if we can find those telepaths first—”

“You can take them out and seriously hamper Century’s tracking efforts,” Foreman said shrewdly and shot a look at Li. “Any idea how to do that?” His gaze came back to me and I could see he was giving it serious thought.

“They only have the capability to sweep a few cities at a time,” I said. “I’m not exactly sure how telepaths work, but from what we do know, they come into a town trying to get a reading on metas, then capture a few so that they can try and use them to locate any friends or acquaintances that these individuals might have who are also metahuman.”

“Like links in a chain,” Scott said with a nod. “Makes sense. If you’re a meta, odds are overwhelming your family is as well, that someone up the tree came from a cloister or knows others who are metas. We’re all connected, except for wildfire metas and a few other loners. You just keep following that chain in both directions until you reach the end, then try and get hold of another chain and another until there are none left.”

“An apt metaphor,” I said. “And they’re cutting more links out all the time. If Weissman’s in Rio, they’ll be putting all their attention there for the time being. Except for Sovereign.”

“Oh?” My mother gave me a questioning look. “You know something else about him?”

“I guess I’m a priority for him,” I said, feeling myself flush. “Not sure why, but Weissman said I’m the only meta outside Century that he’s categorically forbidden to kill.”

Scott gave me a funny look. “How’d you make the list?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” I said. “There are some things going on with Century that make no sense at all. Like, remember when they tried to kill us in the woods, when they shot Andromeda? But now they’re not allowed to kill me? Weissman said that was direct from Sovereign. Same with this whole extinction protocol: Weissman said it’s his program, that Sovereign doesn’t really care about it. Meanwhile, Raymond told me that Sovereign and Century are going to make the world a better place by removing the old order of metas and putting a new one in power.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s like we’re in the middle of this giant puzzle, and there just aren’t enough pieces in place for us to see the entire thing yet.”

A pall hung over the conference room. “Who would have the answers?” Li asked, watching me with a measured gaze.

“Sovereign,” I said. “Weissman. The other members of the one hundred.” I sighed. “But I don’t know who any of the others are.”

“So we have two problems that need solving,” Li said. “One, we need to gather intelligence to ascertain where metas are located in the U.S. regardless of what we decide to do with them. Second, we need to discover any Century operatives within our borders, and—obviously this would be much worse—any operating within the government or even our new agency. Counterintelligence,” he finished, “in order to fend off their efforts against us.”

I leaned my head back against the worn leather headrest of the chair. “That’s a tall order, and we can’t even do it by traditional means.”

“Because of telepaths?” Li asked after a moment’s hesitation.

“Yes,” I said.

“There aren’t that many telepaths in the world,” my mother spoke up from her end of the table. “If there are only a hundred metas in Century, I can almost promise you that they can’t have gathered more than ten telepaths at most to be part of their number.”

Foreman placed fingers on his chin, contemplative. “How do you know that?”