The next morning, well before dawn, Dan fielded a call from Anastasia Summers. The old matron was equal parts furious and gleeful at Dan's newest revelations. Her plans for Madison were spoiled, but she seemed to delight in spying on her enemies without them having the slightest clue.

"You need to destroy the footage," she told Dan. "Nobody can find out about this. We can't use any of it in any sort of official capacity. It must not get out."

"You just want a monopoly on surveillance," Dan pointed out.

Anastasia made an exasperated noise, the level of which the phone couldn't quite convey. "Of course I do! But you need to consider the consequences for yourself, before you condemn me. What do you think will happen when it is discovered that you can completely sidestep traditional security measures to eavesdrop?"

"I can't possibly be the only person in the world capable of that," Dan denied. Natural powers were too versatile for him to ever believe such a thing.

"With so little risk to yourself? You may very well be." Anastasia scoffed. "You're not hiding, invisible in a corner with a camcorder. You don't have to be in the same room. You don't even have to be on the same continent. That is unheard of, so far as I know. Sure, there are Naturals who could counter you; I would notice one of your little doorways in a heartbeat, but that is worthless in the grand scheme of things! Security everywhere would have to be revamped, just to deal with you."

"I've got very little interest in spying on people who aren't actively trying to kill me and mine," Dan pointed out. He'd only learned about Madison through an assassination attempt, and he only cared about the man because of his association with the People. This wasn't exactly Dan's day job.

"You think that matters?" Anastasia laughed. "Enemies come and go like the weather. There's no reassurance you can give that will make people feel safe, and your power is too versatile to be easily countered. Much easier to remove the problem at its root. If this gets out, anyone with a secret to keep will want you dead, and that's basically everyone with any amount of power."

"Um..." That wasn't what he'd expected to hear. Dan turned to face Abby, whose face had gone pale with alarm. Neither of them had given much thought to the broader implications of what he could do. They'd both been too caught up in the moment.

"I need you to understand this, Newman," Anastasia insisted, and for the first time she actually seemed concerned about him. "You've been cavalier with displaying your abilities so far, but this one is too exceptional to ever, ever show. You must take absolute care. Nobody else can know. Nobody."

"Right, of course," Dan said, quietly glancing up at the massive television screen in the center of his living room, which showed Senator Madison having a breakfast meeting with his staff. Abby slapped a palm over her face. "I won't let it slip. Wouldn't dream of it."

"How are we going to explain the video?" he asked, after a moment had passed.

"Were you not listening?" Anastasia demanded. "The video must be destroyed. Who knows what the right Natural might pick up by watching the damn thing. We cannot use it."

Dan frowned. "That will make arresting him a lot more difficult."

"We have to catch him in the act," Anastasia said. "We would have had to do that, anyway. There's nothing on the video incriminating enough from which he couldn't squirm his way out of in the court of public opinion, much less one of law."

"Okay," Dan said, unhappy, but in agreement with her read on the situation. "So, I'll keep watching him. How are we supposed to bust him? When he makes the hand-off for that orb thing?"

"No, it'll have to be after." He could almost hear Anastasia scheming. "He'll likely go somewhere random and obscure for the drop. They'll do a basic security sweep, but nothing too in-depth. There shouldn't be time to set up any sophisticated surveillance. They'll rely on that. With any luck, that sense of security will have Madison let slip his plans."

"In other words," Dan drawled, "keep doing what I'm doing." He looked up again at the television. Madison's meeting was wrapping up.

"But keep me informed," Anastasia insisted. "Try not to do anything foolish."

"Yeah, well, you know me," Dan said.

There was a long, long pause on the other end of the line, then a click as Anastasia hung up. Dan looked at the phone, and up at Abby, whose face looked pinched. She sat on the couch beside him, and beyond her, daylight streamed in from his backyard. There was a sliding door leading out to the patio, large and mostly glass. The only thing stopping nosey neighbors from seeing inside the house were some tattered old blinds. Abby followed his gaze, looking from the back door, to the television screen, where world shaking secrets played out in 4k HD.

"I think I'll go shopping for some better blinds," she said, her voice tilting and nervous.

"Yeah," Dan agreed. "Sounds good."

Abby left, and Dan spent a few minutes hanging up thick sheets across his windows. He didn't care if it made him look like a crazy person, nor that all of the neighboring houses were supposed to be empty. Anastasia had gotten him good and spooked, and he wasn't anywhere near his most rational. Dan maintained his doorway as he worked, and stayed within sight of the television. By the time he'd finished hanging up his sheets, Madison was wrapping up his breakfast, and moving on to the next meeting.

The senator had kept a backpack within hands reach throughout his entire morning, and he carried it out to the waiting limo himself. Inside, Dan knew, was the blackened, wooden orb he'd received from the Evo Church. He'd already confirmed its existence this morning, and he checked again as Madison climbed into his car. His veil snaked through a door at the base of the car, pierced through the backpack's rugged exterior, and brushed against the solid mass of cosmic energy.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Still there. Good.

Dan settled in for what he assumed would be a brief stakeout. The senator was already clingy with his pack. He couldn't carry it around everywhere, not for long, not if he didn't want to draw attention to himself. The backpack was too big, too obvious, too out of place. It wasn't something you expected a senator to use, or if he did, it was to be kept out of sight. It should be sitting inside Madison's office , but instead it was accompanying the man into a fancy boardroom. He kept a hand on it, or nearby it, at almost all times.

When that meeting ended, the senator was shuffled off to another, and then another. The entire time, he kept his backpack nearby. He made phone calls, sent texts, debated policy positions and kissed babies, and throughout it all his faithful pack rested nearby. The furthest it ever left him was to sit in a neighboring chair. When noon came and went, Anastasia called for a brief update.

"What's he doing?" she demanded without preamble.

Dan checked the screen. "Still at a lunch meeting. He's got his pack with him, still. It hasn't left his side at all."

"It'll be soon," Anastasia insisted. "His public itinerary shows him with a two-hour break between this meeting and the next. That's when he'll hand it off."

She wasn't wrong. The meeting ended earlier than scheduled. Madison shook hands with his donors, threw his backpack across his shoulders, and strode off towards his ride with unusual vigor. The car peeled out of the parking lot, and turned in the opposite direction of his next meeting. Dan perked up, and started paying attention.

Abby, looking over from where she was hanging their new drapes, and asked, "Is this it?"

Dan checked his map app, plotting a route that followed the senator's itinerary. It seemed unimaginable that they were heading to the next meeting, but that wasn't all that strange. He had two hours and some change to burn. That said, Dan's route was saying it would take about an hour to get across town, to where the senator was expected to be. Traffic in the capitol was horrendous.

"I can't think of anywhere else he'd be going," Dan said, scrutinizing the map of Washington D.C. "He just finished eating, so it isn't that. His office isn't in that direction either, nor his hotel room."

Dan continued watching, jumping his portals a block at a time. It was a shame he couldn't listen in on the car, but keeping a portal inside a moving object was not something he could reliably manage, and just dumping a recording device inside and hoping for the best seemed like a recipe for disaster. So, he watched.

It wasn't difficult to notice when the urban jungle gave way to a suburban sprawl. The city streets, broken and in disrepair, slowly cleared of traffic, of people, of use. The misshapen skyline faded into the distance, and for a few seconds, Dan thought Madison might be returning to the Evo Church. A quick check of the map dispelled that idea. So, then, where was he going?

His phone buzzed, and Dan checked the notification. It was an email alert, sent from...

Dan blinked, swapped tabs in his browser, and pulled up the senator's official website. He'd subscribed to their newsletter on a junk email address, to get updates about Madison's whereabouts. The man had just changed his itinerary. He'd cancelled his next visit.

"It's happening," Dan said, phoning Anastasia.

She answered on the first ring, and said, "I saw. Where is he?"

Dan checked the screen, checked his map, and rattled off the nearest intersection.

"I'm going to move some people around," Anastasia said. "I doubt he'll kick off anything too destructive right away, but better to be safe than sorry."

"Wait, what?" Dan demanded. "I didn't even realize that was a possible outcome! What do you mean?!"

He could practically hear Anastasia rolling her eyes. "We're guessing that he's about to incarnate a Natural, Newman. Sometimes things go bad. Why do you think it's illegal?"

Dan cursed, realizing that she was completely right. His own incarnation had been so melodramatic, he'd never even thought about how things might otherwise turn out. Part of Dan idly wondered if Marcus Mercury had had some kind of death wish, back then, but he pushed the past away in favor of the present.

"If it looks like there'll be collateral damage," Dan said, slowly, "I'm gonna intervene."

Abby came up behind him. There was a scowl marring her pretty face, but she laid her hand on Dan's shoulder, and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

Anastasia clicked her tongue. "I'm not saying it's likely, Newman. Madison would hardly put himself in danger, now would he? The man isn't reckless, nor stupid."

On the screen, The car turned down a side street, into a little neighborhood. It weaved along a curving road at a languid fifteen miles per hour, passing a church and a school. There was a public park, filled with laughing children. A pool, a playground, a basketball court. Dogs chasing frisbees and kites in the air. People, everywhere. An uncomfortable foreboding built in the back of Dan's neck.

The car finally stopped, pulling in front of an unassuming house, a mere block away from the park. He opened a portal at a nearby street light and zoomed in on the front of the house. Dan quickly found the address and Abby checked it against the list of Madison's properties. Dan, meanwhile, opened a second door in the ground outside, and snuck out a tendril of his veil to scout the surroundings. One strand went up, and another down. The former roamed up the wooden front steps, through the completely normal door, and across a carpeted foyer. The latter checked below for a secret basement, and found dirt and worms. Madison's car cut its engine, and his bodyguard stepped outside and scanned the surroundings.

Dan focused on the house, sweeping the interior as quick as he could. He looked for life signs, lingering people, and found several almost immediately. Someone was in the kitchen, wielding a knife to cut vegetables. Another was on a couch in front of a television. Another stood idle in a separate room. Madison left the car, backpack in hand. Dan swept the walls and ceiling for electronics, for wiring that didn't belong, and came up empty. He pulled back, now certain that he was missing something, and started a sweep of the outside.

Madison had filled his house with pollen. He'd filled his property with trees. This was a man who valued control above everything else. If this meeting was what they'd assumed, there was no way Madison hadn't put some kind of contingency in place. He wasn't that sort of man. There had to be something that Dan was missing.

He tasted the air, the tips of the grass, the nearby trees. None felt like Madison's home, no trace of cosmic power lingered inside them. He brushed against the wooden patio, the garden fence, the furniture. There was a rocking chair on the porch, and a wicker couch. Dan swept them both—

His veil felt Kevlar fiber and reinforced polymer, then bounced off something solid. Dan blinked, then sat up ramrod straight. His door reoriented, moving from the light pole, to a nearby tree that he'd already swept. The camera angle changed, but the contents remained the same. Madison walked up the steps of the house, and knocked on the door. The front porch was empty, save for the senator and his bodyguard. And yet, Dan's veil insisted that a person was sitting in the wicker chair not ten feet away.

The door opened. There was a young man there, who greeted the senator with a welcoming smile and a handshake. They spoke, briefly, while Dan zoomed in on the chair. There was nothing, not even a blur, not even an impression. His veil pushed insistently against a wall of impenetrable flesh.

"What is it?" Abby asked. "What's wrong with the chair?"

It took him a moment to understand. His eyes were wrong. They were lying to him, as eyes often did. His veil was the thing that he could trust, something that did not worsen with age, nor succumb to bias. His veil, which had found something that should not be there.

"Danny," Abby said, sounding annoyed. "You're missing Madison. They're going inside. What are we looking at?"

"A Geist," Dan said. "We're looking at a Geist."