Page 41 of The Presidents Shadow

DACHE HAS NEVER been generous with praise to anybody. So Maddy, during this most recent training section, is astonished to hear him say, “I observe, Madeline, that there is significant improvement in your development.”

“Yes, uh, thank you, sir,” Maddy says.

They are concentrating today on one of the most advanced abilities—shape-shifting.

This allows an ordinary person to actually transform their body into something else.

A human being with this rare power can become a vicious writhing snake, a twenty-foot cement wall, an insect, a race car… whatever best fits their situation.

Dache has taught Maddy to immerse her entire body and soul into a different mental state, a state so flexible and strong that she’s able to bring herself into a new plane of existence.

“This is not fantasy, Madeline. This is not the banal art of hypnosis. This is so much larger, a new reality. It is a reality that exists beyond who you actually are,” he says.

Maddy thinks she might be ready to try. It has taken many lessons to override her own logic, to believe that her body can transform into something else.

It’s a perspective shift that can take years to master.

Margo—who’d only been able to influence the minds of others when Maddy first met her—could harness the ability over the past few years, thanks to Dache’s rigorous instruction.

Whenever Maddy feels doubt, the ability abandons her. But when she pushes herself, when she meditates so strongly that her mind seems to actually leave her body, then—and only then—can she become a speedboat, a leaf falling from a maple tree, a grain of sand, a raging wild horse, a child’s toy.

Dache reiterates today what he has said during other lessons. It is Dache’s mantra, and Maddy knows it must become her own.

Problems belong to all people. Solutions belong only to the chosen few.

When this most recent lesson ends, Maddy is a mass of nerves and pain. Her head aches and she wants to fall into a swimming pool of icy water to recuperate.

She lies on her bed, unable to sleep. She keeps hearing Dache’s mental proverb over and over in her head, until she suddenly grasps the full meaning of the words: Like Lamont, Maddy is one of the chosen few.

She must seize the power. She must fix the problem.

Lamont and Margo, Burbank, Jericho, Tapper, and Hawkeye are all busy literally trying to save the world.

She can’t ask them to drop everything to help with her problems. She must become the solution herself.

She knows she can only succeed if she actually plunges into Belinda’s grim world.

She must go undercover. She must join them.