"I heard her thoughts."
Forential lay his tentacles on his desk. They scrabbled nervously. "How long have you known?" How did she manage to break through our telepathic shielding? he wondered. He made an inward snarl of surprise ... powerful mind!... Then he went weak with temporary relief: Suppose we hadn't found out about her until the invasion? We had to know now while there's time! How much does she...?
"Just today, for sure. Once or twice before...."
Walt told Forential all he knew about Julia. He spoke quickly, and with rising excitement.
By the time he was finished, the council had convened. The circuits were open. Forential fed them the information Walt had just given him. Their incomprehensible language crackled beyond Walt's thought range.
**We must destroy her at once.**
**Unconditioned! Unconditioned: no telling how much information she has.**
A terrified thought: **Danger, danger, danger!**
Forential's eyes did not leave Walt's face. His thoughts were assessing the situation even under the force of the shock.... The one called Julia had to be under the influence of the larger transmitter; all the mutants had been bred for that frequency. It was only years later that the ones in the smaller compartment had been adjusted to the other frequency. If the larger transmitter were to be shut down, then it would interrupt Lycan's training schedule for nearly a thousand mutants. But it would also render Julia an earth-normal....