I really enjoyed this. The action was well paced, and there were enough surprises to keep it interesting. The ending was nice and circular, and honestly something I didn't see coming, but that was in hindsight pretty obvious. So, now I can dive a little into a discussion of the concepts of the book. The whole mind reading thing is explained to be an evolutionary thing. Apparently, millions of years ago, many primates had the ability to read others' minds, but for evolutionary reasons, over time those genes got suppressed. Apparently the drugs that the doctors gave the test subjects inhibited this inhibition, and allowed the genes to express themselves again, which allowed them to read minds. The author claims that the reason mind reading was evolved away from is because humans, with complicated emotions and other stuff, probably ended up being in the position where it was best if people didn't know what everyone was thinking, that secrets could be a good thing. But, this explanation has two problems that are fundamentally problematic. One, is that those who evolved without the trait at first would be at a severe disadvantage to those who could read minds, so it seems like the initial evolutionary disposition would be towards keeping the mind reading. Two, in the book, it is impossible for those who can read to read each other's minds, so if a million years ago, everyone had the ability to read minds, then no one had the ability to read minds (hopefully that makes sense to future Xavier), so people wouldn't even know they had the power. Obviously this book isn't science fiction, so I don't knock it too hard for this hole, but I do think they are big holes. Tbh, the fact that I'm even bringing it up show how good I thought this book was, because there wasn't really a whole lot else to knock about it, other than maybe it's (hopefully) exaggerated content about military contractors, and how much killing people are willing to do to prevent a secret from coming out. But yeah, I think this is my first book by Patrick Lee, but it probably won't be my last. A good use of 4 hours.