Empathy manifests itself in different forms and different ways in each person. Most can merely sense someone else's presence without a glance simply by feeling the pulse of their emotional energy thrumming through the air like ripples in a warm pool, know exactly how someone is feeling through a single blind touch. There are some, however, with extraordinary gifts, those who can see the remnants of recent emotions as though a physical stain left on the earth, who can follow a scent of a memory back to its source, who can take emotions and warp them within a person for good or bad. Those gifted few were found and trained, their natural talents controlled and enhanced, then put to use for the greater good or, at the very least, a healthy profit.

Then there was him. Exceptional even at a tender young age and trained up at Modus Institute to become something unbelievable, James Grantham is the most powerful asset the FBI has in its possession, and it's least stable.

He can pick up the hint of any emotional residue, past or present, though not entirely by choice. Every little scrap of energy possesses him and leaves him forced to relive the moment, the source of that particular thread of feeling. It's powerful, it's maddening, and it's practically given the FBI a play by play of their unsolved cases. Grantham has already revolutionised the bureau but that doesn't mean he and his team are infallible.

A string of murders have been confounding James and his team, all traces of the perp being muddled and mixed in the energies of dozens of others leaving no one any closer to clarity. There's only one thing clear about it all: every one of the murders is connected to him.