Telepath (Hive Mind Book 1) (23 page)

He paused and added
chattily. “I know this from personal experience. I nearly drowned in a park
lake when I was seven, but a heat-seeking flotation device snagged me. After
that, I crawled out of the lake, got lectured by an emergency response team,
and signed up for swimming lessons.”

“Now he tells us,” Adika
said, in a bitter voice. “Lucas, you could have mentioned the heat-seeking
flotation devices before I went swimming on our first trip here. I wouldn’t
have been so worried about drowning.”

Lucas ignored this
complaint. “My point is those cameras are designed to operate devices. You’re
quite close to the lake. I think the target has added a dart gun to a lake
safety camera. Maybe the sort of dart gun that vets use to fire tranquilizers.
It was set up to shoot at moving targets.”

“Rabbits,” I said, “and
I’m getting dizzy doing circuits here.”

“Amber’s right,” said
Lucas. “If that dart gun was active earlier, the park would be full of
unconscious squirrels and rabbits. The people we sent to dig up the drain and
check for evidence would have been shot too. The dart gun has only just been
activated. The target was waiting for us!”

I winced at the volume of
the last sentence.

“Don’t shout so loud,
Lucas,” said Adika.

“Our target has set up a
way to control the camera and dart gun remotely,” said Lucas. “I think he or
she was using the camera to watch us the first time we were here. When the
target saw we’d come back again, they turned on the dart gun.”

Lucas made a sound of pure
frustration. “The target’s been controlling the situation all along. Playing
games with us.”

“The dart gun seems to be
off now,” said Adika, “and I want my injured men out of here. Nicole, get us some
medical support.”

“Already waiting at the
nearest exit,” said Nicole.

“Forge, Kaden, come with
me. We get Eli, Rafael, and Dhiren, and carry them to the exit. Then we get
everyone else out of here.”

I watched the scene
through constantly changing eyes, as faint lights moved around. At one point, I
was in Forge’s head as he was running for the lift, with Eli slung over his
shoulder. I caught his wish that Eli was as light to carry as Amber.

“We’ll get Amber out
next,” said Adika. “Bodyguard team, what’s your status over there?”

“Amber’s still by the
tree,” said Rothan. “That’s shielding part of her. We’re surrounding her, and Caleb’s
over the top, so a dart would have to get through him to touch her.”

“I thought she sounded a
little muffled,” said Adika. “Are you crushed to death, Amber, or able to
move?”

“I’m all right,” I said.

“Caleb’s crushing me, not Amber,”
said Rothan, “and I’d appreciate him moving his left hand somewhere less
personal.”

“I thought I was leaning
on your …” Caleb broke off. “Sorry.”

“Disentangle the human
pyramid, grab Amber, turn your lights on, and run for the exit,” said Adika.

One frantic dash and I was
outside the park. The world was dazzlingly bright again. A few minutes later,
the rest of the team had gathered there, and we headed back to the unit. Lucas
was babbling through my ear crystal all the way.

“Ahead of us. Always ahead
of us. Next time, we don’t do something as stupidly predictable as going back
to the park.”

“Next time, however
brightly lit the place we’re in, everyone wears wristset lights,” said Adika.

We headed out of the lift
into the sanctuary of our unit.

I sat on the sand and looked out to
sea. The opposite wall of the beach, with its craggy cliffs and nesting gulls,
was far away across the water. Nothing else in the Hive was on the massive
scale of a beach. The ceiling was far higher than a mere park, and the shore
seemed to stretch endlessly on either side of me.

I wasn’t staring out to
sea to admire the cliffs. I was doing it because Lucas was sitting next to me
and I wanted to avoid looking at him. We were having yet another fight, partly
because we were both frustrated and angry after yesterday’s disastrous trip
back to the park. It had achieved nothing. Our discussions afterwards had
achieved nothing. Lucas had been right when he said the target was in control
of the situation and playing games with us.

“I hoped that coming here
would help,” said Lucas sadly.

I turned to glare at him.
“Help what exactly? Help me get used to large places so I’ll agree to go Outside?”

“No! You’re not going Outside,
Amber. It’s out of the question. If we’d had the faintest idea it would affect
you like this, no one would ever have suggested it.”

“So stop talking about
it!”

Lucas sighed. “I haven’t
been talking about it.”

“You’re always thinking
about it though.”

“I’m trying not to think
about it,” said Lucas, with exaggerated patience, “but the strength of your
reaction worries me.”

I picked up a pebble and
threw it savagely into the foaming remnants of the latest wave. “I know. I can
read it in your head right now. It’s always there. If it isn’t on one of the conscious
levels, then your subconscious is analyzing it.”

“I really can’t be blamed
for what the unconscious levels of my mind …” Lucas must have realized the
pointlessness of trying to defend himself because he abandoned the sentence.

I knew I was being unreasonable
lashing out at Lucas this way, but I couldn’t help it. I felt like a wounded
animal, cornered and under attack by the people who should be defending me.

“There’s no record of me
ever going Outside,” I said. “My parents say I never went Outside. Therefore it
never happened. Therefore I’m lying.”

Lucas sat up straight.
“Don’t tell me I’ve ever thought that, because I haven’t!”

“Not in those exact words,
but it works out as the same thing. Watching a bookette, hearing someone else
talk about their own experience, getting confused and thinking it happened to
me. I’m not making this up, Lucas. I’m not imagining it. It really happened,
and it happened to me not someone else.”

“I accept that.”

“So why does your head
keep analyzing and worrying about it?”

Lucas buried his face in
his hands. “Amber, I suggested a trip to Level 1 beach because yesterday’s run
was a nightmare. Everyone needed a break to calm down, and I wanted to try to patch
things up between us. Can’t we stop arguing?”

“We keep arguing because
you keep thinking, Lucas. All the time, you’re thinking. You think too much!”

I stood up, and brushed
damp sand off my swimming costume. My current bodyguards were sitting on the beach,
a wary distance away, pretending not to watch me. Adika and the rest of the
Strike team were further along the shoreline. Forge had been acting as swimming
instructor while they nervously tested their swimming skills in the waves. Now
they were having a rest break, and Forge had grabbed his chance to do a little
surfing.

He was out at sea now,
perfectly poised on his surf board, the embodiment of male beauty as he rode a
wave in to shore. I walked down to meet him, and applauded his arrival.

He grinned at me, flushed
with pleasure, his head beautifully free of any thought of the world outside
the Hive. Forge didn’t have all the complications that came with Lucas. Forge didn’t
perpetually analyze things. He wasn’t obsessed with why I panicked at the
mention of Outside or the Truesun. If I was in a relationship with Forge, then
we wouldn’t still be neurotically working on our first kiss. Forge wouldn’t
just think about sex, he’d make it a physical reality.

“This is wonderful,” said
Forge. “We’ve got this whole section of Level 1 beach to ourselves.”

I laughed at his pure
delight, and at my own thoughts. This was just like the days on Teen Level. I was
thinking about Forge, and he was thinking about surfing. For a blissful moment,
I was just a kid again, with no worries about hunting wild bees.

“Thank Adika’s paranoia
for that,” I said. “He reserved this whole section of beach because he didn’t
want crowds of people near his precious telepath.”

Forge and I sat down among
the knee deep waves, the way we used to do on teen beach. We lay back and relaxed,
letting the water float us to and fro. When I lifted my head for a second, I
saw both Lucas and Adika were standing watching us. I was dragged back from the
past into the present, and had a moment of rebellion.

“Lend me your board,
Forge. I want to surf.”

His mind instantly snapped
back from memories of Teen Level to being Strike team. I was no longer just
scruffy Amber, who tagged round after him and Shanna. I was a precious true telepath.

“Better not, Amber. You’ve
barely done any surfing. What if you get in trouble?”

I shrugged, impatient with
being kept wrapped in cotton wool. “It’s my neck.”

Forge hung tightly on to
his board, and nodded at where the other members of the Strike team were sitting.
“It’s not just your neck, Amber. They’d all be in the water after you, trying
to help, and …”

I groaned in defeat. “Yes,
if I do something stupid, I could drown half of my Strike team. I’m just so tired
of the pressure to do what the Hive wants, be what the Hive wants. Lottery was
supposed to allocate me an ordinary profession, not anything like this.” My
simmering resentment broke surface again. “And I’m not going Outside!”

Forge cowered at the mere
mention of the word. “Adika told us not to talk about that.”

I dipped into his mind and
saw the memory there. Adika forcefully lecturing the Strike team. No one was to
mention Outside to Amber. Not ever. Inconsistent of me to resent that, but I
did.

“It really happened, Forge.
I went Outside and it was horrible. I’m not imagining it.”

He gave me a pleading
look. “Amber, if Adika finds out that I talked to you about this, he’ll fire me.”

Forge was genuinely scared
of losing his place on the Strike team. It wasn’t fair to drag him into this.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m
just angry with the whole world at the moment, and furious with Lucas.” I
repeated my earlier words, because they summed up my feelings so well. “He
thinks too much.”

“Lucas cares about you,”
said Forge cautiously. “He worries. It’s not easy to stop thinking about things
that bother you. I wish it was. I’d like to forget Shanna, but I can’t. Being
here on this beach reminds me of the old days. The surf team. The competitions.
You and Shanna cheering for me.”

I pulled a sympathetic
face. I would probably regret offering this, but … “I could try to get Shanna a
job in the unit. On the Liaison team perhaps. I can’t guarantee anything, but I
could try.”

“What would Shanna do on
the Liaison team? Give everyone fashion advice?” Forge shook his head. “It
doesn’t matter anyway, because I don’t want Shanna back, but getting over the
past is difficult. She was such a huge part of my life on Teen Level. Now I
know she never really cared for me, it messes up all my memories.”

I gave him a hug. “Do you
think we could have a swim without creating hysterical panic among the Strike
team?”

“Yes, let’s swim.”

Forge left his board on
the beach, and we swam out into the waves. As we turned back to the shore, I
could see Lucas was standing there and watching us. I reached out with my mind
to touch his thoughts and winced. He’d seen me hug Forge and was thinking …
Waste it, he should know better than that.

I swam faster, losing
myself in the cold sting of the waves until I was weary and had to head for
shore. Everyone threw on clothes over their swimming costumes after that, and
we went back to the unit. It was a silent trip. The Strike team were feeling
wet, cold, and tired, and were nervous of talking given my mood and Adika’s
threats. I missed the ebullient Eli, who was still in our medical area along
with Rafael and Dhiren, recovering from the sedatives in the darts. Eli would
have chatted away however awkward the situation.

When the lift arrived at
the unit, Lucas slouched off in depression. I chased after him. It was probably
a mistake, we’d just have yet another row, but I couldn’t let him walk away
like that.

“I’m sorry that I’m oversensitive
about the Outside thing,” I said, “but it terrified me, and it hurts that you
believe I imagined it.”

“I don’t believe you
imagined it.” Lucas stopped walking, and spoke each word with paranoid care. “I
keep trying to work out what happened, why we can’t find any record of it, and all
the possible answers keep running through my head whether I believe they’re
right or not. I can’t stop thinking about puzzles. It’s what I do, the way I am,
the reason Lottery gave me this job. Whatever happened, it must have been when
you were very young.”

“Lucas, please just accept
it really happened and forget it. The details don’t matter. Yes, I was very
young, and I was terrified when my skin started falling off.” I shuddered.

Lucas was frowning. “Your
skin started falling off? That’s the first time you’ve mentioned that detail.”

I pulled a face. “It didn’t
happen until a day or two after I was Outside. My skin was peeling off. It was
revolting. Let’s forget it.”

“The sun burnt you. Your
skin peeled afterwards. Sunburn!”

“Lucas! What does it take
to stop you thinking? I’ll get the Strike team to knock you out.” I gave a
despairing laugh. “No, even that wouldn’t work. You analyze things in your
sleep, so I’m sure you’d analyze things when you’re unconscious as well.”

“I do?” asked Lucas. “In
my sleep?” He considered that for an instant, and then he was off again. “You
got sunburnt. Your medical records mention an allergic reaction to face paints
causing a skin rash when you were three years old. Why does your record say it
was an allergic reaction if it was sunburn? Why do your parents think you’ve
never been Outside? Why …?”

Lucas broke off, and
stared at me. “I’m a fool! We’re all fools! We’ve been asking other people, and
we should have been asking ourselves!”

I checked his thoughts and
they were like a stampeding mob. I recoiled out of his head before I got
flattened, saw Lucas sprinting off towards his office, waved my arms in
despair, and ran after him.

I realized after a moment
that I’d been wrong. Lucas wasn’t going to his own office, but to the Liaison
area. By the time I caught him up, he was already shouting at a startled Nicole.

“We did this ourselves. We
called sunburn a skin rash. We hid the fact Amber was taken out of the Hive,
because it’s standard procedure to cover up the actions of a wild bee.”

“What?” I stared at him in
shock.

Lucas glanced at me and
forced his voice back to more normal levels. “You were kidnapped as a child,
Amber, and a Telepath Unit covered it up. Just like we did with that child in
the park. We don’t want people to live in fear, so we pretended she’d been
trapped by accident.”

I checked his thoughts.
Yes, he was serious about this.

“Nicole, check all the Telepath
Unit records for fifteen years ago,” said Lucas. “You’re looking for a three-year-old
child who was taken out of the Hive. It should be easy to find. We don’t have
many incidents as bad as that.”

Nicole pulled herself
together and started frantically looking things up. “One of Morton’s cases.
Fifteen years ago. The target took a hostage. A three-year-old girl. Amber 2514-0172-912.”

Nicole broke off and gave
me a wide-eyed look. Yes, that was me. Name and identity code.

“Time for a team leader
meeting,” said Lucas. “Call the others, Nicole.”

He took my arm and tugged
me off to meeting room 4. Lucas sat me down at the table, and took the chair
next to mine. “You were quite right to be angry with me. I should have guessed
at once.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said.
“How could you guess something like this?”

Nicole, Megan and Adika walked
into the room together. By now I’d learned that Nicole’s health condition
varied from day to day, so sometimes she would walk rather than use her powered
chair. This was clearly one of her better days.

The minute everyone had
sat down, Megan broke into anxious speech. “It’s a bad idea for Amber to learn what
happened.”

“Amber is being affected
by the buried, distorted memories of a terrifying childhood experience,” said
Lucas. “If she learns what actually happened back then, it should help rather
than harm her.”

“It’s a risk.” Megan was practically
wailing the words. “We could trigger old traumas.”

“We’ve already triggered
them, Megan.” Lucas’s voice was savage now. “We tried to persuade Amber to go Outside,
and when she refused we kept worrying about it. Every time she read our
thoughts, it must have created havoc in her subconscious. The way Amber has
been acting lately, desperately trying to defend herself, was a huge warning
signal. I was just too stupid to recognize it.”

He slammed his hands on
the table in frustration. “We’ve already done just about all the harm that’s
possible short of physically dragging Amber Outside.”

Megan gestured helplessly.
“I’m still not sure we should tell Amber what happened.”

“What other option do we
have, Megan?” demanded Lucas. “Amber is a telepath. Once we know the details,
she’ll read them in our minds.”