Telepath (Hive Mind Book 1) (24 page)

“Do we need to know?”
asked Megan.

“Yes!” Adika joined the
argument. “If I don’t know then I can’t do my job properly.”

“That’s doubly true for
me,” said Lucas. “Besides, if we don’t know what happened, we’ll keep guessing,
and Amber will be reading our thoughts about it. May I point out that my
imprint, Adika’s imprint, and the imprints of the entire Strike team include
explicit details of everything wild bees have been known to do to children
they’ve abducted. Adika and I are busily thinking about a dozen gory possibilities
right now. The more we try to stop ourselves, the more we’ll do it.”

“Yes, but …”

“No, Megan,” I interrupted
her. “Lucas is right. I must know what really happened back then.”

Adika glanced at Megan. “We’ve
no choice here.”

She gave a sigh of what
seemed to be reluctant acceptance.

Adika turned back to face
me. “I’m sorry, Amber. Your abduction happened years before I joined Morton’s
team. I had no knowledge of it.”

“Nobody knew,” said Lucas
bitterly. “Not even Amber’s parents. Telepath Units cover up incidents too well.
The truth is only held in our confidential records. It’s the best thing for the
Hive, it reduces the chance of future incidents, but it was disastrous in this
case.”

He shrugged. “Nicole, look
up the details for us. Amber, promise me you won’t read any of our minds while Nicole
explains what happened. If there’s something bad, it’s much better for you to
just hear it as words, without adding the burden of the emotion and images in
our minds.”

That made sense. I’d
already seen some images in Adika’s head that sickened me. “I promise.”

Nicole gave Megan a
nervous look, then tapped the table to make a data display appear in front of
her. She looked down at the flowing text, and took a deep breath before
speaking.

“There’s only the standard
report from Morton’s unit. It happened during Carnival. Morton and his Beta Strike
team were responding to an emergency call, but the local hasties got the situation
under control before they arrived. Morton checked they’d arrested the right
target, and the team started heading back to the unit, but Morton picked up
something strange on the way. He wasn’t sure whether it was a real target or
not, but they tried following it to be on the safe side. They must have had a
problem doing that, because they rode the belts for ages without catching up
with the target.”

“A chase wouldn’t be easy
during Carnival,” said Adika. “The belts would be packed with people in silver
and gold Carnival outfits, most of them wearing masks.”

“The problem seems to have
been more than that,” said Nicole. “Morton knew the target was a man, but he wasn’t
getting a name or any clues on what he’d do next. He couldn’t even tell if the
target knew he was being followed. Eventually, they reached 511/6126, and the
target went into a park that was running a Carnival event for children. There
were thousands of wildly excited small children and just a scattering of adults.”

I must have been one of
those children. I tried to remember a party in the park back then, but I’d been
to a lot of Carnival events as a child. The earlier ones were just blurred,
excited memories of dressing up in costumes, playing games, and chasing
balloons. The strange thing was that I had no fear of parks at all. It was only
the thought of Outside and the Truesun that bothered me.

Nicole pulled a face. “It
was a nightmare situation for Morton’s Liaison team. Before they could work out
how to evacuate the park, Morton said the target was moving again, heading up
in a lift, and he had a small child with him. The child was tagged with a
bracelet of course, so Liaison got her identity and started tracking her.”

Nicole paused, and gave me
a nervous look before continuing. “Tactical decided the target knew he was
being followed and had taken a hostage. The bracelet signal went straight up in
the lift to Industry 1. Since this was Carnival, all the working areas were
empty apart from the odd person watching essential systems. Morton’s team were
preparing to go for the strike, when the target took the child through a
maintenance exit and out of the Hive. That caused a major delay.”

Adika frowned. “Why? Were
the Strike team scared of going Outside?”

“Tactical wouldn’t let
them go through the maintenance exit,” said Nicole. “Morton wasn’t getting
anything at all from the target now, and the child’s bracelet signal was right
outside the door. Tactical thought the target had been terrified by finding
himself Outside, and was sitting there, frozen in panic. They were worried that
if the Strike team charged out of the door after him, then the target might
harm the child.”

She shrugged. “Eventually,
some of the Strike team went out through another exit, aiming to sneak up and take
the target by surprise. It took them over an hour to do that. When they finally
got there, they just found the child’s bracelet, open but undamaged.”

“How could the target have
taken off a child’s tracking bracelet without damaging it?” asked Megan. “Only approved
medical staff have access to the codes to unlock tracking bracelets.”

Nicole shook her head. “The
report doesn’t say anything else about the bracelet. Morton’s team were concentrating
on finding the target and hostage child. They couldn’t involve Outside maintenance
workers in a search for a potentially dangerous target. The Strike team had to
do all the searching themselves, they were struggling with conditions Outside, and
running out of time. When the Carnival event ended, the child’s parents would
discover she was missing. Eventually, the Strike team heard a child crying,
found her hiding in some bushes, and took her back into the Hive for medical
checks.”

“What did the medical
report say?” asked Lucas, in an unfamiliar harsh voice.

“The child was terrified,”
said Nicole, “but completely unharmed. Her only problem was sunburn. It had
been a very hot and sunny day Outside. The medical staff treated that, gave her
sedatives and a new tracking bracelet, and delivered her back to her parents
telling them she’d had an allergic reaction to face paints.”

Adika and Lucas seemed to
relax slightly. I cheated on my promise a little, telling myself Nicole had
finished her explanation, and skimmed the surface of Lucas’s thoughts. I didn’t
just see his relief, but some of the possibilities he’d been braced to hear. I winced,
and told myself to forget those dark images. If Nicole was telling the truth,
then I hadn’t been harmed. I dipped into her thoughts for a moment to reassure
myself. Yes, she was telling the truth.

Lucas groaned. “I know the
medical staff would have been under time pressure, but they should have given
Amber proper psychological treatment after such a traumatic experience. What
about the target? Did the Strike team keep searching for him?”

“No,” said Nicole. “It
sounds like the Strike team had hit their endurance limit. There were no more
searches, but they posted hasties at all the Hive entrances in that area for
the next week. No one came in from Outside, so they assumed the target had got
lost and had an accident. They closed the case after that. If a target had deliberately
left the safety of the Hive and got himself killed, it wasn’t their problem.”

She paused, frowning. “There’s
one other thing. It must be just coincidence, but Morton’s Strike team first started
chasing their target in area 600/2600.”

There was a long silence after
that. Oddly enough, I felt quite calm, as if I’d been expecting to hear Nicole
say those words, even as if I was glad to hear them. Maybe I was just relieved to
have a solid reason for the fear that had had me snapping at people for days.

I glanced round the table.
“Area 600/2600 again. Coincidence?”

Nicole looked like a
frightened mouse. Adika and Megan seemed unable to speak. I turned to Lucas.

“Extremely unlikely,” he
said.

I wrinkled my nose at him.
“Wrong answer, Lucas. The right answer, the comforting answer, is that it’s obviously
pure coincidence.”

“It’s impractical to lie
to a telepath.”

I checked heads. Lucas was
fighting his anger, trying to concentrate on analyzing the situation. Megan’s
mind was practically hysterical. Adika was lost in grim and dangerous thoughts.
He’d always had an obsession with the possibility of his telepath getting
kidnapped. The news that she already had been wasn’t helping at all.

I sighed, and asked the truly
scary question. “You think our current target in 600/2600 is the same man that
kidnapped me, Lucas? Despite the fifteen year time gap?”

“Yes. The child in the booby
trapped drain was also a three-year-old girl.”

I hadn’t thought of that.
“He chose a girl of the same age both times.”

“More than just the same
age,” said Lucas. “The girl in the drain had the same name as you.”

“What?” I shook my head.
“I didn’t know she was called Amber.”

Lucas pulled a face. “We
avoided mentioning her name during the run. Talking about two different Ambers
was liable to cause confusion, and it didn’t seem significant at the time. Now
it’s clear it is. The target is playing games with us, deliberately picking a
hostage who’d remind you of yourself fifteen years ago.”

That sounded seriously
creepy to me. “So everything that’s been happening in area 600/2600 is about
me. The target is hunting me again.”

“I believe so,” said
Lucas.

Adika woke from his
trance. “There would have been over a million three-year-old children in the
Hive back then, and the target kidnapped the only one who would grow up to
become a true telepath. That couldn’t be random chance.”

“It seems highly unlikely
to be random chance,” said Lucas, “but if it wasn’t then the target had a way
of identifying future true telepaths at three years old.”

“That’s not possible,”
said Megan. “A century ago, there was a trial attempt to test children for telepathic
ability at age twelve. The trial failed because the subconscious defensive
block on using telepathic ability was too strong to overcome at that age. It
would be even harder to identify a true telepath at age three.”

“Our Hive’s method of identifying
true telepaths doesn’t work on young children,” said Lucas, “but Hives never
trade information on telepaths. It’s possible another Hive uses an entirely
different approach. Brainwave activity goes through significant changes at
around age three. There may be clues that indicate if a child is a potential true
telepath.”

“Another Hive!” Adika’s paranoia
about threats from other Hives made him leap at that explanation, his thoughts
burning with anger. “Another Hive is behind this. How could an agent from
another Hive get information on our children’s brainwave activity?”

“Annual infant development
checks contain baseline brainwave activity measurements,” said Megan, in a
despairing voice.

“We know the target had
the code to unlock Amber’s tracking bracelet,” said Lucas. “If the target could
hack his way into our Hive’s central data storage to get the bracelet code,
then he could access the development check records and a host of other information
as well. Whatever method he used, he discovered Amber was a true telepath, and carefully
planned her abduction. Carnival was the ideal opportunity, with all the children
being entertained at special events.”

“Kidnapping a true telepath
is a major violation of Hive Treaty,” said Adika. “We have to report this to Joint
Hive Treaty Enforcement.”

“They’d dismiss the report
as wild supposition,” said Lucas. “We’ve got no evidence at all that another
Hive was involved in Amber’s kidnapping. We don’t even know which other Hive to
accuse of the crime. All we’ve got is a plausible explanation of why Amber was
kidnapped rather than any other one of a million three-year-olds.”

“You believe the explanation
is right though, Lucas?” I asked. “Our target is an agent from another Hive?”

Lucas buried his face in
his hands for a moment, thoughts racing on every level of his mind, and then
lifted his head again. “Yes. There’s a limit to what I can accept as random coincidence,
and if everything was deliberately planned then the target knows far too much
about too many different things. How to find the one true telepath among a
million three-year-old children. How to hack into our central data core. How to
lure a telepath and her Strike team into a trap.”

Lucas made a helpless
gesture with his hands. “We have subversive groups in our Hive, but I can’t believe
any of them could know more about identifying telepaths than the Hive itself. If
the target is an agent from another Hive, it would explain a lot of things,
including why Morton was having problems reading his mind fifteen years ago. Morton’s
a skilled telepath, but was probably struggling because of language issues.”

I didn’t understand that,
and I couldn’t cheat by reading Lucas’s thoughts when they were running at bewildering
speed on multiple, interleaved layers. “Explain that last bit please.”

“Many Hives speak a
different language to us,” said Lucas. “The target must have been imprinted
with our language, but the top levels of his mind would still be using words
from the language of his home Hive. I don’t know exactly what that would look
like to a telepath, but it must be confusing.”

“I’ve sometimes had
trouble when a target is thinking of something complicated to do with their
work,” I said. “When a thought level is racing along using lots of technical
words that I don’t understand, it all blurs together into an incomprehensible
mass. I usually get round that by skipping to a thought level that’s using
simpler words, but presumably all the target’s thought levels would have the
same problem. That’s not good.”

I bit my lip. If we ever
caught up with this target, I’d find his thoughts unreadable. I’d be able to
see the view from his eyes, but not warn my Strike team about his plans.

“So the target kidnapped
me, planning to take me back to his own Hive,” I continued. “He took off my
bracelet so no one could track us and hunt us down. What went wrong? Why did he
let me go? If Morton’s Strike team scared him away, then he should have made
another attempt to kidnap me a few weeks or months later, not wait fifteen
years before reappearing. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I agree,” said Lucas. “From
what the report says, Morton’s Strike team never got close to the target. I
doubt he even knew they were chasing him. We need to go back to the beginning and
work events through logically.”

He paused. “Let’s start
with the base point assumption that the target is an agent from another Hive.
Our time line starts over fifteen years ago when the target came to our Hive. How
would he have got here? My imprint doesn’t tell me anything about other Hives.
I know we have border defences, but I’ve no information on how they work or …”

“My imprint covers border defences,”
Adika interrupted. “It’s a long way to both our coastline and our land borders
with the territory of other Hives. An unauthorized aircraft couldn’t breach our
air space without being detected. We’d launch intercept aircraft in response,
and Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement would send in forces as well. The guilty Hive
couldn’t possibly explain their incursion, because we’re nowhere near any of
the neutral trading exchange points.”

“How do you think the
target reached us then, Adika?” asked Lucas.

“Our land border line is a
flat concrete strip patrolled by heat-seeking drones,” said Adika. “They’d be
hard to evade even with stealth technology, and I don’t believe the target came
from a neighbouring Hive anyway. We’re on good terms with our neighbours, and
they speak the same language as us.”

He pulled a face. “My
guess is the target came from our coastline. Our air space extends offshore, so
the target must have been dropped into the sea from an aircraft. There are
drones patrolling offshore, but a lone swimmer with breathing equipment could
make it past them by diving underwater when they approached. Once the target
made it to land, he would have had to make a lengthy journey on foot to reach
our Hive. It would have taken him several days, possibly longer, to get here.”

Lucas nodded. “And the
target would have to make the same trip in reverse to get back home.”

Megan burst into speech. “The
target surely couldn’t have been planning to take Amber on a journey like that.
She was only three years old. Spending days Outside. Being dragged underwater. It
could have killed her!”

Lucas banged his head
forcibly on the table top.

“Lucas, stop that!” I
said.

He lifted his head and looked
round at us. “Everything strange that’s been happening is interconnected. Every
bit of it. Amber told me she had a vivid, repeating dream through all her years
on Teen Level. She was in a weird park, walking through incredibly tall trees
with Forge. It was hot, and the suns were very bright. Of course they were. It
was a bright, sunny day Outside when Amber was kidnapped. She was frightened in
the dream, but Forge told her she was a good girl. He talked to her as if she
was a child, because she was a child when it really happened.”

“My dream can’t have been a
memory of being kidnapped by Forge,” I said. “We were both only three years old
back then.”

“Your dream isn’t the
exact memory, Amber,” said Lucas. “Your mind tried to make sense of confusing
fragments by relating them to familiar things. You replaced Outside with a
park. You replaced the Truesun with the park’s lighting. You replaced your
kidnapper with Forge.”

He paused. “You were
kidnapped when you were three years old, but the dreams didn’t start until you
moved to Teen Level and met Forge. You had a strange reaction to the sight of
Forge as well. Those things must have happened because Forge looks like your
kidnapper. The sight of him had triggered latent memories.”

Megan turned to look at
Lucas with an appalled expression. “Lucas, if you’re right that Forge looks
like Amber’s kidnapper, then the whole Strike team must look like him too!”

“Oh, yes,” said Lucas. “We
didn’t just try to take Amber Outside; we surrounded her with men chosen to
look like her kidnapper. Amber should be completely hysterical by now, but she
isn’t. The dreams and the strange reaction to the sight of Forge have stopped
as well. When did that happen, Amber?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “After
I worked out my reaction to Forge was caused by me looking at him, I tried to
keep my eyes closed when he was around and work telepathically. One day, I accidentally
looked at him directly, and found I wasn’t reacting to him any longer. It was
the same with the dream. I suddenly realized I hadn’t had it for a while.”

“Did you react to Forge
after your arrival at the unit?” asked Lucas.

“Definitely. I remember getting
hit by it just before a training run. Keith’s Strike team leader was going to
be our target.”

“I remember that day,”
said Adika sharply. “Forge had a bruise on his face, and someone poked it.
Amber started yelling at them, and we all wondered … Wait a minute!”

He broke off and stood up,
leaning forward with his hands on the table. “When Forge arrived at the unit,
he had a birthmark. An odd red mark on his left cheek. During the training run
with Keith’s Strike team leader, Forge cut his face badly on a branch. Our
medical staff had to do some reconstruction work on that cheek, and Forge got
them to remove the birthmark as well. We all teased him about it.”

Adika seemed to realize he
was standing up, and sat down again.

“And that’s why Amber
wasn’t reacting to the rest of the Strike team,” said Lucas. “They may well
have the same general appearance as the target, but they don’t have birthmarks.”

“We can search Hive records
for males of the right age group with a similar birthmark,” said Nicole.

“The target may not actually
have a birthmark, just some sort of mark on his left cheek,” said Lucas. “It could
be a mole, a scar, a tattoo, anything, and if he really is an agent from another
Hive then he won’t be in our records.”

Lucas’s voice was oddly
flat and dispassionate, but his thoughts were an incomprehensible whirlpool of analysis
mixed with churning emotion. He’d thought of something very bad, and didn’t
want to tell me about it.

“Whatever it is you’ve
worked out, Lucas, you have to tell me.” I quoted his own words back to him. “It’s
impractical to lie to a telepath.”

Lucas groaned. “What Megan
said was right. The target couldn’t have been planning to take a three-year-old
child on the hideously difficult journey back to his Hive.”

“So why did he take me Outside?”
I asked.

“He took you Outside to
imprint you with orders to obey him.”