Telepath

  I twiddled my ear crystal to lower the volume.

  “Tactical ready.” Lucas’s voice sounded breathless. He must have just sprinted into the office to join the rest of the Tactical team.

  “Liaison ready. Tracking status green,” Nicole said.

  I checked my dataview. We had a full team, except for Matias who was still on restricted duties while he recovered from his appendicitis operation. “Green here.”

  Lucas started briefing us. He’d got his breath back now, and his voice sounded reassuringly calm, but I knew his thoughts would be frantic with worry.

  “You’re going back to the 600/2600 area to check it at several different locations,” he said. “First location, back at the park, 601/2603 Level 80. I don’t need to remind you about last time. Extreme caution advised. You’ll find the park empty, because it’s still closed after the incident with the child.”

  Adika listed eight names to be my bodyguard team, putting Rothan in charge of them, and then the rest of the trip went by in grim silence.

  Everyone’s nerves were wound up to breaking point when we entered the park. Chase team formed a defensive perimeter. Rothan carried me, and the other bodyguards clustered tightly around us. They put me down by a vaguely familiar looking tree. There was still a silver and gold balloon stuck in its branches. I ignored it. We’d been here before. We’d done this before.

  “Checking the area.” I closed my eyes and reached out with my mind. There was a tight knot of bodyguards surrounding me, thoughts concentrated on my protection. Spread around the perimeter, the Chase team were equally tense and alert.

  “Check the park itself, Amber,” said Lucas. “The target might have returned. It’s not that hard to get into a locked park.”

  Only the wordless thoughts of birds and small creatures floated around me. No strangers. “No one in the park. Reaching further. Checking this level first.”

  Minds. Lots of minds. None distinctive. None with a different taste, smell, shape. I drifted across them, not going deep into any individual thoughts, just checking the feel of each mind as I brushed its surface. Tame bees, working in their hive, absorbed in their everyday lives. No jarring note among the busy hum.

  “Nothing on this level. Trying the higher levels.”

  I was checking the chattering human heads in the area directly above the park, when I became aware of an itch inside my head. I had a sick feeling in my stomach.

  “Itch. Going circuit!” I opened my eyes and stared at my dataview, gabbling the names of both Bodyguard and Chase team members as I checked their minds.

  “Amber?” Adika’s voice asked. “What’s happening?”

  “She’s got an itch.” Lucas’s voice was sharp and anxious. “Amber had an itch when the child was unconscious. Amber woke up with an itch when Matias was hit by appendicitis. Someone’s in trouble.”

  “Everyone take cover!” Adika snapped out the order.

  My bodyguards covered me. Literally. At least one of them was lying on top of me. I couldn’t see my dataview any longer, but I kept chanting names from memory.

  “Eli’s down. Unconscious. Dhiren’s down. Unconscious.”

  “They were next to each other on Chase team perimeter north,” said Adika. “The recording of their visual links just shows the angle changing as if they slowly sat down. Pity they weren’t looking at each other. Kaden, you’re closest to them. Can you see anything?”

  “I’m in some bushes. I can only see Eli’s foot from here. I could sneak out of the bushes and …”

  “Stay in cover!” Adika ordered. “Is everyone else all right?”

  I paused in my soft chanting of names. “So far.”

  “Everyone keep hidden,” said Lucas. “Amber, can you get anything from Dhiren and Eli’s minds? Any clue to what happened?”

  I hated quitting circuit, my team were in danger and it was instinctive to keep checking them. Lucas was right though. We needed to know what had happened.

  “Stopping circuit,” I said. “Checking Dhiren and Eli. They’re unconscious. Dreaming. Rose without a thorn. Something about a thorn. I’m getting an image from Eli.”

  I focused on the image. Eli’s dream was replaying in a loop. “Eli felt something sharp stick into his arm. He thought it was a thorn from one of the bushes. He brushed at it, looked down, and saw that some kind of dart had gone straight through his body armour. He tried to speak but couldn’t, then he passed out.”

  “Darts,” muttered Adika. “Still no target mind?”

  “No target,” I said. “There’s no one except us in this park. I can’t swear the dart thing is right. I’m getting it from a dream sequence, and editing out what is obviously just fantasy.”

  “Tell us the edited bit as well,” said Lucas. “It might mean something.”

  “There’s a winged angel,” I told him. “The light angel from the Halloween festival. She’s flying above Eli, and she’ll save him from the dark hunt.”

  “Halloween festival,” muttered Lucas. “Filled with frightening images. People all dressed as evil creatures hunting prey. Light angel only exception, only hope of escaping the hunt. Light angel clearly Amber. She’ll save Eli from the hunt. Why is she flying? Light angel has wings but isn’t normally flying. What exactly does she do, Amber?”

  “She looks over her left shoulder at something, and then flies up towards it. The dream sequence starts looping after that. I don’t look much like her, Lucas. I wish I did, but I don’t.”

  Lucas was jabbering away, verbalizing his thought trains in abbreviated sentences. “Idealized image. Flying to save Eli. In the air. Something high up. No target mind. Target uses booby traps.”

  “Back on circuit.” I started chanting names. “Rafael’s been hit.”

  …my hand. The slim, black dart sticking into it didn’t hurt much, but I was …

  “Rafael’s unconscious,” I reported.

  “He was on the other side of Eli and Dhiren.” Adika sounded furious. “There’s something to the north, and it’s taking us down one at a time. Keep under cover everyone. Don’t show a hand, a foot, a finger.”

  I was still running circuits, checking the unconscious minds along with the rest. So far they just seemed to be peacefully sleeping, but if they started feeling sick …

  “Nicole,” said Lucas, “cut all power to the park.”

  “Working on it,” said Nicole.

  “You’ll turn out the suns, Lucas,” said Adika, “and we won’t be able to see. Eli had the bag with the wristset lights.”

  “There’s a device targeting you,” said Lucas. “It may be attached to the park power supply, or it may have its own power cell. If it’s using the power supply then it’ll be turned off with the suns. If it isn’t turned off, then it may not be able to detect you in the dark.”

  “I’ve got someone on the power supply now,” said Nicole, in a panicky voice. Conflicting orders from the Tactical Commander and the Strike team leader were Liaison’s worst nightmare. “Do we turn it off or not?”

  “Turn it off,” said Adika.

  Everything went very black. At least, it went black to Forge. My own eyes were closed, but I was in his head at the second the lights went out.

  “Stay still unless told to move,” said Adika. “Kaden, you’re closest to Eli and you’ve got the robot. Can you use it to retrieve Eli’s bag of wristset lights?”

  At the mention of Kaden’s name, I automatically swapped to his mind. I found him wishing he’d been shot so he didn’t have to tell Adika the bad news. “The robot is broken down into four pieces for transport,” he admitted reluctantly. “I’ve only got three of the pieces. Rafael’s got the main section, and he’s …”

  “Unconscious,” Adika finished the sentence himself and groaned. “You’ll have to try to get the bag yourself then. Crawl cautiously towards Eli.”

  “It’s pitch black,” said Kaden. “I’m not sure where Eli is now.”

  “I’ll guide you,” I said.

&nb
sp; “Heading off in hopefully the right direction.”

  I was a passenger in Kaden’s thoughts as he left the shelter of his bushes. I could hear the rustle of leaves as he crawled forward, feel the coolness of grass under the palms of his hands, share his tense awareness that whatever weapon had taken down his team mates could be about to shoot him too.

  “Turn a bit more to your left,” I said.

  “I just hit a tree trunk. Going round it. Now I can move left.” Kaden crawled onwards in the darkness.

  “Straight on now,” I said.

  “Found Eli!” A pause. “Got the lights. Do I turn one on?”

  “Get into the bushes first,” said Adika. “Then turn one light on and throw it away from you. See if anything shoots at it.”

  “Got that,” said Kaden. “Throwing now. Nothing happening.”

  “Good,” said Adika. “Now put on one of the wristset lights and turn it on. If anything shoots at you, turn it off again. If nothing happens, crawl round to team members and hand out lights.”

  “I’ve been trying to work out the relative positions,” said Lucas. “I think the device shooting you was attached to a park safety camera. Those are focused on lakes or anywhere else dangerous for small children, and automatically analyze people’s movements. If their internal software decides someone is in trouble, they trigger alarms and release rescue devices.”

  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.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  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 bo
dyguards 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.”