Telepath

  I realized my voice was shaking. “I know that sounds silly, but it was frightening.”

  “You were holding someone’s hand. Describe them.”

  “It was a huge man. His face was too high up to see.”

  “Did the man speak?”

  “Yes,” I admitted reluctantly. “He said I was a good girl, just like in the Forge dream. I’m pretty sure it was the same voice as in that dream too, huskier and deeper than Forge’s real voice.”

  “You were getting fragments of an old memory,” said Lucas. “Your three-year-old self was walking with the target. Your mind changed day to night to protect itself, and the balloon represented the Truesun. Do you remember anything else at all?”

  “Sorry, nothing.”

  Lucas sat in silence for a moment. The lights were still on low, but I could see him frowning. I wanted to read his thoughts, but I couldn’t. I had to try to remember more of my dream.

  Finally he spoke. “It’s a bit of a risk, but I can try to improve your memory of the dream. I’ll need to use hypnotics.”

  “Try it.”

  Lucas took out a closed dataview, tapped it to make it unfold to full size and turn on, and then went across to the wall display controls. “I’ll show you some images. I want you to watch them and relax.”

  The wall display lit up with swirling colours. There was barely audible music too, just on the edge of my hearing range.

  “Watch the colours, Amber,” said Lucas. “Relax. Let yourself drift with the music.”

  I watched the colours change, and waited for the dream to return.

  “All done,” said Lucas briskly.

  The wall display had vanished. I turned to look at Lucas. “That was like one of the Lottery tests, where I thought that I’d fallen asleep but I hadn’t.”

  He nodded. “Several Lottery tests use hypnotics. I’ve talked you through the whole dream sequence. No details of the target. The golden balloon holds central significance. Obvious sun symbolism.” He paused. “It’s almost nine in the morning, but we didn’t get back here until the middle of the night. Do you want to sleep some more?”

  “I don’t think so.” I sat up, and stepped off the sleep field to stand next to Lucas. “Thank you for helping me last night. You asked me then if you’d earned a reward, and I think you have. First kiss moment.”

  I stepped towards Lucas and lifted my face for the kiss, but he dodged backwards.

  “Would love to,” he said, “but can’t.”

  I felt like I’d been walking down a corridor, the floor solid beneath my feet, and then found myself falling down a lift shaft. I was disoriented, hurt, and also angry. Waste it, this was the second time Lucas had blocked things between us. I turned my back on him. Lucas could read faces, and I didn’t want him reading mine just then.

  His voice came from behind me. “I just used hypnotics on you, Amber. You’ve been influenced to accept my commands without question, so I can’t kiss you now. That kiss could lead to other things, and tomorrow you might feel you’d done things you didn’t want to do. Even your offer of a kiss may not actually have been made of your own independent free will, but in an effort to please me.”

  He paused. “Amber? You understand that, don’t you? You need a couple of hours to be clear of the hypnotic effects, or I’d be doing the same thing to you that the target did.”

  I kept my face away from him, and my voice carefully controlled. “Of course I understand.”

  “Read me.”

  “I’d like to get myself some breakfast now.” My tone was polite dismissal.

  “Message understood,” he said. “I shall go to my own apartment, and bang my head against a wall.”

  I listened to him leave, and then stood still for a few minutes longer, nursing my hurt. Lucas made endless sexual suggestions to me in the safety of his own head, but he didn’t seem to want those thoughts to become physically real. I’d taken the first step in Hive Futura. I’d taken the first step again just now. Lucas had turned me down both times. Did he enjoy humiliating me? Despite what he said about hypnotics, one kiss wouldn’t have mattered.

  Or would it? Would it have stopped at one kiss or gone a lot further? Had I given Lucas his signal at this particular moment because I wanted to, or because I was affected by the hypnotics? I thought it was my own choice, but Lucas couldn’t be sure of that.

  I grudgingly decided I should admire Lucas’s principles rather than be angry with him. I’d have to apologize the next time I saw him.

  I cursed imprints, hypnotics, and Lottery, ordered breakfast from my kitchen unit, and was busy not eating it when I noticed a package on a side-table. I went over to investigate, and found the package was from my mother. I ripped it open, and laughed when I found she’d sent me a glittering golden duck. I remembered Lucas mentioning the pictures of golden ducks in the 500/5000 Level 1 shopping area, and how a craze for duck toys was sweeping the Hive.

  I picked up the duck, and idly examined the ornate, silver and gold pattern on its side. There was an odd sound in my head, like the clink of metal on metal, before a male voice started talking. I knew that voice. It was the voice of the most important person in the world, and he was telling me what I needed to do to please him.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  There were two Ambers now. The Amber that was me was trapped in a spherical, crystal cage within my own head. Fleeting images of people and places swirled around my prison. I could hear snatches of conversation, and recognized that some of the words were spoken in my voice. There were moments when I was aware of my body moving, but it wasn’t answering my orders.

  The imprint had activated, and put the Amber that was three years old in control of my mind and body. She was the one looking through my eyes, speaking with my mouth, and touching things with my hands. I felt her raw, childish emotions ripping through me, changing abruptly from joy to anger and back to joy again. She’d done what Elden wanted. Elden would be pleased with her. Elden would say she was a good girl.

  Elden had to be the name of the man who’d imprinted me. What had the child Amber done to please him? Had she harmed the people I loved? Was she already taking me to serve her master in another Hive?

  I couldn’t tell anything from the random words and bewildering images that reached me. I tried to talk to the child Amber, reason with her, but she didn’t seem to hear me, or even be aware that I existed.

  Lucas’s face appeared outside my prison, his expression utterly exhausted and despairing. I gathered every ounce of strength, tried to control my body for just a second to speak to him, but couldn’t. A moment later, he was gone, and then everything outside the crystal cage went black.

  Was that blackness because the three-year-old Amber had closed her eyes, or was it because I’d lost the last fragile link to my body? I remembered the Halloween stories of the hunter of souls. The creatures of the pack that followed him were forever cursed to roam the night shadows of Outside. Was I cursed to hang here in darkness forever?

  That was the moment when I felt the walls of my cage move closer to me. The imprint had imprisoned me inside this crystal sphere, and now it was trying to crush me out of existence.

  Lucas would be working to remove the imprint, and send the three-year-old Amber back into the past. Working to free me from this cage, and give me my body back. I had to find a way to hold on here, forget my fear and fight for my survival, or there wouldn’t be anything left of me for Lucas to set free.

  I thought of Elden, screamed my anger and defiance at him, and the walls of my crystal prison moved further away. I focused on the anger that made me stronger. I would survive this, I would take my life back, and I would hunt down Elden and destroy him the way he’d tried to destroy me.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  I woke up, opened my eyes, and stared at the ceiling. There was something wrong about that ceiling. This wasn’t my bedroom at my Telepath Unit, or my room on Teen Level. I wasn’t on a sleep field either, but lying on a so
lid bed.

  “Welcome back, I hope. Do you know me, Amber? What’s my name?”

  I turned my head, and saw Lucas was sitting in a chair by my bedside. There was a spectacular purple bruise on his left cheek, and he looked desperately tired. I tried to work out what had happened.

  “Of course I know you, Lucas. What’s happened? Did I faint when we were Outside?” I frowned. “No, I remember we went back to my apartment after that. I had a dream, and I called you and …”

  I remembered the kiss thing, and my words trailed off in embarrassment.

  “That all happened three days ago,” said Lucas. “Do you have any memory of ducks?”

  “Three days!” I sat up, shocked. “Ducks? What? No.”

  “How about a parcel from your mother?”

  “Yes, I remember there was a parcel on the side-table. Hannah must have left it there. I picked it up and …”

  I broke off. I’d opened that parcel and discovered a glittering duck. That was followed by a blank patch, which must have been the point when my imprint activated. The next thing I remembered was a long period of nightmare images. I’d been trapped in a crystal sphere, fighting to avoid being crushed out of existence.

  I’d been determined to survive and get my life back. I’d succeeded. I gave myself a moment to savour the sight of white room walls, the humming sound of an electrical display next to my bed, the coolness of a sheet beneath my hands, and the distinctive background chemical scent that meant I was in a room in the unit medical area.

  The world seemed very convincingly real, but I had to be sure. I lifted my right hand to my mouth, and bit at the side of my forefinger. There was a faint taste of blood and the blaringly loud sensation of pain.

  Lucas snatched at my hand, pulling my finger away from my mouth. “What are you doing, Amber?”

  “The imprint activated and took control of me, Lucas. I’m checking I’m truly awake. Do you remember that we once had a conversation about telepaths feeling pain? You said that pain screams at all levels of the mind. You were right. There’s something very real about pain.”

  I gave a long sigh. I was back in reality, but that meant I had to face the next problem. What had my three-year-old self been doing with my body during the last three days?

  Sick with apprehension, I forced myself to ask the question. “What happened while I was under the control of the imprint?”

  “When I left you,” said Lucas, “things between us were in a bit of a mess. I waited a couple of hours so you’d be clear of the hypnotics, then went back to try to talk to you.”

  I’d tested my five standard senses, and now it was time to try that vital sixth one. I reached out with my mind, dipped into Lucas’s thoughts, and found them startlingly slow and comprehensible by his standards.

  “You wouldn’t look at me,” he continued. “It wasn’t because you were angry. There was something very wrong, like part of you was missing. For a horrific moment, I thought it was my fault, that I’d made some dreadful mistake when I used the hypnotics to get more information about your dream.”

  I flinched at the pain of his memory. “Lucas, I can read you. There’s no need to explain.”

  He was at breaking point from exhaustion, but he kept talking anyway. He’d been waiting for hours for me to wake up, planning exactly what he’d say, and he insisted on saying it.

  “I was going to call Megan over and explain the situation. If she didn’t kill me on the spot, I’d find myself a nice deep lift shaft and jump down it. Then you told me that you’d filed a request to transfer to Hive Genex.”

  He dragged his fingers through his hair. “That made everything clear. The target had somehow managed to activate your imprint when you were safely inside your own apartment, in the middle of our unit, behind the strongest security defences in the Hive.”

  He gave a despairing shake of his head. “You marched out of your apartment. I pulled myself together and went after you. You were heading for the lifts, so I tried to stop you, and you were kicking my ankles and fighting me.”

  I looked guiltily at his bruised face. “Did I do that to you?”

  “No. Someone must have seen us struggling, because Adika and the Strike team showed up and flattened me. Fortunately, I managed to explain before I suffered major injuries.”

  “Sorry,” I said uselessly.

  “There were a few awkward minutes after that. You were fighting the entire Strike team and winning, because they couldn’t make themselves use physical force on their own telepath. I finally had the sense to paint a fake birthmark on Forge’s face, and got him to reason with you. The effect was incredible. You started calling him by the target’s name, Elden, and obeyed his every command.”

  I saw Lucas’s memories of me acting like a puppet, constantly watching Forge, adoring Forge, obeying Forge. I felt a wild medley of distress and fury at seeing myself like that, tried to run my fingers through my hair, and discovered I was wearing something on my head.

  I took a look at myself through Lucas’s eyes. I was wearing my own familiar clothes, but had a tiara on my head, a ludicrously ornate thing smothered in glass crystals. I disentangled it from my hair. “I see my three-year-old self liked sparkly things.”

  “Yes, with Forge giving you orders, and rewarding you with shiny jewellery, we had the situation contained. You happily told Forge about finding the duck in the parcel.” Lucas’s hands clenched into frustrated fists. “I was stupid. I should have guessed those ducks were appearing in the 500/5000 Level 1 shopping area for a reason. The gold and silver pattern on the ducks was the trigger symbol that would activate your imprint. Elden was counting on the fact that a telepath was bound to visit the finest shops in the Hive.”

  “I kept meaning to go there, but I was too busy.”

  “Elden finally lost patience, and took more direct action, luring us to that 601/2603 Level 80 park. Once we knew what to look for, we discovered a fragment of a gold and silver balloon there.”

  “I vaguely remember seeing a balloon when we were there. I never really looked at it. I usually have my eyes closed when I’m working.” I threw the tiara into the far corner of the room. “You weren’t stupid, Lucas. There was no reason for you to think the ducks were important when they first appeared.”

  “I was incredibly stupid,” said Lucas. “I should have realized about the ducks. I shouldn’t have assumed personal mail from your family was safe. I should never have left you alone for one single second. If I’d been there when you opened that package, I’d have realized the duck was the trigger symbol. I might have been able to grab it before …”

  I interrupted him. “All that matters is that you’ve got rid of the imprint now. It is gone, isn’t it? It can’t control me any longer?”

  “The imprint is gone, Amber. It can’t make you do anything now.”

  I moistened my lips before speaking again. “And I didn’t … hurt anyone?”

  Lucas understood the question I daren’t ask. “You didn’t kill any of your Strike team by sending them into danger, or shooting them, or doing whatever other horrors you’ve been picturing in your head. They have a few bruises where you kicked them, some of them in very painful places, but they’re always covered in bruises anyway.”

  I sighed in relief. If my three-year-old self had killed someone in her eagerness to please Elden, everyone would have told me it wasn’t my fault, but I’d still have spent the rest of my life feeling like a murderer.

  I forced that thought away. It hadn’t happened, and it wasn’t going to happen. My three-year-old self was back in the past, and I was in control again. “How did you get rid of the imprint? The symbol on the ducks was the key symbol too?”

  Lucas shook his head. “The key and the trigger symbols mark the start and end of the imprint, so they have to be different.”

  “You didn’t do it without the key? I’m not …?” I could read Lucas, so I was still a telepath, but would I be able to tell if my mind was damaged in other way
s?

  “Obviously we had to find the key first. You’d told me about the golden balloon chasing you in your dream. The second you mentioned it, I was sure that was linked to the key symbol. Given our personal relationship, it was shockingly unprofessional of me to use hypnotics on you myself, but I had to break the rules. If I’d delayed to get Megan, your dream memories would have faded.”

  Lucas hesitated. “Once I’d broken safety protocols to get more details of the balloon, I couldn’t possibly risk kissing you.”

  I waved a dismissive hand. “I understand that, but I didn’t know you’d worked out the key symbol.”

  “I hadn’t worked it out. I just had a few clues as a starting point. It was like trying to recreate a piece of broken china when all you have is a couple of remaining fragments. There were a huge number of possibilities for the symbol, but at least we could dismiss the incorrect ones rapidly.”

  I could see the painful process in his head. Seemingly endless attempts at creating the key symbol. All the times when I’d obeyed Forge’s orders to look at the symbol but not responded. Finally, after working solidly for three days and nights, Lucas had found the right answer.

  “Once we’d found the correct key symbol, your imprint unravelled beautifully,” he said. “It should have taken your artificially imprinted fear of Outside and the Truesun with it, but an unpredictable amount of natural fear will remain given your terrifying experience out there as a child.”

  “The target, Elden, can’t control me anymore. I’m free.” I took a moment to savour the thought. “Did you get Forge to order me to cancel my transfer request, or do I still need to do that?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t cancel that yet,” said Lucas. “Elden must have access to the low security areas of our central data core to achieve the things he’s done. He’ll have seen your request and know your imprint has been activated. If you cancel the request, he’ll see that too.”