Borderline (Hive Mind Book 4)

by Janet Edwards

  “What decisions?” Gregas asked, in a bewildered voice.

  “The first decision is about your counselling,” said Buzz. “You’ll need a weekly session with a borderline telepath psychologist to help you adjust to your abilities. You can either travel here once a week to have your counselling with me, or I can arrange for you to have counselling from someone in Blue Zone.”

  I wasn’t surprised when Gregas instantly replied to that. “I’d rather keep having counselling from you.”

  “The second decision is whether you wish to move room to a different area or not,” said Buzz. “If you stay in your current room, then you’ll have to be extremely careful to keep your ability and your new knowledge secret from the other teens.”

  “I don’t see how moving to a different area would make that easier,” said Gregas.

  “Children who grow up on Law Enforcement’s private Level 20 know the truth about telepaths,” said Buzz. “When they’re thirteen, they go to live on Teen Level like other teens, but they have their own areas to make it easier for them to keep the Hive’s secrets, and when they go through Lottery they’re likely to be assigned to work in Law Enforcement themselves.”

  She smiled. “If you choose to move to a part of Teen Level where teens from Law Enforcement live, you’ll find everything virtually identical to where you are now, but there’d be the crucial advantage that you could speak freely to the teens and activity leaders about your ability.”

  “How far would I have to move?” asked Gregas warily. “What zone would I have to live in?”

  “There are areas in each zone,” said Buzz. “You’d naturally want to move to one in Blue Zone.”

  Gregas pulled a dubious face. “Even if I was still in Blue Zone, I’d be moving into a corridor of total strangers who all have friends already. They probably wouldn’t be very welcoming, and telling them I’m a borderline telepath would make things even worse.”

  Buzz laughed. “People in Law Enforcement are used to interacting with borderline telepaths, Gregas, and admire our abilities. They’re intrigued by our insights, and the vagueness of what they reveal means only problematic individuals react to them as an invasion of privacy.”

  She paused. “Being a teen borderline telepath with full insights is unusual, because most of us don’t get full insights until after we’ve been through the triggering processes in Lottery. If you moved to live among Law Enforcement teens, then you’d find you were the centre of attention.”

  “Oh.” Gregas seemed to be thinking that through.

  “You’d be surrounded by admiring teens eager to be your friends,” said Buzz, “and your insights would allow you to avoid those mostly attracted by the fact they know you’ll be rated Level 1 in Lottery. You’d be wise to keep your relationship to Amber a secret though. If the other teens discovered you weren’t just a teen borderline telepath with full insights, but the brother of a true telepath as well, then you’d get completely mobbed.”

  The expression on Gregas’s face hovered somewhere between being apprehensive and smug. I guessed he was picturing himself being the centre of attention for an admiring crowd of teens.

  Buzz stood up. “I suggest we go and sit by the lake for a while now, Gregas. You can take your time absorbing everything you’ve learned, and you’ll probably have some questions that you prefer to ask in private. I should explain that my primary role here is to be your sister’s counsellor, but I counsel other people in this unit as well, and never share their confidential information with her.”

  Gregas stood up as well but turned to give me a suspicious look. “Do you read Buzz’s mind, Amber?”

  I shook my head. “No. Megan gave me my original telepathic training, and also acted as my counsellor for a while. Seeing her professional thoughts about me was one of the reasons those counselling sessions were a disaster. I don’t want to risk messing up my counselling relationship with Buzz in the same way, so I never read her mind. Your secrets will be perfectly safe with her.”

  Gregas nodded, and followed Buzz off down the path towards the lake. I watched them go, then looked reproachfully at the nearby bushes.

  “Come out of there at once!” I ordered.

  Rothan and Forge crawled out of the bushes and got to their feet.

  “I never thought to do a telepathic check of the park for people spying on my private conversation with my brother,” I said bitterly. “I’d no idea you were there until I noticed the light of the suns glinting on your guns. Were you really planning to shoot Gregas?”

  “Only if absolutely necessary, and only on stun,” said Rothan hastily. “The news was bound to be a shock to him.”

  “Adika said we had to take the danger of a personal attack seriously after the way Gregas dealt with the man on the ladder,” said Forge.

  “We were only obeying orders and protecting your safety,” added Rothan.

  I made shooing gestures with my hands. “I realize that. Now go away.”

  They hurried off, and I did a brief scan of the nearby area. “There isn’t anyone else around. Adika took the cowardly option of sending Rothan and Forge rather than coming to spy on me himself.”

  Lucas looked amused. “I think that was good tactics rather than cowardice. You’ve yelled at Adika in the past for asking questions about your personal life. He knew you’d be annoyed about him listening to a private conversation with your brother, but wouldn’t blame Rothan and Forge for following orders.”

  I went to sit down next to Lucas. “As far as I could tell, Gregas coped with the revelations reasonably well. I’m obviously not going to read his mind to check.”

  “This would be an exceptionally bad time to read Gregas’s mind,” said Lucas. “He’s bound to have a few resentful thoughts about you at this point. The important thing is that he isn’t having an extreme reaction of loathing against either you or himself.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Buzz felt the key point was to undermine Gregas’s fear of nosies with a dramatic unmasking, replacing his image of nosies as being loathsome with an image of them as being ordinary people. That does seem to have worked.”

  I hesitated. “I wasn’t expecting Buzz to wear that particular dress. I suppose she chose it because it’s a Teen Level one. She’s got a tactic of wearing clothes of someone’s level to help them relax and talk to her more easily.”

  “That was probably one reason she chose the dress,” said Lucas drily. “I think the other was that she wanted to make sure Gregas’s new image of nosies was as attractive as possible.”

  He paused. “Query. Can we discuss an oddity that’s been puzzling me ever since we discovered Gregas was a borderline telepath?”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “There’s a strong genetic factor involved in someone becoming a borderline telepath,” said Lucas. “We’ve no idea what makes someone move beyond that and develop into a true telepath, but we do know that when two or more siblings are borderline telepaths, they virtually always have a borderline telepath parent or grandparent. That rule must surely hold true when a borderline telepath and a full telepath are siblings.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “You’re saying that Gregas turning out to be a borderline telepath means that we have a borderline telepath parent or grandparent as well?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must be wrong about that,” I said. “If one of my parents or grandparents were a borderline telepath, they’d be Level 1. My parents are Level 27. My mother’s parents are Level 31 and work at manufacturing dataviews. I’ve never met my other grandparents, but they’re Level 14, and they dumped my father for coming out of Lottery a disappointing Level 27.”

  “Yes, I remember your mother mentioning that,” said Lucas. “Would you mind me checking the records to make sure there hasn’t been a mistake?”

  “I don’t see how a mistake could be possible, unless …” I was hit by an unnerving suspicion. My father’s parents had been Level 14!

  “You clearly aren’t c
omfortable with me investigating this,” said Lucas. “I’ll forget about the whole thing.”

  “No,” I said. “Check the records. I’m almost sure that you won’t find anything, but … Well, you’d better do it anyway.”

  “Are you sure that’s what you want?” asked Lucas. “You could think about it for a day or two.”

  “I’m sure. Now you’ve raised this issue, I need to know the full truth.” I frowned at Lucas. “Why are you pulling that face? What did I say that was funny?”

  “I just remembered what I said earlier about curiosity, and how you’d feel in Gregas’s position.”

  I groaned. “Yes. Gregas wanted to know the full truth immediately. So do I. Check the records.”

  Lucas tapped at his dataview. “Your father’s record says that his parents are Level 14 medical staff.”

  I relaxed. “There you are. No borderline telepaths in my ancestry.”

  “That’s on your father’s standard open record,” added Lucas. “He also has a secure record.”

  My unnerving suspicion wasn’t just back again, but turning into virtual certainty. “My father is Level 27,” I said grimly. “That’s far too low for him to be involved in any Hive secrets. That secure record must be adoption details.”

  “It’s probably adoption details,” said Lucas warily.

  I ran my fingers through my hair. “It has to be adoption details. My father must have been the duty child of a borderline telepath. You said that the duty child programme selects suitable couples between Level 11 and Level 19 to adopt children. My father’s parents were Level 14 medical staff. If they’d adopted a duty child expecting him to come out of Lottery as Level 1, then it would explain why they were so disappointed by my father’s Level 27 result.”

  “That theory does fit all the facts,” said Lucas.

  I stared down at my hands. “Do you think my father knows the truth?”

  “I doubt it.”

  I lifted my head again. “Can you check the secure record and find out who my father’s genetic parents were?”

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Yes. I’ve always felt this sense of bewilderment that I was a telepath. It seemed as if my ability had been thrown at me from nowhere. If I have a borderline telepath grandparent, then it would all make far more sense. It’s not as if I have any attachment to the people I thought were my father’s parents. I’ve never even met them.”

  “All right,” said Lucas. “I’ll check the secure record.”

  I watched tensely as he tapped at his dataview, and was startled by a staccato bleeping noise.

  “This is Information Archive,” said a female voice. “You have requested access to a secure record containing restricted information. Please state your identity and the reason for your request.”

  “I’m Tactical Commander Lucas 2511-3022-498,” said Lucas. “I’m requesting this information on behalf of Amber 2514-0172-912.”

  “I cannot release the secure ancestry information of a telepath without that telepath’s personal consent,” said the voice.

  Lucas handed me his dataview, and I saw a woman with an oppressively perfect hairstyle that reminded me of Megan.

  “I’m Amber 2514-0172-912,” I said, “and I’m requesting this information.”

  “Do you only require details of your father’s parents, or are you requesting your complete extended paternal ancestry record?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I might as well have my complete paternal ancestry.”

  “Please wait while I get my supervisor to witness the request and verify your identity,” said the woman.

  Her face froze for a moment, then the image divided to show both her and a man.

  “Please repeat your request for the witness,” said the woman.

  “I’m Amber 2514-0172-912,” I said wearily, “and I’m requesting my complete paternal ancestry record.”

  “Now please look directly at your dataview screen and repeat the following words of a Hive duty song for me,” said the man. “Burgundy, Red, Orange Zones. We are united.”

  I pulled a confused face but repeated the words. “Burgundy, Red, Orange Zones. We are united.”

  “Request witnessed and identity verified,” said the man briskly.

  “I’m sending your complete extended paternal ancestry record to your personal dataview now,” said the woman.

  There was a chime from my own dataview that meant it had received a message.

  “Do you require any further information at this time?” asked the woman.

  “No, thank you.” I ended the call, handed Lucas’s dataview back to him, and took my own from my pocket.

  Lucas stood up. “I think I’d better leave you to look at your ancestry information alone.”

  “Why? We already know what I’m going to see. One of my paternal grandparents was a borderline telepath.”

  “I think you’re going to see more than that,” said Lucas. “The Information Archivist wouldn’t have had to get her supervisor to witness the request and do face and voice identity verification if it just involved a borderline telepath.”

  I blinked. “You mean there’s a true telepath in my ancestry?”

  Lucas nodded. “I’ll go and sit by the stream for a while.”

  He walked away, and I stared at my blank dataview screen. Lucas had to be right. There was a true telepath in my ancestry, and it was obvious who that true telepath would be.

  After Claire’s death, her unit had been closed down for three years, before becoming my unit. Her apartment became mine. I was sitting in the park where her ashes had been scattered. Four of her old Strike team members were now my bodyguards.

  I’d always felt something of Claire was still present in this unit, and now I knew what it was. Claire had had twenty-five duty children. I knew none of those children had been adopted, but some of them would have had duty children too, and …

  Something of Claire was still present in this unit. Her great-granddaughter was here. Her great-granddaughter was me.

  I tapped at my dataview and displayed the ancestry information in mid air in front of me.

  I’d been right.

  I’d been wrong.

  I knew what I needed to do.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  I went over to where Lucas was sitting by the stream. “I’ll send you the ancestry information in a few minutes. I’ll want to keep the facts secret from everyone except you for now, and I’m going to need some private time to think them through before we discuss them. I’ll go and sit in the bookette room for a while.”

  “I’ll be in the Tactical office if you want me,” said Lucas. “We need to record the closing down hunter of souls sequence for Halloween.”

  “Beckett will be sad at Halloween closing down,” I said. “The players will be sad too. What are you going to say to them?”

  “I’ll say that Halloween must end now because the New Year festival is almost upon us. Carnival will follow, and some of the packs will be summoned to learn their destiny. Those who have braved the darkness have no need to fear that summons. There is no light without darkness, and no darkness without light.”

  I smiled. “That’s a strong hint that they don’t need to fear Lottery.”

  “The Hive wants teens to know that. Their activity leaders constantly tell them there’s no need to fear Lottery, but the teens are naturally scared of automated systems deciding their whole future.”

  I remembered how terrified I’d been when I went into Lottery. I was terrified now too. “I’ll call you later,” I said aloud.

  I walked back to our apartment, tapped at my dataview to send Lucas the ancestry information, and then went into our bedroom to get my new festival dress and the matching flower out of the storage wall. I put the dress on, brushed my hair, made up my face, and then put the flower in place among my long dark curls.

  I took a moment to study my reflection in a mirror. I was a true telepath, so important that I didn’t
usually need to dress to impress anyone, but this time was different.

  Finally satisfied, I went to the bookette room and carefully closed the door. There was still a couch left there from a previous day, so I sat down on it before taking out my dataview. I linked into the dedicated secure connection between the Telepath Units, used Adika’s security codes to start a new conference call, and then issued an invitation to join with the distinctive one-word text message. “Alone?”

  The reply came almost immediately. “Two minutes.”

  I set the call to visual, transferred it to the bookette room systems, and sat waiting. It was probably more like three minutes before Keith’s holo image appeared standing in front of me.

  I’d seen plenty of images of Keith in Lucas’s head. They’d all showed a man of just past thirty, with dark, shoulder-length hair, who preferred the semi-shaven fashion of a decade ago to regularly using shaving cream.

  Keith had been wearing clothes in those images though, and now he was totally naked. I guessed his idea was to shock and embarrass an eighteen-year-old girl. He clearly hadn’t thought through the fact that I had over forty men on my Strike team. I was trained to link to their minds at the mere thought of their names, so I’d often stumbled on them standing naked in front of shower room mirrors or changing in communal areas.

  I’d long ago reached the point where my embarrassment was because of my accidental intrusion into their privacy rather than what I was actually seeing. I almost felt sorry for Keith. His shock tactic was never going to work on me, standing naked in front of someone in a resplendent festival dress made him look ridiculous, and given the words I was about to say …

  “Hello, Keith. My name is Amber. Did you know that we’re cousins?”

  Keith groaned. “Give me a moment.”

  I’d assumed he was standing in an ordinary bookette room, but as he turned to stroll across it, the holo image automatically followed him. Keith walked in a straight line for far too long, and I remembered Megan saying he had a vast bookette room in his expansion section.