On the positive side, Forge and the child were both going to be fine. There’d been a lot of excitement on the Hive news channels about the trapped child, but everyone believed the cover story about a freak accident when a drain collapsed. Nosies were, temporarily at least, almost popular.
On the negative side, we hadn’t just failed to bring back a target; we hadn’t even got a sniff at one. Keith kept sending his Tactical Commander messages, insisting Gaius interrupt the discussion to point that out. I guessed that Keith was feeling sensitive about the fact he’d dismissed area 600/2600 as perfectly safe, and was criticizing us as a way of fending off potential criticism of him.
After Gaius wearily recited the fifth message from Keith – the one that said Amber’s failure to locate the target proved she was an inadequate telepath who’d been rushed through training too fast – Adika lost his temper. He said that if Keith sent one more message insulting me, then he’d go over to Keith’s unit and personally bang Keith’s telepathic head against a wall.
Gaius instantly started defending his telepath, saying that Keith was making valid points. Since Lucas seemed unwilling to argue with either Adika or his old boss, Megan had to intervene and calm things down before it turned into an inter-unit war.
When everyone finally ran out of things to say about the situation in area 600/2600, I took Lucas back to my apartment so we could discuss a more personal crisis. I sat on one couch, and he dragged another across so he could sit on it facing me. His mind was like a room with all the lights off. He couldn’t keep me out of his thoughts, but he could do his best to stop thinking except for the top level of pre-vocalization.
“I need to explain about Forge,” I said. “We knew each other on Teen Level.”
“I worked that out from what he said when he was suffering from the effects of the gas,” said Lucas. “You rode the rail together at the end of Carnival. Forge fell off. You made it all the way. You rode the Hive. Congratulations.”
Lucas was shutting me out. His words, his thoughts, his body language, all condemned me unheard. Anger hit me.
“I’m not like you, Lucas. I can’t put myself, faults and all, on public display. And please, don’t point out the double standard that I’m a telepath reading everyone else’s secrets, but I can’t handle them knowing mine. I’m fully aware of it.”
“So what was the fault you were hiding?” asked Lucas. “Forge is handsome and intelligent. Yesterday, he proved he was heroic and tough as well. That’s not exactly an ex-boyfriend to be ashamed of, or is the real truth that he isn’t your ex at all? I can understand him wanting to prove he has a place on the Strike team on merit, rather than have them thinking he’d only got in because he was the telepath’s boyfriend. Well, he’s proved that now, so you can stop keeping your relationship secret.”
“Forge isn’t my ex! He was never my anything at all.” I knew I was ranting at Lucas, but I didn’t care. “Forge was besotted with my best friend, Shanna, for all our years on Teen Level. I had this weird obsession with him back then, and a peculiar repeating dream about him.”
I shrugged. “Forge never knew about that, and he still doesn’t. I never told anyone because I was horribly embarrassed, and then the whole obsession thing suddenly stopped just after I came to this unit. That’s all there is to know, Lucas. Enjoy it!”
The lights went on in a sudden dazzling display. Lucas’s head was busy analyzing on so many levels that I lost count. I tried to catch the thoughts as they whizzed by, but they were far too fast.
“Apologies for the misapprehension,” he said. “Am I fired?”
“I would fire you, but I can’t. You’re totally maddening but a brilliant Tactical Commander. I’ll come up with an alternative punishment.”
I paused to rub my forehead. “I know I should have told you all about this when we were in Hive Futura, but I kept coming up with reasons why I couldn’t. I think the real truth was that something about my obsession was blocking me, preventing me from talking about it.”
I shrugged. “Now the whole weird reaction to Forge is gone, and he’s just an old friend. I’ve been wanting to tell you about this for weeks, Lucas, but you were partially right. Forge was worried people would think he only got on the team because he was the telepath’s pet. I promised him I wouldn’t say anything until he’d justified his position.”
“I think he achieved that on the last emergency run. Tell me more about your weird reaction to Forge.”
Lucas had bounced back. He’d gone through rampaging resentment and jealousy, absorbed my explanation, adjusted his feelings, apologized, and moved on to professionally analyzing the situation. Going through that whole gamut of emotion would have taken normal people days. It had taken Lucas a few minutes. He was unbelievable.
I told Lucas the whole stupid story. My arrival on Teen Level, my first meeting with Forge, the repeating dream where we were walking in the park, and the compulsion to keep him happy. Lucas frowned as he listened to it.
“That wasn’t an ordinary teen crush,” he said.
“I know. Even when I was on Teen Level, I realized my obsession wasn’t normal. Now I’ve learnt far more about teen crushes. Most of the unit have suffered them in the past. Hannah’s got one right now on … Well, never mind that. Half the Strike team have a kind of crush on me as well.”
Lucas grinned. “They’re fantasizing about heroically saving their beautiful telepath from certain death?”
I laughed. “I’m not beautiful, but yes. There’s a lot of exaggeration of my looks. Their own too sometimes. Anyway, my point is that by now I’m rather an expert on crushes, and my fixation on Forge doesn’t seem to fit that pattern at all.”
“Agreed.” Lucas’s mind was still frantically working at the problem, even the pre-vocalized thought level lapsing into his speed speech. “No current theory. Any recurrence, especially of dream, tell me immediately.”
“It all seems a little silly now. I’ve been making a fuss about nothing.”
“Emphatically untrue, Amber. Anything that affected a telepath so strongly has to be taken seriously. You’re vitally important to the Hive. Vitally important to me too.”
Lucas paused. “You don’t have to be embarrassed about telling me things that happened to you on Teen Level, Amber. My own time there was a total disaster. I was a social introvert, struggling to cope, rejected by the other teens on my corridor. I got some measure of acceptance in the end by playing the clown.”
“Did your clown act on Teen Level make you immune to being mocked?” I asked. “Is that how you manage to be so open about everything?”
“The clown act plus my time in Keith’s unit. He teases people about their secrets, and threatens to expose them to the whole unit. I decided the best defensive measure was not to have any secrets at all.”
I was horrified. “Keith shouldn’t treat the people in his unit that way.”
Lucas shrugged. “It’s not surprising that Keith lashes out at people given the stress of his situation.”
“What situation?”
“You don’t know about Keith?” Lucas gave me a startled look. “Only the people in his unit, or on the other Telepath Unit Tactical teams, are fully informed about it, but I’d assumed you’d seen it in either my own or Megan’s thoughts by now. Keith isn’t really a true telepath.”
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
“You know that true telepaths have full control over their ability, while borderline telepaths just have random, intermittent glimpses into the minds of people around them. Keith is the only case we’ve discovered of a telepath who falls somewhere between those two extremes. He can control his telepathic ability most of the time, but it occasionally cuts out for minutes, hours, even a full day.”
Lucas pulled a face. “Think how frustrating that is for Keith’s operational teams when it happens in the middle of an emergency run. It’s even worse for Keith himself.”
“Oh.” I sat in silence for a moment. “I’d seen t
he deep parts of Megan’s mind thinking that Keith was arrogant and lazy, and brooding on the fact that he could have saved her husband’s life if he’d done his job properly. When I saw you thinking about the problems of working with Keith, I thought …”
I let the words trail off. I’d seen Lucas’s relief at leaving the problems of Keith’s unit behind him, but skipped the details in his mind, assuming I knew them already. I’d been guilty of the telepathic equivalent of hearing someone speak but not listening to what they were saying.
“It’s not surprising that Megan blames Keith for her husband’s death, at least on the unconscious level,” said Lucas. “The real truth is that the poor man was doing his best, but his telepathy cut out at the worst possible time.”
I pictured myself on an emergency run, my telepathy cutting out, and one of my Strike team dying. “How did Keith manage to carry on working after that happened?”
“He’s always had to struggle against his problems. He can have nine good runs in a row, and then on the tenth his telepathy randomly cuts out and he loses a target. The biggest problem is that his staff can’t help thinking about it, Keith sees that in their heads, and takes it as criticism. That’s when he loses his temper, hits back by threatening to reveal their secrets, and goes into his arrogant superior telepath act.”
Lucas sighed. “Keith’s been having an especially hard time lately. Dean’s death was a nightmare for him, and then Lottery discovered a new, highly gifted true telepath. Keith naturally feels jealous and resentful of your abilities, Amber. That’s why he kept making Gaius interrupt our meeting with those petty messages about you.”
Lucas yawned, and slid sideways to stretch out on his couch. “I hope you understand why I didn’t want to argue with Gaius over that. He’s Keith’s Tactical Commander, so he has to do whatever’s necessary to support Keith through these problems.”
“I do understand. I wish I could help Keith to …”
I stopped talking. The thoughts in Lucas’s head had changed tempo and were less crisply defined. He’d fallen asleep. I watched, fascinated, as his thought patterns seemed to drift down a few levels into the subconscious and then started working away again at trying to make sense of my repeating dream. Lucas did analysis in his sleep!
I hesitated, wondering whether to wake him up and send him home, but decided against it. Lucas desperately needed some sleep. I needed sleep too. There’d been the strain of the emergency run, the long hours of discussion afterwards, and it had been emotionally taxing to tell Lucas about the whole Forge business. I headed to my bedroom, undressed, sank blissfully into the embrace of the sleep field, and went to sleep.
I’m not sure how long I slept before I suddenly woke in panic. I itched deep in my head. Something was dreadfully wrong, I didn’t know what, but I automatically started running circuits. Dipping into each of the Strike team’s heads in turn for a fraction of a second.
Adika was dreaming of running, chasing after …
Forge was dozing restlessly in a room in our medical area, troubled by ghosts of Shanna.
Eli was thinking about girls.
Matias … Matias had been stabbed!
I reached instinctively for the panic button next to my sleep field, and pressed it to open the emergency sound link between my apartment and Adika. “This is Amber,” I screamed. “Someone just stabbed Matias!”
The unit intruder alarm started its staccato beat, and Adika’s voice responded over the emergency link. “Amber, stay in your apartment. Do you have a target? Strike team, armour, guns, move! Bodyguards to Amber, everyone else with me to Matias’s apartment.”
My eyes were closed. My mind was searching. Nothing. No strangers, just familiar minds. “I can’t find a target.”
“Sofia?” Adika made the name into a grim question.
By now I knew only too well that relationships could sometimes turn violent. I searched for Sofia’s mind in a blind panic, worried that I’d made a dreadful mistake in bringing her to the unit. Reading her thoughts had told me she was fiercely passionate about her art, but I’d seen no clue that …
I found Sofia’s mind. She was alone in her apartment. She’d been woken up by the alarm, and was anxiously picturing Matias searching the unit along with the rest of the Strike team.
“It wasn’t Sofia that stabbed Matias,” I said.
Fabric mesh touched my skin and Lucas spoke from next to me. “Urgently suggest you put on your body armour, Amber.”
“Is that you, Lucas?” Adika asked. “You’re with Amber? Bodyguards, don’t shoot Lucas!”
I rolled out of the sleep field, opened my eyes, and pulled on my body armour. As an afterthought, I grabbed a random dress and dropped it over my head. Lucas grabbed my crystal unit from its shelf and handed it to me. When I put it in my ear, I briefly heard Rothan’s voice before he was drowned out by Adika shouting angrily at someone.
“Get back in your apartment before you get yourself shot!”
Eli’s voice came next from my ear crystal. “Full bodyguard team now in position outside Amber’s apartment. Amber, open the door.”
I checked the minds outside my apartment, and ordered the front door to open.
“Amber, lock the door,” said Eli.
I ordered the front door to close and lock itself. Lucas helpfully opened the bedroom door, and stood aside to let my bodyguards run into the room.
“Relax everyone, emergency over.” Adika’s voice came from both my ear crystal and the emergency link. He sounded much calmer now. “Matias hasn’t been stabbed, but he’s only semi-conscious and in a lot of pain. I think he’s got appendicitis.”
Megan’s voice broke in. “Medical team on the way.”
I felt an utter fool. “Sorry. It felt like a knife was stabbing Matias in the stomach. All my training is about checking for injury, so I never thought about illness. I should have waited and …”
“No!” Adika interrupted me. “You never wait, Amber. When you sense something that may be an attack, you sound the alarm instantly. If we have an intruder, then seconds count. How did you spot Matias was sick, anyway?”
“I woke up. I had the same itching I had on the last run, so I started checking minds.”
“A good thing that you did,” said Megan. “I’m with Matias now. The problem is definitely his appendix and he needs emergency surgery.”
“Well, in addition to getting vital medical help to Matias, this has been a useful emergency drill,” said Adika. “Amber, can we have a full unit meeting at nine to go over a few points with everyone?”
“Of course, Adika. Meeting at nine for the entire unit. Goodnight everyone.”
My bodyguards said their farewells, and gave speculative glances at Lucas before leaving. I checked the emergency sound link between my apartment and Adika had been shut down, and took my crystal unit out of my ear.
Lucas gave me a worried look and gabbled in his speed speech. “Woken up by intruder alarm, people being attacked, concerned for your safety.”
I nodded. “I quite understand why you came into my bedroom.”
“Situation possibly gave misleading impression to bystanders.”
“Quite possibly, yes.”
“Denial potentially worse.”
I lay back on my sleep field, and laughed. “Very true. What time is it now?”
“Six in the morning.”
I jumped back to my feet. “I need breakfast. How about you?”
“Starving,” said Lucas.
Our meals yesterday had only been hastily grabbed snacks, so I ordered us both substantial breakfasts from my kitchen unit. We were in the middle of eating, when I got an incoming call. I glanced at my dataview.
“Waste it! Lucas, hide!”
“Hide?”
“Yes, hide,” I said. “I don’t care if my entire unit is speculating on you being here at night, but my mother’s calling me. Get under the table or something.”
Lucas pointed at the food on the table. “Two
meals.”
“Good point.”
I sprinted into the next room to take the call. My mother’s sleepy and worried holo image appeared.
“Amber,” she said. “Sorry to wake you, but it’s an emergency. Gregas just arrived on our doorstep. He’s run away from Teen Level!”
Chapter Twenty
At nine o’clock, everyone in the unit gathered in the park. Adika stood on a picnic table to address the crowd, explaining that everyone except the Strike team should stay locked in their apartments during an intruder alert. Liaison team members, cleaners, and electricians shouldn’t be roaming the corridors trying to find out what was going on.
Adika felt strongly on this point, and he expressed himself fully and fluently to the offenders for the next ten minutes. When he’d finished, I headed off to deal with my family crisis. I’d decided to take Lucas along with me. My mother wanted me to talk my brother into going back to Teen Level before his absence was noticed. My theory was that Lucas would have a much better chance of achieving that than I did. When it came to dealing with Gregas, Lucas had two obvious advantages over me. He was imprinted as a tactical expert, and he wasn’t a nagging Level 1 big sister.
Adika insisted on going with us, and bringing two of the Strike team as well. This seemed an overreaction to me. I was going to visit my parents in 510/6120 Level 27, which was a full four zones away from the suspect 600/2600 area.
Once we were inside the lift, it became clear Adika was planning to make the most of his time on this trip. “Rothan, Eli, since you’re both candidates for my two deputy positions, I didn’t want to criticize you in front of the whole unit.”
Rothan and Eli looked nervous.
“Rothan first,” said Adika. “I’m not asking what you were doing in the park when the intruder alert sounded. I’m not asking who you were doing it with either. I approve of the fact you had your body armour and your gun with you, and you made it to Matias’s apartment quickly. Next time, however, I suggest you run round the lake instead of falling into it.”
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