Sapphire’s face took on that masklike quality I’d seen during our previous conversation. “Limited residual effects are normal after contact with a difficult target mind.”
“These are getting worse. After the run where we found Fran’s body, my Tactical team felt I was showing classic fragmentation symptoms. After the run chasing Mercury, I hit my Tactical Commander and screamed abuse at him.”
I had to moisten my lips before I could continue. “Later on, I tried to apologize to Lucas, and he said he wasn’t sure it was me that hit him. Only minutes ago, I was thinking through the best way to say something, and someone else spoke for me. Olivia said she could see more than one person looking out of my eyes, and she’s right. Mercury is still inside my head!”
“Limited residual effects are normal,” repeated Sapphire. “We refer to them as the echoes of target minds. Most of them fade away rapidly, but the more powerful ones can gain a longer-lasting foothold in your consciousness. You need to find a way to cleanse yourself of these more powerful echoes before they become a serious threat to your own personality. I wish I could help you do that, but I can’t.”
“You must be able to help me. You’ve been reading minds for twenty-five years, and you haven’t been overwhelmed like Olivia. Keith has been reading minds for thirteen years, Mira for seventeen years, Morton for over four decades. How do you cleanse yourselves of the powerful echoes?”
“Keith’s telepathy only operates intermittently,” said Sapphire. “This appears to act as some sort of safety valve. Whenever his telepathy ceases to function, it releases the echo personalities from his mind. That means their effects may sometimes make him stressed and bad-tempered, even cause him to commit regrettable actions, but they never become a long-term threat to his own consciousness.”
“What about the rest of you? Your telepathy isn’t intermittent. You must have other methods.”
“We do, but I’m not going to tell you about them.”
I’d been keeping my voice quiet, in case anyone else was in the park and heard me, but now I lost control and cried out in desperation. “Why won’t you help me? Do you want me to become like Olivia? Do you want me to be taken over by dozens of competing personalities? Do you want the Hive to have only four functioning telepaths instead of five?”
“No,” said Sapphire sadly. “That’s why I won’t answer your questions. When Olivia started showing fragmentation symptoms, we tried to help her. Morton, Mira, and I all explained our methods of removing echoes to her. Claire was alive back then, and told Olivia her methods and those used by two previous telepaths as well. We should never have done that. It was a terrible mistake.”
“What? Why?”
“Because we didn’t know what we were doing. We each had a method that helped us rid ourselves of echoes, but we didn’t understand why they worked for us until after we saw what happened to Olivia. Then, when it was far too late, we realized some key things. The way to cleanse your core identity of alien influences is by being yourself, as fiercely and strongly as you can. The method that works for one person can’t possibly work for another, because everyone’s core identity is different.”
Sapphire sighed. “The rest of us watched as Olivia changed from a caring girl to the tormented shell of herself that you saw today, and knew it was partly our fault. If we hadn’t tried to help Olivia, if we hadn’t distracted her with our own methods of removing echoes, she might have discovered how to help herself before it was too late.”
“Oh,” I muttered the single monosyllable.
“The Hive tries to prevent telepaths talking to each other,” said Sapphire. “Perhaps it’s true that the Hive knows best in this matter. It may be a good thing if Jupiter gives away the secret of us talking to each other, and our communication channels are blocked.”
As I opened my mouth to reply, my dataview screen went blank. Sapphire had ended the call.
I dropped my dataview and hurried along the path, eager to get away from the spot that had new bad memories to add to those of my final confrontation with Fran. When I reached the area with the picnic tables, I turned off the path, went across to the stream, and knelt beside it. I dipped my hands into the cool, clear water, scooping it up to bathe my sweaty, tear-stained face, and then slumped sideways into the thick grass.
I stared upwards at the lights of the moons in the ceiling. I wasn’t alone in my head. Mercury was here with me. I could feel his presence, like a stubborn splinter stuck deep in my mind, and there would be others joining him soon.
I was in danger of becoming another Olivia, lost in fragmentation. Sapphire wouldn’t help me. No, Sapphire genuinely couldn’t help me. I had to find a way to help myself before it was too late.
Chapter Twenty-nine
When I woke up, I could tell from the breeze and the birdsong that I was still in the park, but I was lying on something soft rather than the ground. I opened my eyes, blinked at the brightness of the suns in the ceiling, and peered down to find someone had stolen the cushions from the couches in my apartment and brought them here.
I thought I knew who the thief was. I turned my head and saw I was right. Lucas was lying next to me on some more cushions.
He smiled at me. “Good morning. Would you like a cold breakfast now, or prefer to wait for something cooked?”
His words, his voice, and his body language were all aimed at making it seem perfectly normal for us to wake up in a park. The effect would have been more convincing if he’d made a joke about it.
I hadn’t used my telepathic abilities since the chase after Mercury ended with me slapping Lucas. I reached out to his familiar mind now and found his multi-layered thoughts in tumult. He was pretending things were normal. He had to. He daren’t add to the pressure on me by admitting he was worried, let alone that he was close to panic.
… difficult to assess how much is Amber’s own reaction to the stress she’s been under, and how much is due to fragmentation, but …
… my team telling me I’m not being objective about this. How can I be objective? I’m a Tactical Commander, but I’m still a human being. I can’t look at Amber and coldly …
… the parks help her, and going Outside helps her, but they aren’t helping her enough. We have to find a better answer before the invading personality becomes so entrenched that …
I hastily pulled out of Lucas’s thoughts, and found myself joining in his pretence that nothing was wrong. “I’m starving, so I’ll eat now.”
We both stood up. I stretched, yawned, reached for my dataview, and discovered it was missing.
“I think I left my dataview somewhere. My jacket as well.”
“I found them when I was looking for you last night.” Lucas waved an arm at the nearest picnic table. “They’re over there with our breakfast.”
I glanced at the table and saw my dataview and jacket were lying next to two covered dishes. “Thank you. I was lucky that it didn’t rain last night.”
Lucas laughed. “That wasn’t luck. The park keeper turned off the regular night-time rain because you were in here.”
“Oh. I must remember to thank her.”
We went across to sit at the picnic table. Lucas lifted the covers off the plates, while I picked up my dataview to check the time. “It’s eleven o’clock in the morning. Waste that!”
Lucas shrugged. “We both needed the sleep.”
I reached eagerly for my plate, and crammed a pastry into my mouth. Lucas let me finish eating my breakfast before he spoke again.
“Would you be able to cope with us holding a team leader meeting today?”
“Yes. In fact, I’d like it scheduled for as soon as possible. There are some things I need to discuss urgently. Just allow me time to shower first.”
Lucas hesitated as if he was considering asking a question, but then nodded his acceptance. “If that’s what you want, then I’ll notify the others.”
He sent the messages, and then we called in at our apartment to shower and
put on fresh clothes. When we arrived at meeting room 4, Megan, Adika, and Nicole were already there. I noticed that Nicole was sitting in an ordinary chair. Her health varied from day to day, and this was obviously one of the better days when she didn’t need her powered chair.
Lucas and I sat down in the two remaining chairs, and Lucas immediately started talking. “I intended to use this meeting to review the events of yesterday, but Amber wishes to discuss something first.”
He turned towards me, a concerned frown on his face. I told myself that I wouldn’t really be lying to him or the others. Everything I said would be the exact truth. I was just rearranging the details of how I got my knowledge.
“The chase after Mercury descended into chaos.”
“I totally agree,” said Adika bitterly. “The way that Sapphire’s Beta team eavesdropped on our …”
“That breach of protocol is being dealt with jointly by all Telepath Unit Tactical Commanders,” interrupted Lucas. “I’m happy to discuss it with you later, but we need to let Amber speak now.”
“The chase was chaos,” I repeated. “I ended up with a jumble of Soren’s thoughts, Mercury’s thoughts, and Forge’s thoughts all churning together in my head. I couldn’t make much sense of any of it until I woke up this morning. That was when I remembered Mercury’s thoughts as he fell from the ladder. He was thinking that he was dying, so he’d never light the greatest of fires now, and remembering a conversation he’d had with Jupiter.”
Lucas leaned forward in his chair, his eyes studying me intently. I dodged his gaze and kept talking.
“Jupiter was standing in a bookette room. She was wearing a Carnival mask and cloak, so Mercury couldn’t see her face or hair. They were discussing him lighting the greatest of fires, when someone else came into the room and spoke to Jupiter.”
I paused. “Jupiter reacted by ending the call. As she did that, she pulled off her cloak and turned to face whoever had come into the room. Mercury only caught a split-second glimpse of Jupiter before his dataview screen went blank. She was younger than he’d expected, probably in her mid-twenties. She had shoulder-length, light-brown hair that was decorated with silver flowers, and she was wearing a long white dress.”
Lucas was still studying me. Did he believe what I was saying? I moistened my lips and told the key lie.
“Mercury didn’t see who it was that had come into the room, they were outside his view, but he did hear a voice say one word. Olivia.”
“Olivia,” repeated Adika. “Could that be Olivia the telepath? The description sounds credible.”
Lucas finally turned away from me, and looked round the table at the others. “It’s a possibility worth investigating. Olivia is highly unstable. She’s read a lot of target minds herself, and could access Telepath Unit records on others, so she had all the information needed to recruit Mercury and Mars. She would have learned about Fran being fired from her Tactical Commander’s thoughts.”
Lucas shook his head. “I’ve been puzzled by two things about Jupiter. Firstly, how good she was at luring in her chosen recruits with their exact personal fantasies. Secondly, how she knew highly restricted information. Both those things would be explained if Jupiter was Olivia. She has been reading minds for eight years.”
“But how can we establish whether Olivia is innocent or guilty?” asked Adika. “We’d normally ask Amber to read a suspect’s thoughts, but she mustn’t go anywhere near Olivia, let alone try to read her mind.”
Lucas shrugged. “We’ll have to let Olivia’s Tactical Commander handle this.”
Adika gave a snort of derision. “Olivia’s Tactical Commander wouldn’t just be investigating Olivia’s innocence or guilt but his own competence. He’s bound to say that she can’t possibly be Jupiter.”
“Lottery chooses Tactical Commanders who are willing to put aside their ego, question their own decisions, and admit to their mistakes,” said Megan.
Adika snorted again. “This would be an extreme mistake.”
“That’s a valid point,” said Lucas. “I’ll have to find another solution. Now, it’s clearly been stressful for Amber to describe Mercury’s dying memory. Could the rest of you wait in the next room for a few minutes, so she can have a break before continuing this meeting?”
There was a scraping of chairs as Adika, Megan, and Nicole stood up and went outside. Lucas waited until the door was closed behind them before turning to me.
“Amber, I could tell you were lying about most of that story, but my impression is that you genuinely believe Olivia is Jupiter.”
“I don’t believe Olivia is Jupiter. I know that Olivia is Jupiter. I can’t explain how I know that, but I’m absolutely certain it’s a fact.”
Lucas frowned. “The last time you hid things from me, you were protecting Forge. Are you protecting him again?”
“No.”
“But you are protecting someone? An innocent party who is somehow caught up in this?”
I considered that. I wasn’t sure if I was protecting myself, or if I was protecting the other telepaths, but I was definitely protecting someone.
“Yes, I am.”
“If I promise to keep it a secret, can you explain the full truth to me?”
I shook my head. “That would put you in a very difficult position.”
Lucas ran his hands through his hair. “So you know that Olivia is Jupiter. You can’t tell me the details of how you know that, because it would cause problems for an innocent party and put me in a difficult position?”
I nodded eagerly. “That’s right.”
Lucas was silent for a moment. “I accept your judgement on this, but please don’t read my mind for a while. I can’t stop myself coming up with theories about what you’re hiding from me. If you read those thoughts, then your body language will tell me if I’m right or not.”
I wondered whether Lucas was just accepting my judgement, or if he was also afraid to push me for the full truth in my current state. Either way, the important thing was that he believed my claim that Olivia was Jupiter.
Lucas drummed his fingers on the table. “Adika is right. If I accuse Olivia, then her Tactical Commander will say she can’t possibly be guilty. He won’t believe he’s failed to notice something as drastic as Olivia organizing an attack on the Hive.”
“So what do we do?”
“I’ll have to ask one of the other Tactical Commanders to go in and investigate as an impartial third party. Penelope would be the best choice. Emotions are running very high in Sapphire’s unit after Soren’s death, so Penelope wants this case solved just as badly as we do. She’ll insist on questioning Olivia herself. We just have to hope that questioning uncovers evidence of Olivia’s guilt.”
I thought back to my conversation with Jupiter. If she was still the dominant personality in Olivia’s mind during Penelope’s questioning, there’d be no problem proving her guilt. Jupiter would openly admit what she’d done, and use it as an argument in favour of resetting Olivia. The only questions Jupiter would refuse to answer were those about Mars and his mission.
“I’ll get the others back in now,” said Lucas.
He tapped at his dataview. I’d planned to discuss two issues at this meeting. Having dealt with the first, I felt a cowardly urge to leave the second until another day, but delaying would just make things worse.
Adika, Megan, and Nicole came back in and sat down. I noticed Megan looking anxiously at me. I tried to give her a reassuring smile, but it probably looked more like a grimace.
Lucas turned to Adika. “I’ll be asking Penelope to investigate the possibility of Olivia being Jupiter.”
Adika sat back in his chair, and gave a smile of satisfaction. “That’s an excellent idea. We can depend on Penelope finding out the truth. She’s terrifyingly thorough.”
“I didn’t realize that you knew Penelope,” said Lucas.
“We both came out of Lottery with Mira. I was on the Strike team, and Penelope was on the Tactical team. Pene
lope was obsessed with ballroom dancing back then. She’d had to split up from her old partner before Lottery, and insisted on teaching me to dance so that I could replace him.”
Megan stared at him. “You’ve never mentioned being in a relationship with Penelope.”
Adika looked oddly embarrassed. “We were nothing more than ballroom dancing partners. We won several competitions before Penelope moved to be deputy Tactical team leader in Sapphire’s unit.”
I blinked, tried to picture Adika in a ballroom dancing competition, and failed.
“Anyway,” said Adika hastily, “I think asking Penelope to investigate is an excellent plan.”
“Good,” said Lucas. “Was there anything else you wanted to discuss, Amber?”
I took a deep breath. “Yes, we have to discuss the fact I’m suffering from fragmentation. You all helped me through that business with Elden. Now I need you to help me through this.”
Chapter Thirty
There was a shocked silence before Lucas spoke. “We’ve all been doing everything we can think of to help. You must know that.”
“You’ve all been doing everything you can, except openly discussing the problem with me. That’s what I need you to do now.”
“I came out of Lottery with Mira, so I was in her unit when she hit the fragmentation issue,” said Adika. “Telepaths often behave a little erratically after contact with a target mind, but Mira started lashing out at people in a way that was completely out of character. It reached the point where our Tactical Commander ordered everyone to leave the unit.”
“What do you mean?” asked Lucas. “Your Tactical Commander can’t have thrown everyone out of the unit.”
“Yes, he did,” said Adika. “Well, virtually everyone. Our Tactical Commander said it was vital that Mira only had contact with the most familiar and supportive minds. The five or six people closest to her stayed in the unit, while the rest of us were put on indefinite leave.”
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