Borderline (Hive Mind Book 4)

by Janet Edwards

  Distancing! Mira had mentioned distancing and said it would never happen to me. “What does distancing mean?” I asked cautiously.

  “It’s when a telepath becomes distant from the moral code of the Hive, and starts trampling on the rights of other people,” said Lucas. “In most cases, the situation stabilizes within the first few years, with the telepath establishing their own ethical code.”

  He shrugged. “As I said, I’ve not seen any hint of you distancing at all. If anything, we have the opposite problem, where you show too much compassion for people who cause trouble.”

  “Such as Tobias,” said Adika bitterly.

  Mira had said that I would never be distant because I felt the emotions of the people whose minds I read. Now Lucas had explained distancing to me, Mira’s comment made complete sense. How could I trample on someone’s rights when I could feel their distress as if it was my own?

  Mira had also said that Morton, Sapphire, and Keith didn’t feel emotions at all, so they’d been distant for a long time, and Keith was still distant. I knew something about Morton’s past that showed how distant he’d been in his first few years as a telepath. Everything I’d heard about Keith confirmed Mira’s statement that he was still distant. Sapphire …

  Well, I didn’t know anything at all about Sapphire’s past. Adika had said her people were fiercely loyal to her, which wouldn’t be the case if she was mistreating them now. After the enormous risks Sapphire had taken to save the Hive during the three years when it only had four functioning Telepath Units, I felt she’d redeemed herself for any past bad behaviour.

  “Keith is still distant,” I repeated the words Mira had said to me.

  Megan grimaced. “Yes. Everyone’s given up hope of him changing for the better.”

  “Well, I’m not distant,” I said, “and I’m not interfering in Lottery’s decisions about Gregas.”

  “Let’s focus on the immediate situation now,” said Lucas. “We need to make decisions on two separate issues. First of all, there’s the question of what we tell the boys’ parents. Amber, you said last night that you didn’t want your parents to find out about Gregas being arrested. I agree that they’d probably react badly to the news, especially if we admit we’ve had both boys in our unit holding cells since the middle of last night.”

  I shuddered. “We mustn’t let my parents find out about either Gregas being arrested or me lying to them. They’d be dreadfully upset with both of us.”

  “That means we’ll need a cover story to explain the boys being missing for a few days.” Lucas looked at Nicole. “Emili will have been sending your team information from the parents. I’m hoping you’ll be able to invent something that they’ll find believable.”

  “I’ve already worked out a cover story,” said Nicole. “My Liaison team should be sending a script to you shortly.”

  “Wonderful,” said Lucas. “Now let’s consider what we tell Gregas, Wesley, and the Captain. We’ve agreed Wesley and the Captain would believe the man in the air vent was a maintenance worker. The problem is that Gregas wouldn’t.”

  He glanced at Megan. “At this point, I need Megan to go and ask Wesley a question.”

  “He won’t answer it,” said Megan. “Both the boys have been resisting answering any questions even under the influence of hypnotics. That’s why we had to let Amber read their minds.”

  “They’ve been resisting answering any questions about what happened when they met the wild bee because they didn’t want to get into trouble,” said Lucas. “Wesley shouldn’t resist answering this question though. I just want you to ask him what position Lottery assigned to Gregas’s sister, Amber.”

  Megan gave Lucas a puzzled look but went out of the room. It was only a couple of minutes before she returned and sat down again. “Wesley told me that Amber is a Level 1 Researcher with her own Research Unit.”

  “And that makes everything much simpler,” said Lucas. “When Amber admitted to her family that she didn’t run a Research Unit but a Security Unit, Gregas asked if she could arrange for Lottery to give him a place in her unit. I told him that might be possible, but warned him that a Security Unit couldn’t accept anyone who’d breached Hive secrecy restrictions.”

  Lucas paused. “Gregas took that secrecy warning seriously. He hasn’t even told his best friend that Amber runs a Security Unit. Since we can trust Gregas to keep secrets, I suggest we tell him the truth.”

  I gave Lucas a startled look. “How much of the truth?”

  “The whole truth,” said Lucas. “That the man he met in the crawl way was a wild bee. That the nosies are fakes to deter people from committing crimes. That his sister is one of only five true telepaths in the Hive. That he himself is a borderline telepath with flashes of insights into minds.”

  “No!” I shook my head urgently. “We can’t do that. Gregas hates nosies. I know what a shock it was for me when I was told the truth. I went from hating nosies to hating myself.”

  Megan gave me a horrified look. “You never said anything to me about hating yourself, Amber.”

  “I didn’t want to discuss it,” I said. “I tried not to think about it either, but there was a voice of self-loathing constantly nagging at me. It took me a long time to get past that and accept my telepathy. I’m not sure that I’m totally over the problem even now. It’s like the malicious echo of a target mind lurking in my subconscious, except this doesn’t come from a target but from me.”

  Megan turned to Buzz. “Did you know about this?” she demanded.

  “I’m not sharing confidential details about Amber with anyone,” said Buzz.

  “But I was Amber’s counsellor back then and …”

  Buzz interrupted Megan. “You were Amber’s counsellor back then, but I am her counsellor now, and I intend to respect her privacy.”

  Megan gave a depressed sigh and sank back into her chair.

  I was too focused on Gregas to worry about Megan’s feelings. “My point is that learning the truth will be just as big a problem for Gregas as for me. Perhaps even worse. He won’t just hate himself. He’ll hate me too.”

  “He has to be told something,” said Lucas. “What if he keeps having insights?”

  “Gregas only had an insight because he was in a life-threatening situation,” I said. “That won’t happen again.”

  “Whether he has more insights or not depends on how fully his ability has awakened,” said Buzz doubtfully.

  “And Gregas will have to learn the truth when he goes through Lottery anyway,” said Lucas.

  “That’s years away,” I said. “He’ll be older. Better able to cope.”

  “We should be able to tell Gregas the truth in a way that lessens the self-loathing issue,” said Buzz.

  “I absolutely forbid anyone to tell Gregas the truth,” I said flatly. “It’s too big a risk.”

  There was an awkward silence before Lucas spoke. “That means we’ll have to use the enemy agent story again.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Megan, Lucas, and I went back into the room where Gregas was lying on a couch. Megan towed the technical display across to a corner of the room, removed the metal blobs from Gregas’s forehead, and then whispered something in his ear.

  “I’ve got Gregas counting down to waking up from the hypnotics,” she said before leaving the room.

  Lucas and I sat down in a couple of chairs to wait. It was another minute before Gregas’s eyes opened. He stared up at the ceiling with a confused expression on his face, then sat up and looked around the room. When he saw Lucas and me, he gave a despairing groan.

  “When Wesley and I got dragged across the Hive to Orange Zone, I guessed we were being brought to your unit.”

  I smiled. “Good morning, Gregas. It’s nice to see you too.”

  He frowned. “It’s morning already? What happened when Wesley and I got here? I remember some sort of doctor talking to us but then … I must have fallen asleep.”

  “We let you rest until
now because Amber was busy,” said Lucas.

  “Busy sorting out the problems you’ve caused,” I added gloomily.

  “Don’t do it, Amber,” said Gregas sharply.

  “Don’t do what?” I asked.

  “Don’t give me a long lecture about getting arrested.”

  “I wasn’t going to lecture you about getting arrested,” I said. “Given your situation at the time, getting arrested was your safest option. It meant that you had a lot of highly trained people to protect you if the man on the ladder recovered from his fall and came after you again.”

  “Recovered from his fall,” Gregas repeated my words nervously. “You know about me knocking him off the ladder. I suppose the Security Unit that arrested Wesley and me brought in a nosy to read our minds.”

  I didn’t trust myself to say a word at this point, so I just nodded.

  Gregas made a retching noise. “I was afraid they’d bring in a nosy, but … I didn’t hurt the man too badly, did I?”

  “No, the man was arrested too, and only had a few bumps and bruises.”

  Gregas gave a sigh of relief. “That’s all right then.”

  “It’s far from all right. I said that I wasn’t going to lecture you about getting arrested. I’m not going to lecture you about knocking that man off the ladder either. If you hadn’t done that, then he’d have hurt you, and possibly hurt Wesley too.”

  “That man really was dangerous then?” asked Gregas anxiously. “I know this will sound as silly as Wesley’s boasting stories, but … When I was climbing the ladder, I had a sudden overwhelming feeling that the man chasing me was dangerous. That’s why I kicked him in the head like that. I felt sure that he was going to kill me if he caught me.”

  “The man was an extremely dangerous enemy agent,” I said. “You were perfectly right to defend yourself.”

  “An enemy agent!” Gregas blinked. “What was he doing in our Hive?”

  Lucas took out his dataview. “Most of the details are classified, but we can play you a Hive Channel 1 news report about an incident that our unit handled yesterday.”

  Lucas projected the news report onto the white wall of the room. Gregas watched the incomprehensibly black images at the start of the news report with a confused look on his face. Then he heard the voice gabbling about being attacked, and gasped. His forehead creased in concentration as he listened to Lucas’s call, and watched the shadowy figures of red group coming down their ropes. When the report ended, Lucas put away his dataview.

  “A game group was in a maintenance area, got in the way of an enemy agent, and one of them was stabbed,” Gregas said tensely. “You showed me that news report because the same thing happened to my game group, but we were lucky and got away unhurt.”

  “That’s right,” said Lucas.

  “Why was an enemy agent wearing torn party clothes?” asked Gregas.

  “That’s classified information,” said Lucas. “We’ve been able to tell you this much because we know we can trust you with Hive secrets. It’s best for Wesley and your game group leader to believe you were just chased by a maintenance worker though.”

  “I agree,” said Gregas. “Wesley can’t resist gossiping about anything exciting, and I’ve no idea if our game group leader is trustworthy because I’ve only met him twice.”

  “That’s settled then,” I said. “Now, please don’t interpret this as me lecturing you, but you made a bad mistake when you gave a false name and identity code to the people who arrested you.”

  “I gave a false name and identity code because I didn’t want you dragged into the situation,” said Gregas.

  “That’s exactly what I’m complaining about,” I said. “I’m your sister, Gregas. If you get in trouble, then I want to be able to help you. Promise me that if this sort of thing ever happens again, you’ll give your proper name and identity code at once. Lying about them meant there was a long delay before I found out you’d been arrested, and that caused major problems.”

  “You’re right,” said Gregas. “If you’d got involved earlier than I wouldn’t have had a nosy rummaging around my brain.”

  I was grateful when Lucas replied to that for me. “The delay has caused other problems as well.”

  “What problems?” asked Gregas warily.

  “Wesley didn’t show up for his weekly visit home yesterday,” I said, “so his parents discovered he was missing.”

  “Oops,” said Gregas.

  “This morning, Wesley’s parents discovered you were missing too, and told our parents,” I continued.

  Gregas made a despairing sound. “When Mother and Father find out I was arrested, they’ll lecture me for the rest of my life.”

  “They aren’t going to find out about you being arrested,” I said quickly. “My Liaison team leader has arranged a cover story to keep what happened a secret from them. She’ll be here in a minute to take you next door to join Wesley. She’ll then explain the cover story to both of you. I’m afraid it’s heavily based on some of Wesley’s past problems, so you’ll have to admit to having done some rather silly things.”

  “Well, I suppose it’s true that I haven’t been entirely sensible.”

  I desperately wanted to say that Gregas hadn’t been remotely sensible, but heroically kept quiet.

  “You’ll also have to watch some educational bookettes on seagulls,” added Lucas.

  “Educational bookettes on seagulls?” Gregas stared at him. “Why?”

  Lucas stood up. “I haven’t had time to read the full details of the cover story myself yet, but the bit about the seagulls caught my attention. Our Liaison team leader will explain everything to you. All four parents are panicking, so Amber and I need to go and talk to them now. We’ll say we’ve discovered where you and Wesley are, and tell them the cover story.”

  I followed Lucas out of the room, and we both spent a few minutes studying the script that Liaison had sent us. Finally, Adika and my other bodyguards escorted us to the lifts.

  “I hate lying to my parents,” I said, during the brief lift ride up to our unit.

  “I know,” said Lucas. “You could just let me go and tell Nicole’s cover story to your parents. I could say that you were busy with a serious Hive emergency.”

  The lift doors opened, and we walked out. “My parents think that Gregas being missing is the biggest possible Hive emergency,” I said gloomily. “Besides, it’s unfair to make you do all my lying for me.”

  I was relieved that Adika didn’t insist on following us down the corridor towards the community rooms. Lucas paused outside one of the doors, opened it, and I saw Emili was sitting inside with my parents. The two strangers with them were obviously Wesley’s parents.

  The instant they saw me, all four parents stood up, and my mother gave me a desperate pleading look. “Amber?”

  I stopped feeling guilty about lying to my parents. I’d tell whatever lies were needed to take that frantic expression from my mother’s face and make her happy again.

  “We’ve found Gregas and Wesley,” I said. “They’d had a slight accident, and were at a medical facility, but checks showed that they only had minor bruising. They’re being discharged right now, and it didn’t seem sensible for me to insist on them travelling the extra distance to get here, so they’ll be going straight back to their rooms on Teen Level.”

  There was a sigh of relief from all four parents. “Does that mean we can call them now?” asked my father.

  “You can’t call them just yet because they’d left their dataviews back in their rooms,” I said. “They’ve got strict orders to call you the moment they get back there, but it may not be for quite a while because they’re in Green Zone.”

  “What are they doing in Green Zone, and why would they go somewhere without their dataviews?” asked Wesley’s mother, in a bewildered voice.

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  Emili moved a tray of drinks and nibbles from a nearby couch to a table by the wall. “You and L
ucas had better sit down and explain it.”

  Everyone sat down, and I took a deep breath. “This all started because Gregas and Wesley were having problems budgeting their teen living allowances.”

  Wesley’s parents gave the resigned nods of people who knew all about Wesley’s budgeting problems, but my father frowned.

  “Gregas has been complaining about the pathetic teen living allowance ever since he moved to Teen Level, but every teen does that. I didn’t realize he had real problems.”

  “I was told that Wesley has been having budgeting problems all the time,” I said. “Gregas was managing well until he made the classic mistake of buying something much too expensive the moment he got his allowance.”

  I shrugged. “A few days ago, Gregas and Wesley reached the point where they couldn’t afford to buy meals. The sensible thing would have been to go to their community centre, admit what had happened, and ask for emergency support. Gregas and Wesley didn’t want to do that though, because it would have meant attending a mandatory course on budgeting, and having a budget supervisor approve all their purchases for the next three months.”

  I waved my hands in despair. “They came up with an alternative plan of signing up for a residential activity course that would give them free food for a week or two. The only residential courses are those that have to be held at a special location in the Hive, and they’re usually booked up for months in advance, but there’d been a last-minute cancellation on one course that left two places available. This course was restricted to teens from Burgundy Zone, so Gregas and Wesley signed up giving false names and identity codes.”

  Wesley’s parents groaned. “Not again,” muttered Wesley’s father.

  I was tempted to ask what he meant by that, but decided I’d better keep telling the cover story. “This course was about the care of seagulls, so had to be held at the Teen Level beach.”

  “Seagulls?” repeated Wesley’s mother in disbelief. “But Wesley’s scared of birds.”

  “Yes. That was the fatal flaw in their plan. Gregas and Wesley were worried that something on their dataviews would give away their real identity. They decided to leave their proper ones in their rooms, and just take an old damaged dataview with them on the course. They were planning to use the damaged dataview to send last-minute excuses about missing home visits and activity sessions. They don’t seem to have thought through the fact that all their incoming messages would be going to the dataviews they’d left in their rooms.”