“I wouldn’t describe sending thirty thousand teens trespassing in maintenance areas as a little rule-breaking,” I said acidly. “Especially when those thirty thousand teens include my brother!”
“I agree that Blue Upway has gone well beyond the acceptable limits for a Teen Game,” said Lucas.
“Blue Upway hasn’t just gone beyond the acceptable limits,” I ranted. “I’ve just worked out that it caused all the problems with both Gregas and Tobias. Gregas got drawn into playing Blue Upway and going into the air vents. That game was the reason he met a wild bee, got triggered into being a borderline telepath, and then arrested by Mira’s Strike team.”
I paused for breath. “Tobias got left behind because a Blue Upway game group caused an emergency run. That game was the reason he was dropped from the Alpha team, lost his temper, and accidentally hit me.”
Lucas cowered. “Please don’t get angry with me about those things, Amber. I’ve been doing my best to help.”
For a moment, I thought this was Lucas’s standard comic routine of pretended fear, but then I realized he was genuinely scared that I was angry with him. We were getting close to the New Year festival, so Lucas was afraid of his own shadow.
I hastily forced my voice back under control. “I’m not angry with you, Lucas. I deeply appreciate how much you’ve helped. I’m just saying that Gold Commander Melisande is right. We have to shut down Blue Upway as fast as possible.”
Chapter Nineteen
After breakfast the next morning, Lucas and I met Adika by the lifts. We went down the two levels to Industry 3, and walked back to the waiting room we’d used the previous day. The chairs were still organized into a circle, and Buzz and Megan were sitting there waiting for us.
As Lucas and I sat down, Megan started speaking. “Tobias has had plenty of time to calm down now, Amber, so you should get a clear idea of his psychological state.”
“You’ll be reading Tobias’s mind from in here,” said Adika firmly. “Please don’t suggest seeing him in person, or try to find ways to keep him in this unit. Gold Commander Melisande has given me detailed orders about ensuring your safety, and …”
I lifted a hand to stop him. “I accept that I can’t see Tobias in person, or keep him in this unit. I wish you and Megan hadn’t reported what happened to Gold Commander Melisande. It was completely unnecessary and could have got everyone into trouble.”
“A member of my Strike team hit my telepath,” said Adika harshly. “As Strike team leader, it’s my duty to report such an incident to Gold Commander Melisande whatever the consequences for myself or anyone else.”
“And as your personal doctor, it’s my duty to report any illness or injury,” added Megan.
“I suppose that’s true,” I said grudgingly. “Well, I’ll carry on and read Tobias’s mind now.”
I closed my eyes. I’d been trained to run circuits of my Strike team, automatically linking to each of their minds in turn as I thought of their name. I must have linked to Tobias’s mind that way hundreds of times, but this time I thought of his name and nothing happened.
“Something’s wrong.” I opened my eyes in alarm. “I’ve just failed to make a circuit link to Tobias. Are you sure he’s all right?”
Megan frowned. “Tobias is being kept in double sets of restraints, so he’ll be uncomfortable, but he was perfectly healthy and sitting up in a chair five minutes ago. His guards are watching him continuously. I hope that none of them …”
“My men are furious with Tobias,” said Adika. “They’ve made a few rude comments to him, but they wouldn’t go as far as harming him.”
“I’m sure that no one has harmed Tobias,” said Lucas, in an odd voice. “I think we have a different problem here. I suggest Amber tries using a standard search to find Tobias.”
I closed my eyes again, and this time I reached out past the bright glow of Lucas, and the hard granite of Adika, to the familiar thoughts of four Strike team members on guard duty. Close by them, was a mind that flared red with the distinctive look, sound, taste, scent, touch that I’d met so often on emergency runs. A mind that wanted revenge against the jealous rivals who’d conspired against him, destroyed his career, and now had him locked in a holding cell. A mind that raged against the telepath who must have known what they were planning, but did nothing to stop them.
“Tobias has turned wild bee,” I wailed in despair. “He hates me. He hates all of us. He thinks we deliberately destroyed his career, and he wants to take his revenge by destroying us. How could this have happened?”
Lucas glanced pointedly at Megan and Adika. “You should leave Buzz and me with Amber.”
Adika instantly stood up and left the room, while Megan gave a hesitant look at me before following him. When the door closed behind them, Lucas came to kneel on the floor in front of me and take my hands in his.
“You’ve always avoided thinking through certain truths about your Strike team members, Amber. Do you remember what I said about Teen Games, and how the Hive permits them because they provide an important outlet for the teens who are rebels and risk-takers? Without that sort of outlet, they could have serious clashes with authority during their years on Teen Level.”
“Yes, I remember.”
Lucas gazed intently into my eyes. “Some teens aren’t just rebels and risk-takers though, but also have a potential for violence. In their case, it’s essential to provide suitable outlets during their teen years, because pent up frustration could trigger them into becoming wild bees. Once these teens reach Lottery, their potential for violence is controlled and channelled into roles like Strike team member, where it’s beneficial to the Hive.”
Lucas had discussed the issue of Lottery selecting Strike team members with a potential for violence with me before. He was right that I’d been avoiding thinking that through. I didn’t like thinking about it now either.
“Going through Lottery usually ends the problems,” said Lucas. “Tobias is one of the rare cases where a refusal to adapt to circumstances in the critical first year after Lottery meant frustrations kept building.”
He paused. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice a change in Tobias’s mind during the last few weeks, Amber. You should have found it becoming disturbingly stressful to read his thoughts.”
“The last time I read Tobias’s mind in detail was during our last case. I did find it disturbing, but I thought that was because we were in a tense situation. I didn’t realize …”
I groaned. “This is my fault for making Adika give Tobias a second chance. The incident at the lift triggered him into turning wild bee. If we reset his memory to before that happened, it will fix my mistake, and we’ll be able to transfer Tobias to Hive Defence.”
Buzz coughed. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Amber. This isn’t a case of one incident triggering Tobias into turning wild bee. He’s been causing problems ever since he came out of Lottery. In fact, the warning signs were already present in his Lottery test results.”
“They were?” Lucas went back to his chair. “I didn’t notice any warning signs when I went through Tobias’s Lottery test results.”
“I’m a specialist forensic psychologist,” said Buzz. “Your Tactical Commander imprint won’t include the holistic net analysis method I used to assess Tobias’s test results yesterday.”
“I freely admit that I’ve never even heard of holistic net analysis,” said Lucas.
“It’s not one of the popular analysis techniques,” said Buzz. “I have a personal liking for it because I find it especially compatible with the insights I get into people’s minds.”
She shrugged. “Well, when I ran a holistic net analysis on Tobias’s Lottery test results, and compared his stability with the selection criteria for Strike team candidates, his scores were barely above the minimum cut off point. When I ran the identical holistic net analysis on Forge’s Lottery test results, his scores were vastly higher, as you’d expect for someone imprinted for Strike team leader.
”
Lucas raised his eyebrows. “You analyzed your boyfriend’s Lottery test results. Doesn’t that breach the guidelines on professional conduct?”
Buzz gave him a look of exaggerated innocence. “I needed to run an analysis on a random member of the Strike team for comparison purposes, and my randomisation process happened to select Forge as my test subject. I would have repeated the randomisation process to get a different test subject, but I had limited time.”
Lucas sighed. “There’s really no need to lie to me, Buzz. You must know that I’d never report you for breaching guidelines. Your counselling has helped Amber so much that I feel you’re irreplaceable.”
“Well, the fact is that I have trust issues when it comes to relationships,” said Buzz. “I was totally unnerved when I saw Tobias hit Amber, and ran an analysis on Forge to reassure myself that he wasn’t likely to throw punches at me.”
“Forge would never punch you,” I said indignantly.
“I assume Buzz needed reassurance because of the life-threatening experience she mentioned having as a child,” said Lucas.
Buzz nodded. “I’d normally have been treated by having my memory reset, but the incident had triggered my borderline telepathic ability. That meant I could only have standard therapy, which didn’t help me at all.”
“Why didn’t the standard therapy help?” asked Lucas.
Buzz winced. “The incident had been covered up in the usual way. My therapist knew I was telling the truth about what had happened, told my parents to take my distress seriously, and advised them on how to help me. My parents believed I was telling lies and pretending to have nightmares because I wanted attention, so they did the opposite of everything the therapist said, jeering at me when I got upset.”
All my sympathies were with Buzz now. “That must have been horrible for you.”
“It was a mess,” said Buzz. “Anyway, my insights, my holistic net analysis, and Amber’s telepathy all agree that Forge would never harm me. Unfortunately, Tobias’s Lottery results show he was far less stable than Forge during testing, and his problems have been building since he joined our unit. By the time the incident at the lift happened, he’d reached the point where virtually any negative experience would trigger him.”
She grimaced. “If we reset Tobias’s memories back a day or two, and Adika tells him that he’s being transferred to Hive Defence, then I guarantee the news will trigger Tobias into turning wild bee again.”
“So, what do we do?” I asked.
Buzz stared down at her elegant fingernails. “I don’t want to risk damaging our counselling relationship by making the decision on Tobias’s treatment myself. It’s best if he’s transferred to the nearest specialist Therapy Unit for another forensic psychologist to do a thorough, independent assessment. There are limited options available in a case like this, so I can guess what their final conclusion on his treatment will be, but I want you to be absolutely sure that every possibility has been carefully considered.”
“What are the options?” I asked.
Buzz lifted her head and studied me in silence without speaking.
“I promise I won’t hold whatever you say against you,” I said. “The other forensic psychologist will be making the final decision on Tobias. I’m just asking you to tell me the options.”
“I believe there are only two options for treating Tobias,” said Buzz. “Strike team members are selected, imprinted, and trained to be deadly fighting machines. When they’re working for the benefit of the Hive, that’s good, but when one goes wild bee …”
She waved her hands. “Well, Tobias is now a lethal threat. Our priority must be ensuring he doesn’t endanger other members of the Hive, and especially you.”
“So what are these two options?” I asked.
“The first option is containment. Tobias’s imprint would be removed, and he’d be kept securely confined for life.”
“Removing an imprint messes up all the personal memories associated with it, and confining Tobias for life …” I made a sick sound.
“We can’t leave Tobias with the imprint of a Strike team member,” said Buzz sadly. “Those imprints include full details of every type of armed and unarmed combat.”
I buried my face in my hands, and felt the soreness of my cheek where Tobias had hit me. I still believed he’d done that by accident, but now he wanted to kill me and everyone else in my unit, and he was imprinted with a hundred ways to do it.
“Even worse,” Buzz continued, “Strike team imprints have details of all the most vital equipment in the Hive. That information is intended to help a Strike team member defend the equipment, but …”
I lifted my head again. “I can see how the information could be misused to attack rather than defend. What’s the second option for treating Tobias?”
“The second option is to attempt to salvage Tobias as a useful member of society. This would involve resetting his memory a year, giving him therapy, and letting him go through Lottery again. Unravelling his memory chains back to a point before Lottery would mean his imprint was automatically removed along with all his other memories of the last year, and there’d be no resulting confusion. It would be as if Tobias had been asleep for the last year.”
“Why go back a whole year rather than just to last Carnival?” I asked.
“Going back a whole year has the advantage that Tobias’s memory would be consistent with the current point in the Hive year,” said Buzz. “There would be less jarring reminders of his memory loss, and crucially he’d forget all the events he attended before the last Lottery.”
She paused. “Tobias must lose the memories of his previous Lottery preparations. If he goes into the next Lottery with the same inflated ego and sense of self-entitlement as last time, then he’ll follow the same pattern of behaviour again. He has to make a completely fresh start with therapy that encourages new attitudes.”
“Tobias’s attitudes weren’t just built up in the months before the last Lottery though,” said Lucas. “The seeds of them had been sown years earlier. How can therapy overcome that?”
“You can reset someone’s memory for a few days, and make sure they never notice anything has happened,” said Buzz. “You can’t stop people noticing a missing year though, so you either have to tell them a cover story or the truth. In Tobias’s case, he has to be told the truth, or at least most of the truth. He can’t learn that he belonged to a Telepath Unit, because there’d be a risk of him starting his new life with a grievance against telepaths.”
She shrugged. “The obvious treatment plan would be for Tobias to be told he was assigned to a combat position in a standard Hive Security Unit, and became bitterly jealous of his brother having a post in a Telepath Unit. That resentment made him perform so badly that he was given a temporary disciplinary suspension, after which he lost his temper and attacked non-combatant members of his own unit. His record could be adjusted to show that version of events.”
“What about Tobias’s family though?” I asked. “They know he was on my Strike team.”
“Tobias’s parents and brother all belong to Law Enforcement,” said Buzz. “They’d understand the need for the full truth to be withheld from Tobias. I expect they’ll decide to break contact with him entirely though. Tobias has been pushing the family bond to breaking point for months, and they’ll be utterly disgusted by him attacking his own telepath.”
“Tobias didn’t intend to hit me,” I said.
“It may be true that Tobias only hit his telepath because he was trying to punch his Tactical Commander,” said Buzz carefully. “I don’t think Tobias’s family would be impressed by that excuse though.”
“You’re right.” I groaned. “That means Tobias’s family will disown him for an action that he can’t even remember, and he’ll end up spending the New Year festival alone.”
“Yes,” said Buzz. “This treatment approach would mean that everyone and everything would be reinforcing the same message to Tobia
s. He has failed in every possible way. He has betrayed his Hive and shamed himself. It’s a brutal tactic, deliberately designed to destroy Tobias’s confidence, but it’s a choice between breaking his ego or confining him for life.”
I nodded sadly.
“Tobias would then spend three months on Teen Level being closely monitored while he comes to terms with his failure,” said Buzz. “If he appeared to be responding appropriately to therapy, and aiming to redeem himself rather than blame the situation on others, then he would go through the next Lottery.”
I frowned. “But what if Tobias doesn’t respond to therapy?”
“There’d then be another full assessment, to consider whether a second reset was needed, taking him back an additional year or two.” Buzz’s voice took on a more positive note. “I doubt that a second reset would be necessary though. I came out of Lottery two years before you, Amber. I’ve worked with several similar cases where this approach to treatment was successful.”
“So Tobias would go through the next Lottery as a repeat candidate,” said Lucas. “He’d need to have his record flagged to prevent Lottery imprinting him for Strike team again.”
“Definitely,” said Buzz. “An appropriate specialist would decide if any other professions should be flagged as excluded as well.”
I sighed. “Resetting Tobias’s memory to give him a second chance has to be better than a lifetime of captivity.”
“When the second forensic psychologist has completed their treatment plan, will you want to approve it before they proceed with the reset?” asked Buzz.
“If the treatment plan matches what you’ve just told me,” I said, “then the psychologist can go ahead immediately. If there are significant differences, then I’ll want to know what they are.”
Borderline (Hive Mind Book 4) Page 19