Borderline (Hive Mind Book 4)

by Janet Edwards

  “It’s no good trying to bribe me with dreamcakes, Lucas,” said the newest member of the Tactical team, Telyn. “I never had any involvement with Teen Games at all. I wasn’t even living on Teen Level for most of my final year before entering Lottery.”

  She sighed. “I had an accident during the huge Blue Zone power cut, and injured my leg so badly that I needed a series of reconstructive operations. I was given a special dispensation to let me spend the next eight months living with my parents so they could support me through the surgery.”

  I winced in sympathy. There’d been a lot of accidents in the darkness during the Blue Zone power cut, and a friend of mine had been badly injured like Telyn.

  “Statistically we were virtually certain to have some Blue Upway game players in our Strike team,” said Lucas. “We’re exceptionally lucky to have the Blue Upway Champion with us, and we couldn’t expect to have its original Game Commander in our Tactical team as well.”

  He frowned. “There’s something puzzling me, Forge. Established Teen Games have selected players acting as recruiters, looking out for promising teens to invite to join the game. With a new Teen Game though, the Game Commander has to recruit the first players personally, and normally protects their own identity by inviting teens from distant areas of their home zone.”

  Lucas paused. “The Game Commander won’t know anything about the teens in those areas, so they just issue blanket invitations to random corridors of older teens. If you got a card of instructions pushed under your door, Forge, then Amber should have got one too, but she’d never heard of Teen Games before the last emergency run.”

  “Amber might have got a card and not realized what it was about,” said Forge.

  Lucas turned to me. “Do you remember getting any strange cards pushed under your door back then, Amber?”

  “No, and I’m sure I’d have remembered something that unusual,” I said.

  “Now I stop and think about it,” said Forge, “I doubt my friend Atticus got a card either. He was like Amber, much too law-abiding to be a game player, but I’m sure he’d have mentioned anything odd like that to me.”

  “So these cards weren’t being pushed under every door in a random corridor,” said Lucas. “You were chosen to get an invitation, Forge. What were the instructions?”

  “If I wanted to join Blue Upway, I had to write my game name and the identification number of an anonymous dataview on the card, and leave it at a drop point. If I wanted the chance to impress the Game Commander and skip to a high rank, then I had to donate a second anonymous dataview to Blue Upway as well.”

  “What’s an anonymous dataview?” I asked.

  “When you buy a new dataview, it’s on factory settings, so there’s no personalization at all until you enter your identity code,” said Lucas. “That’s an anonymous dataview. Everyone involved in Teen Games uses them, because you can send and receive messages using just the dataview identification number. That means the other players, and even the Game Commander, only know your game name rather than your real identity.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Teen Game players seem totally obsessed with secrecy. Don’t they trust each other at all?”

  “It’s not that they don’t trust other players,” said Forge. “It’s that they’re worried about nosies reading their minds. Hiding true identities from each other is an act of mutual protection.”

  “Teen Game players are aware that Law Enforcement tolerates a little game playing,” said Lucas. “They believe nosy patrols will challenge anyone they catch thinking about major acts of trespass though. I assume that idea is encouraged by the same sort of staged encounter with a nosy patrol that we saw on our last emergency run.”

  “That’s right,” said Buzz. “Law Enforcement gets plenty of reports about game players. Those can come from people working on Teen Level, other teens genuinely worried that their friend could get hurt, or a teen with a grudge against the player. Whatever the reason for the report, nosy patrols publicly challenge some of the worst offenders.”

  “I can understand game players thinking the best way to hide identity information from nosies is to make sure they don’t know the information themselves,” I said. “That means anyone wanting to play a Teen Game has to buy a brand new dataview though. In fact, Forge needed two brand new dataviews. One to play Blue Upway, and a second one as a donation. How could you afford to pay for two new dataviews on your Teen Level allowance, Forge?”

  Forge made a choking noise. “I couldn’t. Game players don’t buy brand new dataviews. They get a damaged dataview that someone has trodden on or dropped in water, and restore it to factory settings. You don’t need everything on the dataview to be working properly to play a Teen Game. You just have to be able to take some images and send messages.”

  Lucas was looking thoughtful. “The fact Forge was asked to donate an anonymous dataview does confirm he was one of the very first players of Blue Upway. Game Commanders are aware of the risks of having hundreds or even thousands of players sending messages to each other about their game group plans. They take extra precautions to protect everyone’s identities by relaying all game communications through a whole series of anonymous dataviews called the game master stack.”

  He paused. “That means a Game Commander needs a lot of anonymous dataviews. Ideally, those dataviews need to come from entirely different sources, so they don’t give any clues at all to the Game Commander’s location. The best way to achieve that is to get the first players to donate anonymous dataviews.”

  “The other three teens in my game group were all among the first players of Blue Upway too,” added Forge. “During my first few trips with them, I noticed they were all remarkably good at climbing. Eventually, I discovered we’d all done some of the advanced cliff climbs on the Teen Level beach.”

  Lucas’s eyes widened. “You couldn’t possibly pick a group of four random teens and end up with them all having a history of cliff climbing. The Game Commander of Blue Upway didn’t recruit the first few players of Blue Upway at random, but gave invitations to Blue Zone teens who’d proved they were risk-takers by doing advanced cliff climbing. Do you know who has access to the lists of cliff climbers?”

  “Yes,” said Forge, “but I’m afraid the answer won’t help us. You have to book slots for the advanced cliff climbs in advance, so the instructor can check you’ve got the appropriate prior experience. To avoid any confusion or arguments, the full day’s schedule for each of the advanced climbs is displayed on a noticeboard, and that schedule includes the name and room information of every climber.”

  Lucas groaned. “You’re saying that anyone could go to the Teen Level beach, look at that schedule, and make a note of climbers from Blue Zone?”

  Forge nodded.

  “All right,” said Lucas. “Let’s move on to the issue of who goes undercover into Blue Upway.”

  Both groups of Strike team members looked hopefully at him.

  “Gold Commander Melisande has told me that our unit’s first priority is closing down Blue Upway,” Lucas continued, “but we all know the reality is that we’ll still need to cover any emergency calls that other units can’t handle. That means we’ll need to keep the full Alpha team available.”

  There was a massed sigh from the direction of the Alpha team.

  “Four of the Beta team will be going undercover,” said Lucas. “Three of them will be Penn, Amir, and Yosh.”

  Penn, Amir, and Yosh yelled in triumph.

  Lucas looked at Adika. “Would you be willing to allow Forge to go undercover? I realize there could be an impact on the Beta team’s training.”

  Adika was silent for a moment before speaking. “Rafael could take over the training duties for a short period. I’ll allow Forge to go undercover until the New Year festival, but I’ll want him back here after that. We expect our unit to be under increased pressure doing emergency runs then, so I’ll need both my deputies available.”

  “Agreed,” said Lucas. �
��Forge, you’re going undercover for a limited period.”

  Forge raised his arms in celebration.

  “Using Forge and Penn has the advantage that they’ll be familiar with many of the Blue Upway challenges,” said Lucas. “That should help them attract the Game Commander’s attention, but they’ll be going back to the zone where they lived as teens. We can’t risk them being recognized, so I’ll need their formal consent to immersion disguise measures.”

  “I consent,” chorused Forge and Penn.

  “I don’t,” said Buzz. “It could take weeks for Forge to get back to his normal appearance after an immersion disguise. What would you do to him anyway?”

  “That’s Liaison’s decision,” said Lucas.

  “We’d probably only need to use hair dye, coloured contact lenses, and some long-lasting cosmetics,” said Nicole. “I think we could make Penn a convincing red-head, while Forge could go ash blond.”

  “I don’t want a blond Forge,” complained Buzz.

  “You can discuss disguise details with Nicole later,” said Lucas, “but Liaison will have to make a decision tonight. Beckett is currently working on the integration of the geographical pattern analysis of Blue Upway, and expects to send the completed version to us early tomorrow morning. I’ll then meet with my Tactical team to study the geographical pattern and choose the four locations that have the highest concentration of Blue Upway game players.”

  Lucas paused. “That means Forge, Penn, Amir, and Yosh need to be ready to go undercover tomorrow afternoon. We can’t afford to follow the standard approach of them waiting around on Teen Level for weeks to be noticed and invited to join Blue Upway. We have to get them recruited immediately, so I’m not just planning to send them into areas of Blue Zone that are hot spots of game activity, but to help their chances by staging a dramatic arrival.”

  Lucas smiled. “Our undercover men will be escorted to Blue Zone by a large group of hasties, who will take each man to their teen room in turn. At each room, the teens living in that corridor will be called together and lectured about the bad character of the new arrival. They’ll be told about their history of rule-breaking, including excessively reckless behaviour in some game other than Blue Upway, which has led to them being punished by being moved to a different zone. The teens will then be ordered to avoid the new arrival. I expect the news to spread rapidly, so our men are contacted by their nearest Blue Upway recruiter.”

  “Can I play the part of the hasty giving the lecture about Forge’s bad character?” asked Buzz.

  Forge cringed. “Oh, no. I’m doomed.”

  Lucas laughed. “You can give all four of the lectures, Buzz.”

  “Then all four of us are doomed,” said Forge, in resigned tones.

  “We’re doing everything we can to get our undercover men quickly recruited into Blue Upway,” said Lucas, “but it won’t be easy to find clues to the Game Commander’s identity. We have increasing numbers of players being injured attempting Blue Upway challenges, so my Tactical team will need to find a way to deter teens from playing the game until we’ve caught our target.”

  I frowned. “I thought it wasn’t possible to deter them, Lucas. You said that giving warnings about the danger would just make Blue Upway more attractive to risk-taking teens.”

  “It would. I wasn’t thinking about giving warnings but distracting them with something like special teen events or …” Lucas broke off his sentence and shouted. “That’s it!”

  “What?” I asked in confusion.

  Lucas began gabbling single words. “Brilliant. Answer. Warn. Halloween.”

  He’d gone into the minimal speed speech he loved using with me to save time. I automatically linked to the pre-vocalization level of his mind to fill in the gaps between words.

  “You’ve never mentioned a Teen Game called Halloween to me before, Lucas,” I said.

  There was a chorus of groans from the watching crowd, especially the Tactical team members. “Perhaps Lucas could say his side of this conversation aloud for the benefit of non-telepaths,” said Emili pointedly.

  “Apologies,” said Lucas. “I was saying that Amber is brilliant. The answer is that we don’t warn teens not to play Blue Upway. We warn them not to play a Teen Game called Halloween.”

  “Just like Amber, I’ve never heard you mention that game before,” said Kareem.

  “I’ve never mentioned it before because it doesn’t exist,” said Lucas eagerly. “We issue warnings, or even better actual orders, to teens not to play Halloween. No truly risk-addicted game player will be able to resist an officially forbidden game named after the Hive’s ominous festival of darkness and death.”

  I gave him a bewildered look. “But you just said that Halloween doesn’t exist.”

  Lucas grinned. “It doesn’t exist now, but it will exist by tonight. My Tactical team will be running it. Blue Upway has about thirty thousand players, but it’s the most reckless teens who are attempting dangerous challenges and getting hurt. If we can lure the most risk-loving five thousand players into moving to Halloween, then the injury rate should drop drastically.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  That evening, Lucas and I went to the Tactical office to start Halloween. When we walked into the room, I saw Nicole was sitting in her powered chair at one of the spare desks. She was looking tired, and I realized it was days since I’d last seen her walking. Megan was right about the urgency of filling the vacant deputy Liaison team leader position.

  “Nicole, the candidates for our unit vacancies will be coming tomorrow for me to do the initial check on their minds,” I said. “Are you happy with Megan’s preferred candidate for your deputy?”

  “I’ve checked Akiko’s details, called her, and we had a useful discussion of how she can best support me in my team leader role,” said Nicole. “She seems perfect, but of course everything depends on what you see in her mind. We really mustn’t have a repeat of the problems we had with Fran.”

  “I promise I won’t inflict another Fran on you,” I said.

  Lucas and I went to sit on a couch facing the main screen. That was currently blank except for a time display of days, hours, minutes, and seconds that was frozen at zero.

  Lucas smiled happily at me. “We want Halloween to have an irresistible appeal to Teen Game players. We aren’t just ordering them not to play it, but making it different from all the other Teen Games. We won’t be littering Teen Level with invitation cards. Players will need to go out and hunt down the invitations themselves, and those invitations aren’t cards but Halloween masks.”

  Lucas’s Tactical team were all sitting at their desks. Emili came over and handed me a mask. Teens usually collected basic coloured masks from their local community centre and decorated them for the festivals of Carnival and Halloween. At first glance, I thought this was a basic red Halloween mask, but then I noticed the symbol at the centre front. A black skull with the red eyes of the hunter of souls.

  “The instructions are stamped on the other side,” said Lucas. “The player has to prove themselves worthy of joining the demon pack by taking an image of themselves wearing their mask and standing by a direction sign on Level 1.”

  Gideon smiled. “The hasty patrols on Level 1 are going to hate us for flooding them with trespassing teens.”

  “The potential player then follows the standard procedure of sending the image and their details to the dataview identification number on their invitation,” said Lucas.

  Emili went back to her desk. “We obviously don’t need to bother using chains of anonymous dataviews to protect our identities. We’re just giving out a hundred different contact numbers so we can monitor the distribution of our players across the Hive.”

  Lucas picked up his dataview. “It’s eight o’clock in the evening, so all the teens will have returned home from their community centre activity sessions, eaten, and be talking with their friends. It’s time to start Halloween and give them something to talk about. Is your Liaison t
eam ready, Nicole?”

  “We’re ready.”

  Lucas gave me a joyous grin. “Would you like to give us a countdown, Amber?”

  I laughed. “Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Now!”

  Nicole touched a control on her desk, and I saw the time display on the main screen start counting the first seconds.

  “My team is now sending out two messages,” said Nicole. “The first message is to all the Teen Level hasty patrols, telling them to start hiding their stockpile of invitation masks in places like air vents and maintenance areas. The second is a public service message to every teen, ordering them not to play a dangerous Teen Game called Halloween.”

  “Dutiful teens will ignore the message entirely,” said Lucas. “The risk-addicted players will be urgently contacting their game groups though, asking if anyone knows about Halloween.”

  He paused. “My team can now send Emili their predictions on how long it will take for the first player to find an invitation, follow the instructions, and join Halloween.”

  The Tactical team all grabbed their dataviews and tapped busily, then Emili spoke. “We have predictions ranging from thirty-seven minutes to one hour twelve minutes, and a wildly optimistic six minutes from Lucas.”

  Hallie frowned. “It’s impossible to find an invitation on Teen Level, get to a Level 1 direction sign, take an image, and send details to us in six minutes.”

  “I totally agree,” said Lucas cheerfully. “I’m guessing the one hour twelve minutes estimate was from Gideon.”

  “I was assuming that players would stop to think for a while before trying to join an officially forbidden Teen Game, but …” Gideon shrugged. “You’re right. I’m a seventy-year-old defence specialist, not a seventeen-year-old future Strike team member, so I should have gone for more like fifty minutes.”