A second later, Forge spoke again in an irritated voice. “I still think you should have told me about Keith trying to borrow you. We agreed that our relationship would be purely sexual rather than romantic, but …”
Rothan interrupted hastily. “Forge, your conversation with Buzz is being broadcast to the entire unit.”
“Oh,” said Forge, in an embarrassed voice. “I thought I’d set my ear crystal back to receive only, but I … Perhaps the best arrangement would be to have Liaison move the Beta team to a separate comms channel, and then give us regular updates on the Alpha team’s progress finding Beckett.”
“We can do that,” said Nicole cheerfully.
Eli sighed. “I was looking forward to hearing Buzz lecture the local teens about the new arrivals. I especially wanted to hear what withering things she had to say about the disreputable Forge.”
“All communications during a run are recorded for future reference,” said Nicole.
“High up!” said Eli. “We can listen to Buzz’s warning speeches later then.”
“I’ve planned a particularly scathing speech about Forge,” said Buzz’s voice on the comms.
There was a despairing groan, which had to be from Forge.
“It’s all about how Forge was corrupted and drawn into evil ways by a dreadful girl called Simone,” added Buzz. “I shall be warning him never to associate with her ever again.”
There was a moment of thoughtful silence. “Isn’t Buzz your nickname, and Simone your real name?” asked Eli.
“That’s right,” said Buzz happily.
Caleb coughed. “I’d just like to say that if the warning speech makes Forge decide to stop associating with the dreadful Simone, then I’ll volunteer to be corrupted by her next.”
Forge laughed. “Please separate the comms now, Nicole.”
“You can stop broadcasting the crystal comms over the unit loudspeakers too,” said Lucas.
“Broadcast ended,” said Nicole. “Alpha and Beta team crystal comms are now separated.”
The interchange was approaching, so we all moved across from the express belt to the medium, then to the slow, and finally stepped onto solid ground.
“We’ll go across to the southbound belt now,” said Lucas, “If we walk beside it, heading for the boundary between Orange and Red Zones, then we may meet Beckett coming towards us. If we don’t find him by the time we reach the bulkhead doors, then we’ll need Amber to do a search for him.”
Adika led the way through the interchange to the southbound belt. We started walking north beside it, and a group of teens travelling in the opposite direction on the slow belt shouted at us.
“Wrong way, algae brains!”
Adika gave the teens a single menacing glare. They instantly fell silent, and moved across to the express belt to get away from him quickly. A moment later, I saw the express belt change from being overcrowded to completely empty. Lucas paused to frown at it.
“There doesn’t seem to be a problem with the belt system, so that sudden gap must mean everyone is getting out of the way of a nosy patrol. Let’s stop and wait for the patrol to arrive.”
A second later, I saw Lucas was right. The forbidding figure of a nosy was riding along the express belt towards us, enveloped in its ominous grey robes and mask, and surrounded by its escort of four hasties. Lucas stepped forward to wave both arms urgently at the patrol, and the five figures moved across to the slow belt, before stepping off to stand in front of him.
The nosy stared at Lucas, with its inhuman purple eyes glinting behind its mask, but didn’t speak. By now, I’d learned a lot about how the perfectly ordinary people who dressed up as nosies acted their part to be as intimidating as possible. They had a script of enigmatic phrases to use in standard situations. When in doubt, they fell back on the tactic of staring in silence at someone, giving the impression that they were reading their mind.
Before I went through Lottery and learned the truth about telepaths, I’d found that tactic terrifying. It was surprisingly unnerving even now.
“We’re a Telepath Unit Strike team on a rescue mission,” said Lucas briskly.
One of the hasties raised his eyebrows and turned to look at me. “Light Angel?” he asked in awe.
“Yes.” I felt myself blushing.
“We’re searching for someone who is lost and in distress,” said Lucas. “We’ve had a report of him being sighted near the bulkhead doors. Some teen musicians are performing there, so the area is very crowded. Can you please head back there and stand somewhere conspicuous to encourage the teens to move away?”
“I’d love to help,” said the nosy, in the creepy voice generated by the acoustic distortion system in his mask, “but I don’t want to frighten the person in distress.”
“The person belongs to Law Enforcement,” said Lucas. “He shouldn’t be worried by the sight of a nosy.”
The nosy patrol nodded and started walking north, while we trailed after them at an appropriately respectful distance. When we neared the point where the massive red and orange striped bulkhead doors were wide open, I heard the distant sound of music, and saw the performers standing on a makeshift stage of boxes. Their audience had already spotted the approaching nosy patrol, and were hurrying onto the express belt to escape. A moment later, the musicians stopped playing, seized their boxes, and hurried off too.
The nosy patrol paused by the bulkhead doors to wait for us. As we got closer to them, the patrol moved forward to intercept us, and I saw the teens riding the belt give us looks of horrified sympathy. The nosy must have noticed the looks too, because he spoke in his weirdly distorted voice.
“I feel depressingly unpopular.”
Lucas smiled. “Please stay being unpopular here for a few moments longer. I want to check a little further north.”
We walked north to the point where a voice boomed from overhead speakers. “Warning, zone bulkhead approaching!”
“There’s still no sign of Beckett,” said Lucas anxiously. “We’d better go back to where he was last seen.”
We turned to walk back to the bulkhead doors, and now we got the full effect of the red signs flashing countdown numbers to the people riding the belts. I was guiltily aware that I’d never considered those signs might be a problem for some people, or even realized how many signs there were until now.
We arrived back where the nosy patrol was waiting. “No luck then?” asked one of the hasties.
“No,” said Lucas. “We’ll need to find somewhere less public so Amber can do a search.”
“There’s a disused storage complex down that side corridor,” said the hasty, eagerly pointing the way.
We went down the corridor to the storage complex, and Adika opened the yellow double doors. We gazed into a dark void.
“Eli, get the lights on for us,” said Adika.
“Always me,” grumbled Eli. “It’s always me that gets these jobs. There’s no need for me to turn the lights on here though. Storage complexes have motion-activated lighting. Look!”
He marched forward into the darkness, and overhead lights came on in the area around him.
Lucas laughed. “And that’s exactly why we always ask you to do these jobs, Eli. You remember all these details about the lighting.”
“I could suffer a sudden memory loss,” said Eli.
“Nicole, we’ll be staying fairly still while Amber does her search,” said Lucas. “I don’t want the lights to keep going on and off, so can you override the motion activation controls for us?”
“Working on that,” said Nicole.
Seconds later, a host of lights came on to reveal a vast room. There were stacks of empty crates by the walls, and a couple of freight lifts at the far end.
Lucas led the way forward, and grabbed a pair of empty crates to use as makeshift chairs. The two of us sat down facing each other.
“Nicole, can you send plans of the general area to our dataviews?” Lucas asked.
“North or sout
h of the bulkhead doors?” she asked.
“Both, please.”
I closed my eyes and reached out past the dazzling brightness of Lucas’s mind to the glowing thoughts of my four new bodyguards. I gave myself a moment to get more accustomed to the shape, taste, colour of them before moving on to start searching, and immediately sighed.
“There’s a Blue Upway game group in a room at the east side of this storage complex. Four of them.”
“Have they seen or heard us?” asked Lucas.
“No. When all the lights came on, they realized someone must be here, so they’re hiding in some crates.”
“Nicole, please send a hasty squad to the eastern entrance of this storage complex,” said Lucas. “Tell them to give the game group a lecture and send them away.”
“Dispatching hasty squad now,” said Nicole.
I moved on from the game group, checking this level of the Hive. My telepathic view didn’t show me walls, floors, or ceilings, but the northbound and southbound express belts were obvious because of the lines of moving minds. There was a blank line running east to west which was surely the bulkhead between Red and Orange Zones.
There were a lot of minds scattered around. I skimmed across them, noticed one that was an unusually deep red, and linked to it.
… it! Waste it! Waste it! Waste …
“Nicole, can you send a paramedic to the community centre about two cors north of here?” I asked. “An activity leader has dropped some sort of machinery on her foot. She doesn’t want the embarrassment of calling for help, and thinks the pain will wear off, but I’m fairly sure she’s got broken bones.”
“Dispatching paramedic,” said Nicole. “How should we explain knowing about the injury if the activity leader hasn’t called for help?”
“Say that a nosy reported hearing the mental screaming,” said Lucas.
I’d covered a wide area north of us, so I tried searching south. There were plenty more glowing dots of minds, including one that glittered in an odd shade of bluish purple. I didn’t have to try to link to it, because the intensity of it reached out to drag me in. The number of thought levels nearly rivalled those of Lucas, but all of them from pre-vocalization down to the subconscious were saying the same thing.
… on Cee Cee purring, focus on Cee Cee purring, focus on Cee Cee purring, focus on …
Then everything else hit me at once, and I gasped. “I’ve found Beckett. He’s about three cors south of us, but his eyes are closed, so I’m not getting any visual clues. There’s lots of other sensory information though. In fact, I’m drowning in it. Beckett’s focusing on stroking Cee Cee, so there’s the warmth of fur and the rumble of Cee Cee purring, but there are at least a dozen other noises beating at me, and the smells are making me feel sick.”
Chapter Twenty-six
“Come back to us, Amber,” ordered Lucas. “Come back to us right now!”
I pulled back into my own mind, and opened my eyes. “You’re right about it being like all the senses are on too high a volume, but the amount of different information was just as bad. It was like listening to the dialogue of a dozen bookettes at the same time.”
“You clearly found it difficult reading Beckett’s mind,” said Lucas. “Does that mean there’s a problem with him joining our unit?”
“There’s no problem with him joining our unit at all. I just found the deafening volume and amount of sensory information disorienting.”
“You’ll find it much easier when Beckett’s settled in our unit and has his headset and glasses with him,” said Lucas.
“I’m not likely to be reading Beckett’s mind very often anyway,” I said. “I only read the minds of my team leaders and Strike team members on a regular basis. There are many unit members, such as Hannah, where I’ve only read their minds a couple of times, and others where I’ve only ever done the compulsory check when they joined the unit.”
Lucas laughed. “I think you’re wise to avoid reading Hannah’s mind. She must have some terrible thoughts about your untidiness when she’s cleaning our apartment, especially when she sees something like this morning’s great bookette room disaster.”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “It wasn’t that bad. I just remembered we’d left a tray of food and drink in there, went to get it, and it somehow slipped out of my hands.”
“When Hannah called me about it, she said that dropping the tray on the floor wasn’t the problem. It was your attempt to clean up the mess yourself that destroyed the carpet. She says that you must never try to clean anything again.”
I groaned. “I won’t.”
Lucas grew serious again. “We can count you reading Beckett’s mind now as being the initial check on him joining the unit. You mentioned some smells. What sort of smells were they?”
“Unpleasant,” I said. “Like when the waste chute in my teen room got blocked.”
“Beckett’s somewhere not too far from a waste chute,” muttered Lucas. “It probably isn’t blocked though. He’s just far more aware of the smell than most people.”
“There was what seemed like someone was wearing a whole bottle of lavender perfume too.”
“What about the sounds, Amber?”
“There was a repetitive throbbing sound.” I tried to imagine what that would be like if it was much quieter. “I think that could have been the sound of the express belt. Something was going bang every second or two as well. I couldn’t make sense of the other sounds at all.”
“Beckett wasn’t riding on the express belt?” asked Lucas.
“No, he wasn’t moving. He was sitting on the floor with his back to something cold.”
“Was there a carpet?”
“No.”
Lucas stood up. “I’m going to walk south alongside the express belt, Amber. I don’t want you to link to Beckett’s thoughts again. Just try to guide me towards him.”
“Rothan and Kaden can go with you, Lucas,” said Adika.
“No. I’ll need to be alone when I find Beckett.”
Adika grunted his disapproval. “Rothan and Kaden can follow you at a discreet distance then.”
Lucas sighed. “I didn’t have a very pleasant time when I lived on Teen Level, Adika, but I think I can survive it alone for a few minutes without a bodyguard.”
“Keith has already tried and failed to get you and Buzz transferred to his unit,” said Adika pointedly. “He could have set up this situation with Beckett to lure you into a trap.”
“You believe Beckett is luring me into a trap for Keith?” asked Lucas incredulously. “Do you think that Gaius is part of this conspiracy as well? Neither Beckett nor Gaius would do anything to harm me, and Beckett would be the worst conspirator in the history of the Hive. He can’t even tell the normal polite lies about someone’s hairstyle suiting them. Besides, Amber would have seen Beckett’s thoughts about the trap when she read his mind.”
“Beckett might not know it was a trap,” said Adika. “Keith could be using both Beckett and Gaius without their knowledge. Remember how Keith tricked his Strike team into arresting one of Sapphire’s people.”
Lucas was silent for a moment. “All right, Rothan and Kaden can follow me.”
I closed my eyes, and watched the beacon of Lucas’s thoughts move west. Once he reached the stream of minds on the express belt, he turned to head south. Finally, I spoke.
“You’re very close to Beckett now. Just a fraction west of him.”
“I’m standing next to a solid corridor wall,” said Lucas. “Beckett must be somewhere on the other side of it. I’ll go back to the last of the side turnings I passed.”
The glowing mind of Lucas moved north a little before turning east. He was definitely getting closer to Beckett, closer, closer, then …
“Wait!” I ordered. “You’ve just walked right by Beckett.”
Lucas stopped and went back. “Amber, could the smell of lavender have been from some sort of cleaning fluid rather than perfume?”
“Probabl
y.”
“There’s a cleaning supply room here,” said Lucas. “Beckett must have gone in there to get away from all the lights, noise, and people. The door code will be one of the standard maintenance ones.”
He paused. “Rothan and Kaden can wait at the end of this corridor while I go inside the room. I’ll be setting my crystal unit to receive only while I talk to Beckett, and reporting back to the rest of you afterwards.”
“I insist on you leaving your crystal unit on transmit,” said Adika. “In fact, I want you to set it to visual as well.”
“Keith has put Beckett through a cruelly unnecessary ordeal,” said Lucas. “I’m not adding to the damage by having everyone witness a conversation where Beckett may be deeply distressed.”
“Your safety is my responsibility, Lucas,” said Adika firmly. “Either you let me see and hear what’s happening in that room, or you take Rothan and Kaden in there with you.”
“I’d try pointing out that I’m your boss,” said Lucas plaintively, “but that tactic has never worked before.”
“And it won’t work this time either,” said Adika.
“Setting my crystal unit to visual,” said Lucas, in a resigned voice. “Nicole, please keep my visual and audio transmissions limited to yourself, Adika, Megan, and Amber unless there seems to be some sort of threat developing. This conversation is absolutely not to be included in the recording of our communications available for later reference.”
“Understood,” said Nicole. “Your visual link is green now, Lucas.”
I didn’t bother getting out my dataview to watch the images from Lucas’s camera, just linked to his mind. I usually got a better perspective on events by looking through someone’s eyes, and if there was even the faintest possibility that Keith had set up this situation to trap Lucas … Well, I needed to be checking his thoughts to make sure he was safe.
I was just in time to see the view as Lucas opened the cleaning supply room door. The lights inside were on a low setting, but I could see the room was much larger than I’d expected. There were shelves of cleaning materials along the left-hand wall, and a sink and waste chute at the far end.
Borderline (Hive Mind Book 4) Page 26