Borderline (Hive Mind Book 4)

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Borderline (Hive Mind Book 4) Page 32

by Janet Edwards


  He shrugged. “There’s only a vanishingly small chance that Game Control somehow managed to lose the report. The far more likely explanation is that Michaela didn’t report anything because she didn’t know the game master stack for Blue Upway had been stolen.”

  I gave him a bewildered look. “But Michaela must have known it had been stolen. She’d have gone back to Teen Level after Lottery to collect her old possessions and retrieve the dataviews.”

  “I don’t think Michaela went back to Teen Level to collect her possessions,” said Lucas. “She went into Lottery on the day after the Halloween festival. That was the same day that our Hive gave Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement the evidence of Hive Genex’s involvement in the attempt to kidnap you.”

  Lucas had been careful to use the neutral word evidence, but I still winced as I remembered precisely what our Hive had given to Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement. The dead body of Hive Genex’s agent, Elden. It would have been his living body if I hadn’t …

  I relived that crucial moment during the Halloween festival. My Strike team, Lucas, and I had all been wearing Halloween costumes as we hunted a wounded Elden through the Hive. He’d been a poor, broken thing by then, the pain of his physical injuries overshadowed by the agony of a mind being ripped apart by imprint overload.

  Elden had turned to look at the demonic hunt pursuing him. I was dressed as the light angel, so his eyes had focused on me as the one sign of hope in the darkness. My Strike team had been given strict orders to shoot Elden on stun, so he could be handed alive to Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement.

  I’d known exactly what would happen to Elden after that. How he’d be destruction analyzed, his body and mind picked apart cell by cell to extract as much information as possible before he was finally lucky enough to die.

  Elden had been my enemy. He’d worked on his plan to kidnap me for years. He’d nearly succeeded in taking me to Hive Genex. I’d set my gun to kill, and shot him in the head, but it had been an act of mercy rather than revenge.

  I fought to banish that too vivid memory and focus on what Lucas was saying now.

  “Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement would respond immediately to such a major breach of Hive Treaty as an attempt to kidnap a telepath,” said Lucas. “The instant the evidence was verified, an investigation team of inspectors would have flown to Hive Genex. Ambassador Paula said that the investigation team invited our Hive to send a delegation to join them. Given the importance of the situation, Hive Politics would send our delegation as fast as possible. I think Michaela came out of Lottery, was assigned to the delegation, and was flying to Hive Genex within days or even hours.”

  I frowned. “So Michaela didn’t have time to go back to Teen Level and collect her old possessions. Something similar happened to me when I came out of Lottery. I’d left all my possessions in my room’s storage locker, and I arrived in this unit and found them all in a stack of boxes in my apartment. I assumed that Megan had arranged for someone to collect them. Would someone have arranged for Michaela’s possessions to be collected?”

  “That’s an excellent question.” Lucas worked on his dataview before speaking again. “Accommodation Services has a record log for each room on Teen Level. Two weeks after Halloween, Michaela contacted them to say she’d be unable to collect her possessions within the standard six-week period because she was involved with long-running negotiations at another Hive. Accommodation Services replied that the room could remain assigned to her until next Carnival, when it would need to be refurbished ready for the incoming wave of thirteen-year-olds.”

  Lucas drummed his fingers on the arm of the couch. “Nobody has been to collect Michaela’s possessions yet. She doesn’t know the game master stack for Blue Upway is missing. She’ll assume the dataviews ran out of power and the game shut down. She’s at Hive Genex, so she won’t have seen the Hive channel 1 story about our emergency run, or heard anything about a Teen Game causing problems.”

  His forehead creased in thought. “I want to keep Michaela’s involvement a complete secret from everyone except you and me.”

  “A complete secret? You aren’t even going to mention her in your reports to Gold Commander Melisande?”

  Lucas shuddered. “Definitely not. I don’t need Gold Commander Melisande giving me a lecture on the sensitivity of this situation. I’m fully aware that we want to avoid arguments with Hive Politics.”

  He paused. “I’ll want you to do check runs of the four undercover locations tomorrow, to make sure there aren’t any problems developing. Michaela’s room is only two corridors away from Penn’s room, so you can also check the possibility that the game master stack of Blue Upway was stolen by a teen in a nearby room. The timeline pattern analysis of Blue Upway is telling us some very nasty things about the personality of its new Game Commander, so their mind should be very noticeable.”

  Lucas stood up. “Let’s get back to the Tactical office now.”

  We headed back through the unit, and found the Tactical team staring at a whole array of small holos in shades of orange and red.

  “Are those what I think they are?” asked Lucas.

  “They’re the hazard ratings of the changes to Blue Upway,” said Beckett.

  “I don’t like the look of them,” said Lucas.

  “I don’t like the look of them either,” said Gideon. “In fact, they’re horrifying me.”

  “And you were perfectly right about our target not knowing much about Teen Games,” said Emili. “That’s the only reason those hazard ratings aren’t all dark red. Our target’s first attempts to create dangers weren’t very successful because they didn’t understand how challenges worked. Unfortunately, they’re gaining knowledge with every attempt.”

  Lucas stared at the holos for a moment longer. “We’ll obviously need to do more detailed studying of the Blue Upway timeline pattern this afternoon, but the overall situation seems clear. The new Game Commander has already killed one Blue Upway player, and is working to make the game even more lethal.”

  He grimaced. “Our undercover men will be deliberately trying to attract our target’s attention, which is a dangerous game to play with someone that malevolent. If the local teens get suspicious, then our men will be in deep trouble. Tomorrow morning, we’ll send Amber and the Alpha Strike team out to do check runs of the teens in the four locations. It will be easiest for her to do that when most of them are gathered together in their local community centres doing activity sessions.”

  The Tactical team members nodded.

  “And what happens tonight in Halloween?” I asked.

  “We have to be very careful what we do with Halloween,” said Lucas, “because future Game Commanders may copy our ideas. That means we have to come up with events that are unusual and thrilling, but don’t put the players in danger or cause any problems for the Hive. Tonight, we’ll be holding the first of a series of darkness events.”

  He paused. “Most people in the Hive are afraid of the dark. That’s the natural result of most people only experiencing total darkness during power cuts, with all the related terror of knowing that no power means no fresh air arriving. You’ve personal experience of the problems this causes during a lengthy power cut, Amber.”

  I nodded grimly.

  “The Hive has tried several tactics to get people more accustomed to the dark,” Lucas continued, “such as introducing brief spells of total darkness into the Light and Dark pageants. That hasn’t been very successful, so if our Teen Game ends up making its players less scared of the dark, that will be beneficial to the Hive.”

  “What will this darkness event be like?” I asked.

  “We’re having players gather in a different set of parks,” said Lucas.

  “Using parks again is repetitive,” complained Hallie.

  “Other games send players to do challenges in groups of three or four at most,” said Lucas. “The players enjoyed the novelty of gathering in larger numbers for our Halloween parties, with their identities s
afely protected by masks and a shadowy park. We’re going to stick with that distinctive approach.”

  “We were surprised by how many players attended the Halloween parties,” said Kareem. “We need to make sure we hold the events somewhere with enough space, and there aren’t many options.”

  “There are community centre halls,” said Hallie.

  Gideon shook his head. “If we make them sit in rows in a community centre hall as if they’re waiting for a lecture, then they’ll go running back to Blue Upway.”

  Hallie gave a resigned grunt.

  “The darkness event will start with the drama of the moons and stars going out,” said Lucas. “We’ll leave the players in total darkness for one minute, and then the moons and stars come back on again to show the leader on the event stage. We’re then going to give our players the sort of challenge they’ve never had before. A challenge where each pack competes as a group against all the other packs in their zone. The better your pack does compared to the others, the more Halloween points each player is awarded at the end, and the best performing pack in each zone gets rewarded with a title.”

  “And Lucas is being cunning about the scoring system,” said Gideon. “The bigger packs have an automatic advantage, which will encourage the players to get their friends to join Halloween.”

  Lucas turned to Emili. “Can you run the hunter of souls darkness challenge sequence for Amber, please?”

  Emili went to tap at her desk, and the main screen showed Lucas in costume as the hunter of souls. “The packs will gather tonight to prove their courage. How many of your pack will venture into the darkness? Only the bravest of the packs will earn the title of Demons of their zone.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The next morning, the Alpha Strike team and I went to four different locations on Level 49, so I could check the minds of the teens in the community centres beneath me on Level 50. I didn’t find a malignant Game Commander, or any hint that the teens were suspicious of our undercover men, but I did accidentally discover a fifteen-year-old who’d been starting a series of fires in his area. Tiny ones at first, but gradually increasing in size and potential danger.

  Once we’d arrested the developing firebug, and handed him over for therapy, we returned to the unit. I had lunch with Lucas, and then his dataview chimed. A message had arrived from Beckett, with a massive quantity of statistics about the Halloween events. Lucas’s head filled with numbers as he studied them, so I decided this was an excellent time to visit my family in their unit apartment.

  I chatted with my parents for a while, and then we played a couple of bookettes, before coaxing Gregas out of his bedroom to share one of the high level meals from the kitchen unit.

  When I finally left my parents’ apartment to go to what was becoming the regular Tactical team evening meeting about Halloween events, I met Gideon in the corridor.

  “When I last saw Lucas, he was absorbed in some statistics about the Halloween events,” I said. “Did they show anything important?”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Gideon. “I’ve been sent the statistics, but I didn’t bother looking at them. A Tactical Commander is imprinted with every type of tactical role, and needs to have a functional level of ability at all of them, which is one reason suitable candidates are so rare and valuable. Tactical team members specialize in a specific area though. As Beckett would phrase it, I do people not numbers. My usual approach with statistics is to listen to what people like Lucas, Hallie, Beckett, and Telyn say, and nod wisely at intervals.”

  I laughed, and we continued to the Tactical office. Everyone else was already sitting in their usual places, so I went to join Lucas on the couch, and looked expectantly at him.

  “Early this afternoon,” said Lucas, “I called our four undercover men and told them to stop attempting Blue Upway challenges.”

  I blinked.

  “You did?” Emili raised her eyebrows. “Why are we abandoning the standard approach for shutting down Teen Games, Lucas?”

  “Because in this case it’s too dangerous and can’t possibly work. Telepath Units are normally called in to deal with a situation where a Game Commander starts a Teen Game out of genuine interest, but is irresponsibly pushing limits on challenges to the point where they endanger their players. In that case, the Game Commander’s attention will be attracted by a player that’s startlingly daring and successful at challenges, and they may well be curious enough to arrange a meeting.”

  Lucas paused. “The situation in Blue Upway is totally different. When Gold Commander Melisande gave us the job of shutting down Blue Upway, I told her that my instincts were warning me there was something horribly wrong in that game. The timeline pattern analysis has now shown us exactly what we’re facing. The new Game Commander got hold of the Blue Upway game master stack by accident, doesn’t have any real knowledge of Teen Games, and is only interested in using it to harm players.”

  He shook his head. “The new Game Commander is only spending about an hour a day working on Blue Upway, so our men stand little chance of attracting attention. Even if they did manage it, this malevolent Game Commander is never going to meet a player to present an award. Our men will just get offered more lethal challenges.”

  “I agree with what you’re saying,” said Kareem, “but I hope we have a new strategy. If we don’t, then Gold Commander Melisande is going to be seriously annoyed.”

  “We do have a new strategy,” said Lucas eagerly. “I’ve been going through Beckett’s collated statistics on Halloween. When we started the game, we estimated that Blue Upway had about thirty thousand players. Our goal was to tempt the most risk-loving five thousand of those players into leaving Blue Upway and joining Halloween. By midnight the first evening, we had one thousand players. By the morning, it was three thousand. By yesterday evening, we’d already reached our goal of five thousand players.”

  Lucas grinned. “At that point, we sent out the hunter of souls allegiance sequence, which is when the unexpected factors began hitting. We had five thousand players signed up for Halloween, but eleven thousand came to the parties.”

  “How could that happen?” I asked.

  “The players who’d joined Halloween got the message about the supposedly illegal party in their area,” said Lucas. “They must have told their Blue Upway game groups about it. A lot of those players decided to go to the parties as well.”

  Lucas waved both hands. “All the reports say that the teens loved their illegal parties, especially the excitement of running away from a hasty patrol at the end. Those who weren’t actual Halloween players rushed to join after the parties, and yesterday evening we sent out the hunter of souls darkness challenge sequence.”

  He laughed. “The idea of packs competing for a zone title has caught the imagination of the players. As I hoped, they worked out they’d have a better chance with a bigger pack, and started recruiting their friends. We’ve now reached a total of nineteen thousand players.”

  “If you insist on counting the cheats.” Beckett was sitting at his desk as usual, monitoring the running of Halloween.

  “I do insist on counting the cheats,” said Lucas.

  “What do you mean by cheats?” I asked.

  Lucas laughed again. “Some of the new players were told a Halloween contact number by a friend, and didn’t bother to go searching for one of our official Halloween masks. They just joined using an image of themselves wearing a random mask they had lying around in their room. Beckett feels that’s cheating.”

  “It is cheating,” said Beckett, with a disapproving sniff.

  “But our goal is to attract as many Blue Upway players as possible to Halloween, so we’re letting them join with any Halloween mask image,” said Lucas. “Some of our nineteen thousand players may have come from different games, but I estimate that at least fifteen thousand must be from Blue Upway.”

  Lucas paused. “That means we’ve attracted the attention of half the players of Blue Upway, and our undercover m
en have reported another development. As I said earlier, the new Game Commander has little knowledge of Teen Games, and is only spending about an hour a day working on Blue Upway. The game has only kept running smoothly because most of the routine work, such as allocating points, has been delegated to several hundred of the higher-ranked players.”

  Telyn gasped. “And those players got their high ranks by doing dangerous challenges. They’re the ones most attracted to Halloween. You mean we’ve stolen all the players who were doing the work of running Blue Upway?”

  “Exactly,” said Lucas. “When I talked to our undercover men, they told me that points allocation has virtually halted in Blue Upway. The players won’t keep doing challenges if they aren’t getting rewarded with points and promotions.”

  He continued in a triumphant voice. “That means we just need to hold the interest of the current fifteen thousand players for a few more days, then everyone else from Blue Upway will come to join them, and the Game Commander of Blue Upway will have no one left to kill.”

  “If you’ve told our four undercover men to stop attempting Blue Upway challenges, does that mean they’re coming back to our unit?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” said Lucas. “We don’t need our undercover men to infiltrate Blue Upway any longer, but we do need them to infiltrate Halloween. I told them to rest for the remainder of the day and come along to the next darkness event tonight.”

  I was confused. “Why do we need our undercover men to infiltrate our own game?”

  “So they can chat to other players and find out information about Blue Upway’s Game Commander,” said Lucas. “That person enjoys having the power to harm people. Over the last two months, they’ve been steadily escalating their behaviour to the point where they’ve killed someone. If we stop them using Blue Upway to put players in danger, they’ll just find a new way to hurt people. Our case won’t be over until we catch this person and stop them from ever harming anyone again, so …”

 

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