Borderline (Hive Mind Book 4)

by Janet Edwards

  “Chase team, pursue Tobias to housing warren,” ordered Lucas. “He’ll be following any corridor sign that includes the number eight. Liaison, sound the escaped prisoner alarm in that housing warren and send it into lockdown.”

  “Strike team, check your new group designations,” said Rothan, in the breathless voice of someone running. “Red group go to housing warren north, blue group south, green group east, yellow group west. Keep guns on stun, so you don’t have to worry about shooting bystanders.”

  There was a pause while he gulped in air. “Find secure defensive positions, take cover, and wait. Tobias will be taking random corridors in the maze of a housing warren. He’ll be running around in circles. We don’t run after him. We stay still and wait for him to blunder into one of our defensive positions.”

  I was still linked to Tobias. He was in the housing warren now. The escaped prisoner alarm was shrilling from overhead speakers, with a voice interrupting at intervals to repeat the same message.

  “Lockdown. Lockdown. Lockdown. Escaped prisoner. Adult male, aged nineteen, wearing hasty combat uniform. I repeat: wearing hasty combat uniform. Threat level extreme.”

  Tobias felt an instinctive reaction to the alarm. He’d been a child on Level 20, and trained to respond to the lockdown order by banging on the nearest apartment door and calling for help. The people inside would let in anyone who didn’t match the description of the escaped prisoner, and then lock and barricade their door against the threat.

  Now Tobias was the threat he’d been trained to fear. He was the one being hunted. He kept running, his thoughts screaming in panic, and colliding with walls in his haste to turn corners. He couldn’t plan his next move, he had to keep running so fast that he didn’t have time to think, because Amber would be inside his head right now, spying on him.

  A startlingly vivid image appeared of me wearing the robes of a nosy, my face looking almost normal except for purple eyes. Then I gave an unnaturally wide smile that revealed inhumanly long and viciously pointed teeth.

  I tried to block that image out, focused on the view from Tobias’s eyes, and kept calling out the numbers on the signs he saw. Logic said that I had no reason to worry about hunting down Tobias now. Logic said that my Strike team had their guns on stun so he would be captured unhurt. Logic said that Tobias was the one who might kill someone at any moment. I was getting swamped by Tobias’s emotions though, feeling his desperation at being hunted, and wanting to help him escape.

  I mustn’t help Tobias escape. I wouldn’t help Tobias escape. I focused on reporting his movements to my team.

  “Corridor 28 going north.”

  “Red group, Tobias is heading straight for you,” snapped Lucas. “Strike time. Amber, start running circuits on red group now!”

  “Going circuit,” I acknowledged.

  It was far harder than usual to escape my target’s mind. Tobias’s frantic emotions were like hooks digging deep into me, but I ripped free. My head was throbbing with pain as I opened my eyes. I urgently studied the screen of my dataview to see who was in red group.

  “Kaden.” I was hidden behind two stacks of crates, staring through the narrow gap between them, and saw the blue-clad figure of Tobias in the distance. He was …

  “Dhiren.” I was up in a maintenance crawl way, peering down through a gaping hole at the corridor below. I had a terrible view here, but I was guaranteed to take Tobias by surprise. In friend or foe holo training sessions, Tobias always made the mistake of not looking up for threats, so …

  “Caleb.” I was crouched down inside a storeroom, with the door open the tiniest of cracks. I needed to wait until Tobias went past before …

  “Kaden.” I saw Tobias pause, stare suspiciously at the door of the storeroom where Caleb was hiding, and kick it open. There was the sharp sound of a gun on kill setting as Tobias fired his gun into the room. I jumped sideways to start shooting at …

  “Dhiren.” I heard the sound of a second shot on kill setting as I dropped down through the hole, landed on the corridor floor, and …

  “Caleb.” My shoulder felt like it was on fire, and I’d dropped my gun when Tobias shot me the second time, but I launched myself at him. I knocked Tobias back through the doorway into the corridor, and …

  “Caleb is hit,” I shouted. “Left shoulder.”

  Kaden and Dhiren spoke in unison a second later. “Target secure.”

  “We’ve stunned Tobias, and we’re putting him in restraints now,” added Kaden solo.

  I was still linked to Caleb. The higher levels of his thoughts were breaking into pieces and vanishing. I was sick with fear that he was dying, but then I saw the subconscious levels of his mind moving into what looked like sleep patterns.

  “Caleb has passed out,” I said.

  “Caleb didn’t just pass out,” said Kaden. “He got caught in the crossfire and stunned by us. Tobias has shot him in the left shoulder twice on kill setting, but the shots were crucially clear of his heart, and hit in slightly different places. Caleb’s going to need surgery, but his combat armour reduced the damage enough to save his life.”

  I pulled back into my own head, and covered my face with my hands. I was used to being hit by reaction a few hours after an emergency run. This time it was hitting in only seconds.

  If Tobias had been a more accurate shot, Caleb would be dead. If we’d stayed on the northbound express belt rather than approaching through the park, several of us would be dead. Instead, Caleb would live, we’d all live, but how could I rejoice about that as a happy ending when my head was still filled with Tobias’s thoughts and emotions?

  I was seeing the situation from Tobias’s viewpoint, and thinking of the memory reset that lay ahead of him. There was no longer any hope of him going into the next Lottery and making a fresh start with a career in Hive Defence. After what had happened today, Tobias’s record would surely be flagged to prevent Lottery imprinting him for any combat role at all.

  “I’m worried about Amber,” said Adika. “She’s huddled up in a ball and crying.”

  Buzz’s voice spoke on the crystal comms. “Amber, please speak to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  I was aware of what Buzz was saying, but it was hard to think of words, let alone say them aloud.

  “Amber? Amber?” Buzz’s voice gently nagged at me. “Does your head hurt?”

  I finally managed a reply. “Yes. It’s like there’s a hammer pounding at my skull, and when I think of what’s going to happen to Tobias …”

  “I can’t believe you’re still worrying about Tobias,” said Adika. “He was planning to kill you, Amber. If he hadn’t been so incompetent, he’d have killed Caleb, and …”

  I interrupted Adika, opening my eyes to look up at him, and screaming in outrage. “Tobias had a perfect right to shoot Caleb. He had a perfect right to shoot all of us for conspiring against him. What happened to him was so unfair, so …”

  I heard what I was saying, broke off my tirade, and gasped in panic. “No, that’s wrong. Those aren’t my words. Those are Tobias’s words!”

  Chapter Forty-three

  I clutched at my head. “The day after Tobias hit me, I read his mind and discovered he’d turned wild bee. I knew that reading him had left me with his echo inside my head. It wasn’t a problem back then, just the mental equivalent of having a splinter in your finger, but now that echo has suddenly grown to be tremendously powerful. It’s not just swaying my emotions, but speaking words using my mouth. That shouldn’t be possible.”

  “It’s all right, Amber,” said Buzz soothingly. “You can trust me to help you deal with this. You can trust all of us to help you deal with this. I want you to find the area of your mind that holds Tobias’s echo, and focus on keeping it contained. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  Buzz’s voice abruptly changed from soothing to giving a crisp order. “We need to get Amber back to the unit immediately.”

  “Confirm that,” snapped L
ucas. “Bodyguards, bring Amber home as fast as possible.”

  Adika picked me up and started running. I did what Buzz had said, and searched for Tobias’s echo in my mind. It was easy to find. The size and strength of it meant it couldn’t hide. Echoes didn’t have a fixed physical form, because they were just lingering impressions of powerful personalities left on a telepath’s mind. The current appearance of this one reminded me of the beetles I’d seen in parks. It was on a vast scale, with a heavy carapace protecting it, and claws digging deep into my brain. No wonder my head was hurting so much.

  I was vaguely aware of the conversation continuing on the crystal comms. “Chase team gather on red group’s location,” said Lucas. “Liaison, we’ll need a medical team to join them and collect Caleb.”

  “A medical team is already on its way to transfer Caleb to our unit medical area,” said Nicole. “Megan has contacted Atticus, and he’s coming to carry out whatever surgery is needed.”

  “And what do we do with Tobias?” asked Rothan.

  “You can drop Tobias down the nearest lift shaft,” said Adika savagely. “Falling eighty levels to the bottom of the Hive should stop him from causing us any more trouble.”

  “Chase team will wait to hand Caleb over to the medical team,” said Lucas. “They will then take Tobias back to the Therapy Unit and remain there guarding him. Rothan, you will not, under any circumstances, release Tobias until his memory has been reset a year. Any messages to the contrary should be ignored, even if they appear to be from Gold Commander Melisande herself.”

  “Understood,” said Rothan.

  “I’ll want Buzz to go and supervise Tobias’s reset, to make absolutely sure he isn’t left with any residual memories of our unit,” added Lucas. “That naturally has to wait until she’s finished helping Amber.”

  I was concentrating on Tobias’s echo, and trying to will it into retreating to the outskirts of my mind. It seemed to be shifting its position, but I wasn’t sure whether it was going to retreat or attack. I’d never met a single echo this strong before. I felt it was studying me, looking for weaknesses, and I was sure it could sense my fear.

  Adika was still carrying me and running at a steady speed. “I don’t see how Tobias’s echo can be this powerful. Amber has read far more difficult targets in the past, and none of them affected her this badly. It was only when she’d been weakened by an accumulation of echoes that she showed fragmentation symptoms.”

  “Those more difficult targets weren’t members of Amber’s unit, and she normally only read their minds once,” said Buzz bitterly. “You may be capable of adjusting rapidly to someone changing from being friend to foe, Adika, but Amber can’t. She’s been trained to trust her Strike team with her life.”

  Buzz paused. “Amber’s trust in her Strike team is one of her greatest strengths as a telepath. It allows her to close her eyes and focus completely on target minds, while other telepaths get distracted by events happening near their physical body. In a situation like this though, Amber’s trust in her Strike team is also her greatest weakness. It makes her especially vulnerable to Tobias’s echo. It got a strong grip on her mind when she first discovered he’d turned wild bee, and reading him again this evening has hugely magnified its power over her.”

  Adika gave a grunt that seemed to mean Buzz’s explanation made sense to him. It made sense to me too. Being trained to trust Tobias was bound to hamper my attempts to defend myself.

  “I knew that hunting Tobias would be a massive strain on Amber,” said Lucas, in a voice of deep self-reproach. “She hates ordinary conflicts between her unit members, so she’d obviously find it traumatic to have her Strike team members trying to kill each other. I didn’t have any other choice though. Sapphire was available, but her team couldn’t reach the Therapy Unit in time to catch Tobias. If we’d let him escape with weapons and equipment, then Amber wouldn’t have been safe in our own unit, let alone …”

  Buzz interrupted him. “Lucas, if I’d felt you were wrong to send Amber after Tobias, I’d have argued against it. I didn’t do that because I knew you were right about Tobias being an extreme threat to Amber’s life. Now we need to focus on helping Amber. Is Megan on the crystal comms, or is she still talking to Atticus?”

  “I’m here,” said Megan’s voice.

  “Good,” said Buzz. “Is the expansion section ready yet?”

  “All the major structural planting was finished yesterday,” said Megan, “and the new security door into Amber’s apartment was installed earlier this evening. There’s still a problem with the waterfall though, and a couple of the suns aren’t working.”

  Buzz made an impatient sound. “Are the animals and birds in there yet?”

  “Yes,” said Megan. “The animal care team spent all day putting the nest boxes in place and setting up the feeding stations. We’ve delayed the fish and reptile delivery until the waterfall’s fixed.”

  Buzz made the impatient sound again. “I’ve never heard Amber mention reading the minds of fish or reptiles, so I don’t think they’re relevant. Are the animals and birds well-fed and happy?”

  “They should be ecstatic,” said Megan. “The animal care team say that our area is their equivalent of Level 1 accommodation.”

  “Wonderful,” said Buzz. “Now, we’ll need to give Amber the chance to cleanse herself of the echo of Tobias. I was expecting there to be problems after this run, so I started working on how to give Amber a break Outside before you even located Tobias. It’s not just winter Outside, but late evening as well, which means it will be freezing cold and dark. I asked Liaison to call Hive Defence and arrange for an aircraft to be on standby ready to fly Amber to one of the Hive’s outlying supply stations. The problem is that Hive Defence has warned us there’s a storm approaching.”

  “We’ve seen what those storms are like,” said Adika in alarm. “It isn’t safe to send Amber up in an aircraft during one of them.”

  “Hive Defence says this isn’t a severe storm,” said Buzz, “but even if it was safe for Amber to fly, the experience could do her more harm than good. It would be difficult enough for her to face both her fear of heights and Tobias’s echo, without adding storms as well. We’ll try taking Amber to be with the animals and birds in the expansion section until the storm moves out of our area.”

  She paused. “Are the suns in the expansion section still on at full brightness?”

  “Yes,” said Megan, “but the transition to the moons and stars programme will be starting soon.”

  “When Amber arrives back at the unit, Lucas and I will meet the lift,” said Buzz. “Everyone else needs to stay out of the way entirely. We can’t have Amber surrounded by a crowd of panicking people.”

  “I need to meet the lift as well,” said Megan. “Reading wild bees doesn’t just put severe mental stress on a telepath. It’s a physical strain on their bodies as well. I have to scan Amber to check if she needs medication.”

  “That’s true,” said Buzz grudgingly. “You can meet the lift, but you mustn’t give Amber any medication without my approval, and especially not sedation. She can’t fight Tobias’s echo if she’s unconscious. Once she’s inside the expansion section, I’d like the lights to stay at sun brightness for another fifteen minutes before transitioning to the moons and stars programme.”

  There was silence on the crystal comms after that. Adika was still carrying me and steadily running. I didn’t know if we were still in the park, moving through corridors, or on the belt system. I had my eyes closed because I was busy fending off the thoughts and emotions of Tobias.

  There was a period when I could only hear pounding feet and heavy breathing, then Tobias’s echo started slowly circling my mind. Its claws were ripping at me, leaving an agonizing trail in its wake, so I was entirely lost in pain.

  Eventually, I felt myself being passed from one set of arms to another, and then heard Adika’s voice give a sharp order. “Jump belt.”

  That was followed by another long sp
ell where I was swamped by pain, then I became aware of the distinctive sensation of being in a lift heading upwards. There was the sound of lift doors opening, and again I was passed from one set of arms to another. I felt someone kiss me on the forehead, and Lucas’s voice spoke.

  “Amber, you’re back home now. Everything is going to be all right.”

  The pain hammering at me eased. I opened my eyes and saw Lucas’s anxious face looking down at me.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Lucas repeated. “I’ll carry you to the expansion section now.”

  There was a sudden rush of footsteps from my left, followed by someone shouting. “What’s going on? What’s wrong with my sister?”

  That was Gregas’s voice! I turned my head, and saw he was running towards us, with Rafael chasing after him.

  Megan and Buzz stepped forward, their arms outspread to block Gregas’s way. “Your sister has just got back from a very challenging emergency run,” said Buzz. “You mustn’t bother her now.”

  “But Amber was screaming. I’ve never heard her scream like that before. I’ve never heard anyone scream like that before. What’s happened to her?”

  I was confused. Had I been screaming? I’d been in a lot of pain, but I hadn’t been aware I was screaming.

  Rafael caught up with Gregas and grabbed his arm in an iron grip. “I told you that you needed to stay in your apartment until the emergency run was over.”

  “But it is over, my sister’s back, and …”

  The rest of Gregas’s words were lost as Rafael dragged him away down the corridor that led to the park. I looked guiltily after them.

  “I’ve frightened Gregas.”

  Lucas gave a choking laugh. “Absolutely typical.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You’ve got the echo of Tobias trying to take control of your mind, but you’re still worrying about Gregas rather than yourself.”