I reached out past the thoughts of other unit members, searching to the west, and then expanding my range downwards to where three familiar minds were close together. I paused to check Eli’s thoughts. I’d talked to him about his operation earlier, and he was much less worried about it now. Strangely, what seemed to have reassured Eli the most wasn’t anything medical at all, but the fact that Forge and I had known Atticus on Teen Level.
I moved on to examine a distinctive mind nearby. It had a higher number of thought levels than most, but nothing approaching the dazzling complexity inside Lucas’s head. What made this mind stand out from those I’d read before was its peculiar taste, colour, texture. I hesitated, trying to analyze exactly what was different about it, and heard Lucas’s anxious voice.
“What’s happening, Amber? On emergency runs, you talk us through your contact with the target’s thoughts. I’d like you to do the same now.”
“I’m just checking the appearance of Juniper’s mind,” I said. “You were right about it being different from the minds of people in the Hive. I’ll try reading her thoughts now.”
“If you have any problems, stop at once.”
I touched Juniper’s mind, and found myself sitting on a hard chair in a white, featureless room. I was staring at a clock on the wall, my body rigid with tension, waiting for Fiona to come back.
… said that she needed to check something and would be back in a moment, but it’s been ten minutes now. What’s happened to delay her? I suppose she’s chatting to someone or …
… cruel to leave me alone like this. Doesn’t Fiona realize how stressful it was for me to travel through those endless corridors and how lost I feel? No, she probably doesn’t. She’s helped me with a lot of things, explaining all the medical procedures, the tests, and the unfamiliar food. She finds my fear of small windowless rooms funny though, which …
… and Fiona said the hangar was only one lift ride away now. It won’t be long before I escape from this windowless place with its maze of corridors. I’ll be stepping into an aircraft and going home to …
Whirling images filled Juniper’s mind. I could recognize some of them. A grove of trees. A seashell. A stream.
A few more bore a faint resemblance to things I knew. Massive gratings sliding shut reminded me of the three-monthly test closure of the bulkhead doors between the ten zones of the Hive. One image looked like a line of crates, except they had oddly ridged tops. Another showed what I’d have thought was a camp fire, but couldn’t be because it was inside a room.
Other images made no sense at all. A chessboard in shades of green. A group of overturned glass bowls on a green carpet. Something smashing against a wall, spraying it with paint.
Then terror rose up from Juniper’s subconscious and blotted out all the images.
Why did Fiona shut the door? She knows I hate it when she shuts doors. She laughs at me for wanting them left open all the time, but it makes it so much harder to …
Endless weeks of drinking lifeless recycled water. Endless weeks of breathing lifeless recycled air. I need the wind on my face and the …
Juniper’s raw emotions drew me in. They were my emotions now, my heart was racing, and I couldn’t breathe. I had to open that door however much Fiona laughed at my weakness. Having it open only made a slight difference, but it was the difference that saved me from suffocating.
I jumped to my feet, took three swift steps to reach the door, and pulled at the handle. It didn’t move. I tried again without success, and then a third time before I understood what was wrong.
The door was locked! I was trapped inside this airless coffin of a room! Why had Fiona locked me in here? Why …?
Then I realized what should have been obvious from the start. Fiona had been unusually quiet when she came to escort me through the Hive to the aircraft hangar. I’d been fool enough to think she wasn’t chattering away because she was sad I was leaving, but actually it was because she was lying to me.
Fiona hadn’t been taking me to the aircraft hangar at all. She’d lied about that so I’d willingly travel through the Hive with her. She’d tricked me into walking into this room so she could lock me in.
Why had she done that? Why had she imprisoned me in …?
The answer hit me. I’d been imprisoned in this room because the incompetent fools in Sea Farm Security had decided I wasn’t a victim but a suspect! I was locked in here so one of the creepy nosies could read my mind! The thing was probably crawling around in my thoughts right now, poking and prying into every private memory.
I hammered at the door with my right hand, and screamed my outrage. “Nosy! Nosy! I know that you’re reading my mind, nosy! How can you think I’m a suspect? How can you believe I’m the one that’s been harming people?”
I stopped hammering and focused my eyes on the black bands encasing the wreckage of my left arm. “Look at the state of my arm, nosy. Look at my hand with the three missing fingers. Do you think I did this to myself? My dream was to become a Sea Captain like my mother and father, and be in charge of my own fishing boat, but now I can never …”
The words were too painful to say, so I let my sentence trail off, and started another. “You want to know what happened that day? This is what happened!”
I focused on the memories that were still razor sharp. The memories that I knew would never be anything less than razor sharp. I’d tried to blot them out of my mind, but even when the painkillers dimmed everything else, this remained brutally clear, a living nightmare with the power to haunt my waking hours as well as my sleep.
The class had finished, so we all stood up and headed for the doorway. Perran and I were at the back of the group, and he was asking me a question when a voice interrupted him.
“The list is up already!”
We hurried to join the others gathered in the hallway. The list was conspicuously pinned to the centre of the noticeboard, and I saw my name was at the top. I’d hoped for the number next to it to be something well over eighty, but was stunned to see it was ninety-six! There were a few seconds of pure delight, with the voices of my friends congratulating me and discussing their own scores, and then Perran spoke.
“Top of yet another assessment list, Juniper. Well done!”
Perran had chosen his words to seem like praise, but I couldn’t miss the petulant edge in his voice as he said them. My delight at my result instantly soured.
“Trick or treat! Trick or treat!” A group of ten-year-olds came dancing around the hallway, screeching the words in their high-pitched voices.
We all instinctively covered our ears with our hands to protect them from the noise, and the girl on my left groaned. “Halloween was over weeks ago, but they still keep …”
I missed the rest of their words because Perran had grabbed my arm and was tugging me towards the woodworking room. “Juniper, I need to talk to you.”
I resisted for a moment before giving in and going with him. We were about to have that conversation again. The conversation where he whined and sulked until I agreed to …
No, I’d had enough of this. Our conversation was going to be entirely different this time. Several of our classmates had warned me about Perran. They’d said he was only pretending to be my friend to get me to help him with his studies. They’d said that whatever I did, however much time I spent coaching him, he’d never be satisfied. They’d been perfectly right, and I was ending this right now.
I stood in the woodworking room and watched Perran close the door on the people talking in the hallway. Our only audience now was the array of woodworking machinery.
Perran turned to face me. “You never give anyone else a chance, do you, Juniper? You always have to be top of the assessment list.”
“If you were a real friend, Perran, then you’d be pleased to see me doing well.”
“I am pleased to see you doing well. I just think someone else should have a chance to do well too.”
I sighed. “You mean you’re jealous o
f my success because you want to be top of the list yourself.”
“I’m not jealous,” he said, in a superior voice, “and I never said it should be my name at the top of the list instead of yours. You aren’t being fair to any of the rest of us.”
I was trying not to lose my temper but failing. “I’m not being fair to the rest of you? What are you suggesting? That I’ve been cheating in the assessments the way you did two years ago?”
“Of course not.”
“So what isn’t fair? We all do the same tests.”
“I explained this to you before. You should stop obsessively working to improve your own already great results, and spare some time to help others.”
I shook my head. “You said that before and I agreed to coach you. When the last list came out, you weren’t happy that you were still in second place, and wanted me to double the amount of time I spent coaching you. I agreed to that too.”
I shrugged. “The results of that assessment are on the noticeboard in the hallway. You scored seventy on the previous assessment, and now you’ve improved to seventy-nine. I hoped to get over eighty, but I spent so much time preparing for the assessment with you that I got ninety-six.”
I paused. “We’ve established that I can help you do better, but that makes me do better myself, so you still aren’t happy. What are you really saying, Perran? What do you want me to do to be fair to you? Are you asking me to make deliberate mistakes on the assessments so you can be top of the list for once?”
He flushed. “Not make deliberate mistakes, but you could be a little less careful with your answers.”
“Well, I’m not doing that,” I said fiercely. “I don’t cheat in assessments, I don’t pretend to be friends with someone to get them to do things for me, and I don’t fake bad results either. If you don’t like me getting high scores on assessments, then it’s your problem, not mine.”
I heard a massed shout from out in the hallway. “Trick or treat!”
Perran glanced at the door, then faced me again and laughed. “Trick or treat! The children are right. If you won’t help me, then you deserve to be punished.”
Perran seized my left arm and dragged me towards the row of woodworking machines. “Trick or treat, Juniper!”
He thrust my hand into the slot at the front of the nearest machine. I knew the power was off, but we’d all been taught how dangerous these machines were. I fought to pull my arm back, but Perran was stronger than me.
Then there was the sound of the machine coming to life, and my own voice screaming, screaming, screaming!
Chapter Twelve
I was screaming. Piercing, desperate, wordless screams. Invisible hands grabbed at my arms, and I screamed words this time. “Don’t touch my arm! Don’t touch my arm!”
“Amber, come back to us! Amber!” A strange voice shouted an unknown name at me.
No, I corrected myself. That wasn’t a strange voice but the voice I knew better than any other in the world. The name he was shouting wasn’t unknown but belonged to me.
The strength of Juniper’s emotions had blurred the boundaries between my mind and hers, my identity and hers, but now I pulled back my consciousness, opened my eyes, and found Lucas was standing next to me.
“Amber, what’s wrong with your arm?” he asked.
I stared at him in confusion, then looked down at where my right hand was protectively cradling my left arm. “Perran was forcing my arm into the machine and … No, I mean that Juniper was remembering him forcing her arm into the machine.”
Lucas winced. “Are you all right?”
“Mostly.” I rubbed my forehead with my right hand, stopped, and deliberately rubbed it with both hands. “Yes, I’m all right. We need to get Sea Farm Security to send Perran to the Hive at once.”
“Perran has already been sent here,” said Lucas. “He was in the third group of suspects. Morton confirmed that Perran had forced Juniper’s arm into the machine, but his intention had only been to frighten her rather than injure her. Perran had checked the power to the machine was switched off. He didn’t know someone else had tampered with the switch, so the power was still on even when the switch was in the off position.”
“Oh.” I considered that for a moment. “Even if someone else had tampered with the power switch, Perran wasn’t exactly innocent. He knew the woodworking machine was dangerous but still forced Juniper’s arm into it.”
“It’s true that Perran committed an act of recklessly cruel bullying,” said Lucas. “He was given a course of therapy before being returned to the sea farm a few days ago.”
Juniper’s memories were still vivid in my mind. “Was it really safe to send Perran back to the sea farm?”
“Once Perran’s treatment was complete, Morton carried out a second check of his mind to confirm there was no risk of him repeating his behaviour.”
Morton had been reading minds for four decades. I reluctantly accepted that he wouldn’t have made a mistake about Perran.
“So our real target isn’t Perran but the person who sabotaged the power switch?”
“Yes.” Lucas grimaced. “There’s been a series of similar incidents at the sea farm. Our target sets up traps to harm unwary people. A typical example was knives being wedged upright in a crate and covered in flour. When a man put his hand inside …”
Adika’s voice interrupted him. “Lucas, the sea farm girl is yelling and beating at the room door. I’m afraid she’ll hurt herself. What should I do?”
“You have to open the door, Adika!” I ordered. “You have to open it right now!”
Lucas looked at me anxiously. “Are you sure about this, Amber? It sounds as if the girl could be violent.”
I glared at him. “Juniper isn’t violent. She’s beating at the door because we locked her in a tiny box and she can’t breathe. Adika has to let her out at once.”
Lucas gave me a startled look. “You mean Juniper’s having a claustrophobic attack? Adika, open the door!”
There was a short pause. “The girl’s out of the room now, sitting on the corridor floor,” reported Adika.
“Juniper’s medical record didn’t mention claustrophobia, but I should have realized someone from the sea farm might have difficulties in small rooms,” said Lucas, in a voice of self-accusation.
“You shouldn’t be blaming yourself for this, Lucas,” I said. “It’s the fault of Fiona, the medical aide assigned to assist Juniper while she was at the Hive. Fiona knew that Juniper suffered from claustrophobia, but didn’t bother to put the problem on her record. She even laughed at her distress.”
“That was highly unprofessional of Fiona,” said Megan. “We should file a complaint.”
For once, I was in total agreement with Megan. “Yes, please file a complaint about Fiona, but the more urgent thing is to make sure Juniper is all right.” I took my dataview from my pocket. “Nicole, please send me Juniper’s contact information so I can call her.”
Lucas shook his head. “Amber, it wouldn’t be a good idea for you to talk to the target when you’re still suffering from identity confusion after reading her mind.”
“I’m not confused any longer, and Juniper is not a target,” I snapped at him. “She’s a perfectly innocent girl. I saw that in her mind.”
“You managed to read some of Juniper’s thoughts before you were hit by the memory of her accident then,” said Lucas. “What were they like?”
I groaned. “There was an odd colour, taste, feel to Juniper’s mind, and her thoughts included some unfamiliar images and words. Most things were clear though. Juniper was badly injured by a wild bee, and had to endure weeks of medical treatment in what’s a terrifying place for her. Fiona lied to her, claiming she was taking her to an aircraft that would fly her home, and tricking her into going into our holding cell.”
I waved my hands in a despairing gesture. “Juniper worked out a nosy was reading her mind, thought she was under suspicion of setting the traps, and was understandably upset. S
he thought about the accident to prove she was innocent.”
Lucas frowned. “You mean that Juniper deliberately threw that horrific memory at you?”
“Juniper had a right to be angry about the way she was treated by Fiona and by me. I want to talk to her and apologize.”
“I can talk to her if you wish,” said Lucas.
“I was the one who read her mind. I should be the one to apologize.”
Lucas hesitated. “If you insist on talking to Juniper, then it has to be a sound-only call, and you mustn’t tell her you’re a telepath. If Juniper learned that the nosies are fakes, we’d have no choice but to wipe the memories of recent events from her mind.”
“I know that, Lucas. I’ll tell Juniper I’m talking on behalf of the nosy. I’ll have to be as truthful as possible about why she was brought here to have her mind read, while also staying consistent with the nosy myths.”
Lucas turned to Buzz. “You’re Amber’s counsellor. What’s your opinion of this?”
Buzz had an anxious expression on her dark face as she studied me. “Amber is still distressed by what she experienced reading Juniper’s mind, but I don’t believe she’s suffering from identity confusion any longer.”
She played with a strand of her thick, black, curly hair for a moment before giving an abrupt nod. “Amber feels very strongly that Juniper deserves an explanation for how she’s been treated, and has worked out how to give that explanation safely. If we prevent Amber from doing that, it could have negative psychological consequences, so we should let her go ahead.”
“In that case, Nicole should set up the call, masking Amber’s contact information,” said Lucas. “Patch the call into the crystal comms on receive only. I want everyone to be able to hear the conversation, but Juniper should only be able to hear Amber.”
Nicole tapped at the controls inlaid into the table top, and my dataview chimed, its screen flashing the words “image disabled”. A few seconds later, the flashing stopped. Juniper had answered the call.
Hurricane (Hive Mind Book 3) Page 11