The covers were in place over the aircraft windows, with slight gaps left for us to peer out into the dimly lit hangar. I stared across at the flying hospital. “Why isn’t the operation over yet? It was supposed to be finished an hour ago.”
A weary-voiced Megan answered me on the crystal comms. “We were about to close up, but we discovered some more internal bleeding. There’s just a bit more patching to do now.”
“Hopefully you and Atticus will be out of there before our target comes,” said Adika.
“We aren’t going anywhere for at least another day,” said Megan. “Our patient will need the life support facilities and blood salvaging system in the flying hospital to survive the crucial first stage of the accelerated healing process. Since Atticus has had to do most of the operating, the plan is that I’ll take on the brunt of the aftercare.”
Adika groaned.
“Atticus is a truly caring and skilled surgeon,” said Eli thoughtfully. “I don’t think I could ask for anyone better qualified to carry out my operation.”
“There isn’t anyone better qualified,” said Forge. “Atticus has always been a wonderful person, and now he’s the finest surgeon in the Hive as well.”
“Thank you, Forge,” said Atticus’s voice.
“Atticus!” Forge sounded mortified. “I didn’t know you were on our crystal comms. I hope you realize I only said those things to reassure Eli.”
“I’m fully aware that you wouldn’t have been so complimentary if you’d known I was listening,” said Atticus. “Can you turn my ear crystal back to listen only, Megan? I’m worried that once I release this clamp the …”
Atticus’s voice abruptly cut out. I wondered what it was like to be carrying out that operation, but didn’t dare to read either Megan’s or Atticus’s mind to find out. It sounded like there was a lot of blood involved.
“Pay attention, everyone,” said Lucas. “It’s now ten minutes to midnight, so our target will be on their way to attack the flying hospital.”
“You’re that sure of the timing, Lucas?” Adika asked incredulously.
“Our target will want to come late enough that few people will be walking the corridors of the Haven, but they won’t want to stay up half the night. Midnight is a very tempting time to choose. Liaison, watch the surveillance camera images closely.”
“Everything looks perfectly …” Nicole’s voice broke off for a second before speaking urgently. “We just lost the image from a camera near the lifts. Well, virtually all of the image. I assume the camera got covered in paint.”
“Amber, can you find a target?” asked Lucas. “Make the initial contact very slowly. Sea farm minds are difficult for you to read, and this one could be far worse than usual.”
I closed my eyes and reached out with my telepathic ability. There were thousands of minds in the apartments below us, but the top level of the Haven was virtually deserted. The only thoughts outside the aircraft hangar were those of a few workers in the Admiral’s command centre, and a single conspicuous mind moving steadily towards me.
“Target acquired,” I said. “It’s a sea farm mind, and has to be that of a wild bee because of the distinctively angry colour. This isn’t like the wild bees I’ve encountered back at the Hive though. The thought levels somehow seem both more and less organized, which I’m aware makes no sense at all. I’ll try reading the top levels of thought now.”
… time to take out the second camera …
“Forge, Rothan, I want both of you by the door with me,” said Adika. “We go out first, and the rest of the Chase team will follow.”
“Don’t open that door until I say so, and be extremely careful when you go out,” said Lucas calmly. “We only expect to be dealing with one target, but that target has killed two men by catching them off guard.”
“We just lost another camera,” said Nicole.
“The target is going for the third camera now,” I said. “There’s one more after that, and then they can reach the side door to the hangar without being seen.”
“The third camera has gone,” said Nicole.
“The target is moving towards the fourth camera now,” I said. “They have a meticulously prepared plan, and all the levels of their mind are focused on following that plan one step at a time. There’s amazing clarity of thought, but it’s stopping me from seeing more than that one step ahead.”
Fourth camera.
I felt the target’s arm lift and throw. “They just took out the fourth camera,” I said. “It seemed to be higher up than the other cameras I’ve seen inside the Haven.”
“I don’t understand how one camera can be higher up than the others,” said Nicole, in a puzzled voice. “The corridor ceilings are all the same height.”
“The target is staying totally focused,” I continued relaying information. “They’re excited, determined, tense. The next step is opening the side door to the hangar.”
“The silent alarm on the side door has triggered,” said Adika. “Our target is entering the hangar now. We need to get out there, Lucas.”
“Stay where you are,” ordered Lucas.
“The target has the door open a crack and is looking into the hangar,” I said. “They can’t see any guards. There are glints of light from the covered windows of the flying hospital.”
… once I’ve tricked the interfering doctor into letting me inside the flying hospital, it will only take seconds to make sure Massen never wakes up. How did Massen survive that fall? I was sure he’d landed on the rocks, and how did …?
“The target is furious.” I babbled the words in the target’s mind. “How did Massen survive that fall, and how did Tactical Commander Lucas find him so quickly? No, that doesn’t matter. This time, there won’t be any lucky escapes. This time, Massen will die.”
I felt the target brace themselves and push open the heavy door. “The target is entering the hangar now! Their whole mind just exploded with a sense of power. The thrill of the hunt. The joy of the kill.”
“Strike time!” snapped Lucas. “Liaison, get the lights on in the hangar. Amber, go circuit. We can’t risk you staying in this target’s mind during capture.”
I moved to Adika’s mind as he leapt down from our aircraft. As he landed on the ground, the lights came on in the hangar. In what seemed like dazzling brightness, he saw a child running towards the flying ambulance. She started screaming desperately for help.
“Over here,” called Adika.
The girl hesitated, turned, and ran towards him, her black hair trailing behind her, and her left hand going to her bloodstained face as she collapsed at his feet.
“Help me!” she screamed again. “There’s a man with a knife out there in the corridor. He grabbed my little sister and me. I bit his hand and managed to escape, but my sister is only two years old. She couldn’t run fast enough to get away.”
We’ve got a hostage situation. Sea farm minds are hard to read, so Amber must have missed seeing …
Adika tried to put his frustration aside and give a reassuring smile to the girl. “Don’t worry. We’ll save your little sister.”
The Chase team were out of the aircraft now, Adika was telling them to move out to the corridor, but I felt there was something wrong here. Yes, there was something horribly wrong. I couldn’t have missed seeing two other minds outside the aircraft hangar, so that meant …
“The girl’s our target!” Lucas and I shouted the words in unison.
“What?” Adika’s mind blurred in confusion. “This girl’s our target? Are you …?”
As he spoke, the girl’s expression changed to a snarl. She brought her right hand out from her pocket, and struck at Adika with a knife.
Adika had spent seventeen years hunting targets. He dodged fast enough that the girl’s knife missed him.
An instant later, Jalen shot the girl on stun setting. With her small size and weight, the stun took effect immediately, so she dropped the knife, fell to the floor, and her black wig sl
ipped to one side.
Adika’s mind burned with anger and embarrassment.
… ten-year-old girl nearly stabbed me, and it could have been far worse. She almost fooled us into running off into the corridor and leaving her free to reach the flying hospital. She could have killed Atticus. She could have killed Megan!
Waste it! She’s only a child, but that’s her greatest weapon. People don’t believe she’s dangerous, when …
Adika forced his emotions aside, and spoke in a carefully calm voice. “Well done, Jalen. I want to equalize the Alpha and Beta teams at nineteen men each, and you’ve been fitting in well on the Alpha team, so I’ll be keeping you there permanently.”
Jalen grinned in delight.
“The girl disguised herself with a wig,” said Lucas. “and covered herself with fake blood to trick Atticus into letting her inside the flying hospital. Adika, can you clean her face and remove the wig, so we get a proper look at her?”
Adika kicked away the knife before stooping warily over the girl. He wiped her face with a cloth, and tossed aside the black wig to reveal her long blonde hair.
“That’s Rose,” I said. “Aster and Treeve’s daughter. I should have guessed our target was a child when the surveillance camera seemed so high up and the side door of the hangar was so heavy.”
“She had a small bottle in her pocket,” reported Adika. “I assume it holds some of the same chemical as before, and she was going to use it to poison Massen.”
Lucas groaned. “Aster and Treeve lived in Harbour, but Aster took the girls to live with her parents for most of last year. When Aster said she was thinking of moving to Tropics, I should have realized that was where her parents live.”
He paused. “Rose was going to Tropics school last year. She was in Hazel’s class, had some sort of grudge against her teacher, and murdered her.”
I pulled out of Adika’s mind, returned to my own head, and exchanged dazed looks with Lucas. This case had started on the Level 67 beach with us saving a ten-year-old girl from a target. Now we had a target who was a ten-year-old girl. Ever since we’d come to the sea farm, we’d been breaking our usual rules, and this was a target that broke all the rules too.
Chapter Forty
Lucas reported the success of the ambush to a deeply relieved Admiral, and allowed our unit the standard twenty-four hour recovery period after an emergency run. I spent a lot of that time in the observatory, listening to the shrieking of the wind, and watching the staggeringly high waves in awe.
The following day, my team leaders, Buzz, the Tactical team, and I gathered in the operations room. A holo image in front of us showed Rose sitting on an upturned crate in the corner of a small room. Her hands and feet were bound with restraints, and Matias and Dhiren were standing by the door, watching her suspiciously.
“We’re taking no chances with Rose,” said Adika. “My two men on guard duty inside the room with her have no guns so she can’t steal them. My two men on guard duty outside the room do have guns, and orders to shoot her on stun the second she comes out of the door.”
Megan shook her head. “Rose looks such an innocent child. It’s hard to believe she could have harmed anyone.”
“That innocent child intended to trick you and Atticus into letting her inside the flying hospital, so she’d be able to kill your patient,” said Adika bitterly. “When Kaden took that innocent child a drink, she smashed the cup, grabbed a piece of the broken china, and tried to slash open his face. That’s why we put the innocent child in restraints. I’m still not happy about you going in the room with her, Lucas.”
“Don’t worry. I realize exactly how lethal Rose is and will stay well out of her reach.” Lucas turned to face me. “Reading Rose’s mind is obviously going to be deeply unpleasant for you, Amber. We have to do this – it’s the only way to be certain we know the full story – but you can take a break whenever you wish.”
“I’ll tell you if I need a rest,” I said.
Lucas went out of the door, and a moment later he appeared in the holo image, standing facing Rose. “I’m here to determine the full sequence of events at the sea farm.”
“You didn’t even say hello,” said Rose reproachfully. “Why are you people being so cruel to me?”
“I will ask you a series of questions,” said Lucas.
“I’m not answering any questions until you untie my hands and feet.”
“It doesn’t matter whether you answer the questions aloud or not,” said Lucas. “You won’t be able to stop yourself thinking of the answers, and I have a nosy in the next room to read your mind.”
“Nosy!” Rose screamed the word in a savage voice. “Loathsome nosy, look at my thoughts if you dare, and you’ll see what I think of you.”
“Quiet!” snapped Lucas. “The nosy isn’t reading your mind yet. When it is, you mustn’t try to make its work difficult, or I’ll be forced to use alternative interrogation methods.”
“Use alternative interrogation methods? Is that supposed to be a terrifying threat?” Rose laughed. “You’re a Tactical Commander. You’re bound by tedious morality and sanctimonious rules. You’d never torture a ten-year-old girl.”
“I would never torture anyone, Rose,” said Lucas. “I do need to get these answers though. Since you seem intent on foolish resistance, I’ll hand this interrogation over to a specialist in forensic psychology.”
He touched his ear crystal. “Buzz, can you come and assist me, please?”
There was a short delay while Buzz went to join Lucas. Rose took one look at her and laughed again.
“You’re the scary forensic psychologist? You don’t look that frightening to me.”
Buzz smiled. “You’re far more deadly than you look, Rose. So am I.”
Rose’s expression changed to something wary and calculating.
“My work as a forensic psychologist involves establishing the full details of a target’s past actions,” said Buzz. “I then perform an in-depth analysis to decide whether any viable method exists for restoring that person to being a safely productive member of society.”
Rose pulled a reproachful face. “How do you expect me to understand you when you keep using such long words?”
“I’ve seen your school reports, Rose,” said Buzz. “You are highly intelligent, have an extensive vocabulary, and understand what I’m saying perfectly. Targets often attempt to resist interrogation. A heavy combination of hypnotics and medication is always successful in overcoming that resistance, however forcibly subduing a person’s will can cause unpleasant aftereffects such as night terrors.”
“And you don’t care about that? Aren’t you capable of sympathy at all?”
Buzz sighed. “The projection tactic of accusing others of your own faults isn’t going to work on me. We both know you’re the one incapable of sympathizing with others. If you continue to resist interrogation, then I will happily use as much hypnotics and medication on you as necessary. I’ve warned you about the consequences, so it’s entirely your decision now.”
“I’ll cooperate,” said Rose grudgingly.
“No tricks,” warned Buzz.
“No tricks and no treats,” said Rose, in a mocking voice. “It won’t make any difference if you learn what happened anyway. You can’t go back in time to bring people back to life.”
“Amber, you can ask the nosy to start reading Rose’s mind now,” said Lucas.
I closed my eyes and reached out warily to the mind that had the mark of the sea farm as well as an extra reddish haze that was distinctively its own.
“Rose, is it correct that your father, Treeve, set the first series of traps?” asked Lucas.
Rose didn’t answer, so I pressed the button on the microphone I was holding and spoke myself. The microphone distorted my voice into the creepy tones of a nosy, and transmitted it to a speaker on the wall of Rose’s room.
“Yes. Rose liked watching her father in his workshop, and helping him test fly the repaired drones.”
Rose’s thoughts flared in fury as she heard my words, but I kept talking. “Rose understood far more of the things her father was doing than he realized. She saw what he’d done to those light switches and worked out he was causing the power cuts in the Haven. She didn’t tell Treeve what she knew then though. It was very valuable knowledge, so she saved it to use at a more profitable time.”
“Rose, your tracking bracelet was removed on your tenth birthday,” said Lucas. “The next day, a bottle of a dangerous chemical was stolen. Did you take it?”
I spoke into the microphone again. “Yes. Rose was down at the seawall when she overheard one of the staff from the Harbour veterinary outpost discussing an expected delivery of chemicals. Rose didn’t know what would be in the delivery, she just forced open the crate with one of Treeve’s screwdrivers, and randomly picked something labelled as poison.”
“The following day, the children at Tropics school threw paint eggs at all the surveillance cameras near Hazel’s house,” said Lucas. “Did you organize that, Rose?”
Rose’s mind gloated about her own cleverness.
“Yes,” I said. “Rose took a batch of paint eggs to school, and gave some to other children, but kept enough to take out the crucial surveillance cameras herself.”
“And then Hazel was murdered,” said Lucas. “Who killed her?”
The levels of Rose’s mind smelt of blood.
“Rose watched Hazel’s house until Hazel went out to feed her hens, and then sneaked inside to poison the stew,” I said. “She’d read the instructions that came with the bottle of poison, and used twice the recommended dose for a horse to make sure that Hazel would die.”
“Rose, why did you kill Hazel?” asked Lucas.
Again I had to answer the question for her. “When Aster took the children to stay with her parents in Tropics region, Rose started going to the Tropics school. Hazel caught Rose bullying the other children and discussed the situation with Aster. Rose tried claiming Hazel had made a mistake or was lying, but Aster had been to that school herself and been taught by Hazel. She trusted her old teacher and agreed that Rose should be kept under special supervision.”
Hurricane (Hive Mind Book 3) Page 37