Hurricane (Hive Mind Book 3)

by Janet Edwards

  I sighed. “Rose was angry about Hazel constantly watching her, and preventing her having fun harming the other children. Rose was even angrier when her mother took her back home to the Harbour region but insisted on her continuing to attend the school in Tropics. Just before Rose’s tenth birthday, Hazel talked to her. She said Rose’s behaviour didn’t seem to be improving at all. If there was any more trouble, she was going to talk to Aster about referring Rose to the Hive for therapy. Rose had to stop Hazel doing that, so she killed her.”

  “The first thing that a child does when their tracking bracelet is removed is a strong indicator of their character and future career,” said Emili, in a stunned voice. “The first thing that Rose did was steal poison to murder her schoolteacher.”

  “Why did your father go to the mine, Rose?” asked Lucas.

  Rose’s thoughts were contemptuous.

  “Rose ordered her father to go to the mine,” I said. “She’d hidden the poison behind some boxes in Treeve’s workshop. She thought she’d put everything back in place, so her father couldn’t possibly notice, but he did. He found the bottle and confronted Rose, but she laughed in his face. She said that she knew all about him setting the traps and causing the power cuts in the Haven. If her father told Sea Farm Security about her poisoning Hazel, then she’d make sure he was arrested as well.”

  I paused. “Treeve gave in and kept quiet, but he couldn’t help behaving oddly towards Rose after that. Aster noticed, and started asking questions, so Rose told Treeve to take the job at the mine before he gave away both their secrets. Treeve did what she said, but then someone else started setting traps.”

  “That was when Massen began setting the more serious traps,” said Lucas. “What happened when your father came back from the mine, Rose?”

  Rose answered that question herself in a bitter voice. “My father said he’d tried to escape my threats by asking his friend to set some traps to give him an alibi. Massen had taken the trap setting much too far though. Now everyone at the sea farm was terrified by what was happening, including my mother. My father said he’d come back from the mine because he’d decided to confess the whole truth to Sea Farm Security.”

  Rose shook her head fiercely. “My father should have known I wouldn’t let him betray me. It was so easy to silence him permanently. I just knocked some of his precious drone pieces onto the floor, he knelt down to pick them up, and I took the hammer off the wall and hit him.”

  I winced at the memories in Rose’s mind. The problem wasn’t so much the sound of the hammer hitting Treeve’s head, or the images of his body slumping to the floor, but the coldly analytical way that Rose had stood over him, watching with interest to see how long it took him to stop breathing.

  Lucas nodded. “So you killed your father, Rose, and took his illegal drone and his dataview. That second murder brought me and my unit to the sea farm. You saw our aircraft landing on the beach, and the furniture being piled next to the observatory. You tried to commit a third murder by using the drone to put poison on a mattress. Why did you do that? Were you trying to drive us away because you were afraid that a nosy would read your mind?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t ask your nosies to read the mind of a little girl,” said Rose.

  “Then why did you poison the mattress?” Lucas repeated his question.

  Rose looked him in the eyes. “You brought all those fighter aircraft with you. You thought you could frighten me. I poisoned the mattress to show you were wrong, and went to join the audience for your broadcast at the seawall so I could laugh at you.”

  Lucas stared back at her, unflinching. “And then Massen went into hiding. He called your father’s dataview from the shepherd’s hut at the reservoir, and you answered it. What was said during that call?”

  Rose made a noise of disgust. “I should have been perfectly safe after my father’s death. Nobody would ever have suspected me of murdering anyone, but my father had been fool enough to tell Massen about me. Massen said that if he was caught, then a nosy would read his mind and see he was guilty of setting traps, but the nosy would also see I’d committed the murders.”

  Rose smiled. “Massen said my only option was to bring him supplies to help him stay hidden. He was wrong though. I did have another option. I took the heat sack to the reservoir as he’d demanded. Massen wasn’t scared of a little girl, so I just had to hang the heat sack on the safety rail, wait for him to turn to pick it up, and push him over the edge.”

  “And then you left your father’s dataview, and some broken pieces of a drone control box, with Massen’s body,” said Lucas. “The next morning you used the drone to burn Hazel’s house. Why did you burn the house?”

  “I had to make sure no clues were left that could point to me,” said Rose. “Hazel had a strange habit of writing especially private things down on paper rather than putting them on the official school system for other teachers to read. Your fire on the beach made me think of burning Hazel’s house to make sure there was nothing left.”

  She scowled. “I’d thought of everything. You’d never have caught me if it hadn’t been for the freak chance of Massen surviving that fall. I knew the minute Massen regained consciousness, you’d get a nosy to read his mind and find out all about me, so I had to make sure he didn’t wake up.”

  Lucas faced Buzz. “I’ve learnt everything I needed to know. Do you want to ask any more questions?”

  “No. I’ve learnt everything I needed to know as well.”

  “Then the interrogation is over,” said Lucas.

  I gave a sigh of relief, pulled out of Rose’s tainted mind, and opened my eyes to stare at the holo image of her, Lucas, and Buzz.

  “So how are you going to make me into a productive member of society?” asked Rose.

  “We’re not,” said Buzz. “There are ways to help most people, but you are one of the few that will always be a danger to others. I’ll send a full report to the Hive, and an appropriate expert will make arrangements to deal with you.”

  Buzz and Lucas turned to walk out of the room, but Lucas paused in the doorway to look back at Rose. “By the way, Rose, Massen didn’t survive that fall. I just pretended he was still alive to lure you into a trap.”

  I saw Rose snarl at Lucas as he walked out of the doorway, then her image vanished. I handed the microphone to Emili, and shook my head, trying to banish the lingering poisonous touch, taste, scent of Rose’s thoughts from my mind.

  A moment later, Lucas and Buzz were back in the room with the rest of us. Lucas sat down on a crate and groaned.

  “I’ll send the full details to the Admiral. I know he’ll want to explain everything that happened to poor Aster before he announces it to the whole of the sea farm.”

  I gave a depressed grunt.

  “No wonder Cador was hopelessly confused over this case,” Lucas continued. “If we didn’t have Amber to read Rose’s mind, I wouldn’t believe a ten-year-old girl was capable of such things.”

  He glanced at Buzz. “You’re certain that the girl isn’t salvageable? She’s devastatingly intelligent and resourceful for her age.”

  “I’m absolutely certain,” said Buzz. “Adika told us that the insights of borderline telepaths were useless where people from the sea farm were concerned. I checked up on that and discovered the problem was the obvious one. Borderline telepaths just get a brief glimpse of a person’s core driving thought. When someone from the sea farm has been brought to the Hive to have their mind read, all an insight reveals is that the person desperately wants to go home.”

  Buzz shrugged. “Here at the sea farm, insights are much more helpful. In the last few days, I’ve had several insights from Juniper about her dream of being a Sea Captain. When we were next door with Rose, I got an insight from her too.”

  “And that insight was?” prompted Emili.

  “My training as a forensic psychologist included being introduced to a variety of offenders so I could get insights into their minds. The insight I
had from Rose was a distinctive sensation of pure malice that you only ever get from a person who is utterly irredeemable.”

  There was a long silence, then Lucas’s dataview chimed and he checked the screen. “Juniper’s Lottery test run has completed. I’ll go and help her look up her result.”

  I heard the eagerness in his voice and automatically linked to his mind. The thought levels were racing past so fast that I could only catch a few words, and those startled me.

  “You know what Juniper’s result will be, Lucas. You’ve known it all along. That’s why you worked so hard at persuading her to go through Lottery.”

  He gave me an alarmed look. “Have you seen the answer in my mind already? If not, then please don’t read me any longer. I could be totally wrong and don’t want to raise false hopes.”

  I obediently broke my link to his thoughts. “I haven’t seen the answer, and I’m not reading you any longer.”

  “Then let’s go and see if I’m right.” Lucas took my hand. “Back at the Hive it’s impossible to predict the results of Lottery, but there are far fewer professions available at the sea farm, and Juniper’s test sequence seemed to be pointing in the right direction.”

  Lucas towed me out of the room and along the corridor with him, like an over-excited child heading for a Carnival party, and I burst out laughing. When we reached Juniper’s door, Lucas knocked on it, and forced his expression into something earnestly professional.

  Juniper opened the door, and caught her breath as she saw us. “You’ve got my Lottery result?”

  “Yes.” Lucas handed her his dataview. “You just need to tap on the screen to see it.”

  Juniper took the dataview in her right hand, placed it on the top of a stack of crates, and then hesitated for a moment before lifting her right forefinger to tap decisively at the screen.

  I could tell the moment when the result appeared, because Juniper’s face showed shocked disbelief. “That can’t be right. Lottery has made a mistake.”

  Lucas grinned at her. “Lottery doesn’t make mistakes. Can I look to see if your result is what I was expecting?”

  Juniper gave a dazed wave of her right hand at the dataview, and Lucas reached to pick it up. He glanced at the screen and nodded.

  “I was right then. Juniper, do you want to accept the verdict of Lottery? If you do, then Megan and I can carry out your imprinting.”

  “You mean that result is really true?” asked Juniper.

  “It’s true, Juniper,” said Lucas. “Do you want to accept it?”

  “If it’s true, then of course I …”

  Juniper abruptly broke off her sentence, sank down to sit on the floor, and started crying. I frowned down at her, wondering if I should read her mind or not, but the choice was made for me. Juniper’s tears turned to laughter, and her mind flared dazzlingly bright, every level of it united in broadcasting pure joy.

  I had just been reading Rose’s mind, wading through thoughts that held all the malice and darkness of the Halloween festival, but now I was engulfed in the light and life of Carnival.

  “Lucas, what’s happened?” I demanded. “What’s Juniper’s Lottery result?”

  Lucas smiled and handed me his dataview. I read the words on the screen and gasped.

  Juniper 2515-1288-113. Sea Farm Admiral.

  Chapter Forty-one

  The wind eased to a stiff breeze during that night, and the following morning Lucas and I met Adika and Rothan in the observatory. I saw the gates of the seawall were open again, and there was a mass of people down by the houses and boats, apparently checking what damage the storm had caused.

  “The Admiral was eager to talk to his newly appointed deputy,” said Rothan, “so Juniper went down to the seawall an hour ago.”

  I nodded.

  “I think the other Hive’s fishing fleet may be getting ready to leave now,” said Adika. “A lot of the boats flying their pennant are putting their sails up. They wouldn’t be doing that if they were just going to …”

  He broke off that sentence to start another. “Yes, they’re definitely leaving. One of them is starting to move.”

  I watched, fascinated, as boat after boat sailed out through the gap between the seawalls. Something about the way they moved reminded me of a flock of seagulls. The fleet gathered in a group out at sea, and then headed along the coast, seeming to grow smaller and smaller until I lost sight of them in the distance.

  Adika gave a heavily emphasized sigh of relief. “The threat has gone. Well, almost all the threat has gone. Megan told me that Atticus will be keeping the injured man in the flying hospital for one more day before transferring him to the sea farm’s main medical centre. It will probably be several more weeks after that before he’s well enough for one of our fishing boats to take him back to his own sea farm.”

  I laughed. “I don’t know why you’re describing the visitors from the other sea farm as a threat, Adika. They behaved perfectly while they were here. It was one of our people who tried to attack the flying hospital when Atticus was operating on their injured man.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether they did anything or not, Amber,” said Adika stubbornly. “Their presence was a threat to your safety. What now, Lucas? Do we prepare to leave ourselves?”

  “Yes,” said Lucas. “We’ve solved the sea farm’s problems, and its people have returned home, so our mission here is complete. I’ll ask Megan to organize the packing, and order all seven of our aircraft to land on the beach to pick up our luggage.”

  He paused. “Once everything has been loaded aboard the aircraft, Aerial two through seven can fly up to the aircraft hangar, and Forge and the Beta team can take everyone except the four of us, Rose, and the Alpha Strike team through the indoor route to join them.”

  Adika frowned. “You’re planning to keep Aerial one on the beach, ready to fly the rest of us back to the Hive? Lucas, it would be dreadfully dangerous to allow Rose to travel in the same aircraft as Amber.”

  “I think I’ve caught your paranoia, Adika,” said Lucas. “The idea of having Rose travel in any of our aircraft terrifies me. Fortunately, we aren’t responsible for transporting Rose. The Hive is sending an aircraft with a prison warden to collect her.”

  “It isn’t paranoia to be terrified of Rose,” said Adika grimly. “It’s just good sense. That girl uses her age and innocent appearance as a weapon.”

  “We can’t leave without checking if the sea farm need help with repairs after the storm,” I said anxiously. “I want to say a proper goodbye to the Admiral and Juniper as well. I haven’t even seen Juniper since she was imprinted.”

  “I agree that we should say goodbye to the Admiral and Juniper in person,” said Lucas. “Once the rest of the unit have left for the aircraft hangar, we’ll leave Rothan and four of the Alpha team guarding Rose, while Adika and the rest of the Alpha team escort you and me down to the harbour.”

  There was an hour or two of feverish activity, and then a crowd of laughing people gathered by the fire door that led to corridor 5. Lucas and I went to see what all the noise was about, and found Sofia had drawn a picture of a nosy on the wall. Eli was getting everyone in the unit to write their names beside it.

  Adika appeared and glowered his disapproval. “Leaving a list of our unit members’ names behind us is a security risk.”

  “I don’t see that it can do any harm,” said Lucas. “This is just a final piece of evidence to support the story we’ve been telling everyone.”

  He took a marker pen from Eli, and wrote “Tactical Commander Lucas” above all the other names on the wall, in letters that were twice the size of the rest. He then underlined it for extra emphasis, before handing the marker pen to me. I wrote my name near the bottom of the wall, and then added three incomprehensible jumbles of letters under Sofia’s drawing, to represent our mythical three nosies.

  The others finished writing their names, and then Forge and two of the Beta team dressed up in nosy costumes. I watched them lead th
e indoor party off through the grimy corridors of Level 10, and then Lucas and I headed Outside with Adika and most of the Alpha Strike team.

  The storm was over, but it had left a trail of debris behind it. The beach was littered with clumps of seaweed and pieces of wood. As we walked along the sand-strewn beach path towards the seawall, I studied the houses. They had a battered look, with damaged roofs, and the occasional broken window, but everything looked repairable except for one collapsed wall.

  When we arrived on top of the seawall, Admiral Tregereth came to meet us in his distinctive striped jacket.

  “We’ve come to say goodbye,” said Lucas.

  “You didn’t need to come down here to do that,” said the Admiral. “Juniper and I would have come up to the aircraft hangar.”

  “We couldn’t leave without checking the state of the houses and boats, and asking if you needed help with the repairs,” I said.

  “Everything is under control.” The Admiral waved an arm in a gesture that seemed to encompass the whole area. “We’ll be working on repairs for days, and one of the glasshouses in Tropics will have to be completely rebuilt, but we’re used to dealing with the aftermath of storms.”

  “Where is Juniper?” I asked.

  The Admiral pointed behind us. “She’s coming now.”

  I turned and saw Juniper hurrying towards us, wearing a jacket exactly like the one the Admiral wore. In fact, since the jacket was far too big for her, I guessed the Admiral had lent her one of his jackets to wear until one had been made in her size.

  “Perran has just sailed with the visiting fishing fleet,” she said.

  I was startled. “You mean that he’s gone as driftwood?”

  “Yes. Perran said he was glad that Lottery had helped me, but it couldn’t solve his problems. Whatever work Lottery assigned him here, people would never forget his past actions, and he’d never be able to forget them either. Perran has the sea in his soul like me, so he couldn’t be happy living in the Hive. He felt that his best chance was to make a fresh start at another sea farm.”