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Lucas glanced at where Gregas was lying on the couch. “Gregas shouldn’t be aware of anything the rest of us say, but he’s currently attuned to Megan’s voice. We’d better move to another room to discuss this.”
Buzz led the way back outside. “There’s a waiting room at the end of the corridor we can use.”
“I’ll get two of the medical staff to come and sit with Wesley and Gregas while we’re away,” said Megan.
Lucas looked at Adika. “I’m sure you’ll want to join this discussion. I’d better call Nicole as well so we can make this a proper team leader meeting.”
There was a pause while Megan and Lucas took out dataviews and sent their messages, then we all went down the corridor to the waiting room and organized some chairs into a circle. A minute later, Nicole drove her powered chair into the room to join us.
“I recorded Amber when she was reading the minds of both Wesley and Gregas,” said Lucas. “I’ll play those recordings now, so Adika and Nicole fully understand the situation.”
The first recording began playing. It was strange watching a holo of myself sitting, eyes closed, reciting Wesley’s memories. I hadn’t realized how much of my target’s emotions was echoed in my own facial expressions. My voice sounded oddly youthful too.
Once that recording ended, Lucas started playing the one where I was reading Gregas’s mind. That wasn’t strange but genuinely disturbing. I didn’t know Wesley’s face and voice that well, but my brother ...
“I look like Gregas in that holo,” I said. “I sound like Gregas too.”
Lucas stopped the recording. “Yes. When you’re deeply engaged with a target mind, you take on some aspects of their facial mannerisms and voice patterns. It’s especially striking in this recording because of your family resemblance to Gregas.”
“I’d no idea this happened when I was reading minds,” I said. “Do other telepaths react like this too?”
“I never saw any sign of it when Keith was reading minds,” said Megan. “The first time I saw you do it, you were reading Lucas’s mind. I was worried that he had an unhealthy controlling influence over you, but Adika said he’d sometimes seen the same effect when he worked for Mira. I decided it was just one of the many variations between individual telepaths.”
“Mira’s unit referred to this as reflecting,” added Adika. “It’s far more noticeable with you, Amber, than it was with Mira, and I never saw it happen with Morton at all. I don’t know if it happens with Sapphire or not.”
“We could try asking her unit about it,” said Nicole.
“We could ask, but we wouldn’t get an answer,” said Adika. “All Telepath Units are protective of their telepath, but Sapphire’s unit is like a closed-off fortress. She’s notoriously choosy about who she recruits for her unit, rejecting lots of perfectly reasonable candidates, and those she does recruit rarely leave.”
“Is that because Sapphire doesn’t want them to go, or because they don’t want to leave?” I asked.
“My impression is that it’s a combination of both those things,” said Adika. “Sapphire’s people are fiercely loyal to her and unreasonably secretive.”
“After what happened years ago with Keith, Sapphire is defensive of her personal information,” said Lucas. “You can’t blame her unit members for respecting her wishes.”
He turned to me. “Are you happy for me to play the rest of the recording, Amber? If you find it troubling, then I could summarize the rest of what happened for Adika and Nicole.”
“I wasn’t troubled by it,” I said. “I was just intrigued. Please play the rest.”
Lucas raised his eyebrows at me in a sign that he knew I was lying, but started the recording playing again anyway. For the next moment or two, I was focused on the unnerving way I was reflecting Gregas, but then I got caught up in the events I was describing and forgot everything else.
The recording ended at the point where I opened my eyes, and there was a short silence before Lucas spoke.
“Amber’s brother is a borderline telepath. That won’t be a surprise to anyone, but it does complicate the situation.”
“It was a surprise to me,” I said bitterly. “An extremely unwelcome surprise.”
“One of the first things you were told in training was that there was a genetic factor involved in people becoming borderline telepaths,” said Lucas. “You must have realized there was a possibility of Gregas being one.”
“Yes, but ...” I ran my fingers through my hair and glanced at Buzz. “You told me that you had intuitions about people as a child.”
“Yes. When I went through Lottery, the triggering processes made those moments of intuition sharper and more strongly defined, transforming them into true insights.”
“Well, Gregas has never shown the slightest sense about people,” I said. “It was a long time before he worked out that Wesley’s ridiculous stories weren’t true. Gregas’s shocked reaction to his insight showed he’d never even had a moment of intuition before. How could Gregas go straight from no intuition at all to having a true insight?”
“The vast majority of borderline telepaths aren’t consciously aware of having either intuitions or insights until they go through the triggering processes in Lottery,” said Buzz. “Those of us with abilities that awaken early ...”
Buzz hesitated. “Well, Gregas’s experience matches mine exactly, Amber. We both had our borderline telepathy triggered by a potentially life-threatening situation. It just happened to me at a much younger age, so my abilities surfaced as intuitions rather than true insights.”
She hastily changed the subject. “Lucas is right about Gregas’s borderline telepathy complicating things. We can give Gregas any standard therapy we wish, but resetting his memories isn’t an option in any circumstances.”
I frowned. “Why not?”
Buzz sighed. “True telepaths are so vanishingly rare that the Hive has limited understanding of their abilities and errs on the side of caution by not imprinting their minds at all. Lottery finds nearly a thousand borderline telepaths each year though, so we have far more information on how things affect them. It’s perfectly safe to imprint the mind of a borderline telepath, but tampering with their personal memories can damage their abilities.”
“I suppose Gregas being a borderline telepath also rules him out of having a normal combat position,” said Adika. “A pity. I was impressed by his actions on that ladder. Using his height advantage to take down someone much bigger and stronger than him shows rapid, clear thinking. The boy doesn’t have the build to be a Strike team member, but there are other types of combat roles.”
“Gregas’s favourite programmes on the Hive entertainment channels are thrillers about Hive England Defence teams chasing agents from other Hives,” said Lucas. “I expect Gregas saw that ladder trick in one of those thrillers.”
“Seeing someone else do it is very different from having the presence of mind to do it yourself in a crisis,” said Adika. “Buzz, do you know if Lottery has any specialized combat roles for borderline telepaths?”
Buzz waved her hands. “All borderline telepaths have imprints that include some form of Law Enforcement counselling role, how to act the part of a nosy, and basic combat skills to use if you get attacked, but there’s also a personalized section. I’ve only worked with other psychology focused borderline telepaths, so I don’t know about any other roles.”
“I don’t want my brother having a specialized combat position,” I said coldly. “I want him to have a nice safe life.”
Buzz studied my face. “And you have the power to make sure your brother has a nice safe life, Amber. You’re one of only five telepaths in this Hive. You’re so desperately needed that you can insist on Lottery blocking Gregas from any position that carries even the slightest risk. Just say the word and Gregas’s record will be flagged to limit his future options.”
I tugged at my hair. It was tempting to say that word and make sure that my parents and I would never have to worry about Gregas’s work. I couldn’t do that though. I mustn’t do that.
“No, I can’t use my power to control Gregas’s life. I went through this when I first arrived in my unit and discovered my old friend, Forge, was on my Strike team. I knew I could insist on him being kept safe in my unit, but doing that would destroy his life and make him hate me. I went through it again with you, Lucas, and now it’s Gregas. The person changes but the answer must stay the same. I can’t impose my wishes on other people.”
Lucas smiled. “You always amaze me, Amber. My imprint tells me that you should have fully realized the powerful position of telepaths by now, and be showing the first signs of distancing. I’ve not seen any hint of it in you at all though. Not a single member of my Tactical team has even said the word distancing.”
Distancing! Mira had mentioned distancing and said it would never happen to me. “What does distancing mean?” I asked cautiously.
“It’s when a telepath becomes distant from the moral code of the Hive, and starts trampling on the rights of other people,” said Lucas. “In most cases, the situation stabilizes within the first few years, with the telepath establishing their own ethical code.”
He shrugged. “As I said, I’ve not seen any hint of you distancing at all. If anything, we have the opposite problem, where you show too much compassion for people who cause trouble.”
“Such as Tobias,” said Adika bitterly.
Mira had said that I would never be distant because I felt the emotions of the people whose minds I read. Now Lucas had explained distancing to me, Mira’s comment made complete sense. How could I trample on someone’s rights when I could feel their distress as if it was my own?
Mira had also said that Morton, Sapphire, and Keith didn’t feel emotions at all, so they’d been distant for a long time, and Keith was still distant. I knew something about Morton’s past that showed how distant he’d been in his first few years as a telepath. Everything I’d heard about Keith confirmed Mira’s statement that he was still distant. Sapphire ...
Well, I didn’t know anything at all about Sapphire’s past. Adika had said her people were fiercely loyal to her, which wouldn’t be the case if she was mistreating them now. After the enormous risks Sapphire had taken to save the Hive during the three years when it only had four functioning Telepath Units, I felt she’d redeemed herself for any past bad behaviour.
“Keith is still distant,” I repeated the words Mira had said to me.
Megan grimaced. “Yes. Everyone’s given up hope of him changing for the better.”
“Well, I’m not distant,” I said, “and I’m not interfering in Lottery’s decisions about Gregas.”
“Let’s focus on the immediate situation now,” said Lucas. “We need to make decisions on two separate issues. First of all, there’s the question of what we tell the boys’ parents. Amber, you said last night that you didn’t want your parents to find out about Gregas being arrested. I agree that they’d probably react badly to the news, especially if we admit we’ve had both boys in our unit holding cells since the middle of last night.”
I shuddered. “We mustn’t let my parents find out about either Gregas being arrested or me lying to them. They’d be dreadfully upset with both of us.”
“That means we’ll need a cover story to explain the boys being missing for a few days.” Lucas looked at Nicole. “Emili will have been sending your team information from the parents. I’m hoping you’ll be able to invent something that they’ll find believable.”
“I’ve already worked out a cover story,” said Nicole. “My Liaison team should be sending a script to you shortly.”
“Wonderful,” said Lucas. “Now let’s consider what we tell Gregas, Wesley, and the Captain. We’ve agreed Wesley and the Captain would believe the man in the air vent was a maintenance worker. The problem is that Gregas wouldn’t.”
He glanced at Megan. “At this point, I need Megan to go and ask Wesley a question.”
“He won’t answer it,” said Megan. “Both the boys have been resisting answering any questions even under the influence of hypnotics. That’s why we had to let Amber read their minds.”
“They’ve been resisting answering any questions about what happened when they met the wild bee because they didn’t want to get into trouble,” said Lucas. “Wesley shouldn’t resist answering this question though. I just want you to ask him what position Lottery assigned to Gregas’s sister, Amber.”
Megan gave Lucas a puzzled look but went out of the room. It was only a couple of minutes before she returned and sat down again. “Wesley told me that Amber is a Level 1 Researcher with her own Research Unit.”
“And that makes everything much simpler,” said Lucas. “When Amber admitted to her family that she didn’t run a Research Unit but a Security Unit, Gregas asked if she could arrange for Lottery to give him a place in her unit. I told him that might be possible, but warned him that a Security Unit couldn’t accept anyone who’d breached Hive secrecy restrictions.”
Lucas paused. “Gregas took that secrecy warning seriously. He hasn’t even told his best friend that Amber runs a Security Unit. Since we can trust Gregas to keep secrets, I suggest we tell him the truth.”
I gave Lucas a startled look. “How much of the truth?”
“The whole truth,” said Lucas. “That the man he met in the crawl way was a wild bee. That the nosies are fakes to deter people from committing crimes. That his sister is one of only five true telepaths in the Hive. That he himself is a borderline telepath with flashes of insights into minds.”
“No!” I shook my head urgently. “We can’t do that. Gregas hates nosies. I know what a shock it was for me when I was told the truth. I went from hating nosies to hating myself.”
Megan gave me a horrified look. “You never said anything to me about hating yourself, Amber.”
“I didn’t want to discuss it,” I said. “I tried not to think about it either, but there was a voice of self-loathing constantly nagging at me. It took me a long time to get past that and accept my telepathy. I’m not sure that I’m totally over the problem even now. It’s like the malicious echo of a target mind lurking in my subconscious, except this doesn’t come from a target but from me.”
Megan turned to Buzz. “Did you know about this?” she demanded.
“I’m not sharing confidential details about Amber with anyone,” said Buzz.
“But I was Amber’s counsellor back then and ...”
Buzz interrupted Megan. “You were Amber’s counsellor back then, but I am her counsellor now, and I intend to respect her privacy.”
Megan gave a depressed sigh and sank back into her chair.
I was too focused on Gregas to worry about Megan’s feelings. “My point is that learning the truth will be just as big a problem for Gregas as for me. Perhaps even worse. He won’t just hate himself. He’ll hate me too.”
“He has to be told something,” said Lucas. “What if he keeps having insights?”
“Gregas only had an insight because he was in a life-threatening situation,” I said. “That won’t happen again.”
“Whether he has more insights or not depends on how fully his ability has awakened,” said Buzz doubtfully.
“And Gregas will have to learn the truth when he goes through Lottery anyway,” said Lucas.
“That’s years away,” I said. “He’ll be older. Better able to cope.”
“We should be able to tell Gregas the truth in a way that lessens the self-loathing issue,” said Buzz.
“I absolutely forbid anyone to tell Gregas the truth,” I said flatly. “It’s too big a risk.”
There was an awkward silence before Lucas spoke. “That means we’ll have to use the enemy agent story again.”
