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Assisted Transportation said we had to wait one hour and nineteen minutes for our quiet ride. Adika and my new bodyguards waited with me in the storage complex. Lucas and Beckett stayed in the cleaning supply room, with Rothan and Kaden on guard in the corridor outside. All the rest of the Alpha Strike team went to search for the lost dataview.
Adika decided to pass the time usefully by getting me and the new bodyguards to act out a couple of defence scenarios, while he played the part of the wild bee. After what had happened with Tobias, I found it unnerving to have Adika pretending to attack me. I tried to blank out that problem though, and focus on my reactions as the four new men took turns at being the one to use their body as a shield to protect me.
Lucas had been right about me not reacting to the physical appearance of my bodyguards, but their feelings towards me. With the four new bodyguards, it was glaringly obvious what was happening, because of the stark contrast between Vance and the three Hiveists. I reminded Vance of his daughter, so my reaction to him was to someone fatherly. The three Hiveists were like Adika, primarily aware of me as a precious telepath and the focus of their duty to the Hive.
Once we’d finished acting out the defence scenarios, I ran a last rapid circuit on the four new minds, so I could check exactly what they thought of me now. I found that Vance was intrigued by how much I’d reflected Beckett’s emotions when I was reading his mind. The Hiveists had definitely abandoned any idea of me being Claire reborn. Oddly enough, it was Lucas’s reference to me being untidy that had convinced them. Claire had been a neat and orderly person. I caught a final thought as I was leaving Osric’s mind.
... but it has to be right for us to serve Amber. The wisdom of Gaia wouldn’t name a unit Light Angel unless its telepath...
“Wisdom of Gaia,” I repeated the words in bewilderment.
“What?” asked Adika.
“I noticed a phrase in Osric’s mind that I’ve never come across before,” I explained hastily. “Wisdom of Gaia. I was puzzled and wondered what Gaia meant.”
“I’ve never heard the word before either,” said Adika.
“It isn’t in common usage,” said Osric. “Hiveists worship the Hive as a collective gestalt of over a hundred million minds. Some areas of Hiveist doctrine use the term Gaia to refer to that gestalt.”
Adika frowned at Osric. “Why is a Strike team member such an expert on Hiveist doctrine?”
Osric shrugged. “As a young boy, I was deeply interested in Hiveist doctrine, and hoped that Lottery would assign me to be a Hiveist Ministrant like my parents.”
Adika’s frown deepened. “Were you disappointed when Lottery imprinted you as a Strike team member instead?”
“Not in the slightest,” said Osric. “My ambitions of being a Hiveist Ministrant ended when I went to live on Teen Level and had a shocking fall from grace.”
“I’ve always felt sorry for Osric’s parents,” said Vance. “It must have been a dreadful blow when their impeccably behaved, devout Hiveist son moved to Teen Level, abandoned his beliefs, and went wild.”
Adika’s frown vanished, and he laughed.
“But you became a practising Hiveist again, Osric,” I said. “Was that because of Claire?”
“It was because of Lottery,” said Osric. “When I went into Lottery, I expected to be punished for my bad behaviour on Teen Level by being sent to the depths of the Hive. Instead, I was made Level 1 and given the great honour of guarding a telepath. I was overwhelmed by the Hive’s faith in me, and resolved to be a perfect Hive citizen for the rest of my life.”
He waved both hands. “The reality is that I’m only a perfect Hive citizen for the hour or so a week when I’m attending my parents’ Hiveist services, but Claire said that an hour a week was enough for the Hive to keep you safe from harm.”
Lucas’s voice spoke unexpectedly from behind me. “I believe three of the four of you are Hiveists, which is why I need to ask a specific question before you join our unit.”
I turned to face Lucas, and saw he didn’t just have Beckett, Rothan, and Kaden with him, but Megan had joined them too.
When I’d seen Beckett through Lucas’s eyes, he’d been sitting huddled defensively on the floor of the cleaning supply room. Now he’d undergone a startling transformation. His blood-stained grey top had been replaced by an identical clean one, he had a skin-toned plaster covering the cut on his forehead, and he was wearing the glasses and headset that Lucas had mentioned. The glasses were dark-framed, with an odd hint of colour to the lenses. The headset was just a narrow strand linking two disks over Beckett’s ears.
The most striking difference of all was the way Beckett was standing confidently at Lucas’s side. Once again, I had to recognize Megan’s good qualities. She’d played her part in this by rushing to bring Beckett everything he needed. I noticed that Lucas wasn’t introducing Beckett to people, and guessed he wanted to let Beckett adjust to the situation before drawing attention to him.
Lucas was still speaking. “Most people in the Hive are terrified of going Outside, but Amber and her Strike team had to acclimatize to the conditions there to complete vital missions for the Hive. Will Hiveists have a problem taking part in training sessions Outside?”
Osric exchanged glances with his friends before answering. “We’d heard that your unit had gone Outside in the service of the Hive, so we discussed this issue before coming here. According to doctrine, Hiveists have nothing to fear going Outside because they will be protected by their loyalty to the Hive, while a seeker after truth like Vance would get grabbed by the hunter of souls within seconds.”
“The reality is that all four of us are both terrified and fascinated by the idea of going Outside,” added Vance. “We’ll be horribly disappointed if you don’t let us give it a try.”
Lucas laughed. “Excellent. Have our search parties found any sign of Beckett’s dataview yet?”
“I think I’ve found it,” said Eli’s voice on the comms.
“Don’t you know whether you’ve found the dataview or not?” asked Adika impatiently.
“I haven’t actually seen the dataview yet,” said Eli, “but I can hear it chiming whenever the Liaison team try calling Beckett. There’s just a slight difficulty retrieving it.”
“What’s the problem, Eli?” asked Lucas.
“When Beckett fell off the belt, his dataview must have landed on the slow belt and kept travelling along until it reached the gap between the end of the Red Zone belt and the start of the Orange Zone belt. There’s a safety bar to prevent people falling down there, but the dataview was thin enough to slip through.”
“Does that mean we’ve got to stop the express belt to get the dataview back?” asked Nicole anxiously. “Shutting down one of the main Teen Level express belts is going to be ...”
“You shouldn’t need to shut down the belt,” interrupted Eli. “I told a maintenance worker that my precious new dataview had gone down the gap. She said people are always losing things down there, and I’d have to wait for Byron to come back from his break, crawl down the tunnel under the express belt, and retrieve the dataview from the salvage system for me.”
“You can’t retrieve it yourself?” asked Adika.
“I’m currently pretending to be an ordinary teen,” said Eli, in a wounded voice. “I can’t demand to go crawling around under express belts. Besides, I’m told that Byron’s the expert at retrieving items without letting them fall into the crusher.”
“I’m not sure what the crusher is,” said Lucas, “but it doesn’t sound like we want that dataview to fall into it. We’ll wait for Byron.”
“The maintenance worker said he’d be back soon,” said Eli. “He’s only gone to ... Oh, I think that’s Byron coming now. I’ll report back in a minute.”
“Eli said the dataview is still chiming,” said Emili. “Hopefully that means it isn’t damaged. The thought of telling everyone we have to redo all that pattern analysis ...”
“We’ll find out soon,” said Lucas.
There was a suspenseful wait until Eli’s triumphant voice rang out on the crystal comms. “Byron’s retrieved the dataview for me! Do you want me to test if it’s still working?”
“No, you mustn’t do anything with Beckett’s dataview,” said Lucas. “It’s far more complicated than it looks, so just bring it back to the storage complex.”
A few minutes later, Eli ran into the room waving the dataview, with the rest of the Alpha Strike team chasing after him. Lucas hastily rescued the dataview and took it over to Beckett.
“Please try sending a copy of the timeline pattern analysis to our unit right away, so we know if it’s safe or not.”
Beckett tapped at his dataview. “Starting transmission now.”
There was a brief pause before Emili spoke. “We’re receiving the timeline pattern analysis. It’ll take a while to complete the transmission, but it’s on its way.”
Lucas gave a massive sigh of relief. “That means the Beta team can continue to Blue Zone and put our men undercover. The Alpha team will now head down in the freight lifts for our quiet ride home.”
I was surprised that we’d be using a freight lift, but followed him to the end of the room.
Lucas summoned both freight lifts. “Megan and Beckett can go down first in one of the lifts. There should be room for everyone else in the other lift with me.”
The first lift came, and Megan and Beckett went inside. As the doors closed on them, the second lift arrived, and the rest of us crowded into it. I watched as Lucas set the lift destination, and frowned.
“Why are we going down to Level 100 when our unit is at the top of the Hive?”
“We’re going to Level 100 because quiet rides use the freight transport system,” said Lucas. “There are only two networks of freight transport belts in the Hive. One on Level Zero and one on Level 100. We all know from bitter experience that Level Zero holds complex, hazardous, and often noisy equipment, cared for by roaming groups of maintenance workers. Level 100 is mostly filled with pipes and reclamation tanks.”
I nodded. “So quiet rides all use the freight transport belts on Level 100, but doesn’t that mean we’ll have to keep dodging crates?”
Lucas smiled. “That’s why quiet rides have to be booked at least an hour in advance, to allow time to schedule a suitable gap in the freight traffic.”
A moment later, our lift doors opened. Lucas led us out into a wide, dimly lit corridor that held what looked like a medium belt flanked by two slow belts. I’d expected there to be a long line of standard crates going along it, but the size and shape of crates varied hugely, and there were a lot of bulky objects that weren’t wrapped at all. I watched in awe as a piano went by.
“We’d better move clear of the delivery area,” said Lucas.
He gestured at the floor, and I saw it was painted with red zigzag markings. Lucas led the way further down the corridor, to where the floor was a plain, grubby grey. Megan and Beckett were standing nearby, and Megan said something to Beckett before hurrying to join us.
“Lucas, I’ve just had a message from Assisted Transportation to say that they’re merging a priority transportation request into our scheduled slot.”
Adika frowned at her. “What sort of transportation request is it, Megan? Law Enforcement sometimes uses the quiet ride system to make long-distance transfers of dangerous prisoners, and I’m not letting a prisoner transport pod anywhere near Amber.”
“There isn’t anything threatening about this transportation request,” said Megan. “A Blue Upway game group had an accident on Level 100. One of the players was critically injured, so they’re being transported to the Orange Zone Trauma Casualty Centre in an intensive care medical cocoon.”
“You and Beckett should join the belt first then,” said Lucas. “The rest of us will follow you on as one large group.”
Megan gave me a worried look. “Amber, I have to warn you not to read the mind of the patient.”
I winced. I knew what that warning meant. I mustn’t read the mind of the patient for the same reason that I had to leave a target’s mind when Lucas called a strike. I’d never had the courage to ask what happened if a telepath was reading a person’s thoughts at the moment of their death, but it obviously wouldn’t be good.
“I won’t read the patient’s mind,” I promised.
Megan went back to Beckett, and I stood staring anxiously at the belt. There was another minute or two of crates and random objects going past us, then a short gap before I saw the white medical cocoon approaching with its attendant medical team. They went by so close to me that I could see the flashing lights and incomprehensible displays on the top of the cocoon.
Megan left a respectful gap after them, then she and Beckett stepped onto the slow belt and moved to the medium.
Lucas turned to the rest of us. “Be careful not to step on the roller system at the edge of the belts,” he warned. “They should only be activated when freight is being loaded or unloaded, but there’s no point in taking risks.”
Inevitably, Adika lifted me into his arms and carried me across to the medium belt himself, to make absolutely sure that his irreplaceable telepath wouldn’t get injured.
Lucas waited until everyone was settled on the medium belt before speaking again. “This is supposed to be a quiet ride, so try not to chatter too much. Beckett needs some peace after a hard day, and we don’t want our conversations distracting the medical team either.”
“I’m not feeling like chatting at the moment,” said Rothan softly. “It isn’t that long since I was in a medical cocoon myself.”
We rode in almost perfect silence after that, travelling along the dimly lit corridor with its banks of dusty pipes and occasional side turnings. When I was up in my Telepath Unit on Industry 1, I had the babble of a hundred million minds below me and quiet overhead. Here the situation was oddly reversed. Total quiet below me, and the roar of the Hive mind overhead.
Finally, Lucas spoke on the crystal comms. “We’re nearing our unit’s dedicated bank of lifts. Be ready to follow Megan and Beckett off the belt.”
As Adika reached out to pick me up, I became aware of a warning sensation that I’d had several times before. Something that felt like an itch deep in my mind, and always meant someone was in trouble.
I dodged Adika, and spoke urgently on the crystal comms. “I itch. Megan, Nicole, we need to warn the medical team to check their patient.”
Lucas seized my shoulders and shook me. “Break contact with the patient’s mind right now, Amber!”
“I’m not reading the patient’s mind,” I said. “The itch thing doesn’t work that way. We need to warn the medical team.”
“I think they already know.” Lucas let me go and turned to point at the distant white cocoon. The medical team members were clustered around it, frantically working on the controls.
Megan spoke on the crystal comms in her most soothing voice. “The patient must be having a crisis. Don’t worry, Amber. There are ways for the medical team to help them, special drugs they can use to ...”
“It’s too late,” I interrupted her. “The itching has gone now.”
“That probably means the patient is recovering,” said Megan.
“No, it doesn’t,” I said flatly.
“But I can see the medical team is still working,” said Megan.
I groaned. “The medical team is still working, still trying, but they can’t do anything to help.”
There was a long silence before Megan spoke again, her voice tired and grieving. “Amber’s right. I just saw the medical team turn off the cocoon’s life support.”
“How did you know it was too late, Amber?” asked Lucas.
“I’ve no idea,” I said. “I’ve never understood the itch thing, and I don’t understand this either. I felt, saw, heard, something indescribable happening. It was like feeling the artificial wind of a park stop blowing. It was like seeing a light fade away to nothing. It was like hearing the end of a piece of music. It was like all of those things and none of them. My itching sensation stopped at the same moment, and I knew Blue Upway had killed someone.”
