| |
––––––––
I followed Lucas out of the Tactical office door, and down the corridor. “What restricted records do you want to look at?”
“The candidate test results for the last Halloween Lottery,” said Lucas.
I frowned. “I thought all the Liaison and Tactical team members could access Lottery candidate results when necessary for their work.”
“They can, but a Tactical Commander has higher level access, and I have a theory that I may need it.”
I was still confused. “Why?”
“Our target is the current Game Commander of Blue Upway. We’ve no real clues to that person’s identity, but we have learned some highly distinctive facts about the original Game Commander. Distinctive enough that we should be able to identify them from their test results in the Halloween Lottery. Over a million candidates go into the Carnival Lottery each year, but only about ten thousand go into the Halloween Lottery, and only about a thousand will be from Blue Zone.”
Lucas stopped to open the security doors. “The snag is that I believe Lottery will have imprinted the original Game Commander for a very important position in our Hive. Important enough that I’ll need my higher level Tactical Commander access to see the details of their Lottery test results. Important enough that I’ll need to be very discreet about contacting them.”
That sounded ominous to me. “Do we need to contact this person at all? You just said that they aren’t our target.”
“I consider the original Game Commander to be an innocent bystander in this case,” said Lucas. “I’ve absolutely no wish to cause trouble for them. I’d just like to call them and discuss what happened at Halloween. They may only know that they went into Lottery, and came back to find the game master stack of Blue Upway was missing, but there’s a chance they’ll remember some detail that gives us a clue to our target’s identity.”
We walked on in silence to our apartment, then sat down on a couch in the sprawling living room. Lucas took out his dataview, tapped it to make it unfurl, and then accessed the Lottery systems.
“So, we want the last Halloween Lottery results,” he muttered, working on the dataview. “We’re searching for a candidate from Blue Zone that’s a gifted leader, persuasive, highly intelligent, organized, and responsible.”
He gave a decisive tap at the screen. “I knew it. The only openly available test results that match my selection criteria are for two very moderate candidates, but there’s one hidden result. I’ll request access.”
He did some more tapping at the dataview, and entered authorization codes. “Yes, that hidden result is for our original Game Commander of Blue Upway. Michaela came out of the last Halloween Lottery, and was imprinted for the highest position in Hive Politics, but she’s currently only assigned as a Diplomat while she gains basic experience. I’ll just check ...”
He worked on his dataview for another minute before giving a despairing groan. “Do you remember there were a lot of blue decorations in the apartment belonging to the head of Hive Politics, which suggested he’d grown up in Blue Zone?”
“Yes,” I said uneasily.
“Well, Senior Ambassador Elliott came out of Lottery eleven years ago. He’s the eldest of a family of two boys and four girls. Michaela is his youngest sister.”
“Six children!” I gasped. “Does that mean the parents had six duty children?”
“The children were probably all born through the duty child programme, but raised by their parents rather than being adopted. It’s obviously one of those cases where siblings share similar abilities, because all six of them are imprinted for the highest positions in Hive Politics. Elliott and Michaela as Senior Ambassadors, and the other four as Ambassadors.”
Lucas took out his dataview and pulled an apprehensive face. “I’ll try calling Diplomat Michaela now. I just hope she decides to co-operate instead of calling for help from her big brother. Do you want to be included in the call?”
I shook my head. “I’d be terrified of saying the wrong thing.”
Lucas stood up and moved to a point in the room where I’d be out of view, then made the call. After about five seconds, the holo head of a stunningly lovely woman in her late twenties appeared in front of him, her dark hair so long that it trailed well past her shoulders.
“Hive Politics,” she said briskly. “Ambassador Paula speaking.”
“I was hoping to talk to Diplomat Michaela,” said Lucas.
“I regret that Diplomat Michaela is unavailable,” said Ambassador Paula. “Can I be of assistance?”
“Do you mean that Diplomat Michaela is in a meeting?” asked Lucas.
“May I ask who’s inquiring?”
“I’m Tactical Commander Lucas 2511-3022-498.”
Ambassador Paula glanced down, clearly checking Lucas’s identity on a desktop display. “Tactical Commander Lucas, I regret that Diplomat Michaela isn’t in a meeting. She is at Hive Genex.”
I blinked.
“I assume her presence there is connected to the Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement investigation of Hive Genex,” said Lucas.
Ambassador Paula nodded. “When Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement’s investigation team arrived at Hive Genex, they invited our Hive to send a delegation to join them. We naturally can’t take part in the investigation itself, but it’s centred on Hive Genex’s attempt to kidnap one of our telepaths, so we’ve a right to join all the negotiations about penalties and compensation arrangements.”
“It was my telepath and partner that Hive Genex attempted to kidnap,” said Lucas pointedly, “so I’ve a strong personal interest in those negotiations. Have we made any progress?”
“We have made significant progress,” said Ambassador Paula. “Unfortunately, I can’t disclose any details of ongoing negotiations.”
“Is it possible for me to speak to Diplomat Michaela at Hive Genex?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Ambassador Paula. “We suspect that Hive Genex is spying on our delegates’ communication channel, so we’re flooding it with fake messages infected with a self-modifying cyber virus.”
Lucas rubbed his forehead. “I see. At least, I think I see.”
“I’m supervising the situation at Hive Genex, and would be delighted to assist you myself,” said Ambassador Paula.
“You won’t be able to help with this because it’s a personal matter,” said Lucas.
“I may still be able to assist you,” said Ambassador Paula encouragingly. “Diplomat Michaela is my youngest sister.”
“I can only discuss this subject with Diplomat Michaela herself,” said Lucas firmly. “Please ask her to contact me as soon as she returns to our Hive.”
Lucas ended the call and came back to sit on the couch next to me. “I’m not sure if Ambassador Paula is protective of her youngest sister, or just nosy about her personal affairs. I suppose that in a family of six duty children, the eldest girl may take on some of the maternal role.”
I waved my hands to show my ignorance of how things worked in such a large family.
“Well, we’ll have to wait to talk to Michaela,” continued Lucas, “but it’s virtually certain that she doesn’t know anything helpful.”
I raised my eyebrows. “A few minutes ago, you said the original Game Commander of Blue Upway might remember some detail that gives us a clue to our target’s identity. Now you’re saying it’s virtually certain that Michaela doesn’t know anything helpful. What’s changed?”
“What’s changed is that we know Michaela was imprinted for Senior Ambassador and is part of a delegation at Hive Genex,” said Lucas. “The minute she found out the game master stack for Blue Upway had been stolen, she’d have realized the potential for danger in an unknown person having control of a Teen Game with thirty thousand players. She’d have reported the change in control of Blue Upway and any clues to the thief’s identity before leaving our Hive.”
I shook my head. “Michaela wouldn’t want to tell Law Enforcement something that could mess up her brilliant new career.”
“Michaela might be a bit embarrassed to admit she’d started a technically illegal Teen Game, but I can’t believe it would seriously damage her career. Anyway, no one would be imprinted for the role of Senior Ambassador unless they were unflinchingly loyal to our Hive.”
Lucas paused. “If necessary, Michaela wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice her career or her life in the interests of our Hive. In this case, she didn’t even need to worry about the minor embarrassment though, because she could just make her report anonymously. If she’d done that, then Game Control would have given us that information along with everything else they knew about Blue Upway. They didn’t.”
He shrugged. “There’s only a vanishingly small chance that Game Control somehow managed to lose the report. The far more likely explanation is that Michaela didn’t report anything because she didn’t know the game master stack for Blue Upway had been stolen.”
I gave him a bewildered look. “But Michaela must have known it had been stolen. She’d have gone back to Teen Level after Lottery to collect her old possessions and retrieve the dataviews.”
“I don’t think Michaela went back to Teen Level to collect her possessions,” said Lucas. “She went into Lottery on the day after the Halloween festival. That was the same day that our Hive gave Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement the evidence of Hive Genex’s involvement in the attempt to kidnap you.”
Lucas had been careful to use the neutral word evidence, but I still winced as I remembered precisely what our Hive had given to Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement. The dead body of Hive Genex’s agent, Elden. It would have been his living body if I hadn’t ...
I relived that crucial moment during the Halloween festival. My Strike team, Lucas, and I had all been wearing Halloween costumes as we hunted a wounded Elden through the Hive. He’d been a poor, broken thing by then, the pain of his physical injuries overshadowed by the agony of a mind being ripped apart by imprint overload.
Elden had turned to look at the demonic hunt pursuing him. I was dressed as the light angel, so his eyes had focused on me as the one sign of hope in the darkness. My Strike team had been given strict orders to shoot Elden on stun, so he could be handed alive to Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement.
I’d known exactly what would happen to Elden after that. How he’d be destruction analyzed, his body and mind picked apart cell by cell to extract as much information as possible before he was finally lucky enough to die.
Elden had been my enemy. He’d worked on his plan to kidnap me for years. He’d nearly succeeded in taking me to Hive Genex. I’d set my gun to kill, and shot him in the head, but it had been an act of mercy rather than revenge.
I fought to banish that too vivid memory and focus on what Lucas was saying now.
“Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement would respond immediately to such a major breach of Hive Treaty as an attempt to kidnap a telepath,” said Lucas. “The instant the evidence was verified, an investigation team of inspectors would have flown to Hive Genex. Ambassador Paula said that the investigation team invited our Hive to send a delegation to join them. Given the importance of the situation, Hive Politics would send our delegation as fast as possible. I think Michaela came out of Lottery, was assigned to the delegation, and was flying to Hive Genex within days or even hours.”
I frowned. “So Michaela didn’t have time to go back to Teen Level and collect her old possessions. Something similar happened to me when I came out of Lottery. I’d left all my possessions in my room’s storage locker, and I arrived in this unit and found them all in a stack of boxes in my apartment. I assumed that Megan had arranged for someone to collect them. Would someone have arranged for Michaela’s possessions to be collected?”
“That’s an excellent question.” Lucas worked on his dataview before speaking again. “Accommodation Services has a record log for each room on Teen Level. Two weeks after Halloween, Michaela contacted them to say she’d be unable to collect her possessions within the standard six-week period because she was involved with long-running negotiations at another Hive. Accommodation Services replied that the room could remain assigned to her until next Carnival, when it would need to be refurbished ready for the incoming wave of thirteen-year-olds.”
Lucas drummed his fingers on the arm of the couch. “Nobody has been to collect Michaela’s possessions yet. She doesn’t know the game master stack for Blue Upway is missing. She’ll assume the dataviews ran out of power and the game shut down. She’s at Hive Genex, so she won’t have seen the Hive channel 1 story about our emergency run, or heard anything about a Teen Game causing problems.”
His forehead creased in thought. “I want to keep Michaela’s involvement a complete secret from everyone except you and me.”
“A complete secret? You aren’t even going to mention her in your reports to Gold Commander Melisande?”
Lucas shuddered. “Definitely not. I don’t need Gold Commander Melisande giving me a lecture on the sensitivity of this situation. I’m fully aware that we want to avoid arguments with Hive Politics.”
He paused. “I’ll want you to do check runs of the four undercover locations tomorrow, to make sure there aren’t any problems developing. Michaela’s room is only two corridors away from Penn’s room, so you can also check the possibility that the game master stack of Blue Upway was stolen by a teen in a nearby room. The timeline pattern analysis of Blue Upway is telling us some very nasty things about the personality of its new Game Commander, so their mind should be very noticeable.”
Lucas stood up. “Let’s get back to the Tactical office now.”
We headed back through the unit, and found the Tactical team staring at a whole array of small holos in shades of orange and red.
“Are those what I think they are?” asked Lucas.
“They’re the hazard ratings of the changes to Blue Upway,” said Beckett.
“I don’t like the look of them,” said Lucas.
“I don’t like the look of them either,” said Gideon. “In fact, they’re horrifying me.”
“And you were perfectly right about our target not knowing much about Teen Games,” said Emili. “That’s the only reason those hazard ratings aren’t all dark red. Our target’s first attempts to create dangers weren’t very successful because they didn’t understand how challenges worked. Unfortunately, they’re gaining knowledge with every attempt.”
Lucas stared at the holos for a moment longer. “We’ll obviously need to do more detailed studying of the Blue Upway timeline pattern this afternoon, but the overall situation seems clear. The new Game Commander has already killed one Blue Upway player, and is working to make the game even more lethal.”
He grimaced. “Our undercover men will be deliberately trying to attract our target’s attention, which is a dangerous game to play with someone that malevolent. If the local teens get suspicious, then our men will be in deep trouble. Tomorrow morning, we’ll send Amber and the Alpha Strike team out to do check runs of the teens in the four locations. It will be easiest for her to do that when most of them are gathered together in their local community centres doing activity sessions.”
The Tactical team members nodded.
“And what happens tonight in Halloween?” I asked.
“We have to be very careful what we do with Halloween,” said Lucas, “because future Game Commanders may copy our ideas. That means we have to come up with events that are unusual and thrilling, but don’t put the players in danger or cause any problems for the Hive. Tonight, we’ll be holding the first of a series of darkness events.”
He paused. “Most people in the Hive are afraid of the dark. That’s the natural result of most people only experiencing total darkness during power cuts, with all the related terror of knowing that no power means no fresh air arriving. You’ve personal experience of the problems this causes during a lengthy power cut, Amber.”
I nodded grimly.
“The Hive has tried several tactics to get people more accustomed to the dark,” Lucas continued, “such as introducing brief spells of total darkness into the Light and Dark pageants. That hasn’t been very successful, so if our Teen Game ends up making its players less scared of the dark, that will be beneficial to the Hive.”
“What will this darkness event be like?” I asked.
“We’re having players gather in a different set of parks,” said Lucas.
“Using parks again is repetitive,” complained Hallie.
“Other games send players to do challenges in groups of three or four at most,” said Lucas. “The players enjoyed the novelty of gathering in larger numbers for our Halloween parties, with their identities safely protected by masks and a shadowy park. We’re going to stick with that distinctive approach.”
“We were surprised by how many players attended the Halloween parties,” said Kareem. “We need to make sure we hold the events somewhere with enough space, and there aren’t many options.”
“There are community centre halls,” said Hallie.
Gideon shook his head. “If we make them sit in rows in a community centre hall as if they’re waiting for a lecture, then they’ll go running back to Blue Upway.”
Hallie gave a resigned grunt.
“The darkness event will start with the drama of the moons and stars going out,” said Lucas. “We’ll leave the players in total darkness for one minute, and then the moons and stars come back on again to show the leader on the event stage. We’re then going to give our players the sort of challenge they’ve never had before. A challenge where each pack competes as a group against all the other packs in their zone. The better your pack does compared to the others, the more Halloween points each player is awarded at the end, and the best performing pack in each zone gets rewarded with a title.”
“And Lucas is being cunning about the scoring system,” said Gideon. “The bigger packs have an automatic advantage, which will encourage the players to get their friends to join Halloween.”
Lucas turned to Emili. “Can you run the hunter of souls darkness challenge sequence for Amber, please?”
Emili went to tap at her desk, and the main screen showed Lucas in costume as the hunter of souls. “The packs will gather tonight to prove their courage. How many of your pack will venture into the darkness? Only the bravest of the packs will earn the title of Demons of their zone.”
