I hurried through the doors, feeling buoyant with relief, and saw I was at the edge of a brightly lit shopping area. Despite the late hour, there were a surprising number of people moving from shop to shop. I supposed there were a lot of shift workers living here on Level 93.
I headed across to a row of lifts, summoned one, and the doors opened to show a man and woman wearing matching white overalls. I glanced at the destination level number, saw they were heading up to one of the fifty industrial levels right at the top of the Hive, and set the lift controls for Teen Level 50. There didn’t seem to be many people travelling between levels so late in the evening, because the lift zoomed upwards without stopping for anyone else.
When the doors opened on Teen Level, I saw I was in another shopping area. Teens had little reason to shop late at night, so the lights were turned down, and only a handful of shadowy figures were in sight. I was still at the wrong side of Turquoise Zone, but I felt far more comfortable now I was back on my home level.
I walked towards a brighter area of lights, and saw it marked a major belt interchange. I checked the signs. I was at 505/5010 in Turquoise Zone, and I had to get home to 510/6120 in Blue Zone. I stepped onto the southbound slow belt, and gave myself a second to adjust to the speed before moving across to the medium, and then the express belts.
I was being carried along an extra wide corridor with bright lights overhead. There was a large chattering group of teens ahead of me, and a boy and girl standing behind me. The group ahead must have been to a late night party on Teen Level beach, because they were all carrying beach bags and towels. I realized I’d left my own bag and towel behind when I was taken away on the stretcher. Hopefully one of my friends would have had enough sense to take them back for me.
The signs on the wall showed that we were approaching the bulkhead between Turquoise Zone and Blue Zone. I was working out exactly how many minutes it would take me to get back to my room from there, when the smooth running express belt under me seemed to falter for a moment, and then started gradually slowing. I looked round in confusion, and saw the medium belt was slowing too.
Alarmed now, I turned to the boy and girl behind me. “What’s happening? Is the belt system breaking down?”
The girl pulled a pitying face at my stupidity. “The three-monthly test closure of the Hive bulkhead doors starts at midnight. Did you really think the express belts would be left running at high speed during that, so they keep throwing people at closed bulkhead doors?”
“Oh, yes. A lot has been happening today, so I’d completely forgotten the bulkhead door test was tonight. Silly of me.” I hastily turned to face forward again.
“Now there’s someone who’ll be coming out of Lottery as a Level 99 Sewage Technician,” said the girl’s contemptuous voice from behind me.
I cringed in embarrassment, but I had a bigger problem than looking a fool in front of a couple of strange teens. If I didn’t make it through the bulkhead doors before they closed, then I’d be stuck in Turquoise Zone for an extra hour.
All three belts were running at slow belt speed now. Red signs started flashing, and a deafening voice came from overhead. “Warning, zone bulkhead approaching! Bulkhead doors are about to close. All passengers leave the belts now.”
I shuffled my way across the medium and slow belts, and stepped on to the corridor floor. The group of teens ahead of me was walking forward, so I followed them on to where the corridor ended in an open area.
I could see the two massive blue and turquoise striped bulkhead doors now. They were wide open as usual, so I thought I still had a chance to get through before the test closure, but then I saw that blue-uniformed hasties were stretching red tape across them.
A man in a maintenance uniform stood in front of the bulkhead doors. He took out his dataview and spoke into it. “Bulkhead 6, Door 17, Level 50. We are clear to close on Turquoise side.”
The watching teens were taking out their dataviews too and checking the time. There was an expectant pause and then they started chanting. “Five, four, three, two …”
The voices were drowned out by a siren screaming, and then the two great bulkhead doors started sliding together. The Hive was one zone wide and ten zones long. I pictured this scene being repeated at every door on each of the nine bulkheads, on all the hundred accommodation levels and fifty industrial levels of the Hive.
When I was eight years old, our teachers had taken us on a special midnight trip to watch the bulkhead doors close. They’d given us lectures on the importance of being able to shut off areas of the Hive in cases of severe emergency like a great fire. I’d barely listened to any of it. My mind had been focused on the Hive Duty songs we’d been taught in school, remembering all the lines about the Hive being one great community working together for the good of all, and shuddering at the idea of Blue Zone being sealed off from the rest of the Hive.
Now I was seventeen years old, but I still felt an echo of that old terror as I looked at the sealed bulkhead doors. I’d lived in Blue Zone all my life, first on Level 27 and then on Level 50, but now it was impossible to reach it.
The man in maintenance uniform was talking into his dataview again. “Bulkhead 6, Door 17, Level 50. Confirming bulkhead doors sealed.”
I wasn’t sure what to do now. The bulkhead doors would be closed for at least an hour. I was feeling tired, and my head hurt, so I couldn’t stand here for that long, but I couldn’t think where else to go.
I spotted several teens moving purposefully through the crowd, turned my head to see where they were going, and saw they were heading towards a set of chairs. I hurried after them, and sat down with a feeling of relief.
More teens joined us, and then a man came to stand in front of us. I saw his activity leader uniform and had a ghastly moment of realization. I’d gatecrashed a Turquoise Zone activity session!
“I’m glad that so many of my class made the effort to get here.” The activity leader turned his head to look directly at me. “We seem to have a new recruit as well. Shouldn’t you be at a Blue Zone lecture on bulkhead doors?”
I heard a giggle from the girl sitting next to me. “I had an accident,” I said awkwardly. “I had to go to a medical facility for treatment, and I didn’t make it through the bulkhead doors before they closed, so …”
“Ah, I see,” the activity leader interrupted me. “You were delayed by your accident, couldn’t get to your own class, so you decided to join our lecture instead.”
“Yes,” I said.
“What’s your name?”
“Amber.”
“I like your dedication, Amber.” The man faced the class again. “Now if you were paying attention in yesterday’s activity session, you’ll know half the maintenance staff in our Hive will be taking part in this exercise.”
He took out his dataview, tapped it, and displayed a complex diagram on the wall. “As you see, the bulkhead doors extend above ceiling height and below floor level. There are people in vents and conduits right now, checking that every way through for fire, smoke and toxic fumes is blocked.”
I sat back in my chair, letting his voice drone on past me. He’d been talking for what seemed like hours, and I was on the edge of falling asleep, when I heard a different voice speak. I hastily forced my eyes open again, looked round, and tensed as I saw the activity leader had finished his lecture and was now asking people questions.
“The main vertical air vent,” said the boy who was sitting two chairs away from me.
“Wrong.” The activity leader looked at the girl next to me. “Magda?”
“The waste chute.”
“Wrong.” The activity leader looked at me. “Amber?”
I’d no idea what question I was supposed to be answering. I threw a desperate look at the diagram. There were lots of labels on it, so I picked one at random.
“The bypass electrical link.”
The activity leader’s head went back as if he was startled, and he jabbed a finger at me. “You a
re right!”
I was? I wondered what I was right about. At that moment, the siren sounded again, and everyone turned their heads to watch the bulkhead doors sliding open.
“My class, you’ve had a late night so I’ll let you off tomorrow morning’s activity session,” said the activity leader briskly. “Amber, this is for you. Congratulations.”
He held out his hand. I was stunned to see the gold card he was holding.
“Amber,” he repeated.
I made myself stand up and go to accept the card. “Thank you,” I muttered.
The other teens dutifully applauded the gold card presentation, but I could see the resentment in their faces as they did it, and they stood up and hurried off without speaking to me. The hasties had removed their red tape, so I joined the rush of people hurrying through to Blue Zone.
The belt system was already speeding up again. Within a couple of minutes, I was travelling south at full express speed. I looked down at the gold card in my hand and felt like crying. I’d spent four years working hard, going to all the activity sessions, and I’d only been given a gold card once for my swimming. Now I’d dozed through a lecture, made a lucky guess at answering a question, and been handed a gold card that entitled me to attend advanced sessions in engineering.
I thrust the gold card into my pocket, and tried to forget about it for the rest of my journey. Once I reached 505/6120, I just had a short ride on an eastbound belt, and I was at the end of my home corridor. I gave a sigh of relief, walked down to my room, opened the door, and froze in shock.
There was a gaping hole in my room wall, and a black-clad creature with weird glowing eyes was climbing, spider-like, out of it.
Chapter Six
I made a faint squeaking sound and took a step backwards. What sort of monster could have glowing eyes like this? I remembered the telepath that had been in the lift with me, and how there’d been a strange glint of purple eyes behind her grey mask. Was this what a telepath looked like without their mask? If it was, then why was a telepath coming through the wall of my room?
“Don’t worry, Amber,” said a familiar voice. “It’s only me.”
“Forge?” I shrieked.
“Please don’t shout like that. You’ll wake everyone up.”
I forced my voice down to a savage whisper. “You scared me to death. What are you doing in my room?”
“There’s absolutely no need to get upset.”
“No need to get upset?” I repeated incredulously. “You’ve destroyed the wall of my room!”
“No, I haven’t. How is your head feeling?”
“My head was feeling fine until you leapt out of the wall at me.”
I’d left the lights in my room on minimum setting. Now I finally had the sense to turn them up to full brightness. Forge stood in front of the hole in the wall, looking guilty and embarrassed. He was wearing a black top and leggings, his face and hands were grubby, and he had a coil of rope slung over his shoulder. What I’d thought were weird glowing eyes, were actually lights attached to a black band tied round his forehead.
Forge lifted both his hands in a pacifying gesture, and spoke in soothing tones. “I’d never have come in here if I’d known you were coming back tonight, Amber. I promise that I haven’t damaged anything. I just took off the cover of the air vent inspection hatch on your wall so I could look inside. I was careful not to make a mess.”
He paused to look down at the heap of clothes on the floor. “That mess was already here when I arrived.”
I wasn’t going to get diverted onto the subject of my untidiness. “How did you get in here?”
“You told me your door code.”
“I did? When?”
“Last year,” said Forge. “We were supposed to meet for swimming training. You called me to say you’d be late back from visiting your parents, and wanted to go straight to the swimming pool. You asked me to pick up your swimming bag and meet you there.”
He was right. “You still remember my door code after all this time?”
“It’s not hard to remember a door code that’s 54321.”
I wasn’t going to get diverted onto the subject of my choice of door codes either. “Why can’t you mess around with the inspection hatch in your own room?”
“There isn’t an inspection hatch in my room. I thought you wouldn’t mind me opening this one and taking a peek inside.”
I glared at him. “Those are your cliff climbing clothes. You dressed in your cliff climbing outfit, tied those silly lights to your head, and brought along a rope just to peek inside an inspection hatch?”
“Well, not exactly,” admitted Forge. “When I looked inside the hatch, and saw the vent was big enough to wriggle through, I couldn’t resist climbing in there to take a look, but my ordinary clothes kept getting snagged on the mesh floor and it was pitch dark. I did the sensible thing, went back to my own room, and got better equipped before exploring further.”
I groaned. “That’s your idea of being sensible? Going crawling round a filthy vent system?”
Forge looked down at his hands, and rubbed them on his top. “It wasn’t that dirty.”
“You’d no way of knowing what was in there. You could have fallen down a lift shaft!”
“That’s why I brought the rope,” said Forge, “but I found that I didn’t need it. The narrow vent led into a bigger maintenance crawl way, with motion-triggered lighting. That joined other crawl ways, and there were points with ladders leading up and down.”
He shook his head. “It was a really confusing place. There were maintenance codes on the walls in places, but I didn’t understand what they meant. Next time I go in there, I plan to take a marker pen to number the junctions and ladders so …”
“You aren’t going back in there,” I interrupted him. “At least, you aren’t going back in there from my room. Fix that hole in my wall right away!”
Forge sighed, went back to the hole in the wall, lifted a cover over it, and locked it into place. He stepped back and pointed at it. “You see. There’s no damage done at all.”
I inspected the cover, and prodded it with a dubious finger to see if it would fall off the wall. It didn’t.
“I’m really keen to go back in there a few more times and explore,” added Forge hopefully, “and yours is the only room on our corridor with a full size inspection hatch. Everyone else just has tiny little air vents.”
“Everyone else is lucky,” I said bitterly. “How can I sleep knowing that people could crawl out of my wall at any moment?”
“Please, Amber.”
Forge gave me a pleading look. I felt the usual compulsion to agree to what he wanted, but fought against it. “No. You’re never setting foot in my room again.”
“But it was so exciting exploring the maintenance crawl ways.”
“You go cliff climbing. You’re in the Blue Zone teen swimming and surfing teams. That’s more than enough excitement for any reasonable person.” I pointed at the door. “Go!”
Forge sighed again and left. I looked gloomily at the closed door, wondered if any of our friends had seen him coming out of my room in the middle of the night, and if they’d suspect something was going on between us. It seemed highly unlikely. If Shanna was a park light set to sun brightness, then I was barely the equivalent of a light at moon setting.
I turned to look at my reflection in the wall mirror. My hair was a wild disaster and my tunic was smeared with dark bloodstains. I pulled a face at myself. Forget a park light at moon setting; I was merely one of the tiny, faint stars.
I hung one of my big swimming towels over the inspection hatch on the wall, to make sure no one crawling through the vent system could peek through its grille at me, and then stripped off my clothes. I dumped them with the heap already on the floor, made a mental note that I really must do some laundry soon, and went into my shower cubicle to have a brief and cautious wash.
The glue on my scalp seemed to survive the hot water without prob
lems, but my head was aching again. It was well over six hours since I’d taken my last tablet, so I could take another one now. I remembered the tablet box was still in my tunic pocket, and retrieved it from the laundry heap. As I took out one of the tablets, I noticed the warning words on the box. “May cause drowsiness.”
I groaned. That explained why I’d fallen asleep in the Level 93 park. If I’d noticed those words earlier, I’d never have taken a tablet while I was there, I’d have got back to rejoin my friends in the early evening, and Forge wouldn’t have invaded my room and given me a phobia of inspection hatches.
I looked dubiously at the tablet I was holding, decided that causing drowsiness didn’t matter when I was going to bed anyway, and swallowed it. I set the room lights to minimum, turned on the sleep field, relaxed on the warm cushion of air, and then frowned. I always slept with my head at the end of the sleep field closest to the wall with the air vent, but now I had a towel hanging next to my head.
I rolled out of the sleep field, and climbed on again the other way round, so the towel was by my feet. It made occasional billowing movements as air blew from the vent, but I forced myself to ignore it and closed my eyes.
Perversely, the second tablet didn’t seem to be having the same effect as the first. I hovered on the edge of sleep, but couldn’t cross the boundary. Disjointed memories of the day’s events drifted through my mind. Atticus calmly breaking Teen Level conventions by telling me that his parents were Level 80. The ghastly moment in the lift when the telepath looked down at me. How I’d told Buzz about my odd reaction to Forge.
I’d assumed Buzz was just a chatty, low level stranger, keeping an eye on me in case I suffered dizziness from my head injury. If I’d known she was a Level 1 Psychological Therapist, would I have kept quiet about the whole Forge thing, or would I have given her more details, even mentioned a weird recurring dream I had about him?
At least I’d made a breakthrough tonight. Forge had wanted to explore the air vents again, but I’d been so angry about him invading the privacy of my room that I’d refused.