Perilous Read online

  “After four years living on Teen Level, the other seventeen-year-olds all have their established friends,” said Forge. “They won’t want Reece bothering them.”

  Atticus got back to his feet. “Reece deserves to be left on his own for Carnival. We’ve warned him about his behaviour over and over again. Every time he’s promised to reform but is acting just as repellently within days. Linnette and I caught him teasing Casper only yesterday evening.”

  There was stunned silence at the uncharacteristic outburst from quiet, thoughtful Atticus.

  “I don’t understand why you’re all turning against Reece,” said Forge. “I know he went too far painting insults on Margot’s door, and he shouldn’t have made fun of Amber when she was stuck on the cliff, but he behaves himself most of the time.”

  “Reece is a loathsome bully,” said Margot. “You don’t realize how bad he is, Forge, because he never picks on you or Shanna. Reece is smart enough to attack easier targets. People like Casper. People like Linnette. People like me!”

  “Margot’s right,” said Linnette. “Half a dozen of us went shopping yesterday, and Casper accidentally bumped into a display cabinet in one of the shops. An ornament fell off a shelf and got broken. Casper was distraught about it, but the shopkeeper was very understanding.”

  “He was nice,” said Casper, smiling happily.

  “We sorted everything out,” continued Linnette, “and Casper calmed down again, but that evening Atticus and I caught Reece frightening him. He was telling Casper that he was useless, nobody liked him, and he was going to be thrown out of the Hive for breaking things.”

  Casper’s face crumpled into distress. “I don’t want to be sent Outside to be attacked by the hunter of souls. I don’t want to be traded to another Hive either. I want to stay here.”

  Linnette patted his arm. “What Reece told you was wrong, Casper. You’re very helpful, we all like you, and nobody is going to throw you out of the Hive.”

  Casper brightened up again.

  “I’d no idea that Reece had sunk to the depths of upsetting Casper,” said Forge, with an angry edge to his voice. “Well, you’ve convinced me that we need to take action. Who votes in favour of excluding Reece for Carnival?”

  A host of hands shot up, including mine. Forge raised his own hand and did some solemn counting. “Twenty in favour. Are you abstaining, Casper?”

  Casper gave him an uncertain look.

  “Are you voting in favour?” asked Forge.

  Casper shook his head.

  “Are you voting against?”

  Casper hesitated for a moment, and then shook his head again.

  “All right,” said Forge. “Casper is abstaining from voting because he’s far too kind to vote to exclude anyone, however mean they are to him, so effectively that’s a unanimous decision. Reece is excluded until after the three days of Carnival celebrations. We don’t invite him to our parties. We don’t allow him in the corridor community room. We don’t talk to him. We don’t even acknowledge he exists.”

  “The paramedic is coming now.” Shanna pointed at where a man was walking across the beach towards us. He was wearing the dramatic red and blue, diagonal striped uniform of Emergency Services, and had what looked like a chunky-wheeled stretcher chasing after him.

  Everyone watched in silence as the paramedic knelt beside me. He tapped the white name badge on his shoulder. “I’m Barnard, and I’ve come to treat your injury. What is your name and identity code?”

  “Amber 2514-0172-912,” I recited.

  “Hello Amber.” He took a dataview from his pocket, tapped it to make it unfurl, and entered the code. “You’re seventeen, and live in Blue Zone, area 510/6120, corridor 11, room 6?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I was told that you injured your head climbing the cliff, Amber. Did you fall off?”

  “No, I just bumped my head on the ceiling. There’s a slight cut, but it’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Please lie down, Amber.”

  I lay back on the sand. Barnard peered at my head, waved what looked like a mini scanner at it, and then scribbled my name on a white plastic bracelet and attached it to my wrist. I turned my head to study it, reminded of the tracking bracelets children had to wear until they were ten years old.

  “Is your head hurting, Amber?”

  “A bit.”

  “I’ll give you some mild pain killers.”

  He handed me two virulently purple tablets. I dutifully chewed and swallowed them.

  “I’m taking you to a medical facility now,” said Barnard. “Once you’ve had an initial examination from one of their doctors, you’ll probably be given some stronger pain relief.”

  “But I don’t need to go to a medical facility. It’s only a little cut.”

  He ignored my protest, and brought the wheeled stretcher alongside me. I looked at it nervously, and was about to ask if I was supposed to climb onto it, when something slid out of the side and scooped me aboard.

  “Please lift up your arms, Amber.”

  I lifted my arms. Barnard fastened one strap across my chest, another across my legs, and started the stretcher moving. Despite the straps holding me in place, I grabbed at the sides of the stretcher to make sure I couldn’t fall off.

  “Can one of us go to the medical facility with Amber?” asked Forge.

  “I’m afraid that isn’t possible,” said Barnard. “Teen Level Cascade Triage is in operation.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means that all the Teen Level medical facilities are overloaded, so each case has to be assessed, and some may be sent to more distant medical facilities.”

  “Why are ...?”

  My words were drowned out by a siren sounding, followed by a deafening voice from overhead speakers. “Swimmer in distress! Clear the way for beach rescue!”

  Chapter Two

  My stretcher jerked to a halt, and two men carrying flotation devices sprinted past us, heading towards the water.

  “Waste it, not another one!” snapped Barnard. “Amber, wait here for me.”

  He ran off, and everyone else followed him. I was left alone, strapped to my wheeled stretcher. No, not totally alone. Atticus was still standing next to me, looking down at me with a frown.

  “Margot seems determined to get Reece into trouble,” I said.

  “I don’t blame her. Did you see what he painted on her door?”

  “No. Forge and I were at swimming training that afternoon, and someone from Accommodation Services had cleaned the paint off before we got back.”

  “Well, I heard Margot crying, and went to help her, so I saw there was a savagely nasty mention of her sister. I didn’t understand what it was about, but Margot was completely incoherent with distress, and I had to call Accommodation Services on her behalf.”

  I grimaced. I’d thought only Preeja and I knew the secret about Margot’s older sister. Even Shanna and Linnette hadn’t been told, because Margot had been worried that Shanna would react by saying something tactless, while Linnette had been away attending an advanced course in the care of nocturnal creatures during the crucial couple of weeks.

  I was sure that neither Preeja nor Margot would have trusted Reece with the secret, so he must have found out about it by sneaking around and listening at doors. If he’d been tormenting Margot about her sister, then I wasn’t surprised that she was trying to get him in trouble.

  Atticus waved a dismissive hand. “Forget about Reece. Why did you try climbing that cliff, Amber? I couldn’t believe it when I saw you up there. You must have known that you’d get into difficulties. You get frightened just standing on a stepladder to hang decorations on a park tree.”

  I sighed. “Forge suggested that climbing the cliff would help me conquer my fear of heights. It seemed worth a try. I didn’t think I’d be so scared when I had a safety line to stop me from falling.”

  “I admire you for trying to beat your fear, but I suggest yo
u don’t do it again.”

  “I won’t.” I changed the subject. “What did the paramedic mean about all the Teen Level medical facilities being overloaded? They didn’t seem busy when I went for my last annual medical check.”

  “They’ll be busy now because we’re getting close to the Carnival celebrations, and you know what happens after those finish,” said Atticus, in a startlingly grim voice.

  “The Lottery of 2531.”

  “Exactly. In ten days’ time, every eighteen-year-old in our Hive will be saying final farewells to their teen friends, and then heading for their assessment centres. They know they’ll be hit with a barrage of tests that will decide their whole future life. They’re naturally going to be nervous about that, and in some cases the nerves will turn into outright panic.”

  I recited the words that were on the wall of every community centre on Teen Level. “The five years on Teen Level climax in the thrilling week of Lottery. Eighteen-year-olds are assessed, allocated, optimized and imprinted, emerging from Lottery as proudly productive adult members of the Hive.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “I can understand the eighteen-year-olds being nervous though. Teen Level 50 is halfway up the Hive. Everyone wants to do well in Lottery, and be assigned to a higher level of the Hive, but realistically half of us will end up going down to lower levels.”

  “Our chances are much worse than that,” said Atticus. “When I was a child in school, the teachers kept saying there were a hundred million people and a hundred accommodation levels in the Hive. That made it sound as if there were a million people living on each accommodation level.”

  He paused. “That’s not true though. There are just pipes and waste systems down on Level 100, so the Hive only has ninety-nine real accommodation levels. There must be about five million of us packed into Teen Level, which works because we have one small room each. Adults all have apartments though, and everyone knows that higher level people have bigger apartments.”

  He pulled a face. “If you think about it logically, that means there must be far fewer people living in luxury on Level 1 than those living in cramped apartments on Level 99. There are twenty-two of us living on our corridor. My guess is that only seven or eight of us will be heading up the Hive after we go through Lottery, while the rest will go down.”

  I frowned. I’d worked these things out for myself as a child in school, and kept quiet about them because a loyal member of the Hive didn’t question what the teachers told her. It was disconcerting to hear the quiet Atticus openly say something so rebellious.

  Atticus shrugged. “The idea of going down the Hive doesn’t worry me though. My parents are Level 80, so I’ve never had any great expectations about what Lottery will assign me.”

  I was disconcerted again. Teen Level equality rules said that you never told the other teens what level your parents were. When you went to visit your family, you made sure you were alone in the lift so no one would see your destination level. I’d known a few teens, including Reece, break that rule to smugly point out their parents were among the elite who lived in the top ten accommodation levels of the Hive.

  Such attempts at showing off were always met with the hostile response that your parents’ level didn’t matter any longer, because all teens were Level 50 and equal. I’d never known anyone admit to having low level parents, so I’d no idea how to reply.

  “My parents may only be Level 80, and doing simple work caring for plants in hydroponics, but they’re happy,” continued Atticus. “They’re proud to be doing something as important as feeding the Hive.”

  I finally found something safe to say. “Feeding the Hive is vital work.”

  Atticus nodded. “Even if I end up on Level 99, I know I’ll be doing useful work. I’ll have an apartment of my own rather than a single room, and a better income than the pathetic teen living allowance. My theory is that the Hive sets things up that way deliberately. Teens from high level families must find the transition to the minimal lifestyle on Teen Level hard to start with, but it means that everyone’s living standards improve when they come out of Lottery.”

  I knew that Atticus was right about teens from high level families finding it hard to adjust to Teen Level. When I first arrived on Teen Level as a thirteen-year-old, I’d thought my room horribly small compared to my old bedroom in my parents’ Level 27 apartment, and struggled to buy what I considered necessities on my miserly living allowance.

  I was less sure about everyone’s living standards improving when they came out of Lottery. I’d heard plenty of jokes about how Level 99 Sewage Technicians lived in hovels among the pipes, and assumed people were exaggerating the poor conditions, but I’d no actual knowledge of what life was like down there.

  “What frightens me about Lottery isn’t the uncertainty of what level I’ll be afterwards,” said Atticus, “but the fact I’ll have my brain imprinted with the information required to do my work.”

  “But being imprinted will be wonderful,” I said. “We’ll be given the gift of a wealth of knowledge.”

  “That’s what everyone tells us,” said Atticus cynically, “and it’s what we all obediently repeat, but I find the idea of someone messing with my brain quite terrifying. Haven’t you thought about that, Amber?”

  I hadn’t thought about the imprinting process before – my worries about Lottery had always been focused on whether I’d be rated high or low level – but I was thinking about it now. Was imprinting painful, and did having all that extra knowledge change your personality?

  Forge and Shanna came back to join us, with all the rest of our corridor group except Reece trailing after them.

  “Did beach rescue save the swimmer in distress?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Forge eagerly. “Beach rescue were amazing. I’m one of the best swimmers in the Blue Zone teen swimming team. Maybe when I go through Lottery, I’ll be assigned to beach rescue myself.”

  “You should want Lottery to assign you to either the Blue Zone adult swimming team or the surfing team,” said Shanna reprovingly. “A professional athlete is far higher level than a mere beach rescuer.”

  “Being high level and swimming for my home zone would be nice, but there’d be more satisfaction in rescuing distressed swimmers.” Forge sighed. “Well, Lottery will decide my future, not me. I just hope ...”

  He broke off because the paramedic had returned. “I’ll take you to a medical facility for treatment now, Amber,” said Barnard.

  My stretcher started moving off across the sand again. “We’ll see you later,” called Shanna.

  I lifted a hand in acknowledgement. My stretcher jolted across the sands, the motion sending a jarring pain through my head, but then we went through some double doors. The distant, blue beach sky, with its dazzlingly bright suns, was replaced by a standard-height white ceiling with ordinary lighting, and my stretcher rolled smoothly along a corridor.

  There was only one beach on each level of the Hive, so they were always near the area 500/5000 centre point, and had major belt interchanges at every entrance so people from distant areas of the Hive could travel there as quickly as possible. I expected us to stop at the interchange by this beach entrance, and was wondering what it would be like to ride the belt system strapped to this stretcher, but we kept going on along the corridor to a row of express lifts.

  Barnard pressed the button to summon a lift. “Your head injury appears to be minor, Amber, so Teen Level Cascade Triage has given you a low crisis rating and is sending you to another level of the Hive for treatment.”

  I was being sent to another level of the Hive for treatment! I knew it was ridiculous to feel nervous about that, but I’d lived with my parents on Level 27 until I was thirteen years old and moved to live on Teen Level 50.

  I’d gone for lots of rides on the upways and downways since then, usually illegally balancing on the handrail until blue-uniformed hasties intervened and scolded me. On each of those rides, I’d peered nosily at the other levels as the moving
stairs carried me past them, but I’d never actually set foot on any of them.

  A well-behaved member of the Hive stayed on their home level, only going to other levels when their work required it or to visit close relatives. Once a week, I visited my parents on Level 27. My age and clothes made me conspicuous, so every hasty who saw me would check my identity and make sure I wasn’t straying from the direct route to my parents’ apartment.

  I told myself that I couldn’t get in trouble for going to another level to have my injury treated, but that didn’t make me feel any better. I was feeling vulnerable and wanted to stay on familiar territory.

  “You’ll be treated at a Level 93 medical facility,” continued Barnard.

  “Level 93?” I repeated anxiously. “But that’s almost at the bottom of the Hive!”

  “Don’t worry about that. You’ll still receive medical treatment of a high standard.”

  The doors of one of the lifts opened, and Barnard guided my stretcher inside. A moment later, I was watching the numbers change rapidly on the lift level indicator. The lift stopped at Level 63, and the doors opened to show a group of men wearing maintenance uniforms. They took one look at me lying on my stretcher, face smeared in blood, and stepped backwards.

  “You go ahead,” said one of them.

  The doors closed again, and the lift moved on down, stopping again at Level 69. This time the doors opened to show four men and women in the blue uniforms of Health and Safety, and a female grey-clad figure wearing an oddly shaped mask that enveloped her whole head.

  I gasped in shock. A telepath squad! Was this something to do with the climbing instructor reporting Reece to Health and Safety, or just a random encounter? Telepath squads roamed everywhere in the Hive, reading minds to check for criminal thoughts, so it could just be pure chance that one had stopped our lift.

  I waited tensely, hoping the telepath squad would do the same as the maintenance workers, and back away to let our lift continue without them, but they stepped inside. The lift doors closed, and the telepath moved to stand by my stretcher and look down at me. I saw the purple glint of inhuman eyes studying me from within her bulging grey mask.