Child of the Hive

By Jessica Meats

Will is different... 'special'. He's a genius at maths and even though he's still at school studying for his A levels, he lives on his own in a dingy, run-down bed-sit and has to work at night to support himself. But there's something more that sets him apart - something he has to keep hidden from everyone, even his friends. Otherwise, he risks blowing his cover or, worse, losing his life...

Sophie is 'special' too. Deep in the bowels of a secret government facility she spends her days colouring in seemingly unfathomable patterns on endless sheets of graph paper, never speaking a word. To those around her she seems like a simpleton, but little do they suspect that she, like them, is fighting a secret war - a war against the deadly organization known as the Hive.

Set in a Britain of the near future, Child of the Hive is both a tense sci-fi thriller and a gripping philosophical exploration of what it means to be human in a world of ever-increasing technological sophistication. An unputdownable read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jessica Meats
• Release date: Feb 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301985760

Jessica Meats

Jessica Meats has a degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of York and works for Microsoft as a technology specialist. This love of technology is clear in her first novel, Child of the Hive, an action-packed adventure set in near-future Britain involving the dangers of technology that hasn't quite been invented yet.

Book preview

Child of the Hive

Jessica Meats

Copyright ©Jessica Meats 2009

Smashwords Edition

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The right of Jessica Meats to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher or the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.

Part One

Strange the things that stay in the memory. The shape of the crack on the computer screen. The machine had fallen from the desk when his older brother, Scott, shoved it up against the door. Scott then leaned his weight on the bookshelves. It was hard work for an eleven-year-old, but the shelves toppled, books scattering everywhere, covers bent and pages fluttering. Billy remembered how, confused and frightened, he’d pushed the wheeled office chair to add to the barricade.

Then Scott was flinging the window open and yelling for help, tears streaking his face. In the hallway, voices were promising kindness to boys who cooperated.

A loud bang that spoke of adventure shows and Westerns on past Billy’s bedtime, and the wood around the doorknob splintered. Then the people were back to shoving at the door. The desk shifted by a few inches as the door opened a crack. Hands emerged, trying to push away the obstructions. Scott desperately threw books and stationery at them.

Billy saw Drew on the drive outside, pots of oil and kitchen cleaner balanced precariously on the remote-controlled cars they never let Billy play with. Drew grabbed the matchbox from beside the barbecue, still covered in ash and charcoal from the farewell dinner. He whizzed the cars out of sight of the window. Scott was lifting Billy out the window to stand on the roof of the conservatory below.

The cars with their flammable cargo were driven in through the door, spilling oil over the luggage strewn in the hall. A match followed. A serious of bangs and the voices dissolved into confusion and chaos. Billy slid down to the edge of the roof, the glass beneath him showing a room already filling with smoke.

Scott dropped onto the barbecue and lifted Billy down to Drew. The older boys ran, Drew holding Billy tightly. He was able to look back and see the house. Flames leapt behind the ground floor windows, blazing orange tinged with chemical colours. In the doorway, two bodies, not making a move to escape the heat and smoke.

Blue lights were already flashing down the village street. Billy buried his head in Drew’s shoulder and cried.

Chapter 1

Will woke up to the persistent, annoying beep of his alarm clock to discover that he’d fallen asleep with his head in his physics textbook. He stared in panic for a moment at the blank white page where the last five answers should be, and then he remembered the competition. He had another day before he would have to hand it in and, if they won, it probably wouldn’t matter anyway. If they won, he’d probably never be able to go back to that school again.

He showered quickly, dressing in his least scruffy shirt. He always tried to make sure his school uniform was respectable, even if the rest of his clothes were held together by tattered threads and hope. A comb raked through his hair. A quick coffee in an attempt to wake up. It had to be black coffee because he didn’t trust the milk.

He closed the window that he’d opened the night before in the hope of ridding the grotty little flat of some of the damp smell. All he’d done was make it freezing as well as miserable. Breakfast he avoided due to a combination of nerves and the fact that the fridge was on the blink.

He shoved his physics homework in the bag he’d packed the night before, grateful that he’d thought to turn his alarm on then. He gave the room a search with his eyes, looking for anything he might have forgotten, but there was precious little there. He didn’t spend money on ornaments or any frivolous possessions. Everything he needed was in the bag; there was nothing here he’d mind leaving if he was forced to run again. He wouldn’t miss the flat. He wouldn’t miss the damp smell, the dodgy furnishings and the noise of the neighbours. He focused on that, rather than thinking of the life and the friendships that he would miss.

He glanced at his watch and decided he had time to walk to the station and save the cost of the bus fare. The exercise and chill morning air helped wakefulness burrow its way into his head and, by the time he reached the station, only the butterflies going haywire in his stomach prevented him from being inclined to face the day.

He was a couple of minutes late, but Mrs Porter had arranged the meeting to give them time before the train was scheduled to arrive, so it was absolutely ages before it actually did. She was on the platform now – their chaperone for the trip. Alex and Ben, Will’s teammates for the competition, were standing just far away enough from Mrs Porter that they could pretend to have nothing to do with her. The thought that he might be leaving made him more aware of them than normal. They stood close together – Alex’s short, slightly chubby form next to Ben’s lanky one. In appearance, they seemed opposite in so many ways: gender, height, build. The two looked like they could be the comedy relief duo from some movie, though Will wouldn’t ever tell Alex that. She’d probably find it offensive; no doubt Ben would get the joke.

Standing there, dressed in their school uniforms, rucksacks slung over shoulders, they looked so perfectly normal. Their thoughts were full of homework, TV and fun. When he talked to them, Will was able to imagine, just for a few precious moments, that he was like them. He could pretend he was normal. He could push from his mind the time when he’d been Billy, hide from everything he’d known and everything he’d been and become just another kid.

Pushed together by a talent for maths and the inevitable label of geek, the three of them had found a strong and surprising friendship. There was Alex, with her constant fretting about school and grades, but with an unending generosity beneath the surface. There was Ben, a lopsided grin on his face and a sarcastic joke never more than a few minutes from his mouth, friendly to anyone and everyone. Here was Will, hiding from himself almost as much as from them. It shouldn’t have worked. But it did.

Alex greeted Will cheerfully and then went back to fiddling with the strap of her bag.

‘We were worried our genius wasn’t going to make it,’ Ben said, his trademark grin on his face. ‘Hope you’re feeling smart.’

Will was feeling more nervous than anything else, but not for the same reason as Alex, who was looping the bag strap around her fingers and exhibiting all the symptoms of what the other two had dubbed Pre-Test Tension stage one.

Mrs Porter launched into the ‘reputation of the school’ talk the students had heard on every school trip. The three teenagers nodded along with the instructions about behaving responsibly, being polite and not giving people the impression they were a load of uncouth slobs. She didn’t phrase it that way, but Will could interpret. He knew he wasn’t exactly an example of neatness. His shirt had a badly patched tear on one sleeve, he had been in need of a haircut for over a month now and his clothes had a tendency to hang off his frame in a way which implied a couple of extra meals a week wouldn’t go amiss. Will didn’t suppose it mattered that much. This was a maths competition, not a beauty pageant.

The train arrived a mere five minutes late and they were soon racing down towards London. The three of them sat round a sticky table, while Mrs Porter kept an eye on them from further down the carriage. Will got out his physics homework to finish, while Alex fished out her portcomp and logged onto the web. The Mathematics Mastership Award, known by most as the MMA, had pages of practice questions and past competition papers. Alex had gone into stage two of Pre-Test Tension and was working herself up into a panic by deciding she wasn’t able to do any of the questions.

Will yawned his way through his physics, helping himself to handfuls of the sweets Ben had brought along for the journey. What with the preparation work for the competition, the long shifts at the restaurant and the homework to keep up his scholarship grades, sleep had been quite low on his list of priorities lately.

Across the table, Alex scared herself stupid on the MMA website while Ben copied Will’s chemistry homework.

‘You know, you could do your own homework for once,’ Alex said.

‘But I get better marks when the genius does it. Besides, that’s the least he owes me for eating all my sweets.’

Will looked guiltily at the packet on the table, which was definitely a lot emptier than it had been. He was beginning to regret missing breakfast now. The buffet lunch wouldn’t be for some time, though, with the aid of plastic bags, it could easily be made to stretch until tomorrow.

‘My mum made me bring sandwiches,’ Alex said, ‘just in case the buffet wasn’t any good.’

‘Your mum is a saint,’ Will declared, and ripped off the clingfilm. Will tore into the sandwiches while Alex went back to worrying at the website.

‘Will, how do you do eigenvectors again?’ Stage two of Pre-Test Tension was definitely well under way.

The train raced past fields and housing estates. Ben and Will finished their homework and managed to persuade Alex to put her portcomp to a much better purpose; she let them use it to play Smash! One of the best features of her new state-of-the-art palm computer was, in the eyes of her classmates at least, the fact that it had much better games than anyone else’s.

Only ten minutes after the scheduled arrival time, the train pulled into King’s Cross. Mrs Porter guided them through the crowds of commuters and gaggles of tourists with cameras and phones taking pictures of everyone else taking pictures. Past the departure and arrival boards and the map with the glowing dots displaying live updates of the locations of each of the inbound trains.

They headed outside momentarily, then down the stairs to the Tube. The walls were displaying a new mural, demonstrating the highlights of London in bright colours and stylised images. It seemed Mrs Porter had an easy job; they manoeuvred around a crowd of kids, while a pair of harassed teachers tried to count heads. The school had thought to pay for their journeys beforehand, so they could head straight for the barriers without needing to queue at the top-up machines.

They waved their travel cards at the card readers and the doors opened to let them through. Escalators burrowed into the depths of the earth, while garish posters appealed to the travellers to see the latest West End shows, or ‘visit our new store, opening just a short walk from this station’. The billboard at the bottom was alternating between clips of people enjoying Coca-Cola or lovin’ McDonalds.

The platform was cramped. Among the crowds, Will spotted a little group in green blazers that might well be heading to the MMA. People pored over little guidebooks or had their portcomps picking up the local broadcast of what’s on. Alex fiddled with hers for a bit, then put it back in her bag.

‘I thought there were meant to be signal boosters down here,’ she complained. ‘All I’m picking up is ads.’ Lacking any better distraction, she fiddled with her watch strap for a bit, until the clasp came undone completely and the whole thing dropped to the ground. She put it back on her wrist with an embarrassed grin.

They didn’t have to wait long. The speakers got partway through warning them to not leave luggage, when the system interrupted itself with the notice that the next train was arriving. The potential passengers pushed closer to the doorways in the plastic wall that shielded the platform from the track. It was supposed to be able to withstand a bomb at close range, but Will wasn’t sure he believed that.

The train appeared from the tunnel, screeching to a halt on the other side of the plastic, both pairs of doors whooshing open. Mrs Porter hurried them on through the crush of people trying to disembark, before the synthesised voice warned passengers to stand clear of the doors. The little LED on the IR sensors just inside the door lit up, meaning that it couldn’t see any blockage, and the doors slammed shut again with vicious force.

Will sat down as soon as a seat became available. Alex huffed about it as she grasped the ceiling bar, but she was quite happy about equal opportunities when it came to university places so, as far as Will was concerned, seats were open to all. He spent the rest of the journey reading the graffiti. Someone had spent what must have been a considerable amount of time correcting the spelling in a red marker pen.

It was probably his fear making him remember his past once more, but the sight of the coloured pen made him think of Sophie. He wondered idly how she was, whether Dr Wilkins and the past three years had managed to help her at all, or if she was still the mute young girl, colouring patterns only she could understand.

***

Sophie’s room was a haven of colour in a world of military grey. Graph paper was strewn across the floor, tiny squares meticulously filled with bright ink. Some of the better patterns were pinned up on the wall; others covered the desk. The majority were destined only for the bin. A neat pile of black and white awaited her to go to work with her pens. Her eyes fixed on the page in front of her, she calculated and added and divided, then picked up the red to fill the next millimetre-sided square.

There was a knock on the door. The person who’d knocked opened it without even pausing for a response.

‘Hello, Sophie.’ It was Drew. She didn’t look up, but she smiled as she focused on her formula and picked up the pale green. Andrew Mardon. The closest she had to a friend, and he probably only came to see her because of a sense of guilt.

‘I’ve brought you some more paper.’ Sophie nodded, and Drew put the pile in his arms onto her desk with the rest. Her right hand adding the next colour, in her left, she held out the plastic bag of used pens. He took them.

‘Maybe if you did other things as well,’ Drew suggested, ‘your pens wouldn’t run out so quickly.’

He was just like all the others; always trying to make her stop, trying to make her talk. But she was grateful to Andrew. He came and talked to her when he had the time, choosing to share her company even though he got so little out of it. He was the only person who really did any more. Rachel would sit and talk to her in the mess hall over dinner, but she wouldn’t go out of her way to spend time with her. Everyone else had come to the conclusion she was little better than a vegetable with felt tips and gave up.

There were so many people here, but they each had their own tasks and their own lives. Everyone was so busy, aware of the importance of their work here. They didn’t have time for a girl of seventeen who had less ability to communicate than a baby. All they observed was her silence and her patterns. They didn’t, they couldn’t understand that the girl was still inside, behind the walls.

She missed Billy. He had never told her to stop colouring, though he had wanted her to talk. He’d bought her pens with glitter in them, and ones that changed colours. One Christmas, he’d given her paper that wasn’t just the standard squares. There were hexagons and triangles and pages with overlapping rectangles. She’d had such wonderful scope for her patterns. She’d drawn one with a face. It had taken three attempts to get the formula right and even then the smile had been a bit weird, but she’d done the hair brown, so Billy knew it was meant to be him.

The next two squares were both orange.

He’d told Dr Wilkins that she must be sane and self-aware and all the other stuff he went on about, or she wouldn’t have been able to say ‘thank you’ in this way. Dr Wilkins had just gone on about autism and psychological trauma and the other complications he usually listed. He had too many others to see to and too much research that needed completion. He didn’t hold much hope for Sophie’s recovery, so he focused more on those he could help. It was understandable, she supposed, though that didn’t stop her resenting him for it sometimes.

‘How are you feeling today?’ Drew asked. Sophie shrugged. She was colouring in a little sequence of repeating blue and pink now.

Drew stood there, watching her colour. His shirt was new, crisp and creaseless. The black border around his nametag, marking him as a team leader, still stood out, an unfamiliar sign of authority against the grey material. His hair was trimmed short and he gave the impression of standing to attention even as he leaned on the wall beside Sophie’s desk. It was as though he was desperate to look the part of a military commander, maybe because he still didn’t quite feel one.

‘You really are pale; you should go outside a bit more. How about I take you for a walk in the grounds, or we could go down to the canal?’

She shook her head. It was bad enough having to leave her patterns for the gym sessions Dr Wilkins insisted she did.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t been to see you in a while, but I’ve been a little busy lately,’ he went on. Back to orange now. ‘We’ve had to look into this big maths competition. You know about it, right?’ Blue. No, red. She’d forgotten to carry the one. And they were both prime so multiply them together.

She could feel them pushing against the edges of her mind. She condensed the world into numbers and colours, pushing back. Her eyes were locked on the pattern in front of her, right hand clutching her pen, left hand clenched so tightly into a fist her nails dug into her palm. She focused on the calculations, letting Drew’s words wash past her. She was screaming sums in her head so they could hear nothing else. All her mind was numbers, the previous numbers combining to give the next and each number being represented by a colour. She could create such wonderful, complicated sums, with every coloured square already drawn adding or dividing or multiplying to choose the next. Sometimes even she couldn’t guess how a pattern would look until she’d drawn it.

‘Well, I guess I should get going.’ Drew’s visits always ended this nervously. She wondered why he came, since clearly he didn’t like it. She was glad he did. At least it proved she was still human to someone here.

Drew let himself out as he’d let himself in. Sophie just stayed sitting at her desk, pen nibs brushing over the paper, waiting for their voices to fade to indistinct whispers. She was Silas Marner, the miser hoarding a wealth he could never spend. She had bought herself her thoughts, bought herself a life, but she had no way to use it. All she could do was sit and colour, surrounded by people who fought to make the world better, while she just fought to keep her head to herself, waiting, like Marner, for life to offer her an Eppie. Waiting to express the thoughts she savoured.

She finished the pattern and brought out a new sheet of paper, choosing the calculations and the colours she would use. Then she set to work, the voices pushed to a faint murmur by the walls she’d built.

After a time, the door opened again. This time there was no preceding knock or polite introduction. One of the young soldiers came to take her papers and pens, promising to return them on the hour.

Dr Wilkins had insisted that Sophie spend at least an hour of the day doing things other than her patterns. She had to do a gym session, which even she agreed was necessary to keep her healthy, but apparently that wasn’t enough. So here was this man, sent to steal her defences. She didn’t recognise him. He was just one of those who seemed to do all the miscellaneous tasks no one else wanted. Like visiting her.

If Drew had been the one who’d stolen her patterns, she’d have tried to play chess with him. Scott had had a chess set she was allowed to borrow at any time and Billy had always been willing for a game. The chess set was now tucked away in one of her drawers. They’d thrown out or donated most of Scott’s possessions, but Sophie had snuck into his room and rescued the chess set, so she’d have something to remember him by. Drew didn’t like chess though and she inevitably beat him. Besides, he was always busy now, since his promotion, so she had to think of her own way to keep occupied.

She had a portcomp. Billy had managed to persuade Command that it might help draw her out of her colouring and had got them to pay money towards it, while he paid the rest as a Christmas present. It did have a painting program on it, but this had been disabled, so instead she logged onto the web. She could find some logic problems or maths questions or something. She could feel them pressing up against her thoughts now that she wasn’t focused on the numbers. They were pushing her at the edges, looking for a way in. A weakness. Usually, they were just faint whispers in the distance, not really bothering with her but always watching so they could try their luck when her defences were lower.

She hit the MMA website. They occasionally had challenging problems at the harder end of the practice questions. She hadn’t realised it was the day of the competition until the homepage flashed up with live feed from the webcam in the competition hall. She hadn’t really cared, simply meaning to click to the problems as usual, when she saw a glimpse of something lost and precious.

Billy.

For a moment her mind froze.

The voices screamed against her, pouring into her mind and trying to establish a foothold before she could gain control again.

Two. Three. Five. Seven. She yelled the numbers in her head. Eleven. Thirteen. She pushed back against them, holding them at bay for a little while. Seventeen. Nineteen. It had just been an image on the webcam, pixelated and not very good quality. Just a face in the crowd milling around a large room. Twenty-three. Twenty-nine. She’d only seen the face for a second, but her defences had dropped momentarily and she knew that they had seen it too. She’d let them in just long enough. Thirty-one. Thirty-seven. Forty-one.

She clicked on the link to show the contestants, not thinking about it. Thinking only about the numbers so that was all they would see. Forty-three. Forty-seven. She thought she’d been mistaken. She scanned down the list of names, school photos beside the text. Fifty-three. Fifty-nine. Then she saw his face among the pictures, older but unmistakable. William Francis, Oak Hill School, according to the text beside the image. Sixty-one. He’d changed his surname, but he’d elected to remain William. That didn’t matter really. He’d always be Billy to her. Sixty-seven.

They would have done the same check she did. That was, if they didn’t know already. She had to tell someone. Seventy-one. Seventy-three. But the command never paid any attention to her. She was just a crazy kid who’d been messed up by the Hive. Seventy-nine.

Drew. He was Billy’s friend. More than that, he was one of the few people who paid attention to Sophie. He had to help. Eighty-three. But he was busy with MMA already. He might have seen Billy’s photo. She had to make sure.

Eighty-nine. Ninety-seven. She grabbed the portcomp and ran down the corridor. One hundred and one. She raced round a corner and nearly barrelled into a scientist holding a large pile of files. Cardboard folders went flying and white paper snowed down. One hundred and three. One hundred and seven. One hundred and nine. She gasped her way up the stairs and decided that maybe she would extend the time she spent in the gym. One hundred and thirteen. One hundred and twenty-seven. One hundred and thirty-one. She reached the third floor and was running again, slower now than before. One hundred and thirty-seven. One hundred and thirty-nine. A few people were yelling at her, but she paid no attention. One hundred and forty-three. No, that was eleven thirteens. One hundred and forty-nine. She stumbled going through a door and her portcomp went flying. Thanking any deity that chanced to be listening for shock-proof casing, she picked it up again and charged along the row of doors to the senior offices. One hundred and fifty-one. One hundred and fifty-seven.

She didn’t knock on Drew’s door, just opened it and stood there panting, her mind still calculating primes as she fought for breath. His backpack was open on his desk. She saw him put the gun inside and desperately hoped that he didn’t already know. She wished she’d listened when he’d talked about the competition, then she might have learned what he was being sent to do.

He looked up at her, his expression one of utter astonishment as he saw her away from her room and her patterns.

‘Sophie? What’s wrong?’ His voice was full of concern as it always was. She held out the portcomp and then collapsed into the hard, wooden chair in front of the desk. He took the little computer from her hand, confusion clear on his face.

‘The MMA? Yes, we already know about ...’ He stopped, his face went white as he recognised the picture. ‘Billy.’ So he didn’t know then. Of course he didn’t. Drew wouldn’t have had the gun in his bag if it was Billy he was after.

He left the room, walking but moving fast enough to be nearly a run. Sophie just sat in the chair, almost sobbing with relief. The voices were still there, but even though her focus was no longer complete they weren’t inside yet. They had another target to worry about.

In her mind, Sir Percy, the Scarlet Pimpernel, raced off gallantly to the rescue, while Marguerite was left behind. But that analogy didn’t quite work. Marguerite did get to go and help, have her own adventures, make a difference. Sophie would spend her life stuck here with her numbers and her patterns and them forever whispering in her mind.

Drew would have to do her rescuing for her. Drew wouldn’t let them hurt Billy. He would be the strong protector, just like he had been the day the house burned down.

***

Rachel stood in the corridor, clutching a pile of folders and a portcomp and knowing that if this took much longer she’d just turn and run. Any minute now, he’d be coming out of his office, and she’d say ‘Hi’ to him and they’d talk. Hopefully. The pile in her arms was so that he’d know she had business up here and wasn’t just hanging around on the off chance he’d speak to her.

Rachel wondered if she should have put some makeup on. But she’d never really worn it and would probably put on too much and end up looking like a clown. Twenty-two was possibly a little late to start experimenting. Maybe she should have borrowed the hair straighteners the girls in tech support had offered. A ponytail was practical, but it was hardly a style that would grab a guy’s attention.

She shifted the folders in slightly sweaty hands and tried not to look nervous. She didn’t want to embarrass herself in front of him.

Andrew Mardon. Less than a year older than her and he was already in command of one of the field teams. A body toned by gym sessions and combat training. He carried himself with an air of supreme confidence that came from knowing how to use pretty much any weapon he could lay his hands on. Plus he was able to fight in half a dozen styles. That was probably a slight exaggeration, but she’d seen him sparring and, while she knew nothing about martial arts, she knew that she liked the look of Andrew practising.

And he wasn’t like the other grunts, barely speaking to the science and support staff, coarse and vulgar in their words and actions. Andrew was nice. He always smiled at her and was happy to talk to anyone. And that smile. And those eyes. Tall, dark and handsome by anyone’s standards.

His door opened, and Rachel was casually walking down the corridor, casually noticing that he was there and casually saying, ‘Oh, hi, Andrew.’

‘Sorry, Rachel, I’m in a rush. I can’t talk now.’ And he was gone, heading off at full speed down the corridor. Maybe a bit too casual there.

This couldn’t be good. But he probably was busy, what with the competition and all. It wasn’t like he was purposefully avoiding her. Just like it hadn’t been his fault when he was called away for a meeting when she’d finally worked up the courage to sit at the same table as him in the mess. At least he knew her name. That had to be a good sign, right?

Maybe it was the jeans. She could try wearing a skirt tomorrow. Guys liked girls who wore skirts, right?

Rachel felt like she was back at the old school discos, boys on one side of the room and girls on the other, no one daring to reach across the divide and speak to someone of the opposite sex. She’d never got a date back then; why should things change now?

***

It was supposed to be a simple mission. Drew and his team were meant to keep an eye out for anyone known or suspected of being an enemy agent, watch for suspicious activity and make sure nothing happened to the kids at the competition. But then Billy showed up.

Three years since he’d last seen the Billy brat, but he was still a kid.

Looking at the picture, it was hard to think of Billy as anything but the boy he’d been. Scott’s little brother, there to be protected and spoiled. Knowing what he knew and having seen all he’d seen, didn’t make it easier for Drew to think of the kid as a threat.

The truck he was in rolled through the last stages of the journey to London and Drew studied the information on his portcomp. There was very little, which wasn’t all that surprising. Just school records; faked, but someone had done a good job of making them seem authentic. He must have had some help with the entry in the government database. No way he could have got so much as a date of birth in there without inside help. All in all, Billy had done a very good job of hiding since he’d run away.

Strange that he’d be out in the open now.

Drew looked round at his team. Soldiers, all of them, though not all

Reviews for Child of the Hive

[dreamybanana · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I haven’t got round to reading it myself, which is partly because of exams, but also because my mum couldn’t put it down. I was contemplating coaxing her off it with an ice bun so I could have a chance to read it until she took it on holiday and finished it anyway. So this isn’t exactly my review, but nonetheless it’s a good review and I’ll write one myself when I can.Usually when watching TV, I can’t stand my mum to be in the same room. That may sound harsh but every step of the way she’s guessing what’s coming next, and she’s always right – it ruins it every time. But for this novel, one of the highlights was that it was unpredictable to the end, - well thought through and definitely original. It took her a while to read the first few pages but after that, the book was never to be seen again by me. Apparently it's definitely worth reading, so now I can't wait to read it.

[nick_the_insane · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In this book, Jessica Meats has managed a wonderful balancing act including near-future technology, artificial intelligence, secret organisations, free will, war and its effects, being a teenager/young adult, depression, isolation, love, longing, sharehousing, independence, ... ... I'll stop now. But amazingly she manages to do all of this seamlessly, while keeping you interested in the characters and the events, never being predictable, and never allowing you to settle on a perspective. Even you as an outsider probably won't be sure where your loyalties lie, or what is right, much of the time while reading this. And on top of all of that, the book isn't nearly as intense or difficult a read as you'd be led to expect by the above. In fact, based on her generally straightforward writing style in this novel, I would in particular recommend this book to teenage/young adult readers, though it's definitely an enthralling read for adults as well.

[cajohnson-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I like all sorts of books including detective/thriller types and this is a great read. A fast paced adventure with plenty of twists and surprises to keep you on your toes and to challenge the assumptions you begin to make as the story unfolds. The characters are likeable and you find yourself hoping everyone can get things resolved but knowing this can't possibly happen, or can it? Although I wouldn't generally look in the SciFi genre having erroneously imagined that this only covered Space and Aliens I'm very glad I took this up. The technology although futuristic is perfectly believable, the author obviously knows her stuff. Well written and yet an 'easy' read at the same time, not a combination that is always achieved. For this reason I also think it might appeal to youngsters/teens who have outgrown children's books but are only just getting into longer adult novels.

[carlos1971-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have just finished reading Child of the hive & i belive it is the best book i have read this year. I would not recomend this book for younger children though, in my opinion i would say it is aimed at young adults say 15+. It has a great story line and there is a lot of humer, there is something for everyone. I recomend this book whole heartedly.