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Amber as the Light Angel, flanked by Adika and Lucas

"It's a mistake," I repeated. "I'm not a telepath."
She turned to face me again, and her lips weren't moving. "I stopped talking two minutes ago, Amber. You've been pulling the pre-vocalized words directly out of my mind."

Hive Mind is a series of science fiction works written by Janet Edwards.

The year is 2532 in Hive England, a massive arcology of one hundred million people on 100 residential levels across 10 zones. An eighteen-year-old girl named Amber is about to enter Lottery, the achievement test all eighteen-year-olds go through to find their perfect job. Upon completing Lottery, they will be "imprinted" with all the knowledge they need for that job.

Except Amber finds that she will never be imprinted, because she is one of the extremely rare telepaths that the Hive needs to use to protect citizens from each other. As an elite telepath, she is given command of a unit that seeks out and captures "wild bees" before they can hurt the Hive. She becomes a critical guardian, protecting the Hive from descending into chaos.

Works in the series include:

  • Telepath (novel)
  • Defender (novel)
  • Perilous (prequel novella, set before Telepath)
  • Hurricane (novel)
  • Borderline (novel)
  • Candidate (prequel short story, set during Telepath, available online)
  • Adversary (novel)

This series contains examples of:

  • 10-Minute Retirement:
    • Megan decides to resign after her Belligerent Sexual Tension with Adika spills over and starts negatively affecting Amber. Once Buzz is brought in to counsel Amber, and also provides Adika with some advice, she is convinced to stay.
    • Atticus leaves Morton's surgical team so that he can be the scapegoat for how close Morton came to dying. Morton realizes that this is why everybody is blaming Atticus and calls him back to lead the surgical team again.
  • Abduction Is Love
    • Amber's first emergency run tracks down a boy who kidnapped his ex-girlfriend in an attempt to make her love him again.
    • Morton kidnapped Celandine and spent a year trying to make her love him, but she refused to comply.
  • Achievement Test of Destiny: Lottery. A multiple-day test to find out exactly what would be the perfect role for you in society, the job that you can do well and that will make you happy. Some roles (such as telepath) are so important that anyone who can do them will be taken for that role, regardless of whether it is something they would actually want to do.
  • Aerith and Bob: Amber's support team includes Nicole and Megan, and Forge and Adika.
  • Air-Vent Passageway:
    • On Teen Level, Amber had an air vent inspection hatch in her room. Forge used it to enter and go exploring while playing Blue Upway.
    • In Borderline, Alvin uses air vents to access his neighbors' apartments, including the head of Hive Politics.
    • In Candidate, Eli and Maizie don't have a full inspection hatch to use so they break through a damaged wall to escape from Katelyn.
  • Amazon Brigade: Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement's Valkyrie forces are composed entirely of women. They are feared opponents, both for their own skills and equipment, and because if they are activated, they have the full weight of the rest of the Hives behind them.
  • And I Must Scream: After Amber's imprint is activated, she envisions herself in a little crystal bubble, trapped inside her own head as her mind is taken over by the imprint.
  • And the Adventure Continues:
    • The first three novels all end with Amber going on a run, which the following novel starts with.
    • Adversary ends with one of Blake's old cases being reactivated for Amber to work on, and a promise that Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement has something they need her to do.
  • Arcology: Hive England, which the main characters all live in, is a hundred-million-person city that provides almost all its own food, water, power, and other needs. (They do trade stuff with other Hives, but not for much - the only trades we see on-page are for extremely advanced medical technology.) Other Hives exist but are generally less self-sufficient.
  • Arc Symbol: In each of the books, Amber and her team take on the role of the Light Angel, a character in the annual Halloween and Carnival festivals. The Light Angel protects the Hive and its loyal citizens, fighting the forces of darkness directly or calling on Justice to aid her.
    • In Telepath, Eli dreams of Amber as the Light Angel when he's hit by a tranquilizer dart. Later, Amber dresses as the Light Angel as they move to capture Elden on Halloween.
    • In Defender, Light Angel is the code name of Amber's team as they attempt to stop Mars.
    • In Hurricane, the image of Amber as the Light Angel is used to make Glenna run from Irwin.
    • In Borderline, we find that the use of the Light Angel code name has spread to all of Law Enforcement. This is a major cause of Keith being upset with Amber - he called Olivia his Light Angel, and then Amber "killed" her and took the name.
    • In Adversary, the Hazard Response team is thrilled to be working with Light Angel. In addition, Noreen decides that Forge is the embodiment of the Light Angel after he 'flew' in to save her from Riley.
  • Arc Words: "The Hive knows best." Intended as a way to keep people from asking questions, it gets brought up repeatedly when Amber thinks the Hive is making mistakes. Amber's increasing unwillingness to accept this as an answer comes to a head when she talks to Keith, who expects her to say it as a "dutiful doll". She says she isn't sure that the Hive knows best after all.
  • Are You Sure You Want to Do That?: When Rothan tells Adika that, due to Adika being the top priority target, Rothan is taking over as acting Strike Team Leader and Adika needs to go join the bodyguard group, this is Adika's reaction.
    "And what if I refuse to retreat to the park?" asked Adika.
    "Then I shoot you on stun and get someone to drag you there," said Rothan.
    "Really?" Adika made the single word hold infinite menace.
    "Really," said Rothan.
  • Armor Is Useless:
    • Downplayed with the team's normal armor. For most situations, Strike Team members, Amber, and anyone else on a mission wears a mesh body armor that should stop a knife or a kill shot. Eli is wearing it when Elden shoots him, and while he is knocked over and injured by falling into the river, his armor protects him from the shot. However, it's useless against Eldan's Tranquilizer Dart trap, and Irwin's limpet knife cuts right through it.
    • Subverted with their full combat armor. Caleb is shot twice in the shoulder with guns set to kill, and while he's seriously injured, he survives because the shots hit in slightly different places.
  • Awful Truth: Amber gets several of these.
    • In Telepath, she learns that the nosies are a lie and the Hive is kept from chaos by the efforts of far-too-few full telepaths. She also learns that telepaths are above the law.
    • In Hurricane, she learns that the sea farms exist as a group of people who can survive if the Hives fail, and why telepaths can never meet. She also learns that, if it becomes necessary, Melisande would cut off as many zones from the Hive as it took to save the rest.
    • In Borderline, she learns just how bad things got before she came out of Lottery, with Sapphire doing multiple emergency runs per day.
  • Badass Boast: When Amber clears her echoes, it gives her a feeling of strength and confidence that is often expressed this way.
    I was solely Amber now, this wasn’t just my Hive’s territory but my personal domain, and I had no need to fear any battles that would be fought here.
  • Batman Gambit: A lot of Lucas's successes come from knowing exactly how someone will react. For example, when dealing with Glenna and Irwin at the start of Hurricane, he works out how they will each react to various circumstances. He uses that to separate them to protect Glenna and neutralize Irwin.
  • Belligerent Sexual Tension:
    • Adika and Megan. They start off at practically Slap-Slap-Kiss levels, but they have belligerent sexual tension even after they become a couple. In Borderline, they start having an argument in the middle of a meeting, and are clearly getting aroused by it.
    • Buzz and Forge. After Buzz sees this between Adika and Megan, it makes her think about her own relationships.
  • Beware the Mind Reader: The Nosies are claimed to be telepaths, but aren't. Nosies are generally strongly disliked, and the sight of them almost-universally leads to people chanting multiplication tables as Psychic Static.
  • Big Brother Is Watching: The Hive does its very best to give this impression with the nosy patrols. It's not entirely inaccurate (there are real telepaths, and they do go around making sure potential future criminals are headed off before they get the chance to do anything) but drastically overstates the number of telepaths. Amber is disturbed at the idea that, before they used telepaths, crime was prevented by having cameras everywhere. Averted in that the telepaths are the only use of this; the Hive doesn't use cameras, monitoring of messages, tracking of dataviews, or anything of the sort, to give the residents as much privacy as they can. The Sea Farm does use cameras, and splattering them with paint is a popular game among the children.
  • Big Storm Episode: Downplayed. The climax of Hurricane takes place during a Class 12 Hurricane, but most of the story is unaffected by it.
  • Blackmail: Bruce thinks he's blackmailing Michaela over leading the Blue Upway game because it will ruin her career. However, part of being imprinted at the level she is is that she would choose the good of the Hive over her personal career. The blackmail actually only works because having that on her record would damage her case against Hive Genex, which includes three more citizens and their children, including a full telepath.
  • Blackmail Backfire: As soon as Lucas finds a way to prevent Michaela's secret from coming out, everyone involved agrees to take the blackmailer down immediately.
  • Bodyguard Babes: The typical strike teams of male telepaths, when possible. Strike teams should be people the telepath finds attractive, because they are likely to be in close physical contact frequently.
  • Book Ends: The first book begins with Amber (in Carnival costume) and Forge (in Halloween costume) riding the downway rails as part of the Carnival celebration before Lottery; it ends with Amber in Carnival colors as the Light Angel and Forge in Halloween colors as the Dark Angel, riding the downway rails on Halloween to pursue Elden. In both cases, they're leading a group of 22 people; Amber is amused by the similarities.
  • Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Hive England seems to not abuse the coercive potential of imprinting, although it is implied that other hives do. However, even with that, Hive England does use imprinting in some coercive ways, which we see most directly in the Strike Team. The Strike Team are all imprinted to sacrifice themselves for the telepath, and that telepaths must never meet.
  • Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting: Amber's parents made it clear they would love her no matter what level she ended up on. This is in reaction to her father's parents abandoning him when he came out as level 27, 13 levels below them.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • Literally a gun in Telepath. When Lucas learns that he doesn't need to teach Amber to swim, she suggests he teach her how to use a gun instead. She uses the gun to kill Elden.
    • Chekhov's Surfboard in Borderline. The surfboard in Elliott's apartment is specifically called out as important and of great sentimental value, and later gives Lucas the clue he needs that Elliott is protecting Michaela.
  • Chekhov's Skill: For Forge, climbing around in the air vents. He was doing that to play Blue Upway.
  • Chew-Out Fake-Out: Adika to Rothan at the end of Borderline, after the Are You Sure You Want to Do That? incident. Before everyone leaves for New Years, Adika gathers them together so that he can respond to Rothan's actions...by praising him for following protocol correctly, and congratulating him for doing a good job leading the strike. It takes Rothan a moment to realize he isn't being demoted.
  • Children Are Innocent: Deliberately exploited by Rose to conceal her murders, and while trying to evade responsibility for them.
  • Christmas Carolers: After Lady Luck passes on New Year, entertainers come through singing festive New Year songs. The first one is a Hive-specific version of "Here We Come A-Wassailing".
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The ten zones of the Hive are color-coded to distinguish them, in spectrum order. Northernmost is Burgundy, then Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Turquoise, Blue, Navy, Violet, and Purple.
  • Conveniently Coherent Thoughts: Averted. Streams of thought get less coherent the further they get from pre-vocalization, and Amber can only see what the person is currently thinking of. She frequently complains that people never think about their own names, making it harder to figure out who a particular target or victim is.
  • Cool Kid-and-Loser Friendship: How Amber views her Teen Level friendship with Shanna and Forge. Amber's basically incompetent at all the crafts and other sessions, while Shanna is the social leader of the corridor and Forge is Shanna's boyfriend. And yet, Shanna considers Amber her best friend, and vice versa.
  • Crappy Holidays: Lucas's view of New Year. After his father left, six-year-old Lucas went to find him for New Year, only to be rejected. Lucas refused to go to the express belt to watch the New Year go past, until Amber takes him there with her family.
  • Crisis Catch And Carry: The strike team's job includes carrying the telepath around while the telepath is scanning minds, as it's hard to walk and scan at the same time. Petite Amber's strike team is considerably happier about this than heavily-built Keith's.
  • Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: Riley's view of the person he saw stabbing a nosy. He decides that that is the life he wants, hiding in the Hive and doing whatever he wants, including injuring and killing people.
  • A Day in the Limelight: The short story Candidate features Eli as the protagonist.
  • Deadly Prank: Perran pushes Juniper's arm into a machine, knowing the machine is off, only to find that somebody set the switch to be on but look like it's off.
  • Den of Iniquity: Overnight clubs are unofficial clubs where people of all levels and from all across the Hive gather to dance, indulge in mind-altering substances, and spend the night with partners met there. The first time Amber goes near one, Buzz tries to very circumspectly explain what they are, until Amber comments that she knows exactly what they are because a team member goes there. Everyone immediately (and correctly) assumes that it's Adika, although there's a bit more surprise that Megan goes with him to dance.
  • Dirty Mind-Reading: Amber stumbles onto this more often than she'd like. Adika has thoughts about Megan, Lucas has thoughts about Amber, her strike team has thoughts about many different women (including Amber), and occasionally she ends up scanning lovers while she's out looking for wild bees.
  • Disability Immunity: Keith's telepathy randomly cutting out is absolutely awful for him and everyone he works with, but it does an excellent job of clearing echo personalities out of his head.
  • Distinguishing Mark: Invoked as part of the Emergency Impersonation; Forge is given a fake birthmark on his cheek to make Amber think he's Elden.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: Invoked. When telling Gregas that he's a borderline telepath, Buzz wears a very short, very tight dress under the nosy costume, to distract him from his conditioned fear of nosies and give him a more memorable, positive image.
  • Drink-Based Characterization: Amber drinks melon juice. On teen level, this was one of the things that told Atticus she had come from a higher level, as melon juice isn't available at lower levels.
  • Driven to Suicide: York, a telepath before Amber, committed suicide after his first emergency run. This is why Lucas shows up at Amber's apartment after her first emergency run and insists that somebody stay with her for the night.
  • Dumped via Text Message: Buzz breaks up with Forge via a recorded message.
  • Elite Agents Above the Law:
    • As one of only five true Telepaths, Amber is desperately needed to police a Hive city of a hundred million people. As such, she's showered in luxuries, given anything she wants no matter how troublesome and is explicitly above the law. She takes advantage of this at the end of Telepath, when she Mercy Kills Elden to save him from destruction analysis. In a later book, she muses that no one so much as took away her chocolate crunch cakes.
    • Hurricane reveals that Morton, another, older Telepath used to abuse his power, to the point of keeping a woman prisoner. It took another Telepath's intervention to free her and turn him into The Atoner.
  • Embarrassing Cover Up: The alibi given to Gregas and Wesley for why they couldn't answer their parents' calls. They claim they blew their allowances, gave fake identity codes so they could get into a course they shouldn't have been eligible for, and got injured trying to deal with a seagull...because the alternative was that they were caught trespassing in parts of the Hive they shouldn't have been in, got caught by Mira's telepath unit, and were sedated in Amber's telepath unit's cells while the parents were panicking.
  • Emergency Impersonation: Forge, for Elden. This involves putting a fake birthmark on him, which makes the resemblance close enough to trigger Amber's imprint.
  • The Empath: Amber is able to read emotions more strongly than the other telepaths.
  • Establishing Character Moment: The "Riding the Hive" Carnival sequence in the first chapter is one for both Amber and Forge. Forge wears a Halloween costume (literally the exact opposite festival) and leads the way as the teens ride the handrail down the 100 levels of the Hive, Forge himself hanging on until Level 72. This establishes his rebellious, adventurous character as well as his strength and leadership. Amber is strictly a follower, taking no particular part in the festivities but gamely following everyone onto the handrail. However, she's the only one to make it all the way down, hinting at a hidden resolve and determination: when Amber commits to a plan, she will see it through to the end.
  • Exact Eavesdropping: Gregas starts eavesdropping on Amber and her unit after his borderline telepathy manifests, and manages to overhear both that Morton is in need of surgery and that Wilder is his and Amber's great-grandfather.
  • Exactly Exty Years Ago:
    • Several backstory events happened a multiple-of-five years ago, but it's unclear if those numbers are meant to be exact or approximate. York's Lottery was thirty years ago, Sapphire's (and Fran's) was twenty-five years ago, and an unnamed telepath told Morton why telepaths can't meet twenty years ago.
    • Averted for Morton and Celandine; Morton came out of Lottery over forty years ago, and the Celandine incident was nearly forty years ago.
  • Explosive Leash: The Hive uses tracking chips to control sociopaths and other people who are considered irredeemable. The chips can be remotely triggered to explode if necessary.
  • False Utopia: The Hive is a perfectly safe place where everybody loves their perfect job and the few malcontents are caught by the nosy patrols before they ever commit crimes. Except that it isn't - the Hive is just really good at hiding any incidents. Memories are wiped, purely fictional reports are generated, and the few real telepaths are always busy keeping incidents to a minimum. Even major incidents that can't be memory-wiped away are covered up, with acts of deliberate sabotage described as 'accidents' if possible and 'attacks from enemy Hives' if not.
  • Family of Choice: Amber considers her team her family, much more so than her father's adoptive parents who disowned him for coming out of Lottery too low, his birth parents who gave him up for adoption, or the rest of Claire's family who had no use for her until she came out of Lottery as a telepath.
  • Fantastic Measurement System: Distances are measured in 'corridors', 'cors' for short. Exactly how long a cor is is unstated, although it's a significant amount. The river that is between Amber and Elden at the climax of Telepath is less than one cor wide.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Religion: Hiveism, the belief that the Hive as a gestalt is a divine force that guides people. It includes a belief in reincarnation, with people rejoining the Hive until being reborn into a newborn child or (in an alternate doctrine) becoming an inspiring spirit for someone going through Lottery. It is the only official religion in the Hive; other religions are considered non-conformist organizations, although not forbidden.
  • Father Time: As part of New Year, a white-robed figure with long white hair and beard rides past on the express belts, carrying an hourglass with the new year's number on it. The clocks switch over as he goes past.
  • Faux Death: In the backstory to Hurricane. Claire and her team helped Celandine fake her death to get her away from Morton. It had to seem real enough to convince Morton's strike team, who witnessed it.
  • Fictional Age of Majority: Eighteen is the age of majority in Hive England, and presumably the other 106 Hives around the world, but with a twist; eighteen-year-olds aren't considered adults until they've been through Lottery. This is a massive event where all the eighteen-year-olds are tested before being imprinted with the information for their ideal career, thus saving years of training time and making sure people are matched to the right job.
  • Fictional Holiday: The Hive has four major festivals, evenly spaced through the year. While they may share names with modern holidays, it is clear that they have all been adapted for the Hive, and possibly completely altered. (Valentine, for example, is a summer holiday instead of the winter holiday of Valentine's Day.)
    • Carnival, a bright and happy festival where the Light Angel triumphs over the Dark Angel and the Hunter of Souls, and everyone dresses in silver and white. This is the spring festival, intended to convince people that the Hive will protect them. Lottery happens immediately after Carnival.
    • Valentine, a festival for lovers, intended to get people to pair off. This is the summer festival.
    • Halloween, a dark and spooky festival, intended to convince people that Outside is scary. The Light and Dark Angels from Carnival return. While this time the Dark Angel triumphs, the Light Angel still protects the loyal members of the Hive. This is the autumn festival.
    • New Year, a festival for families, intended to get couples to have children. This is the winter festival.
  • First Guy Wins: While Lucas expects this once he meets Atticus, the trope is ultimately subverted. Despite Atticus being Amber's date to Carnival on Teen Level, Amber remains with Lucas.
  • First-Person Perspective:
    • All books are written from Amber's point-of-view, although we do get to see through other perspectives when she uses her telepathy.
    • The short story Candidate is written from Eli's point-of-view.
  • Flaunting Your Fleets:
    • The Hive sends Amber's unit to the Sea Farm in seven transport aircraft, escorted by four squadrons of twelve fighter aircraft. This is done with two purposes: to show the Sea Farm how seriously the main Hive takes the situation, and to terrify the culprit.
    • Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement sends 40 Valkyrie planes to escort Amber, Ryne, and Aura to the meeting point.
  • Foreshadowing: A comment in Telepath, "As far as I knew, Gregas couldn't read minds...", becomes a lot more ironically significant in Borderline when it turns out that he can, albeit not as well as Amber can.
  • Former Teen Rebel: Many members of the Telepath Unit were rebellious in one way or another while teenagers. Strike team members probably played illicit teen games; tactical team members probably ran them.
  • Frame-Up: Prospero's group is framed as spies from Hive Genex.
  • Free-Range Children: Children old enough to have their monitoring bracelets removed (on their 10th birthday) have the run of the public places on their level. Part of this is that the Hive wants everyone to believe that it is totally safe; part of it is that, by and large, it is.
  • Future Slang: Mostly averted, unlike in Earth Girl. "High up" is slang for "good" and "low down" is consequently "bad", though, relating to the better living conditions on the higher levels of the Hive. "Waste it" or similar expressions are used as mild profanity, and "protein scum" is used as an individual pejorative.
  • Gambit Pileup: The plans to deal with Keith in Adversary.
    • Keith has been using the threat to transfer Hives as leverage any time he is seriously threatened with punishment. He has also been using the promise of entering the duty child program as a carrot.
    • Melisande and the Council of Gaia decide to cut this off by offering to trade him, with the note that they have to tell any Hive making an offer about how horrible a person he is. This will lower the offers made for him and how much the new Hive will accomodate him. If Keith chooses to reject the trade, he will have to use his one chance to transfer Hives to stay in Hive England, neutralizing his largest piece of leverage.
    • Keith counters this by irrevocably signing up for the duty child program at the full 25 children. If he is traded, those children would go to the new Hive.
    • Keith is finally, fully Out-Gambitted when Rune states that he has evidence that Keith's actions in an earlier incident count as treason. At Hive England's request, Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement removes Keith's right to transfer Hives, meaning that Keith has lost both types of leverage he had been using.
  • The Game Never Stopped: In Candidate, Eli gets sent back to teen level due to a system failure in his Lottery result. He's actually getting one final Lottery evaluation, in which he is kidnapped and has to rescue someone, to see if he's a suitable candidate for a Strike Team Leader imprint.
  • Gas Leak Cover Up: Liaison's specialty. To cover up the cracks in the False Utopia, incidents are blamed on accidents such as broken pipes or chemical spills; mysterious agents of other Hives are blamed if it clearly wasn't an accident. At no point is an incident ever blamed on malicious actions by Hive citizens, because that would imply that the nosies missed somebody.
  • Gaslighting: Riley tries to gaslight Noreen after she breaks up with him, telling everyone they're still together and acting like she never said anything. After a nosy reassigns him to a different zone, he comes back the next day and claims the nosy incident never happened, trying to gaslight the rest of the corridor.
  • Genius Breeding Act: Hives are allowed to choose limited numbers of individuals who can have 'duty children' via surrogate mothers. One in one thousand is allowed to have six duty children; one in one million is allowed to have twenty-five. Duty children can be raised by the parents or adopted out; there is high demand for them as adoptive children due to the high likelihood that they will come out of Lottery at a high level.
  • Gold-Colored Superiority: Melisande, as leader of Hive Defense, is Gold Commander, and Atticus's Gold Assignment outranks anything from Amber's telepath unit.
  • He Knows Too Much: The reason for both Treeve's and Massen's deaths; they told Rose they knew what she'd done, and she made sure they couldn't tell anyone else.
  • Hero Secret Service: Much of the role of the strike teams. While stopping whatever disordered individual they're chasing is important, priority number one is protecting the telepath, laying down their own lives if necessary.
  • Hive City: The Hives are of the deliberately-constructed kind. Hive England holds 100 million people in 10 zones, with 100 residential levels and 50 industrial levels above that. There are one hundred and seven Hives in all; it is unclear whether Hive England is relatively large, small, or in-between.
  • Hive Mind: Despite the title, averted. Members of the Hive can think independently.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Keith's sabotage of the Northern Americas Group negotiations was technically treason, and was apparently just done to cause trouble, but Hive England was unable to prove it to Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement. His attack on Buzz had similar enough message routing that Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement was able to connect the two and remove his right to transfer to another Hive.
  • Hologram: The Hive has hologram tech. Bookette rooms use them for immersion, and the Strike Team training room uses it for training scenarios, but they aren't holodecks because they don't use hard light. Even Teen Level apartments, the smallest in the Hive, have a hologram wall display.
  • Humans Are Psychic in the Future: It's unclear where telepathy came from, but about 0.1% of the population have borderline telepathy and about one in 5 million are full telepaths. The nosy system arose after the population crash, so it's possible that telepathy came from the attempt at Population Control.
  • I Have No Son!: Teens who end up at significantly lower levels than their parents are frequently disowned. One character was disowned by her parents for continuing to stay in contact with her (now low-level) sister. Lucas's mother disowned him as soon as he left for Teen Level.
  • I Have Your Wife: Bruce abducts Forge in an attempt to force the Halloween game to be shut down.
  • Illegal Religion: Downplayed. Religions other than Hiveism are not forbidden, but are considered non-conformist organizations that are required to stay discreet.
  • Immediate Sequel: The five novels all run directly into each other:
    • Telepath ends with Amber going out on the run where, in the beginning of Defender, she finds Fran's body.
    • Defender ends with Amber being called in to take over a run from Morton. The beginning of Hurricane covers that run, where she rescues Glenna.
    • Hurricane ends with another alert, which in Borderline is the run where Alvin is caught in Elliott's quarters.
    • Adversary starts in the middle of the New Years lovers' kiss between Amber and Lucas that ends Borderline.
  • In the Future, Humans Will Be One Race: Downplayed. Characters are described in ways that would indicate different races, but nobody seems to care.
  • Intimate Telecommunications: It's implied that Keith and Olivia had intimate holographic conversations in their extra-large bookette rooms.
  • It Tastes Like Feet: Lucas's opinion of the teen level tomato soup. He takes one bite, then refuses to eat anything else because whatever it is will be contaminated by the metallic taste of the soup.
  • Keeping Secrets Sucks:
    • Amber hates having to lie to Lucas about the back-channel communication used between telepaths, and about the information she's gained from it.
    • Amber also hates having to keep her real job secret from her parents, but she knows her parents hate nosies and it would significantly damage her relationship with them.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: Downplayed. Memory resets unwind the memory chain back to a certain point. Specific things can't be wiped without wiping everything after them, and a reset may affect telepathic abilities. After being reset, Olivia is just a borderline telepath.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler: Amber's a telepath. If the title of the first book didn't clue you in, you'll find out pretty early anyway.
  • Lawful Stupid: Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement is initially presented this way. An advocate having broken minor rules as a teenager, even ones that the Hive expects and wants some people to break, could be enough to sabotage their case regardless of the actual legal merits. A shortfall in the number of people at the Sea Farm - even though the people are all in the area, just not living in the immediate vicinity of the Sea Farm itself - could cause all trade to and from the Hive to be blocked, dooming one of the Hive's telepaths and probably killing millions of people.
  • Let's You and Him Fight: Keith tries to set up Amber's unit to attack Prospero's groupette.
  • Life-or-Limb Decision: Downplayed. Eli is badly injured in a fall, and the surgeons tell Amber that they can save his life at the cost of a leg, or keep the leg with no guarantee he'll survive surgery. Based on her knowledge of his mind, she chooses to keep the leg, and he survives.
  • Love Triangle: Averted, despite the cover of the first book implying one. Amber has an odd crush on Forge caused by Elden's imprint, but neither of them consider the other a romantic interest. Amber falls for Lucas before she even sees him, and is never interested in anyone else.
  • Lowered Recruiting Standards: When certain critical jobs become vacant, Lottery will select the best person for the job whether they would normally have been chosen for that job or not. This is especially a problem with the Sea Farm, which typically only sends about a hundred candidates for Lottery ever year.
    • Admiral Tregarth is concerned that if a successor for him is not found soon, the Hive may need to do that for Sea Farm Admiral, which could be disastrous.
    • Caleb was selected for head of Sea Farm Security due to the murder of his predecessor, despite being too impulsive for the job.
    • Amber's Lottery, due to having a new telepath, led to a large number of people being imprinted as potential Strike Team members. Adika wants to wait until the next Lottery to fill the open slots in the Strike Team, on the grounds that anyone selected in the next Lottery will be chosen because they're absolutely perfect for the job instead of being 'good enough' in a year when many were needed.
  • Lysistrata Gambit: Buzz makes it very clear that Forge will not be able to have sex with her again until his hair is no longer blonde.
  • The Man Behind the Man: Elden kidnapped Amber as a child under orders from Hive Genex, who wanted to mind control her into requesting a transfer at 18.
  • Mad Love: In the backstory for Hurricane. Morton fell in love with Celandine, who just wanted to go back to the sea. She eventually had to fake her death to get away.
  • Make It Look Like an Accident: Massen's death. It would have worked if they hadn't been able to trace the drone so quickly.
  • Masquerade: The truth about telepaths. All of level 20 knows the truth, along with some of level 1 and smaller sections of other levels. Maintained through the efforts of the Nosies, and liberal use of Laser-Guided Amnesia.
  • Meaningful Rename: People who arrive at the Sea Farm as driftwood often take new names to indicate their new life.
  • Meet Cute: Amber's maternal grandparents met when they both reached for the same chocolate crunch cake. She bumped him out of the way, he slipped on some fruit, and she ended up taking him to the medical unit.
  • Memory-Wiping Crew: Memory resets are done by psychologists to ensure they are done safely. People can be reset back several years if needed. This is a common punishment for criminals (with the intent of guiding them away from the path that led them to crime), and also used to maintain the Masquerade.
  • Mercy Kill: At the end of Telepath, Amber kills Elden rather than turn him over to Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement for destruction analysis. His mind's basically gone at that point anyway.
  • Metaphorically True: Amber tells her parents she's Level 1 Security. While what she does is primarily about the security of the Hive, she is actually in a separate but critically important role.
  • Minor Living Alone: Teenagers move to the Teen Level (50) when they're thirteen, and remain until they go to Lottery at age 18. The living quarters on Teen Level are notably smaller than every other floor, so that wherever they end up after Lottery will be an improvement.
  • Missing Floor: Level Zero, a double-height interlevel above Residential Level 1 and below Industrial Level 50. It holds industrial equipment and cargo belts, and is accessed by entering a special code into the lift control panel. Most people in the Hive have no idea it exists.
  • Mission Control: Nicole and (usually) Lucas. Nicole as liaison provides information and connects with other organizations in the Hive for Amber and her team; Lucas as tactical commander is in charge of planning the reaction to whatever circumstances the strike team finds themselves in. If Lucas isn't available, Emili takes over; when Emili is also unavailable, Gideon takes over tactical.
  • Mistaken for Spies: Prospero's group is set up to look like spies from Hive Genex.
  • Mutant Draft Board: Any form of telepathy is enough for Lottery to shunt someone into a job that requires it; full telepaths are invariably drafted to protect the Hive.
  • My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Amber gets a mental 'itch' when someone nearby is in trouble. Initially it's just physical trouble - the child being trapped underneath the park, Matias getting appendicitis, Zak being poisoned - but as she develops it includes Lucas having a panic attack over New Years and the death of a complete stranger in a nearby medical support cocoon.
  • Narrative Profanity Filter: Amber often comments that Adika swears, or that there's a level of his mind that is nothing but swears. The specific swears are never stated.
  • Neck Snap: Forge kicks Riley in the head and breaks his neck, killing him instantly. Not that he would have lived much longer, as Adika's kill shot hit him in the head.
  • Negatives as a Positive: The Hives attempted to "breed out" various negative personality traits by restricting who could have children, which led to a population collapse. Part of the purpose of Lottery is to find people's negative traits and channel them in ways that are constructive for the Hive. People with a tendency toward violence, for example, are given training to defend the Hive and placed in roles such as Hive Defense or Telepath Strike Teams.
  • Neural Implanting: The Hives use "imprinting" to let people start work at 18 without bothering with training. Telepaths aren't imprinted because it might hurt their powers. Giving someone too many imprints, or imprints that are too large, can be dangerous. Hive England imprints people safely, and only once. Hive Genex, villains of the first book, gave Elden far too many imprints. He's obviously on the edge of a mental breakdown by the time Amber finds him; discovering that his attempt to imprint her failed pushes him over the edge.
  • Never One Murder: Hurricane has three.
  • New Year Has Come: At the end of Borderline, from 2532 to 2533.
  • New Year's Kiss: Between Amber and Lucas at the very end of Borderline.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • In Telepath, part of the reason Lucas has such a hard time figuring out that Amber has been imprinted is that the abduction incident was covered up after Morton's team rescued her.
    • Many of the issues in Borderline are caused by Amber's attempts to keep the status quo. Her attempt to keep Tobias from being kicked out leads to him punching her, and later trying to kill her. Her efforts to keep Gregas from the truth about his borderline telepathy causes family strife because he doesn't want to accidentally get an insight from their parents.
  • No Antagonist: The novella, Perilous, has no antagonist, instead focusing on how Amber and her friends get through the power outage. The closest thing to an antagonist is Reece, but he's just a Jerkass taking advantage of the situation to scare people.
  • No Poverty: Even somebody who ends up on Level 96, the lowest inhabited level in the Hive, has sufficient healthy food, shelter, clothing, and a job. Someone who is incapable of doing any job will be supported until such time as they can; someone whose job options are limited by disability will be given a job within their abilities. Someone who runs out of money for food will be supported and given lessons on budgeting.
  • Noodle Incident: We don't know exactly what happened when Megan tossed out part of a chocolate crunch cake before Amber was done eating it, but it was notable enough that Lucas bringing it up is enough to convince Megan of how serious something is.
  • Obligatory Earpiece Touch: The crystal comms units are controlled by touch, so it's not uncommon to see the entire strike team touch their ears to extend the cameras. It's unclear just how the user can control extending/collapsing the camera, managing the volume, turning the unit on and off, and toggling send/receive modes with a device small enough to be completely invisible in the ear when the camera is not extended.
  • Ocean Awe: The first time Amber's unit sees the sea, they're all (except for Rothan, who has seen it before) completely overwhelmed by just how huge it is.
  • An Offer You Can't Refuse: Keith threatens to use the secrets of everyone on Amber's team against them if she doesn't cooperate with his plan to reclaim Olivia, up to and including telling Amber's nosy-hating parents that she is really a telepath.
  • One Cast Member per Cover: The first book has Amber flanked by Adika and Lucas, but since then, the book covers have featured Amber (Defender), Lucas (Hurricane), Forge (Perilous), Buzz (Borderline), and Adversary Aura of Hive Genex (Adversary).
  • One-Steve Limit:
    • Played straight in general. However, averted in two cases. The girl that Eldan kidnapped and placed in a booby trap was also named Amber. This appears to have been a deliberate attempt to provoke Amber the telepath. In addition, both Juniper's mother and Admiral Tregarth's wife are named Tressa. This is partly to indicate how common a name Tressa is; it also foreshadows Juniper becoming Admiral Tregarth's deputy and protégée.
    • This being generally played straight is foreshadowing in Candidate: When Eli meets Katelyn, readers who have read Hurricane will recognize her as Morton's strike team leader.
    • Enforced In-Universe. Teen Level corridor assignments are always made so that there are no repeated names.
  • One World Order: Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement seems to be somewhere between this and Fictional United Nations. They can set rules on what Hives are allowed to do to each other, and set standards that Hives are required to meet. The penalties for violations start at trade embargoes and can go up to full-scale assaults on problematic Hives.
  • Only One Name: There appear to be no last names. People are identified by their personal name, with an ID number to disambiguate them as needed.
  • The Outside World: Outside. It's not exactly forbidden, but going there is strongly discouraged, and the Ramblers Association that explores it is considered non-conformist. The Hive teaches people that if they go out there, the Hunter of Souls will capture them while they are blinded by the Truesun.
  • Please Put Some Clothes On:
    • Amber accidentally tells Lucas to come in before she'd gotten dressed, thinking she was dreaming he was outside the apartment. He teases her about it occasionally.
    • Subverted when Eli forgets to put on clothes over his (see-through mesh) body armor. Adika yells at him for forgetting to put clothes on while waiting for Amber to open the door, but Amber says she never noticed.
    • Keith tries to shock Amber when she first calls him by answering in the nude. It doesn't work, because she spends her time reading the minds of teenage males, so male nudity is far from shocking to her.
  • Population Control: In the past, those classified as criminal or socially undesirable were barred from having children. This led to a population crash due to weakened disease resistance and assorted useful characteristics being mistakenly marked as negative. The controls were removed in order to reverse these problems, and Lottery was created to help channel personality traits that could be negative if expressed in an antisocial way. Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement mandates that all adult citizens are allowed to have two children if they want.
  • Propaganda Machine: Hive media appears to be this, in general. Anything presented to the entire Hive will be required to convey approved messages - Outside is scary, other Hives are devious and evil, and Hive England is a utopia guarded by the valiant members of Hive Defense and Security. However, news items are not necessarily completely controlled - the botched run at the beginning of Borderline becomes the lead news item on Hive Channel 1, but no news investigation into the truth is performed.
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Adika drops to this when he's dressing down Tobias for being late to an emergency call because he'd left his gun behind at the shooting range.
    Adika moved from ordinary sarcasm to saying each word singly in withering disgust. "You. Forgot. Your. Gun."
  • Psychic Block Defense: A borderline telepath hardly ever gets insights off a full telepath, as a full telepath instinctively shields their mind. If two full telepaths meet, this can turn into Poke in the Third Eye if one attempts to read the other, and from there into psychic combat.
  • Psychic Powers: As the title of the first book would imply, these play a major role.
  • Psychic Static: The "two ones is two" thing people chant when nosy patrols are near is an attempt at this. It doesn't actually work, but the negative emotions involved make it hard for Amber to use her telepathy around it, especially since it reminds her how much she hated nosies before she became a telepath.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Melisande gives Keith one (off-screen), pointing out that his actions have gotten so bad that he's forcing her to choose between a surly, sociopathic low-power telepath that everybody hates, and a devoted, hard-working high-power telepath that everybody loves. Given that choice, he loses.
  • Red Alert: The alert that sounds to notify the telepath unit about an emergency run is an example of the Emergency Squad Scramble type, with an automated voice making the initial announcement, followed by Adika announcing which strike team is going and any special instructions from Lucas.
    Unit emergency alert. We have an incident in progress. Operational teams to stations. Strike team to lift 2.
  • Reincarnation: Discussed. Hiveists believe that the dead are reincarnated into newborns in the Hive. An alternative Lottery doctrine says that they can instead stay to inspire someone in Lottery.
  • Relationship-Salvaging Disaster:
    • Having to deal with each other for the Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement investigation brings Paula and Melisande back together, and they end up remarrying.
    • Buzz helping Lucas work through his trauma helped her work through her own and resume her relationship with Forge.
  • Religion Is Right: Downplayed. After Noreen is rescued, it is pointed out that, ultimately, her faith in the Hive to keep her safe was justified. She believed the Hive would be watching over her and would save her; Amber's unit was tracking her and Riley and intervened to rescue her.
    Amber: Noreen was terrified then, but now believes she was never in any danger. The Hive was watching over her the whole time, ready to intervene to save her.
    Nicole: Which, in a sense, was actually true. Our unit members were watching over Noreen the whole time, we were ready to intervene to save her, and the last lines of Hive Duty song number ten tell us that we are the Hive.
  • Removing the Earpiece: Amber does this sometimes when she needs to talk to someone without it being broadcast on the crystal comms, such as when she asks Adika why Lucas is coming along on their first check run.
  • Retired Badass: Amber's team calls some of Claire's Strike Team members out of retirement to bolster the team while Morton is unavailable. They're still in shape and still some of the most deadly combatants in the Hive, to the point where Adika is willing to trust them to be Amber's close bodyguards.
  • Revenge Before Reason: The death of Soren's daughter breaks him, and his chase after the person responsible throws off Lucas's plan to safely neutralize the perpetrator.
  • Rite of Passage: Freedom Day, the day after a child's tenth birthday. On the tenth birthday, the child's tracker bracelet is removed, and that night the family and the child's friends have a Bracelet Party. The following day is a personal holiday for the child, where they are encouraged to enjoy their freedom. What the child does is considered indicative of what they will do after Lottery. Children who cross multiple zone boundaries or otherwise go outside the areas they are expected to are more likely to be chosen for strike teams.
  • Romancing the Widow: Adika and Megan. He rushes into romance too quickly, which causes problems in the team until Buzz straightens them out.
  • Rule-Abiding Rebel: Hive non-conformists are generally allowed to keep doing what they're doing as long as they don't hurt anyone or attempt to recruit people. This includes organizations like the Ramblers (people who like to go Outside) and non-Hiveist religions.
  • The Rule of First Adopters: Keith turned his unit's expansion section into a giant bookette room, which he uses for (among other things) porn.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Telepaths are rare and valuable enough to be effectively above the law. Many of them realize this and undergo 'distancing', where they do whatever they want. Most develop a moral code eventually; Keith is still distant. Amber is considered unlikely to become distant due to being The Empath.
  • Second-Act Breakup: Buzz and Forge in Adversary. After being confronted by Franklin and then seeing Forge kill Riley, Buzz is deeply traumatized and breaks up with Forge. After she helps herself by helping Lucas, she gets back together with Forge.
  • Seeing Through Another's Eyes: A key element of telepathy, not just for Amber but for all telepaths. The telepath can tell their tactical commander what a target or victim sees and hears, helping locate the target in physical space and determine what tools or weapons they have access to.
  • Shared Family Quirks: Amber's grandmother Palma loves chocolate crunch cakes as much as Amber does. When Emmett hears Amber sneaking a bite of one during the Circle of Life ceremony, he immediately assumes the sound is coming from his wife.
  • Silent Treatment: Sapphire refused to let her team work with Keith's after he attempted to have one of her strike team members arrested. This included handoffs when Keith's telepathy failed, which led to many problems in the Hive, including deaths.
  • Single-Palette Town: Downplayed. Each zone is color-coded, and the people in that zone tend to wear clothes in that color. When Forge and Penn are sent undercover to Teen Level, they need to borrow clothes from other zones.
  • The Sociopath:
    • Rose, in Hurricane, and her warder.
    • Riley, once he sees that the person inside a nosy costume is just a normal human. Within a year, he is planning to murder his ex-girlfriend in his old room, then hide himself in the Hive, doing anything he wants to do, up to and including injuring and killing people.
  • Spanner in the Works:
    • Forge, in the first book. Forge's resemblance to Elden, especially the birthmark, caused Amber to have an irrational attraction to him. This starts Lucas down the chain of logic that discovers her imprint, helps him figure out the fix, and lets them use Forge to act as a surrogate Elden to keep her under control.
    • Reece, in Adversary. His request to Amber leads to the discovery of Prospero's hideout before Keith can pull the trigger on it, causing Keith to direct Franklin to the park as an alternate attack on Amber's unit. Rune is able to match the message that Keith sent to redirect Franklin to the message used to damage the Northern Americas Group negotiations, providing proof that Keith has committed treason and should be blocked from requesting a trade.
  • Split-Personality Takeover: Olivia's fate: she was unable to get the people she read out of her mind and vanished under them. After the events of Defender, she's reset to eighteen; the original Olivia appears to have resurfaced in the process.
  • Stern Teacher: Headteacher Regan, the head of the school Amber went to, still frightens Amber, and Amber insists that everybody be quiet as they sneak past the school administration office so that Regan doesn't come out to yell at them. (Despite it being New Year and the office almost certainly being empty.)
  • The Stoic: Sapphire doesn't do feelings. The most emotion we get out of her is a brief flicker of pain when talking about having two members of her strike team burn to death while she was still in their heads. This may just be when she's talking to another telepath, however; after some very bad experiences with Keith, she may be unwilling to give out any unnecessary information.
  • Stylistic Suck: The New Years pageant is deliberately boring, confusing, and set at an awkward time, so that people won't want to go to it. Lucas theorizes that the Joint Hive Treaty requires a celebration of its signing, so Hive England makes theirs bad as part of their desire to make people grateful to Hive England for protecting them, not the Joint Hive Treaty.
  • Super Breeding Program: Hive Genex is one of the genetic hives, hives that have focused on improving their genetic fitness overall. For whatever reason, telepathy arose in the non-genetic hives, leading to Hive Genex's attempts to gain telepathic genes by any means necessary.
  • Suspect Existence Failure: Treeve and Massen in Hurricane.
  • Telepathy: Amber's notable ability. There's a few other telepaths in Hive England: Morton, Mira, Sapphire, and Keith are currently working, and Claire, York, and Olivia are dead or otherwise incapable of doing the job any more. Borderline telepaths are much more common, but the unreliability of their abilities renders them incapable of doing the broad scanning that the full telepaths are used for. Telepathy appears to be receptive-only; there is no indication that telepaths can transmit messages mentally. However, if two telepaths are in range of each other, there is a form of mental combat that can occur between them. The risk of this is why the Hive requires that telepaths can never meet, and enforces it by imprinting it in every Strike Team member.
  • Theme Naming: The villains of Defender operate under the fake names Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Mercury. Jupiter's the leader. Since Roman mythology appears to have been lost and the very existence of other planets is highly classified information, the theme naming is actually vital in pinning down who Jupiter is: very few people would have known enough to make the reference.
  • Thought-Aversion Failure: Played straight and discussed.
    • Played straight: There are several cases where Amber reads somebody's mind and is able to get details about things because the person is actively trying not to think about them.
    • Discussed: Amber laments that she can't tell people not to think about things she doesn't want to see in their minds, because it just makes them think about them more strongly.
  • Tiger by the Tail: Once he realized that Amber is a full telepath, Elden should have backed off and gone back to Hive Genex, as a transfer by a full telepath was going to lead to a very thorough investigation at a minimum. But he had no way home (he was expecting to be picked up by the aircraft that was retrieving Amber), his imprint was large enough that he wasn't mentally stable, and it seems very likely that he wouldn't have survived a failure.
  • Training from Hell: Scout training apparently involves being trapped in the training area; if you can escape, you pass, and move on to the next (harder) level.
  • Tranquilizer Dart: Elden uses them in his second trap at the 601/2603 Level 80 park, hooked to the park safety cameras.
  • Trigger Phrase: Elden set a trigger image to activate and make Amber transfer to Hive Genex. It's a gold and silver design that he sprayed around the Level 1 shopping area in hopes that she'd see it. When that didn't work, he set up trap missions for her; when those failed, he mailed her a duck toy with one, marked as if it came from her mother.
  • Two Dun It: The pranks at the Sea Farm were initially committed by Treeve, who then went to the mine for a while and told Massen, who had already been cleared by Morton, to commit some more so that he'd have an alibi. The murders were committed by a third person, Treeve's daughter Rose.
  • Ultimate Job Security: Exaggerated and Justified. All telepaths have this, because losing even one more telepath could doom millions of people. It's one of the things that causes distancing.
    • Amber mercy-kills Elden despite the Hive wanting to take him alive.
    • Morton kidnapped a woman for a year, and she only got away because another telepath was willing to help her escape.
    • Sapphire refused to work with Keith in any way, causing many deaths due to failed handovers.
    • Olivia, despite being nearly useless as a telepath and only able to do occasional check runs, had to have her echo personality set up simultaneous attacks that could kill millions of people before the Hive would consider resetting her.
    • Keith actively works against the good of the Hive on several occasions, to the point where the head of Hive Politics submitted to blackmail rather than risk having Keith learn about what was actually going on with Hive Genex. Part of the reason they were worried that Keith would cause problems was that another telepath may be coming to the Hive from Genex, weakening Keith's leverage.
  • Uncanny Family Resemblance: One of the other members of Hive Genex's delegation looks like Adversary Aura's identical twin, due to being a member of the same bloodline.
  • Unrequited Love Lasts Forever: Morton still pines for Celandine, forty years after her 'death'.
  • Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Played very straight in the climax of Defender. We see Lucas's plan for the exercise, but when they try to execute it, a sudden power surge damages the last plane coming into the hangar. Buzz is injured and unable to play the nosy, forcing Amber to put on the nosy suit despite her ingrained fear and hatred of nosies.
  • Virtual Training Simulation: Amber uses these to learn how to use a gun. The Strike Team training room is set up with Holograms to enable its use for this.
  • Volleying Insults: Between Paula (and the rest of the Hive Politics siblings) and Melisande, blaming each other for Keith being able to sabotage the earlier negotiations. Elliott comments that at least in a virtual space, they can't physically throw things at each other.
  • Wedding Smashers: Downplayed. The Prospero incident causes Lucas to make an urgent call to Melisande about the unit, interrupting her remarriage to Paula.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: In the backstory to Hurricane. Claire called out Morton for kidnapping Celandine, and helped her get away.
  • Where Did We Go Wrong?: Played for laughs. Caleb's level 91 parents, once they get over their fear of offending their level 1 son, complain that he was always too daring and wonder why he couldn't have been a nice, normal son like his level 89 older brother.
  • Who Murdered the Asshole: Treeve was a jerk who claimed people were oversensitive when called on it, so when he died, this was the reaction.
  • Working with the Ex: Paula and Melisande were married briefly until Keith's interference in a contract with other Hives tore them apart. The first time they meet again is in the conference call about Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement's visit. They remarry about a week later.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Amber has a fear of heights and a fear of nosies. She also has a fear of Outside, especially the 'truesun', until the implant from Genex is removed. She, of course, has to deal with all of those.
  • Wild Teen Party: Deliberately created as part of the Halloween game, to draw teens away from Blue Upway.
  • Xanatos Gambit:
    • Jupiter intentionally set her scheme up so she'd get caught. She's hoping that one of Olivia's echo personalities turning out to be a terrorist will get Olivia reset, and that she can become the sole personality.
    • Keith's plan with Prospero's group. He sets them up to look like they're preparing to attack Amber's unit, in hopes that Lucas would call a strike that kills his father and half-sister. But, even if Lucas figures it out before that, he gets to watch his father giving his half-sister the love that Lucas never got from him.
  • You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Lucas tricks Kareem into taking responsibility for a plan as part of rehabilitating him as a Tactical Commander.
  • You Are in Command Now: When Amber finds that Adika is Tobias's top-priority target, Rothan takes command and tells Adika to go bodyguard Amber. Policy is that the top-priority target is not allowed to be on the chase team, so that the team can focus on taking down the attacker and not protecting their teammate.
  • You Are Number 6: Everyone has both a real name (e.g. Amber) and an ID number (e.g. 2514-0172-912). The number is almost never used except for administrative purposes, and no one seems to have a problem with it.
  • You Didn't Ask: Ralston the pilot, when he mentions that Hive Defense tracks all drones in flight at the Sea Farm. He'd known that for a while, but hadn't known that Amber's unit was tracking drones.
  • You Have Failed Me: Apparently how Hive Genex treats its people. Adversary Aura uses her proximity to Amber to ask if Hive England would let her live if she transfers; upon finding out the answer is yes, she immediately requests a Hive transfer, and Rune not only allows it, he offers her protection when she goes to get her imprint removed.
  • Young and in Charge: A common situation in the Hive, where imprinting means an eighteen-year-old fresh out of Lottery can be placed in charge of something much sooner than they might otherwise.
  • Zero-G Spot: Characters sleep in 'sleep fields' that they seem to float in. Amber and Lucas share one once they become a couple.

Alternative Title(s): Hive Mind

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