Keith

*This article is about Keith the Telepath. For Unit Information, see Keith's Unit.*

## Levels & Zones

### Birth Zone

1
Burgundy

## Book Appearances

### Books:

* *Borderline*
* *Adversary*

## Biography

### Personality

Apart from Olivia, at just over thirty Keith is the next youngest of Hive England's Telepaths. His telepathy sometimes cuts out, which prevents him from having to deal with shadow personalities like all the other telepaths; however, it can cause havoc during emergency runs, and was the cause for at least one death among his strike team, that of Megan's late husband, Dean. He can only see one level beneath sub-vocalization, less than the other telepaths.

Keith is devious, malicious and ruthless. He shamelessly trades on his importance to the Hive. He also is very curious about the other telepaths, and over a decade ago, arranged to read the mind of one of Sapphire's team. He then called her and taunted her with what he learned, and she has never forgiven him.

Keith likes to snoop in the minds of his own staff too, and mocks them with the knowledge of what he saw there. Somebody must have snapped because he was stabbed with a knife in the arm by a unit member in the year before Amber's Lottery.

### Family

One of Keith's parents was Claire's duty child #22. However, his family disapproves of him and broke off contact with him when he became a telepath.

### Unit

* Assigned to Burgundy and Red Zones
* Unit is located in Burgundy (?) Zone, Industrial Level 1

### Early Years as a Telepath

Keith's telepathy barely works and frequently cuts out on him, even when in the middle of a run. When it does cut out, he looses all echos so has never needed a way to cleanse them from his mind.

Nor does he feel any of the emotions of the people that he reads, so he has become distant to anybody needs and considers everyone else as disposable.

When Olivia came out of lottery as a telepath, Keith contacted her and they grew close over their secret phone calls. Keith often referred to Olivia as the Light Angel, and she called Keith the Dark Angel. Even though Olivia was lost to fragmentation for the majority time, when she did come back to herself even for a few minutes they would visit through their secret communications.
When Amber's Unit was called "Light Angel" Keith was livid over it.

In 2529, when Hive England Hive Politics where involved in a Northern Americas Group negotiations he became curious and nosed around in Hive Politics records. Between reading minds for access codes and blackmailing people with access he discovered what was going on and using someone else's contact information he sent a message to the Northern Americas Group that was detrimental to Hive England. His actions were considered traitorous and Hive Politics asked Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement to remove Keith's rights to change hives. JHT enforcement couldn't find absolute proof that Keith had sent the message so they would not remove his rights.

In 2532 when Amber was found in lottery, two people from his unit, Lucas and Megan transferred to her unit.

## Summary

### Telepath

Amber first learns about Keith, and that he was the former boss of Lucas and Megan. He does not make a personal appearance in the book but she learns quite a bit about him.

### Defender

Amber learns more about Keith from Sapphire, and from the way he sends petty messages that try to undermine her and other's confidence in her.

### Borderline

Keith escalates his campaign to harm Amber, trying to steal several of her staff including Lucas and Buzz. She finally realizes the extent of his malicious manipulations.

Keith throws Beckett out of his unit and deletes all of his work that he did on Keith's unit's computers. Then Keith wants Beckett back, accusing Amber of kidnapping him.

Amber calls him via their secret system and has a long discussion about family and his grievances. Keith extracts a promise from Amber to help him at sometime in the future in exchange he will stop attacking her and her people.

### Adversary

Keith reneges on his promise to Amber.

He goes to great length to find out where Megan is celebrating the New Year festival and gets close enough to her to read her mind and learn Amber's secret fears. He than calls Amber and threatens her with revealing them unless she helps him get Olivia into his unit.

But Keith doesn't stop with just that, he continuous trying to destroy Amber's ability to work by targeting those closest to her both Buzz and Lucas.

## References

### Citations

1. ↑ Edwards, Janet. Telepath (Hive Mind Book 1) (p. 169). Wallam-Crane Press. Kindle Edition.
2. ↑ Edwards, Janet. Borderline (Hive Mind Book 4) . Wallam-Crane Press. Kindle Edition.

### Bibliography

* Edwards, Janet. *Telepath (Hive Mind 1)* (2016). Wallam-Crane Press. Kindle Edition
* Edwards, Janet. *Defender (Hive Mind 2)* (2017). Wallam-Crane Press. Kindle Edition
* Edwards, Janet. *Hurricane (Hive Mind 3)* (2018). Wallam-Crane Press. Kindle Edition
* Edwards, Janet. *Borderline (Hive Mind 4)* (2019). Wallam-Crane Press. Kindle Edition
* Edwards, Janet. *Adversary (Hive Mind 5)* (2023). Wallam-Crane Press. Kindle Edition