The Panic Room is black as night before me.
I train my eyes, trying to see through its thick black glass. The dark tint of the glass is a composite of rare glass and a compound—highly expensive and difficult to produce—that supposedly neutralizes the deadly gamma rays of sunlight. Nobody’s ever dared test it out.
“Gene.”
I jump at the sound. The sound of my name, breaking the silence. The sound of the voice, that voice, shattering my heart.
I thought I’d forgotten her voice. But one whispered syllable of my name and instead of becoming afraid, I feel an immediate, deep solace in her presence.
“Gene, come to me.”
And I do, helplessly lulled toward the black chamber. I stop in front of the glass wall, my breath frosting on the surface. Yet still I see nothing. Then the tint of the glass lightens. Ever so gradually and slowly, until I can make out the gray outline of a body standing inside. Then more: the curve of her shoulders, the length of her hair, the shape of her eyes. Despite the pain of sunlight, she isn’t wearing shades. She wants me to see her eyes.
“Stop, Ashley June.”
But she continues to turn the glass from dark to a light-gray transparency, her fingers, which I can now see, moving one of many dials on some kind of remote control in her hand. She doesn’t stop, not even as sunlight further illuminates the interior of the chamber and causes her to flinch with pain. She finally stops, stares into my eyes.
I thought I would feel fear. Or guilt. But what I feel instead is an emotion I never expected.
Tenderness.
I’m standing less than a meter from her, from her fangs, her claws, and I know I’m safe with her. That she can no more harm me than I could have pulled the trigger on her. It’s a strange sensation, to be before such terrifying instruments yet to feel so completely at ease at the same time. Even back at the Mission, when she could have easily decapitated me with one slice of her razor claws, the death blow never came.
Our eyes meet; I see the reciprocal tenderness radiating from her eyes, flowering off her porcelain-pale skin. This unexpected kindness makes me want to whisper a thousand pleas for forgiveness for deserting her so many days ago at the Heper Institute.
I had forgotten. How my heart tugs so effortlessly and spontaneously for her. Despite everything my heart knows about her nature now, despite our separate shores. I turn my eyes away.
“Gene,” she says softly into a small mike she’s holding. Her voice whispers through the room’s surrounding speakers. She lifts her hand and presses the palm flat against the glass. Pale, the whiteness of the midnight moon. “Gene,” she whispers, this time so softly, I don’t hear the word, only see her lips mouthing my name. Her lips curling around the syllable of it, as if embracing the contours of every letter.
Slowly, I lift my hand, press it against the glass opposite from hers. I cannot feel heat, only the cold indifference of glass. And still, I cannot look into her eyes.
“Gene, please look at me,” she says softly.
And at that, I meet her emerald eyes, the piercing color visible even through the glass, glowing like gems aglow.
“Don’t be afraid, Gene. You’re safe with me. I can barely smell you—the chamber is hermetically sealed. So don’t—”
“I’m sorry,” I say. My voice juddering over those two simple words.
Her slender pale arms, slimming out of a sleeveless blouse, look fragile and vulnerable although I know they contain the power to smash through this glass and rip me apart in seconds. “Did you ever get my letter?” she says. “I left it in the Umbilical.”
I nod.
“I knew you would,” she says, and her fingers scratch her wrist lightly, once, twice. She looks away for a second, then gazes softly back into my eyes. “I had so much more to write. I had all these things I wanted to tell you.”
I lean forward until my forehead presses against the glass. “I’m sorry for deserting you. I’m sorry for never coming back. I should have tried—”
“It’s okay, Gene.” She presses the flat white of her hand harder against the glass. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
The sun sets lower, its rays diminishing in strength, bleeding into a darker red. Already the skull of the moon is etched into the darkening parchment. Night will be upon us soon. And with that thought, the initial shock of seeing Ashley June wears off, and I glance suspiciously around me.
“That was you on the TextTrans, wasn’t it?” I say. “You used that to lure me here. To trap me.”
“Yes. And to save you. Back at the Convention Center it was me who sent the message to you. I saw you as soon as I walked onto the stage. Toting that ridiculous weapon. If I hadn’t sent that message, you’d have fired your weapon. And given away your position; you’d have been devoured in five seconds flat.” Tenderness on her face. “I’m always saving you, Gene. Like now. I’m about to save you. That’s why I brought you here.”
Her fingers turn the dial of the control in her hand, making the tint of the glass lighten even more. She is enduring the pain, wanting, for a reason I don’t yet comprehend, for me to see her more clearly. She blooms into sharper focus, her beauty more intense, more savage, now. The small mole at the corner of her eye peeks through. Again, I turn my eyes away.
“And where is he?” I ask. “The person you took the TextTrans from.”
Ashley June drops her hand from the glass. When she speaks, it is with timidity. “I’m sorry. He came to me in the hospital. He was somehow able to sneak into my room despite the security detail, despite the constant camera surveillance. He was going to kill me, Gene. With a loaded weapon. So when I killed him, it was out of self-defense. Partly, anyway.” A spittle of saliva dots the corner of her lips. Her tongue snakes out, erases it.
I take a step backward, bump into the table. Grab at the hard edges, glad for something solid to brace my wobbly legs.
“I recognized him immediately,” she says quietly, almost apologetically. “One of the dome hepers. I saw him a few nights ago up in the mountains. Saw him escape on the train. With you. So I knew he was your friend. And because of that, I tried to restrain myself, Gene.” She looks down at her feet. “You have to believe me. And when I knew I could not, I made his death as quick and painless as possible. Because I knew that’s what you would have wanted.”
Epap. Dead. I thought I’d already made peace with his death. But this confirmation knifes me. I remember what he said to me back at the Mission, his face ridden with guilt. I’ll make good. I will. I wish I could tell him now that he never had to make good. He didn’t owe a thing to anyone. He was always laying himself on the line: back at the Mission, carrying my collapsed body along the meadows toward the train, fighting off a trio of duskers from Jacob on the train platform. And here in the metropolis, venturing alone into this vast unknown labyrinth of death, determined to complete the impossible. For Sissy, for David, for me.
I hear Sissy’s words in my head. Loyalty is the proof of love.
“It wasn’t quick,” I say, my voice strained with accusation. “You made him beg. You made him plead. And you recorded his final moments, a recording you just played to lure me here. How sick can you be?”
She shakes her head vehemently. “My hospital room had a security camera and I stole the tape. I didn’t want to play it, but you forced my hand. When you refused to exit the elevator, as I’d predicted you would, you left me with little choice.”
“Well, I’m here now. What are you going to do? Eat me for yourself?”
“If I wanted to do that, you’d be dead now, and you know that.” Her fingers curl, causing her long nails to screech against the glass. “I’m here to save you, Gene.”
I shake my head, take a step toward her. “No. Ashley June, listen to me. There’s a cure. Something called the Origin. It reverses the infection. It re-turns you back to human. I can save you. Not just you, but every dusker. Back at the Palace, there’s a whole arsenal of Origin weapons. To restore, to re-turn
everyone.”
Her face darkens like the landscape blackened by clouds passing before the sun. “There is something you have to know, Gene. Let me tell you—”
“There’s no time, Ashley June. Dusk is almost here.”
“Yes, and whose fault is that? What took you so long to get here? I wanted to explain everything to you. There’s so much to explain, stuff you won’t even believe at first. I wanted to take you down to the fifty-ninth floor and show you things that would help convince you of the truth.” She stares at me. “You know how difficult that was, all the red tape I had to jump through to get that floor opened? It’s been locked forever. If I didn’t have this whole metropolis fawning over me, if I didn’t have the authorities at my every beck and call—”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. But listen to me! I can save you.”
“You want to save me?” she says, her voice edged with derision. “What if I don’t want to be saved? What if I think you are the one who needs to be saved?”
“What are you talking about?”
She steps forward until her face is almost pressed against the glass. Her breath frosts, disappears. “Gene,” she says, her voice attaining gentleness again, “there are secrets that have been hidden for centuries.”
“What secrets?”
“Have you ever felt … at odds with your body? That it sometimes feels like it’s too small or too large or too cumbersome in all the wrong places? Like you’re a square peg trying to squeeze into a circular world?”
I don’t say anything.
She strokes the length of one long pale arm. “Remember that time in the closet in the school gym? The spin-the-bottle game?” She looks about the Panic Room. “That closet was about the size of this chamber, wasn’t it? Everyone else was outside the door, and it was just you and me inside. We made out with fake passion, engaged in maneuvers that meant little to us. It was just a masquerade. At the time, I thought it was because we just weren’t doing it right. But now I realize it wasn’t the actions. It was us. We weren’t right.” Her eyes fall on mine, tender. “We were wrong, Gene. Something was wrong with us.”
“Ashley June, you’re not thinking clearly—”
She raises her hand, silencing me. “No, Gene. My thoughts have never been clearer or sharper. I feel restored, comfortable in my own skin for the first time in my life. I’m saved. Saved from the petty existence we once had, all the faking, the pretending.” Her eyes fill with a naked wistfulness. “I can save you, Gene. I can finally make you real.”
A cold wave sweeps over me. “You’re not yourself, Ashley June. This is not you. Because the Ashley June I knew would never say something like that. She was a fighter.” I take a few steps back. “I don’t know you: I don’t know this.”
“I am Ashley June,” she says, and slaps the glass. “More than ever.”
“No!” I shout with such vehemence she jolts back. “I can save you! Bring you back, Ashley June!” My words tumble out quick and loud. “Don’t you remember back at the mountain village? You fanged Sissy. And she turned, almost the whole way. But the cure, the Origin, brought her back. The Origin is me and her, our joined blood. And in the same way it re-turned Sissy, the Origin can re-turn you! And she’s here, Sissy’s right in this building!”
At the mention of Sissy’s name, the atmosphere suddenly changes. The sunlight flames out, goes dark. All warmth is suddenly sucked out, and a coldness swoops in. And when Ashley June speaks, her voice has lost all emotion, volume, affection. “There’s just two flaws with your plan.”
“Ash—”
“First, I don’t want to be saved,” she says. “I don’t need to be saved.”
Outside, long, thin shadows of skyscrapers slice across the metropolis.
“And second,” she continues. “Sissy is already dead.”
41
SISSY
WHEN THE ELEVATOR suddenly swallows Gene and whisks him up along the atrium wall, Sissy’s initial reaction is outright anger.
He left me behind, she thinks. To search the more dangerous floors of the building alone.
But she catches his expression as he is thrust upward. A look of astonishment. She sees his hand pounding the elevator buttons as he is flung higher, until all she can see is the soles of his shoes.
She runs over to the panel of buttons by the elevator door. She’s never ridden or operated an elevator before and is unsure which button to press, or if they need to be pressed in combination. She settles on pushing them all frantically, randomly, until the buttons become less plastic protrusions to press than punching bags on which to vent her rising fear.
“Gene!” she shouts, her head snapping back as she stares up. The elevator keeps rising, faster yet, as if it is being catapulted through the glass atrium roof.
Then the elevator stops. At the top floor where it’s now a mere speck of light. She hears shouting. Coming from the elevator. It’s Gene, his distant voice galaxies away.
“I can’t hear you!” she yells back, but she knows her voice is as inaudible to Gene as his is to her. For a moment she thinks about finding a stairwell and running up to join Gene. But she drops that thought. Gene warned her not to enter the floors between the glass lobby and top floor. Dark floors that might be holding hundreds of duskers sleeping off the night’s festivities.
And then she’s hearing his voice again. Loud and jarring, screeching out of speakers at the security desk.
“Sissy, can you hear me? Go to the security desk! I’m using the intercom. Go to the security desk!”
She races over. Next to the speaker is a set of different-colored buttons. Uncertain which button to press, she settles on pushing them in sequence and yelling out Gene’s name. On her fifth try, finally, she gets a reply.
His voice crackles through. “Sissy, the elevator’s stuck on this floor! See if you can find some external controls at the desk.”
“Okay,” she says, then stares at the daunting dozens of buttons before her. She punches all of them, randomly, trying to make sense of them.
“Sissy, can you—” Gene starts to say before his voice is drowned out by static.
Then something else.
Someone else.
Sissy’s fingers halt midair above the buttons. Maybe she imagined it and—
“Help me!” Epap’s voice.
Immediately she’s pushing the TALK button.
“Epap?! Oh crap, that’s his voice, that’s Epap!” She bends lower to the speaker, her lips almost touching the metal grill. “Gene, do you see him, is he okay?” She starts smacking the speaker, as if to coax out a response. “Gene! Are you with him now?”
Then a horrific scream screeches out of the speaker.
It’s Epap. “Help … don’t, please don’t, no!!!” he screams.
That gets her moving. She doesn’t care anymore; she’s going to storm up the stairwell if she has to. And as she turns to run, she looks up to the elevator.
It’s descending.
By the time it reaches the lobby, Sissy is already there, slapping the doors with impatience. Even before they open, she sees that the interior is empty. Gene must have gotten out to help Epap on the top floor. She leaps inside, presses the button for the top floor.
The button doesn’t light up. She presses it again.
The door slams shut. But the button still hasn’t lit up.
And now the elevator starts ascending. The sight of the lobby dropping away makes her feel queasy in the pit of her stomach. As if gravity has been reversed and she is falling up into the sky. She spins around, sees the blur of passing floors blink past her, the bold numerals painted on the doors of passing floors flashing by too quickly for her to read them.
This is all wrong. She can’t shake the feeling that she is being played, an invisible hand controlling her actions like a puppet. She slaps the glass in anger, hardly believing how gullibly she walked into the trap. She has to stop the elevator somehow. Can’t allow it to transport her to wher
e it wants. There’s a key above the panel of buttons. She turns it. Something clicks in the panel, and all the floor buttons light up, then go dark.
The elevator only seems to pick up speed, lurching her upward faster. Then it begins to brake. The floor numerals rushing past her on the wall slow down and become readable. 55, 56, 57, 58. Then the number 59 drops into view slowly, coming to a complete stop before her. For whatever reason, the elevator has stopped five floors short of the top floor.
Ping, she hears the elevator sound.
She pulls out the handgun from her waist. Slams in the magazine. Gets into a crouch, ready for whatever might be on the other side of the doors.
42
SISSY
THE DOORS OPEN.
Sissy can’t see a thing. After being in bright sunshine for hours, she finds the darkness before her an impenetrable wall. She tightens her grip on the handgun. The smallest movement, the slightest shift of gray in black, and she’ll blast away. She stays in this position even as the elevator doors start to shut on her. She slides forward into the path of the closing doors. They slam up against her with surprising force and don’t retreat. She holds her position, but when an alarm inside the elevator begins to screech—loud enough to awaken anyone sleeping in the building if allowed to continue—she’s forced to make a decision: move out of the elevator or remain inside at its mercy.
She pauses, Then steps forward. The doors close behind her.
And now she’s swallowed up in darkness. And silence.
She traces the wall for a button but can find none. The elevator is gone. There’s no way of calling it back up.
“Gene!”
Nothing. Only her echo rebounding back from unseen walls. But the silence is not necessarily a bad thing. If there were any duskers in here, they’d surely be roused by now. By her smell. By the sunlight that had briefly poured inside when the elevator doors were opened. But there are no howls of complaint, no clatter of nails scraping against makeshift sleepholds. Nothing. In fact, judging from the ancient fusty air, it doesn’t seem as though anything has stirred in here for years, decades.
The Trap (The Hunt Trilogy) Page 18
