She wishes desperately for a GlowBurn stick. She’d toss it in front of her, let it illuminate the floor. But now all she can do is wait for her eyes to adjust.
Gradually, shapes emerge. She sees the edge of a table. And the hooded shade of a desk lamp. Yet still she does not move.
“Damn it,” she hisses as she realizes she has little choice. She can’t stay in here forever. Not with Epap’s desperate pleas for help still echoing in her head. She edges forward, arms splayed out in front, the side of her hip brushing against furniture. The air is mustier than she previously thought; dust motes waft into her eyes, making them water.
She walks to the desk lamp, locates the power switch. She’s surprised when a dim silvery light cones down onto the desk—she didn’t think it would work. There’s barely enough light to illuminate even the books directly under it, but for Sissy it’s the guiding light of a thousand pyres.
The desk lamp is the first in a row of mercuric lamps placed across the length of a long table. She can’t see where the table ends; it stretches into the darkness, disappearing. Cautiously, she makes her way down its length, switching on every desk lamp. Many don’t work, the bulbs apparently having died from overuse or, given the amount of dust settled over everything, from nonuse. Ten meters later, she’s switched on enough lamps to just make out three tiers of wrought-iron stacks around her, all filled with books.
And in the far wall, she sees a door. A door that could only lead to a stairwell. To the top floor. To Gene and Epap. She looks around, uncertain if she should proceed. Something strange about this place. Above her, she sees a metal-plated sign hanging on the wrought iron of the second tier:
ACADEMY OF HISTORICAL CONJECTURE
BUREAU OF HEPER HISTORY CREATION
Cold fingers of fear grab at her. She ignores them, focuses on the task at hand—getting to the door on the far wall. But her eyes keep flicking to that sign, then down to the volumes of books and notepads piled on the table, many of them spread open. Where they’ve lain undisturbed for years, or even, judging from the thick coating of dust, for decades.
She turns on another desk lamp. She’s almost at the end of the table. The light spits down on a rough sketch of something. She starts moving to the door—
What was that?
Her eyes drop back down to the sketch. It’s actually a map, but unlike any she’s seen before. This one encompasses not just the metropolis, or even, like the Scientist’s map in the journal, the larger surrounding terrain. This map captures the whole earth. Mountain ranges and valleys, vast deserts broken up by thickets of dense forests. A map that even illustrates the ends of the earth, cliffs dropping off into bottomless, endless chasms. She’s never seen a speculative map on this scale before. She stoops lower for a closer look, but her breath unsettles the layer of dust. Motes drift into her nostrils, and she sneezes loudly, forcefully. The map shifts, revealing another map underneath.
And another, and another, and another. A whole stack of them, in fact. These maps, using different cartographies, illustrate unique and often-clashing formulations of the earth. Some depict large landmasses surrounded by even larger bodies of water. Others show tiered levels of land, each separated and held up by massive earthen columns. The maps are filled with names of continents and other places she’s never read before: Hintotes Sea. Mynsento Mountains. Deroze Plains. Some landmasses are apportioned off into sections, dotted lines demarcating and separating nation from nation.
Sissy frowns, looks closer. Some of these sections are labeled—and also crossed out—with what must presumably be designations: Sevibo, India, Heyan, Malinorise, China, Cheung Chau. She stares back down the length of the table, at the ancient journals and maps and books spread under the lamps. This is a river of information, containing secrets old as history itself. And she suddenly, with an intense desire, desperately wants to read everything. Despite the danger, she needs to hear the secrets whispered in these pages, see the truths unveiled.
But there’s no time. Reluctantly, she moves toward the door … and she steps on something. There’s a crack of hard plastic under her boot. Curious, she bends down. A pair of shades. She holds it under the lamp for closer examination.
Odd.
It’s a newer model, a style that came into fashion only a year ago. So out of place in this ancient setting of archaic maps and moldy papers. She runs her finger lightly over its smooth plastic surface. No dust. These shades were left behind fairly recently.
By who?
She moves to the desk, picks up the lamp, swings it around slowly. She spots something: near the far wall, on the floor, not five meters away. She walks toward it with the lamp until the cord pulls taut. She sees a … well, it’s hard to say exactly. She should forget it, her instincts tell her, get away from here. But something draws her irresistibly toward it.
It’s a small cardboard box, mildewed and foul, its lid tossed to the side. The box had been secreted, from what she can tell, in the tight floor space between two shelves. Somebody had extracted it roughly out from there, upturning the box and causing sheets of paper to spill out. What immediately catches her eye is a symbol embossed in the top corner of the nearest sheet:
Tinted silver, it glimmers in the darkness. So alluring, she can’t help but run her fingers across it. Yet this crescent moon is ominous as well, seemingly capable of slicing her fingertips. It’s too dark to read what’s on the page except for three large words stamped diagonally across: TO BE DESTROYED.
Not just on that one page. But on every mildewed, crinkly sheet she flips to, those same words, that same embossed moon. Her fingers, by now, are filmed with dust. She sniffs them and is almost overcome by the pungent fusty musk. They speak of an age more antiquated than anything else on this floor. In this museum of relics and artifacts, what she holds in her hands easily predates everything by at least a few centuries.
She stares at the sheets scattered on the floor, at the half-empty box. Judging from the mess left behind (and the dropped shades), whoever had snuck in here must have had to beat a hasty retreat. And probably with some papers.
She is about to move the papers closer to the light when something causes her to look up. She stares down the length of the table, watchful. There, above the elevator door. A flash of light out of nowhere. The numbers on the floor position indicator are blinking on and off, suddenly working again. Heart pounding, Sissy watches as the numbers light up in the darkness.
48 blinking out to 47. Then 47 to 46.
The elevator is descending, moving away from her.
45, 44, 43, 42, 41, 40, 39.
And there it stops. For a few seconds. Then the 39 blinks out.
The next number lights up.
40.
The elevator is coming back up.
The papers fall from her hand. She does not notice.
41, 42. Gathering speed now. 48, 49, 50, 51.
Then slowing down—52, 53, 54, 55, 56—as the elevator nears its destination.
57, 58.
59.
Ping.
The doors open.
43
“SISSY IS ALREADY dead.”
It takes a moment for Ashley June’s words to register. Then I’m spinning around, racing out of the conference room.
“Gene!” Ashley June cries from behind.
I ignore her plea. I tear down the corridor past empty glass offices. In the elevator lobby, I smash the buttons, glancing down the atrium to the lobby far below. Nothing. No movement, no sign of Sissy, not in the lobby, not in the elevator stopped many floors below me. Even the elevator buttons remain unlit and unresponsive.
“Sissy! If you can hear me, get out! Get out, Sissy!”
The only reply is the sound of my own echo.
When I return to the conference room, Ashley June is gazing outside. At the setting sun, touching the tops of the surrounding buildings. A red glaze fills the floor, but it is heavy and dark, the color of blood clotting. The opaque walls of the Pani
c Room are darker now, Ashley June having dimmed the walls in my absence.
“What have you done to Sissy? Where is she?”
“It was over the moment you stepped into this building.”
“Tell me where she is!”
“She’s probably in the guts of about a dozen people right now.” Ashley June turns to face me. “It’s too late.”
I move forward, slapping the glass so forcefully that Ashley June jolts backward.
“Tell me where she is. There’s still time. You don’t know Sissy. That girl cheats death like no one else. I can still help her. And after I help her, we’ll help you.”
“It’s over, Gene, she’s—”
“No, she’s not! I’d have heard screams and howls already.”
And at that, as if I’d inadvertently flicked a switch, a wail screeches from many floor below. And another. And another.
“Now it’s really over,” Ashley June says. “And in a few minutes you, too, will be killed. The sun has almost set. Night is upon us. And this building is filled with people. As is every building in a thirty-block radius. Rumors of two hepers on the loose last night sent the whole metropolis into a tizzy. Half the population came out, sniffing around, hoping, if not to find you, then at least to discover a drop of you, a smidgen. The dawn siren caught most by surprise; we had to find refuge in these buildings.”
She looks outside at the nearby skyscrapers. “We’re not just talking about thousands of people, or even hundreds of thousands. But millions. Millions who are awakening now, Gene, all around us. There’s no way out. Not out of this building, not out of the metropolis.”
I feel blood drain from my face. I knew there were people in the buildings. But not millions.
“Then just kill me already!” Spit flies out of my mouth, sprays the glass. “Just kill me yourself, put an end to this.” I take out the handgun from my belt. “I’ll shatter the glass for you, let you out. Okay? Isn’t that why you brought me here? So that you get first dibs on me? Well, here I am. Have at me.” I cock the handgun, aim it at the glass chamber.
“No, Gene, no!” Ashley June cries. “I brought you here so we can be together.” Her eyes glistening in the dark. “I’ve turned, yes. But some things still remain the same in me.” She pauses, and now her voice comes out as a whisper. “I still have the same feelings. I still feel the same way about you. But more intensified now. Purer.”
She points to the table behind me.
“Inject yourself. With the hypodermic needle on the table. It’s filled with concentrated people fluid, more than twice what you need. Use it, and within a minute it’ll all be over. All the running. All the hiding. You’ll no longer be prey. You’ll be like all of us. And the Hunt will at long last be over. And we can finally be together.”
I raise the gun until it is pointing to the top of the Panic Room. All I need to do is pull the trigger and the glass between us will shatter.
“No, Gene!”
I close my eyes. “If everything you said is true, maybe it really is over. I’ll let you end it. You can have me.”
“Gene!”
The sound of a gun fired.
But not from my gun. The explosion muted, distant. From a few floors below.
From Sissy’s gun.
Screams break out from below. Then, another sound—Sissy shouting, her voice filled with fright and fury.
And at that, I’m running, ignoring Ashley June’s pleas, ignoring the sound of her hands slapping against glass behind me.
44
SISSY
THE ELEVATOR PINGS. There are duskers inside. She knows this with a clean, cold certainty. And in the fraction of a second before the doors open Sissy considers her options. She can duck out of sight behind one of the stacks, then take them out one by one. She can leap to the corner, use the walls to funnel the duskers toward her, erase them as they converge on her. She can try to make for the exit door, close it before they get to her.
And in the next fraction she plays out the inevitable failure of each option, all of them eventuating in her death, ranging from five to fifteen seconds away. Because as long as the duskers have darkness and space and numbers, her death is a mathematical certainty.
And so she plays the only option that remains. It is not necessarily the best option. It could, in fact, be the worst. But she doesn’t have time to think it through.
She sprints right at the elevator, drawing her weapon.
Her legs cut through the air, speeding along the line of desk lamps.
And now the doors start to open. Dusk light pours through. No wider than an inch, but already she’s aiming between the doors. She fires off a shot. Cocks the weapon, fires off another. Hears the far wall of the elevator shatter as a bullet smashes through it. Glass shards falling like raindrops into the atrium. She shoots again. And again, running, sprinting.
All three duskers are maniacally trying to squeeze through the still-opening doors. They want her. And they want to get away from the glass elevator—it is an oven to them, filled with the searing rays of the setting sun. Wisps of smoke curl up from their skin.
A bullet catches a dusker right in the forehead, snapping its head back. The next bullet punches a black hole into its Adam’s apple. The dusker is propelled backward, knocking against another dusker. Both duskers fall out of the elevator, tumbling through the space made vacant by the shattered far wall.
Sissy empties the handgun at the last remaining dusker, but her aim, jostled by panic, is off. One shot hits a panel by the side of the elevator doors, and the floor elevator doors suddenly freeze in place. But the opening is wide enough for the last dusker to leap out, howling with pain, its eyes scrunched shut. Slip, slide, gone. Into the darkness of the floor, scurrying along the walls, finding shade, finding shadows, finding darkness.
It’s weakened. Not by a bullet—Sissy knows she missed—but by the blinding dusk light. Its time inside the elevator was pure torture, hellfire scorching the marrow of its bones. But here in the darkness of this floor, it has found a haven in which to recover.
Sissy goes after it, loading a new magazine. Light is pouring through the jammed elevator doors, and she is able to see a leg dragging like a lizard’s tail, banging into stacks and furniture as it scuttles away. The dusker is trapped now, caught in a corner where two bookshelves meet. It starts climbing up, frantic feet and hands gripping the shelves like rungs on a ladder, leaving trails of melted flesh dripping from shelf to shelf.
Sissy cocks her weapon, aims—
It’s vanished.
She doesn’t dote on her missed opportunity. Or on her now-evident folly in going after the dusker. She simply turns and sprints for the elevator. The doors are still stuck halfway open, but whatever damage her wayward bullet caused, it’s apparently had no effect on the elevator itself. She watches in dismay as the elevator disappears down the wall of the atrium.
A snarl behind her, deep in the shadows of the floor. She spins, half-expecting to see the dusker coming after her. But she sees only the line of mercurial lamps shining before her. Follow them, she knows, and they’ll lead her right to the door on the far wall. Her escape.
But one of the lamps on the far end blinks out. It could be coincidence—the bulb going out right at that moment. But more likely, it’s the dusker darting in front of it.
Because the dusker has recovered now. Vision regained, advantage restored. Now cutting off her escape route. Sissy stops. Turns back around, races to the precipice of the atrium wall. She stares down. Sees the glass roof of the elevator descending into the atrium. Her only other escape option disappearing by the second.
A howl from behind. Sissy spins around. Two beads shine at the edge of darkness—the dusker’s glowing eyes.
She doesn’t hesitate. Not anymore. She steps one foot out into the atrium and drops into the void. She falls, lands with a loud smack on the descending elevator rooftop. The glass roof holds, even as she half-bounces, half-skids across its slippery surface, a
lmost falling off the edge. She spreads out her legs, arms, holds herself flat. The atrium wall beside her rushes by, floor numbers shooting up past her, as the elevator continues to descend. She raises her arms, gun clasped tightly, and aims up. First sign of the dusker peeking its head out to look down and she will empty the gun into its skull.
And then the elevator starts slowing. Not even halfway down to the lobby, it comes to a stop. She holds her breath, fear clutching her throat.
The elevator bounces slightly under her. Bodies getting on the elevator, piling in under her.
She hears teeth gnashing, fingers scratching the glass walls with agony. It’s the dusk light. Its rays might be fading and weak to her, but to them the rays are blades of razor pain. A small price to pay for the taste of heper flesh.
The elevator starts moving again. Upward.
And still, they haven’t seen her.
Slowly, she turns her head. Looks down from the corners of her eyes.
There are five of them. She sees the tops of their heads, flicking from side to side in a rapid, jerky motion. One of the duskers is smashing the elevator buttons with frenzied impatience, over and over, deposits of melted flesh sticking to the buttons. They’re all in anguish, their flesh already beginning to sizzle, their eyeballs burning like pots of boiling water. Any moment now, they’ll do what she suspects people do when heading up a glass elevator with great impatience and anticipation. They’ll look up.
But, as it turns out, they don’t need to. They smell her first. The whole back wall of the elevator is gone, and her odor is pouring in unimpeded like a waterfall.
The Trap (The Hunt Trilogy) Page 19
