She screamed. A horrific scream that shook her bones and unmoored her organs.
The other hunters around her erupted with screams of their own, but theirs were filled with hunger and desire and hunger-lust, not ice and fear and horror.
And she saw everything unfolding with a maddening slowness. Gaunt Man pulling out a dagger, hacking through his restraints. She screamed yet again. But her father did not look, did not pay any attention to her or to any of the other screams echoing off the walls of the Introduction.
And when the end came, she tried to block off all her senses. Shut her eyes behind her shades to blind herself. Screamed as loud as she could to erase all other sound. But nothing could be done about the blood that splashed across her face, because her hands were restrained, her arms tethered to a pole. The droplets of her father’s blood were still warm. All she could do was scream again, but even that didn’t seem enough, her mouth was too small an outlet for the horror exploding within. And when she felt a tongue—Gaunt Man’s—licking the blood off her face, up and down, the texture of his tongue rough and coarse and wet and sticky, she screamed even louder. But their screams around her were louder yet.
* * *
Two days later, she was back in the Introduction. And as before, she was screaming. But this time, it was with fear, not horror. And this time, she wasn’t tethered to a pole but was racing across the arena, gunning for the entrance to the Pit, three duskers hot on her heels. Blood dripped from a self-inflicted gash across her palm. The scent of it enticed the pursuing duskers, drove them batty. She ran thinking of Gene, many floors above her, hoping she’d created the diversion necessary for him to get away.
Run, Gene, run! she yelled in her head. Now’s your chance to get out!
And she ran, too, the soles of her feet shredded away, her lungs singed with exhaustion. And although every step increased the distance between her and Gene, she also believed these steps were somehow bringing them back together at some distant point in the future, that she was merely running along the circumference of time. They would meet again. Gene would come for her. Theirs was a story only beginning.
She slid, then fell into the Pit, pulling down with her the pole that held the Pit door open. She hit the ground hard, the solid limestone rattling her spine. Above her, the door slammed down, sealing the darkness inside. Scrabbling, scratching sounds, claws on metal. And then curved slivers of light rimming through. The three duskers, they were wedging in their fingers and claws, trying to pry the lid off. Ashley June shot up and turned the lock-wheel until there was a click and she knew the entrance was sealed.
She found candles, matches. The interior was larger than she’d expected, the size of a small bedroom. On shelves lining the far wall sat a riffraff of containers and canisters, stacked cans of food, bottles of water in various stages of emptiness. Rough bedding lay against the nearest wall, blankets folded neatly on the ground, the pillow still depressed in the center. Candles, long extinguished, sat on small ledges that jutted out of the limestone walls. Melted wax lay pooled and hardened, some of it lining down the walls, eerily artery-like, as if these walls pulsed with life.
It was only then she felt the blood. Soaking through the back of her shirt. Her hand trembled as she reached beneath the fabric. She felt three long gashes. Running deep and wet and parallel to one another, across her spine.
One of the duskers had slashed her.
The gashes meant nothing, she told herself. She wasn’t infected, the claws were clean of saliva. She was fine, she was fine, she was fine. This was what she told herself for hours even as the adrenaline gave way to sharp pain, even as a fever erupted from deep within her bones. Only when she collapsed to the floor, cradling her legs, her body slick with ice-hot sweat, did she finally accept the undeniable.
She was turning.
Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to her knees. She would not succumb to this. She would fight the turning. There had to be something inside the Pit that might help her. She began to search. For something, anything. The Pit was a tight, confined space and it didn’t take long before she found something. But it was not what she was expecting.
Under the pillow, she found a dozen or so snippets of paper, folded many times into tight squares. There were words written on them. Not her father’s handwriting—someone else’s. She frowned, not recognizing it.
Whoever wrote them must have passed these notes to her father from the outside. But how? The Pit door was too tightly sealed to allow even paper to slide through the rim. The more she thought about it, the more she realized the notes must have been secretly passed during the Introduction—that initiation procedure when her father was lured out of the Pit by the offer of food and morsels and water and other necessities. Whoever wrote these notes must have secreted them in the bottles and cans that held these items.
She read the notes. Most were short, clipped messages of obscure meaning.
Tobias, it’s me, Joseph. I’m here.
Can’t believe you survived.
I’m sorry about what happened to your family. But know that your daughter is alive.
The Origin is fine.
The Hunt is proceeding according to plan.
Hang in there, we’ll get you after this is all over, too dangerous now.
But it was the very last sheet that most caught her attention. It was the longest of all the notes, a letter really.
Tobias,
I screwed up. I ventured back to the Domain Building yesterday and was—miraculously—able to break into the 59th floor. I couldn’t believe it. After so many failed attempts … But I had to hurry, had only a few minutes before the doors locked on me again.
I stumbled upon something. Almost literally. A stack of old documents in an old box. These documents—we’re talking ancient here. Not sure what’s in them. They’re written in archaic script—almost like hieroglyphics, really—it’ll take me weeks, months to transcribe them.
But I heard someone coming and in my haste to leave I left documents scattered about and I dropped my shades. Didn’t realize it until hours later. If found, those shades will be linked to me; and the missing documents are bound to create a stir. I can’t chance the attention, which could lead them to the Originators. The risk is too great.
So I must disappear. Before any link can be made, before I might be seized. I just need to poof. Quickly, immediately. I haven’t even been able to tell the Originators at the Palace what happened.
It kills me to have to leave you. And even more to leave Sissy. Obviously, without even a good-bye. The same way I had to leave Gene—suddenly and without explanation. Not a day goes by that I wish it could have been done differently. I would rather die than hurt him again.
And so … I must simply … vanish.
But the Hunt plan is still in play. The fixed Lottery, the boat, the arrangement to house Gene in the library, the sunbeams leading to the map—everything is in place. And although I wish I could be here for them when the Hunt begins, it’s too risky to stay. And so I will return to the Mission and await their arrival. For a reunion I’ve been dreaming about for a decade now. I’ll inform the Mission eldership about the Origin plan (if I trust them—please let it not be Krugman who’s in charge now, remember that cad?).
Up in the mountains, to pass time, I’ll keep working on the green-liquid weapon. After so many years, I think I’m almost there. And I’ll start transcribing those ancient documents I found on the 59th floor. I think they hold some important information, though I’m not sure exactly what. So hang tight. I will return for you. I don’t know when, but all in due time. I won’t forget you, friend. I will return for you. Stay strong. Burn this note, as I know you have all the others.
Ashley June read this last letter, over and over. Even in her deteriorating state, she could not stop reading it, mulling over it. Even as her fever intensified, even as sweat poured down her body, she read. One sentence in particular leaped out at her. I would rather die than hurt him
again. Those words branded themselves into her mind. I would rather die than hurt him again. I would rather die than hurt him again.
But when the turning clamped down on her with a vicious finality, twisting her body in agonizing spasms and seizures, her mind fastened on a different phrase. Up in the mountains … Up in the mountains … Up in the mountains …
That was where Gene would be.
The next night, after the turning was completed, Ashley June emerged from the Pit. She snarled at the people around her, smacking them aside with a glorious newfound strength. They sniffed her, could not understand. Where had the heper odor gone? When they realized she was just as they were and that she had just pulled a cruel prank on them, they poured into the Pit.
They demolished everything down there in their yearning to taste anything heper. Nothing survived. Everything was licked and ripped to shreds. Even the notes were torn asunder. All except one: the letter—that she had folded and tucked into her back pocket. But she found she didn’t even need to look at that letter to know the only words that mattered. Just four words.
Up in the mountains.
53
SOMETHING HAPPENS. INSIDE the Palace. We sense it miles before we reach the gigantic disc-shaped building. The wind, once saturated with heper blood, suddenly loses its pungency. Only the slightest of scents remain. Sissy and I pause. The heper massacre is over. All heper bodies have been devoured, flesh eaten, blood drunk.
Sissy shakes her head, and long trails of saliva loop around her head. She seems conflicted. Without the heavy influence of heper odor overloading her senses, older priorities are being reclaimed. She’s thinking about David. She’s thinking about re-turning. She’s thinking about the Origin weapons.
I’m thinking about David, too. But not necessarily in the same way Sissy is.
Behind us, the rumble of the millions increases. More of them, and closer now. Sissy and I push forward. A mile from the wall, we see movement along the ramparts, dots of people racing about. We hear their excited voices, chaotic and exuberant.
Once we reach the walls of the Palace, Sissy and I don’t slow down but leap up the walls, scaling the ancient marble easily. We race along the parapet walk, observing the chaos below. Staffers are running across the courtyard, most of them naked, hair disheveled, eyes keening and hungry. But despite the electricity in the air, it is plainly leftover excitement. We’re joining the party late, the apex long passed, the aftermath cooldown already begun. The carnage is over.
But instead of slowing down, a renewed energy surges through Sissy. She stares up at the obelisk, considering, then bursts forward. She leaps down to a lower level, tears along the roof of a covered parapet walk before jumping to the courtyard. She’s barely landed before she’s springing forward, charging down a corridor as if possessed. She doesn’t look back, certainly doesn’t wait for me. It’s all I can do to simply keep her in sight as I bound after her.
As we tear down the corridors, we pass groups of people dashing to and fro. I’d once thought the sight of these naked bodies, gleaming with a sickly anemia, was repulsive. And I never understood their wont for nakedness during the hunt. But now I know. It’s the excitement, the raw energy that pulsates through the system. I grab my shirt and rip it into ribbons in seconds. I shout into the sky.
Sissy stops and looks at me, cocking her head. A wariness in her eyes as she takes in my naked upper torso. For a second—less, maybe just a tenth of a second—I feel shame. Because she hasn’t given in, not yet, not completely. I know it from her clothes, still wrapped around her, untorn. She’s still resisting. She’s not on the prowl for hepers. She’s here to rescue them, one of them, anyway.
“What is it?” I say.
“Help me find it.”
“It’s up in the obelisk tower. In the Ruler’s chamber.”
Her eyes turn suspicious. “What are you talking about? Help me find the Originators’ science lab. Where the dart guns are stored, the ones loaded with Origin blood.” She stares down a corridor, then down the other. “It all looks the same to me,” she hisses.
Forget sight. Eyes aren’t going to help us. I lift my nose into the air, sniff deeply. There. The faintest trail. Of metal unlike any other in the Palace. And an even slighter hint of gun oil.
Sissy sees me raise my nose and realizes what I’m doing. A second later, she catches the scent as well. Her body stiffens, then she’s flying down the corridor, her feet kicking out behind her.
We find the door leading into the laboratory. It is smashed inward, but the hinges and lock have held. Along the edges of the cratered door, a draft from the laboratory flows through tiny cracks. That is how we were able to detect the artillery and weapon scents.
Sissy wastes no time. She backs up, then flings her body at the door. Again. And again. I join her, and on the seventh try we bust through the door.
The laboratory is empty. Not an Originator in sight. A pity, that. “Over here,” Sissy says, and rushes over to a dart gun lying on a laboratory bench. Next to the guns is a row of darts, filled with the Originator serum.
Though I can’t smell the blood through the sealed darts, I’m suddenly drooling uncontrollably.
“Gene.” Her voice has changed, a hint of threat in her tone. She picks up the dart gun, loads it. “We re-turn you first. Then me. Then we go up the obelisk, find David.” Her voice hard, guarded. Suspicious.
But I’m braced, ready for it. “No, wait.”
She lifts the gun higher, at my chest. “No time to wait.”
“You don’t understand. If we re-turn here, we’ll clod along at a snail’s pace. We’ll never make it to the obelisk, much less climb to the top where the Ruler’s Suite is. Truth? We won’t get fifty meters before we’re detected and hunted down.”
She pauses, considering. She’s conflicted. Her battle is not only with me but also with herself. She doesn’t want to re-turn. Not back to that unwieldy, cumbersome heper form.
“We have to hurry,” I say, urging her. Then the lie. “The sooner we get to the Ruler’s Suite, the sooner we rescue David.”
That settles her mind. She throws the dart gun strap over her head, pulls it taut so that the dart gun is secured against her back. Throws her hair over it like a hood. “As soon as we get to the top of the obelisk, we re-turn,” she says.
“Fine,” I say. On the way out, I grab a double-barreled shotgun from the weapons aisle. We’ll likely have to blast through the door to the Ruler’s Suite. I loop the shotgun around my head, strapping it against my back, grabbing a few shells on the way out. And two prototype Origin grenades for good measure. Then I’m leaping through the doorway, following Sissy.
54
WITH OUR ENHANCED sense of direction, Sissy and I are able to find the entranceway to the obelisk in no time. We tear up a spiral staircase that coils along the inside wall of the tower. A darkened vertical shaft runs up the center of the obelisk like a black spine. I know what it is. It’s the column through which enclaves are transported.
What would have taken us a good ten minutes to climb if we were hindered by the cumbersome coordination and pathetic endurance of a heper is over in less than two. At the top is the door to the Ruler’s Suite. It’s locked. Judging by the fresh scratch marks and the dents pinged into the door, many have already tried to get in, futilely.
Sissy takes a running start, slamming into the door hard. It rattles, but the hinges remain secure. The door is self-locking and triple-barreled. We could be smashing our bodies against the door for the next hour with nothing to show for it.
I pull the shotgun over my head. “Stand back,” I warn. I point the barrel at the doorknob.
The flash of light turns my vision into a white sheen. The sting like a thousand razor blades exploding in my eyeballs. I collapse to my knees, try to blink away the pain. Sissy, bumbling forward, arms outstretched, pushes past me. I hear the sound of the door being ripped apart. Forcing my eyes open, I stagger in after her.
Inside t
he Ruler’s Suite, I stumble into a metal contraption. It’s the restraint apparatus upon which the Ruler had tied himself two days ago. Eyes still clenched shut, I touch along its width and height. It’s empty. Only the remote control used to open and close the glass partition dangles from the frame.
It takes almost a minute before I regain my vision. There’s no one else here. The suite feels so different from before. Instead of a claustrophobic confinement, it’s airy and spacious, the sensation akin to floating in the sky. The windows, shuttered against daylight the last time, are open now and span the entire circumference of the suite. They offer a panoramic view that lets me see a hundred miles in every direction from an unblocked, elevated vantage point.
I gaze outside. Rushing toward us, from the direction of the metropolis, is a one-mile-tall, five-mile-wide wall of dust. It’s the horde of naked millions of citizens coming in at breakneck velocity. At their speed, they’ll be here in less than five minutes.
Around us, glowing like lanterns, are the five tanks. They’re still filled with the green liquid. When I first saw the tanks two days ago, they were dark and opaque, illuminating little of what lay within. Now they are bright and clear and I see everything in them.
Drool drips down my fangs, splatters against my chest. I try to swallow before more saliva spills out, but there’s too much, too fast.
Sissy hasn’t seen the tanks yet. She’s preoccupied, bent over an opened enclave on the floor. Sniffing, licking the interior. I trot over to her. A heper was devoured in here, every ounce of flesh ingested, the glass licked clean twenty times over. I smell the chief advisor, what little odor of him is left, anyway. In the corner of the enclave is his tablet. I pick it up. The screen, layered with sticky saliva, tells it all. He was trying to make his getaway. He had pre-programmed this enclave to head to the underground train station. And that’s not the only thing he’s activated—he also remotely started the train engines.
The Trap (The Hunt Trilogy) Page 22
