Then it’s gone. Just like that. One second in my crosshairs; the next, vanished. I search the side of the stage. There: just behind the curtain, it is surrounded by uniformed officers who are pulling it away deeper backstage.
Fire off a shot, damn it. Just fire off a shot—maybe it’ll hit her.
Another thought blazes into my mind.
Where’s Sissy? Why didn’t she take a shot?
Maybe Ashley June got off the stage too quickly for Sissy to react, to pull out the gun. Or maybe something’s happened to Sissy. Something terrible.
Something vibrates against my thigh.
It’s the TextTrans. A message has come in.
Ignore it, I tell myself. Take the shot. Before Ashley June completely disappears. I bend my head down, try to find her through the scope again.
The TextTrans vibrates with insistence, growing warm.
Exhaling with frustration, I release the trigger, fish out the TextTrans.
A message. From Epap.
It’s a trap. Run.
30
I CAN’T MOVE. Even as I feel valuable seconds tick by, all I can do is stare at the TT screen, try to thaw the layer of frost that’s paralyzed my thoughts, my body. The audience suddenly starts stomping, snapping me out of my stupor. I type out a quick message.
Epap, where are you?
No reply. Inwardly cursing at myself for wasting time, I start to stand when the TextTrans suddenly vibrates again. Seemingly more frantic than before, it almost tumbles out of my hand.
Drop everything. Run.
Epap?
Run. Leave CC now. Get outside.
Where are you?
They’re coming. They know where you are.
Something snaps in me, a panic, an urgency. Fury and adrenaline in chaotic tandem. Finish the job, finish the kill. The mercy kill. But when I bend to the scope again, I can’t find her. She’s gone. There’s no sign of Ashley June.
The TextTrans buzzes in my hand.
They’re coming. Run.
Need to move. I drop the sniper. For a moment, I consider taking the backpack with me, but decide its weight will encumber my getaway. Stealth and quickness are going to get me out of here, not a blaze of gunfire. Still, I grab one handgun, and affix the silencer from the sniper to it. Kick the backpack under the sofa, tuck the handgun down my waist. I’m rushing out the door when the TextTrans vibrates in my hand.
Turn right when you exit suite.
I shut the door behind me. Glance left: the curved corridor outside is empty, only one worker behind the concession gift stand selling T-shirts and magnets and posters and other Heper Hunt–related paraphernalia. Glance right: on the far curved wall, three shadows on the wall are speeding around the bend. I have to turn right, I think to myself. Epap’s telling me to go right. The shadowy figures distort and loom larger as they race along the wall’s curvature.
I head left, quickly, staying close to the wall.
I’m not going to make it. They’ll come around the bend, see me walking briskly and suspiciously away. I sidestep in front of the concession stand, pretend to be examining the wares on display. My back to them, dillydallying as if I have all the time in the world.
Behind me, three security officers come around the bend, their boots clacking on the hard concrete, walking at a brisk pace. But they’re walking, which means they don’t believe they’re on the lookout for hepers, for Sissy and me. If they did, they’d be sprinting, bounding, foaming, and hissing.
They open the door to the Palace suite, walk in.
Now.
I spin around, stride quickly. Only as I approach the open suite door do I slow down. I walk past slowly as if strolling, glance sideways. The three security officers are standing with bent arms at their waists, looking casually around.
I start running. With as silent strides as possible. Need to create distance, get around the bend before they exit the suite and see me.
Only then do I realize I left my Visor in the suite.
The TextTrans starts humming again.
The walkway is empty, the curving ramp bereft of people. I fish out the TextTrans, reading as I run.
Head down ramp to Level 2. Walk to Section 33, exit there.
Quiet. Everyone is still in the arena. I run down to Level 4. Level 3. The sound of my footsteps echoing around the walls of the curved ramp.
Then the sounds of other boots hitting concrete echo from above, throwing disorder and chaos into the rhythmic pounding of my own running.
Level 2, now. My legs are wobbly, kneecaps about to pop like a cork out of a wine bottle. This is the level where I should get off, find the exit by Section 33. I pause. A sign above indicates that Sections 40 to 32 are to my right.
Footsteps, louder now, slaps of soles hitting cement.
The TextTrans starts vibrating against my thigh.
Sissy. All alone on the arena floor. Surrounded by thousands. Right now, she must be sensing something is wrong. I see her in my mind’s eye. Worry creasing her forehead. Her rib cage expanding, shrinking, expanding, shrinking, the air slack and insubstantial. Panic setting in. Stress odors chuting out of her pores. The crowd around her growing restless, beginning to press in. They will think it’s because of this Heper Hunt–related event that they are involuntarily salivating, that their necks are beginning to crack, their lips wobbling wetly. But soon they will realize their heads are snapping toward a locus, toward one person in particular whose head does not snap, whose lips are dry, whose mouth is not salivating.
I bolt. Not to Section 33. But down the ramp to Level 1, down its dark throat, the thin floor lights running along the edges of the ramp like trails of glistening saliva. The TextTrans hums insistently again. But still no time to take it out.
Footsteps pound louder from behind as I get off at Level 1. I force myself to walk slower, fighting the urge to glance back every step of the way. A man, attention fixed on the program sheet in his hand, bumps into me. He regards me coolly, his nose twitching. Head cocks to the side at a slight angle. Shakes his head, is about to start walking when he gives me a long hard stare. But by then, I’m walking through the entranceway to the arena floor. I’m in. I’m safe. In here, there are thousands of bodies with which to merge and disappear.
And then it hits me with fresh horror. I’m in. In the midst of them. In full view, without a Visor, without shades. Rubbing shoulders with the thousands on the floor, with a fresh layer of perspiration slicking my back. With dozens close enough to touch me. Claw me, gut me, fang me.
I stare ahead. Somewhere in this swamp of darkness is Sissy. I push deeper into the crowd. They tide against me, washing over me. I’m in.
31
EVERYONE IS PACKED in. Personal space is usually sacrosanct and transgressed only with consent during romantic interludes and social dancing. But tonight everyone in the arena has adjusted their personal preferences. Especially those crammed together on the floor, their shoulders occasionally touching, backs grazing against chests.
I push through the crowd, murmuring my pardons and excuse mes. There’s no room to slide between people. My secretions graze onto their skin, my odor wisps into their nostrils.
No sign of Sissy. She’d planned on positioning herself close to the stage, but with this crowd I’m wondering how far she was able to advance. Perhaps that’s why she never took the shot. She wasn’t able to get close enough.
A ripple of discontent is spreading through the crowd. Ticket holders were promised more than an appearance by the Valiant Victoress, resplendent as she is. They were told she’d give an earth-shattering disclosure. And so far, there’s been none.
But something else is percolating among the crowd, something deeper than mere discontent. In the subterranean recesses of the crowd’s subconscious, neural networks are detecting an odor. A heper odor. It is a mere ripple for now, but that ripple is ripening by the second into something like excitement, something like hunger, something like lust.
The
master of ceremonies enters the stage, walks to the podium. There will be a slight delay, he says. The Valiant Victoress will return with more breathtaking stories after a costume change. In about fifteen minutes. The crowd grumbles.
I move faster now, grace jettisoned for speed (slow down, take a breath, station yourself). All my years of training going up in a flame of panic. I move quickly to my left to avoid a large man and bump carelessly into a woman. On high heels, she tumbles. The crowd about me shifts as they bend to help her up.
“Sorry,” I whisper, giving her a quick sideways glance.
“You smell it, too?” a man next to me asks.
“What?”
He snaps his neck as if to shake himself awake. A dangle of drool ropes across the side of his face, over his ear. He looks very, very confused. Bothered. Excited.
I hold my breath, wait a second, then start to move forward, away from him, head down.
“Watch where you’re going,” says somebody next to me. His elbow jabs me in the rib cage. I move past, but his elbow, like a hook, holds me in place.
I turn. The man’s eyes bore into mine. He is giving me an odd look, a glint of confusion that is being overtaken by recognition. But that’s not what really scares me. It’s what I see behind him. Dark shadows moving toward me, ruptured here and there by slivers of saliva, rapid head flicks, shimmering eyes.
The master of ceremonies now speaks with a distracted edginess. Saliva sloshes in his mouth, and his words slip out wetly. Spittle dots his lips and chin. He smells heper.
Everyone smells heper.
So much heper.
And like dark, wet clay hardening, the mass of bodies begins to encrust around me into a hard, impenetrable shell. And somewhere in the darkness is Sissy. She’s losing it. I can sense it. I can almost smell her fear, growing, erupting, gaining on her.
I snap into action, shoving myself forward, out of this encircling, condensing mass of bodies. There. Ahead, about fifteen meters away, I see another such circle, a pool of blackness that more bodies are moving toward. Another center of gravity drawing people inward, pulled subconsciously by heper smells.
That’s where Sissy must be.
I glide forward, pushing past—
I see her.
She is standing dead center in the midst of them. She is the only one who is perfectly still, her body rigid, her dry lips stretched taut below the Visor. I see her flinch—barely perceptibly—as someone hisses right over her shoulder. Pale faces swing in her direction, crescent moons turning horrifically full. She’s trying to mimic them, but she’s got everything all wrong. Her gait, the angles of her limbs against her body, tension and stiffness in all the wrong places. The nuances of her body language are completely off.
The master of ceremonies stops speaking mid-sentence. With the abruptness of a person who’s given up any pretense of normalcy.
I push through until I’m next to Sissy. She turns, and her body literally sags with intense relief. Our hands discreetly touch under their line of vision, and I squeeze her hand for just a second, to reassure her. Her skin cold and clammy. Then I let go, and when her fingers try to find mine again I reluctantly push her hand away. She starts to shake with relief. No, not relief. Fear. Fight or flight, fight or flight written all over her. She’s too wound up.
Someone hisses right over my shoulder, a blubbering snort, uncomfortably close. A line of sweat slicks down my back like a finger tracing my spine. I flick my head to the side, hiss, and spit. I’m trying to show Sissy how to release the tension, through movements that won’t draw attention.
But she either won’t or can’t catch on. Her body is stock-still, her exposed lips an awful confluence of dread and horror. If one person sees her mouth, it’ll be over before she can exhale her next breath.
Tse-tse-tse-tse! the person next to me clucks, a staccato sound that shatters through his slippery teeth. “I smell more than one!” he yells.
And at that, something unbuckles in the group. Whatever restraint has been holding it back completely disintegrates. The crowd closes the gaps, cements the cracks with the black tar of its bodies.
Sissy’s hand drifts down to her waist. Where her handgun is tucked under her shirt. Now or never, her move tells me.
She’s right. It’s now or never. Wait another five seconds and we’ll be found out. Dead in seven seconds. It’s now.
But something halts me. I close my eyes, searching for the answer. It’s somewhere in the dark of my mind, some—
It’s already too late. That’s what I realize. They’re too many bodies clumped around us. There’s no way the two of us—even armed—can blaze our way out of here. Even if every fired bullet inflicted a fatal wound, we’d be able to plug a dozen of them at most. Leaving thousands on the floor still alive, and tens of thousands more in the arena.
If we want to live, this plan can’t be now. It has to be never.
There has to be another plan.
I swing my gaze to the stage. Nothing there to help us. Left and right, nothing. Look up. Only the flotilla of balloons assembled above us. Nothing. There’s nothing.
A wail breaks out from balconies on the higher levels. Our odor rising, spreading. Heinous screams of hunger fling out. From the luxury suites. From the upper crust of society. They’re not used to being deprived of choice action, and they want in. I see dark shapes, men in suits, women in upscale dresses, scaling down the walls like ribbons of saliva drooling from the luxury suites.
Sissy turns to me. Her hand is pulling up her shirt, revealing a glint of metal from the handgun. She’s pulling off the Visor now for better vision, her bangs arching over her forehead like a pulled bow. She’s ready. To go down fighting, to cut holes into as many as she can on her way down.
The TextTrans buzzes manically in my pocket. So hot, it’s burning a hole into my thigh.
Sissy starts pulling out the gun.
It comes to me, right then. The plan. An imperfect, deeply flawed plan. But the only one we have.
Sissy is cocking the handgun. And I’m reaching out, snatching it away. Her eyes widen with surprise as I aim it toward the roof.
And fire off six quick rounds.
32
THE FLASHES OF light—six in quick succession—sear through even my shut eyelids. White splats of blinding brightness. Again. And again. With each flash, the gun recoils in my hand, the violent jolt felt all along my upright arm and shoulder. By the sixth shot, the handle of the gun is hot enough to brand my palm.
Fully discharged, I fling the gun away. It sails over the crowd; they lie collapsed like windswept grass completely flattened. Screams and cries of pain. Their corneas are burning.
Sissy grabs my arm. “Now,” she says. “While they’re all down.”
But she’s wrong. Only the people closest to us are incapacitated. The majority of the people, especially those on the outer rim who were shielded from the bright flashes, are already pressing forward. Toward us.
Instead of taking off, I grab her, pull her to the ground. “Not yet!”
“What? We’ve got—”
“Wait for it, wait for it!”
“Gene! For what?”
Then I hear it. The most glorious crack of glass, the sound of a thousand ice cubes thrown into boiling water.
“Duck!” I shout, and pull her into a crouch. Shards of glass rain down. As do massive plates of glass, slicing down and penetrating bodies like an axe head into wood.
Don’t get cut, I think. One tiny slice and blood will pour out. It’ll send this arena into a suicidal rampage.
Thousands of balloons drift down. Red, white, yellow, and green orbs floating down in slow motion. Thousands of discrete moving parts. The kind of cover we need.
Sissy starts to move.
I grab her arm. “A few more seconds, let the balloons reach us.”
“They will reach us before the balloons,” she spits out, pointing at the dark tide of people. “Damn it, Gene!”
“W
ait for it.…”
The thousands of balloons flow down, spread along the arena floor. And then. An unexpected gift. Moonlight, no longer impeded by the thousands of balloons, or, more important, the tinted glass, cascades into the arena, flooding the floor with light.
The effect is immediate. Every eye in the arena shuts, every arm is flung across every face, every mouth cries out in pain. The sudden flush of moonlight is more startling than dangerous. But it’s bought us cover, distraction, and maybe fifteen, twenty seconds.
We move.
Not back the way we came. The entranceways are too clogged with people rushing in from other levels. But forward, toward the stage, Sissy in the lead. Balloons still falling, bouncing every which way. We shove people aside. Our odor, our sweat, our fear, our desperation, wiped full bore on them. But we’re past caring. A few swing back, arms slashing through the air, hoping to catch us with one swipe. But still blinded by the bright glare of moonlight, their aim is off.
Sissy slaps her palms on the stage, swings her legs sideways, up and over, clearing it easily. I’m right behind her, hoisting myself up. I glance back. What I see from this higher vantage point turns my insides cold. The whole floor is churning with the turbulence of thousands of shifting bodies, balloons bobbing in their midst. Pale moonlight layered on everything, casting everything in a sickly glow. And thousands of people streaming toward us like a turbulent river.
We stay low on the stage, and duck under the heavy train of the velvet curtains. The heavy, suffocating weight of the compressed folds pushes down on us as we crawl, disoriented, in the murky black.
And then we’re through, on the other side of the curtains, backstage. It’s empty, everyone having rushed out onto the stage moments before the moonlight poured down. Sissy is up and out first, turns to help me to my feet. No longer needing to pretend to be a dusker and allowed to be herself, she’s in her element.
“Quick,” she whispers. Already the stage is beginning to shift and move. The masses. They’re climbing onto it. The curtain begins to stretch and pull from the other side.
The Trap (The Hunt Trilogy) Page 14