And it hits me right then. A spasm of cold wetness shudders through my viscera, a cold blast that suddenly, on a dime, turns boiling hot. My bones, cells, the electrons within those cells, all set aflame. My legs turn to ash as I slump down onto the tabletop. My body slides to the ground.
Sissy kneels next to me. “Gene? What’s happening to you?”
Lying on the floor, I feel the sway of the Domain Building, its oscillations keening wider and wider. I hear their howls ratcheting up in volume, so many of thousands of them, their screams mirroring the frenzy in my own head.
“Gene?”
Hard to speak. But the pain subsides for just a moment. “I injected us with concentrated dusker serum. We’ll turn really quickly, in under a minute.”
“What? Say that again?”
“We’re going to turn. Human to dusker.”
Her eyes widen with horror. “What the hell have you done?”
“No, Sissy, listen. This is the only way we survive.”
She stares down at her arm. At the spot I injected her, right above the branding. Her eyes huge with disbelief. “You’ve turned me into a … dusker?”
“No, listen, Sissy.” I clutch her arm, hold on desperately like it’s a rope over a canyon. “This is the only way we survive. Once we turn, we become them. We won’t smell. We won’t stick out. We’ll blend in seamlessly. Don’t you get it? We won’t be prey. When they break in, they won’t be able to find us. We can get the hell out of here.”
“But Gene,” she says. “We become them. I’d rather die—”
“No. Listen.” I lean in closer. “Once we’re somewhere safe, we ingest each other’s blood. We’ll re-turn. We’ll become human again.”
“How can you be so sure—”
“We’re the Origin. We’re the cure!”
“I know that! But you still shouldn’t have—”
“I don’t want to die, Sissy!”
“And I don’t want to live if it means becoming one of them!”
Now I grab both her arms. “This is the only way David has a chance to survive.” Something in her eyes relents at the mention of his name. “We get out of here alive, we book for the Palace. We get him out of that tank. Think of him, Sissy!” An idea comes to mind. “Once we get back to the Palace, we find the Origin weapons and use them on each other. We’ll re-turn much faster that way.”
Her chest rises and falls, uncertainty swimming in her eyes.
“We can do this, Sissy. We won’t forget who we are.”
Her eyebrows knit close together, a deep vertical line creasing between them. Her hands suddenly clench. “Gene, it’s beginning!” she cries as her body arches upward, her back bending and locking in place. I reach for her, wrapping myself around her, ease her down to the floor. Her arms start to thrash, smacking me across the face, as cold-hot sweat gushes out of her pores like lava ice. Then she calms, in the eye of the storm I entered a few seconds ago.
And which I am now leaving. The internal burning comes even hotter now, scorching my bones but somehow freezing the marrow. My vision goes white, then red, the colors reversing themselves like a photograph negative. Acid for blood, hot coals for organs, boiling soup for brains.
Never forget, I start to say. But the words are mush on my burning tongue, and my tongue is swollen and unwieldy. Then a cloud blooms in my vision, terrible and horrific, a thousand petals of black that burst into pollens of poison. I’m turning, it’s overtaking me, it’s a mistake! And then my body goes limp, and—
51
IT IS OVER. The turning is over.
So suddenly. It doesn’t feel like a slow disintegration. But rather, a quick correcting, like a separated shoulder popped into place. Instantly righted.
I thought I’d feel a foreignness about this new turned body. As if, within my own skin, I’ve been converted into an alien. But instead, for the first time in my life, I feel a settlement.
Like a knuckle cracked. Like an invisible blockage in my nasal passage suddenly, finally cleared. Like a film of mucus between my heart and soul wiped away.
The smells come to me, rich and vibrant and luxurious, in 3-D, in 5-D, textured threads flowing through my nostrils and felt by the tendrils of every olfactory nerve. Identifying, sequencing, separating, splitting, savoring. My whole life, I had only scratched the surface of the olfactory nirvana that swirled in the world, fumbling with cheap, blunt knockoffs. But what I smell now I could luxuriate in for hours here in the dark.
Except it is not dark. Not anymore. When I open my eyes, the night has become day. The darkness bleached into a crystalline clarity, not a single pocket of black. If anything, the outside light, already muted from the covering of bodies cloaked over the building, is too bright, the glare causing me to squint.
In wondrous clarity, in a way I have never really viewed her, I see Sissy. Still in the eye of the storm of transformation, she’s backing away from me. I don’t know why she looks terrified of me. But the lines of her face are cleaner, her hair and skin purer.
And I smell heper.
It wallops my senses like an overpowering deluge of opiate wonders. Wave upon wave flung onto me, centering and energizing me to a degree that makes adrenaline seem like a sedative. A desire is carving out a large vacuum in me that. Must. Be. Filled. It consumes everything, makes sexual lust seem like a mild itch in comparison.
Saliva flows out of my mouth. For the first time, the torrent that gushes out is true and genuine and unstoppable.
Sissy. Heper smells roaring off her, drawing me to this flesh, this bone, this blood.
It moves, backing away. Fear and suspicion growing in its eyes.
With a sudden burst of speed that surprises even me, I leap atop it.
The smell. Oh, the intoxicating fragrances rippling off its skin in waves, saturating my senses. It struggles under me, its quivering body beckoning me. I feel an irresistible need, a desire, a must to plunge into it, and devour and drink.
“Gene!” it shouts.
I stop. Shake my head.
It’s Sissy.
I throw myself away from her, fearing what I will do next. With shock, I realize I’ve thrown myself up to the ceiling, am suspended upside down. I slide away from her, trying to get away, away from the soft melt of her skin, the alluring fragrances flowing off it.
It flops over, but not in defense. It starts to shake, shift, spasm.
I can’t hold back any longer. I give in, dropping to the floor, my body twisting midair. Claws rip out of my fingertips; fangs jut out of my mouth.
On all fours, I pounce toward it.
It smacks me in the side of the head, and I go pirouetting into the ceiling. I land awkwardly, body smacking against the table. When I spin around, readying to pounce again, she’s staring me down, crouched like a cat about to spring.
She snarls. Fangs gleam.
All heper smells cut off like a spigot turned. She’s no longer heper; she’s turned. Only the drip-drip of residual heper sweat and oily secretions on her skin. And on my own skin, which I smell now. I lick my arm, lapping at heper sweat. A burst of flavor exploding on my tongue. I lick again, the length and thrust of my tongue surprising me.
The people around us are shouting. Their voices are loud and excited but are no longer the high-pitched wails that once lashed my eardrums. Or perhaps it’s my ears that have changed and I’m merely hearing the same sounds differently.
Sissy is licking all over her body, her thick red tongue lapping across her arms, fingers. I go to her, the virginal female heper fragrance smeared on her skin even more tantalizing and intoxicating than the male heper residues on my skin.
I lick her exposed shoulder. She shrugs me off halfheartedly, too distracted in her own licking. I lick, lick, on her neck, behind her ear, lick, lick places she is unable to reach.
She smacks me on the back of the head. I hiss at her, fury burning in my eyeballs. Then I smell her armpits, the residue of heper oils emanating from those twin coves. An ele
ctricity animates my every nerve. I must have at them.
The glass ceiling suddenly cracks with a splintering intensity. Hundreds of people, having scaled the walls, have gathered above us, and their cumulative weight is too much for the glass roof.
At the sight of the large cracks quickly spreading into a web of smaller gashes, a vestigial fear kicks in, clearing my head for a moment. They’re going to come crashing through any second now. And though Sissy and I may be two of them, it will be only a fine distinction to them. They’ll smell the residual heper smells on us. They will rip us to shreds.
I grab Sissy, pull her away from the conference room. She gets it. We bound down the hallways, even as the roof caves in. People falling to the floor all around us, already picking themselves up, chasing after us, smelling the heper scent still on our skin.
“Sissy, this way!” I say, the feel of her name on my tongue cumbersome and slightly ridiculous. It is already feeling odd, this labeling of a person with a personal designation.
We race into the floor lobby on all fours. Even in the midst of this pandemonium, I feel a strange exhilaration. The speed, the dexterity of my body, everything connected and working in fluid, animalistic coordination. Clunky kinks worked out, a grace and a power surging through my flowing movements.
“Gene!” Sissy shouts, glancing back.
A flood of people is racing toward us, on the ceiling, the walls, the floor. Ramming through glass walls, smashing aside furniture.
But we have velocity, too, now. We are nimble and agile and strong, too, now. We turn the corner with too much speed, but our arms and legs skate under us with instinctual coordination, claws scraping across the marble flooring. We skid ninety degrees, fishtailing slightly, then leap toward the elevator doors. We crash right through, flying right into the very throat of the atrium. As we knew they would be, the walls of this deep vertical well are covered with people climbing up, smeared with melted flesh, like thickly spread peanut butter. We take this all in with analytical eyes, even as we’re suspended in the raw drop of the atrium. There’s no fear, only a pulsating exhilaration. We fall at an angle, the wall within arm’s reach.
We’re not the only ones who jumped. The chasing horde is leaping after us, a waterfall of bodies.
Falling right beside me, Sissy links her arm with mine. “Now,” she says.
And together, we reach into the thick layer of climbing people, grabbing bodies, kicking down on limbs and heads, doing whatever we can to slow down. Everything is a blur as we skim along, and then we’re slicing into this thick layer of sticky bodies, slowing down. Eventually, only a few floors above the main lobby floor, we come to a stop.
We leave the building with relative ease after that. We’re not the enemy, not the prey, not anymore. All residual heper oils and secretions have rubbed off and been smeared onto other bodies. And from head to toe, we’re covered with the tar of their melted flesh. We’ve gained what I have sought my whole life: perfect anonymity. We skirt along the perimeter of the lobby, avoiding the crash of bodies still falling from above, sidestepping around the rush of people surging into the Domain from the streets.
Outside, the night sky is thankfully darkening. Visibility improves with every passing minute. Everything is wonderfully clear, sharp, and in focus. Sissy and I race with exuberant abandon side by side, avoiding the crowds. Twenty blocks out, the swell of crowds shrinks to a trickle. We continue another ten blocks, running against traffic, until it is only the two of us.
We help each other wipe off the sludge in our hair, our ears, under our claws. If she’s disgusted, she’s not showing it. In fact, she’s not showing any expression at all. Her face is smooth, bereft of any emotion, covered with a sheen of equanimity. I can’t take my eyes off the purity of it.
“We re-turn now,” she says mechanically, as if reading from a script. “We drink each other’s blood. Then we head to the Palace. For David.”
I don’t move. She doesn’t move.
I stare down at my paws on the ground. “It’s better if we re-turn after we get to the Palace. If we stay this way, we won’t need a horse. We can sprint to the Palace in less than two hours. And we won’t have to worry about being detected, hunted down. Plus, we can use the Origin weapons there to re-turn ourselves much more quickly.”
She pauses, hesitating. We look at each other. Blink, once, twice. I know this look. It’s the look of a person with a new toy or gadget, wanting to test it out.
And just like that, we’re off. We slice between buildings, along the empty streets, two blurs sprinting on all fours. Within minutes, we’ve hit the fuzzy borders of the metropolis, the concrete pavements ceding to the sun-baked desert terrain. Under the night sky, everything is possessed with pure, hard lines, a cleansing translucency to everything.
So incredible, the feeling. The wind rushing against the face, the sense of power exploding in the bunched muscles of my legs, my two arms reaching forward, grabbing earth, thrusting it beneath my flying body, soaring through the night air. The smells of the desert channeling in from miles around, my nose a sensory periscope that gathers information so much deeper, richer, than sight, touch, taste, and hearing combined.
And again, that undeniable sensation of feeling finally, completely, at home in my body. A rightness about this, a pang satiated, a destination reached.
Next to me, Sissy sprints, eyes half-closed against the wind, her nose twitching, flaring. She howls with delight, her voice joining mine. She is a marvel of beauty and grace and power, her legs launching her body into a beautiful gliding trajectory, her body long and sleek as it sails through the night air, gravity a side thought.
About twenty minutes into the run, halfway to the Palace, we pause. Lift our noses into the air. We now smell them: hepers in the Palace, their odor thick and luxurious. At first, their fragrance is only vague and generalized. But then something happens. The floodgates open, and the aroma—compelling in itself already—explodes into the night sky, reaching even the stars. It sweeps over us seductively in dozens of individualized fragrances. Wet, bloody scents, crystal clear, flowing across the desert plains, blown by the wind, staining crimson every grain of sand. It is almost too much, overpowering. With so much heper blood suddenly released, it can only mean one thing. They’ve entered the catacombs. They’re hunting the hepers. They’re bloodletting the hepers.
Sissy and I look at each other. The smallest suggestion of guilt flares in her eyes over the quickly forgotten and barely remembered. A tiny rupture of shame.
And just like that, all commitment to some previous agenda vanishes, replaced by an all-consuming desire. We take off, our legs pounding even faster now. Long chains of drool dangle out from the corners of our mouths, trailing like ribbons.
A couple of minutes later, we stop. Not from fatigue. But because the ground is rumbling, a deep-seated quaking. We look behind us. The shaking is coming from the metropolis. People are now leaving it in droves, racing toward the Palace. We know why: The explosion of heper odor from the Palace, blown by a fierce gust of wind, has reached the metropolis. Has filled its streets and buildings with a pungent musk. Causing the millions of citizens to simultaneously cock their heads toward the Palace. In wonderment. For this is a fragrance never before imagined, of a quantity and variety never before even fantasized, comprised of hundreds of hepers. And now, the whole metropolis is sprinting toward the Palace, the young and old, male and female, a 5 million strong horde. For heper blood, heper flesh, so much of it.
I feel no fear. I’m not the prey. I’m the hunter, a hunter, one of millions. I’m just like everyone else and the thought fills me with a strange gladness. I belong. For the first time in my life, I don’t feel other; I feel together. Not apart, but a part. Joined with everyone, with the millions behind me, with the whole world. And so when I kick out my legs and start racing for the Palace, what fuels my excitement is not only the prospect of what lies ahead but also the deep joy of belonging. The kind of elation you feel when th
e last puzzle piece—so oddly shaped—is finally fitted in to complete the picture, beautiful after all.
The wind gusts hard against us. So many succulent heper odors, I almost miss the one other distinctive non-heper smell in the desert plains. A fresh trail, only minutes ahead of us. Ashley June’s.
52
ASHLEY JUNE
ONE WEEK AFTER her operation, Ashley June’s family went out without her. She was still bedridden and feverish, and the pain below her waist had barely subsided. They were running low on fruit, her father told her, and she needed all the nourishment she could get.
They would be gone for only a few hours, they promised.
But they were not gone for only a few hours. They never came back. She waited all day, and the next, and the next after that. But they never returned. It was the last time she ever saw her brother or her mother.
But it was not the last time she saw her father.
That happened years later, a decade after she’d long assumed him perished. After she’d spent all that time learning to survive on her own, forging a life of her own.
It was at the Heper Institute. When she along with all the other hunters were taken down to the Introduction. He had come out of the Pit and at first she had not recognized him. The same way she had failed to recognize him nights earlier on her deskscreen when he had selected numbers for the Lottery. Amidst all the screaming and drooling and bone cracking, she could not see past the pasty skin, the bald head, the languid, soft body.
She saw the body emerge from the trapdoor in the ground. An arm propping open the cover, head emerging, eyes peering out. Then he came out.
There was nothing of the straight, angular posture she most remembered of her father. This heper was slow, with a soft potbelly that spoke of surrender. But it was his eyes that had changed the most, that droop weighed down with sadness. His eyes never met hers as he studied the pens and pencils laid as bait in front of her. But it was then that she recognized him.
The Trap (The Hunt Trilogy) Page 21