The Trap (19 page)

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.

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.

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.

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.

E
VERYONE 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
pardon
s and
excuse me
s. 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.