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She says something, but I’m too far away to hear. He answers, energy now beginning to course through his body, and points at a number of different monitors. She asks another question, her body turning slightly towards the monitors, inching closer to the man. He notices. And when he answers, his head bobs enthusiastically on his narrow shoulders.
No doubt about it, she’s good at this flirtation game. And she’s up to something.
She raises her long arm, pointing at one of the monitors. Her arm stretches out effortlessly upward like the exclamation point at the end of a sentence that reads: I’m gorgeous! That arm has always done a number on me, all those years sitting behind her, especially in the summer months when she wore sleeveless shirts and I could view the whole length of her wonderful, perfectly sculptured arms. They were neither too thin nor too thick, just the perfect dimensions with perfect ridges that exuded both assurance and grace. Even the light freckles that sprinkle her arm, exploding in a splattering of dots as they disappear into her shirt, are more seductive than imperfect.
Slowly, I edge closer to Ashley June, positioning myself behind a small pillar. I peer around the pillar; she’s moved even closer to him. Above them, images from security cameras shine with a dull blur. At least a good half of them centre on the Dome.
“Can’t believe they’re running all the time.”
“Twenty-four/seven,” he answers proudly.
“And is there always someone watching these monitors?”
“Well, we used to station a staffer here. But, well, it became . . . there was a policy change.”
“A policy change?”
There is a long pause.
“Oh, c’mon, you can tell me,” Ashley June says.
“Don’t tell anyone,” the staffer warns, his voice hushed.
“OK. Our secret.”
“Some staffers became so lost in these images of the hepers that they’d . . .”
“Yes?”
“They lost their senses, they were driven mad with desire. They’d rush out at the heper village.”
“But it’s enclosed by the Dome.”
“No, you don’t understand. They’d rush out in the daytime.”
“What?”
“Right from this very seat. One moment they’re staring at the monitors, and the next they’re rushing down the stairs and out of the exit doors.”
“Even with the sun burning?”
“It’s like they forgot. Or it just didn’t matter to them anymore.” Another pause. “So that’s why there was a policy change. First, no more recordings—illegal bootleg copies were somehow winding up on the streets. And second, now everyone leaves this floor before dawn.”
“It’s completely unstationed during the day?”
“Not only is it unstationed, but look, the windows have no shutters. They were taken down. So now, the sun pours in during the daytime. The best security system. Nobody’s coming in here after dawn. Nobody.”
There is a pause, and I think that’s the end of the conversation when Ashley June speaks again. “And what’s that big blue oval button over there?”
“I’m not really supposed to say.”
“Oh, c’mon, it’s safe with me.”
Another pause.
“Like everything else you’ve told me, all the stuff you could get fired for disclosing, it’s all safe with me,” says Ashley June, this time with a hint of a threat in her voice.
“It’s the lockdown control,” he says tersely after a moment.
“What’s that?”
“It shuts the building down, locks all entrances, shutters all windows. There’s no leaving the building once lockdown has been deployed. Push it to set the system, push again to cancel—”
His voice gets drowned out by the approaching tour group, which has moved away from the windows and is now mumbling its way towards the back of the floor, towards the monitors. I slink back into the mix. Nobody’s noticed my absence. I don’t think.
By the time the group reaches the monitors, the staffer is back in his seat, his head swivelling back and forth, up and down. One of the escorts is speaking in a monotone voice, talking about the function of the monitors, how every square inch of the Institute is covered by a camera. But nobody is listening, they’re all staring at images of the Dome in the monitors. They’re still looking for hepers.
Except me. I’m watching Ashley June.
She’s slinked away again and is wandering around. Or at least pretending to. Something about her bearing – maybe the way she turns her head just so to read documents on desks or bends over as she passes by a control panel filled with switches and buttons – seems purposeful and deliberate. And she’s trying to go about unnoticed, but it’s near impossible. She’s a heper hunter, she’s female, she’s beautiful. She’s sizzling hot oil on your brains. Before long every male staffer around her has taken notice. She realises this, too, and before long, gives up. She rejoins us at the monitors, tilting her head up. She stands very still, immovable, unreadable.
I stare from behind, the line of hair streaming down over the nape of her neck, dark with a dull gleam. She’s up to something here in the Control Centre; I can’t shake that feeling. Digging for information. Looking for something. Seeking confirmation. I’m not sure. But what I am sure of: she’s playing a game the rest of us don’t even realise has begun.
Lunch is late that night; it’s well past midnight before we are taken down to a large hall on the ground floor and seated at a circular table. None of the escorts sit with us; instead, they retreat to their own table in the peripheral darkness. Without their hovering presence, the hunters are set at ease: our backs relax, we become more talkative. Lunch offers the first time I’m really able to meet the other hunters.
It’s the food we talk about initially. These are meats we’ve never tasted before, only read about. Jackrabbit, hyena, meerkat, kangaroo rat. Fresh kills from the Vast. Or so they say. The flagship dish is a special treat: cheetah, typically eaten only by high-ranking officials at weddings. Cheetahs are difficult to catch, not because of th
eir speed – even the slowest person can outsprint a fleeing cheetah – but because of their rarity.
Each dish, of course, comes wet and bloody. We comment on the texture of the different meats on our tongue, the superior taste to the synthetic meats we usually eat. Blood oozes down our chins, collecting in the drip cups placed below. We will drink it all up at the end of the meal, a soupy collection of cold animal blood.
What I most need is absent from the dinner table: water. It’s been over a night since my last drink at home, and I can feel my body desiccating. My tongue, dry and thick, feels like a wad of cotton wool stuffed in my mouth. The past hour or so, spells of dizziness have whirled in my mind. My drip cup gradually fills with mixed blood. I will drink it because it is liquidy and watery enough. Kind of.
“I heard they stuck you in the library.” It’s a man in his forties, sitting next to me, beefy with broad shoulders; he’s the president of SPHTH (Society for the Protection and Humane Treatment of Horses). His generous potbelly protrudes just above table level. My designation for him: Beefy.
“Yup,” I say. “Sucks the big one, having to walk outside. You guys are probably partying up in here all day while I’m cooped up all by my lonesome, bored as anything.”
“It’s the sunrise curfew that would get me,” Beefy says, his mouth full of flesh. “Having to leave everyone and everything, drop of the hat, forced to leave. And all alone out there, surrounded by desert and sunlight in the day hours.”
“You got all those books,” Ashley June says next to me. “What’s there to complain about? You can study up on hunting techniques, get a leg up on us.”
I see the elderly, gaunt man I’d met in the lab earlier scratch his wrist ever so slightly. He jams a piece of hyena liver into his mouth. His designation: Gaunt Man.
“I heard,” says another hunter, “that the library belonged to a fringe scientist with some pretty loony theories on hepers.” The woman, who looks fit for her age – I place her in her mid-thirties, a dangerous age, equal parts fit and savvy – sits across from me; she barely looks up from her plate as she speaks. Jet black hair, greased up, accentuating her angular pale chin. Her lips are luscious and full, crimson with the dripping of flesh blood, as if her own lips were bleeding profusely down her chin. When she speaks, her lips part across her teeth at an angle, as if only one side of her lips can be bothered to move. Like a lazy snarl. I think: Crimson Lips.
