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I stare at her, then back down at the letter. “Why are you showing this to me?” I ask.
“Because I wasn’t fair to you before, Gene.” I try to interrupt, but she shakes her head. “No, this is important, so let me speak. I feel like I may have forced you to agree to something you’ll later regret.”
“That’s not—”
“No, Gene, listen! I don’t want you to feel you were coaxed into something. So I want to give you one more chance. To really think about it, and make up your own mind about what you want to do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If you put that letter back into the Umbilical, then the Hunt happens. We happen. But you can also not put it back; you can rip it to shreds. Then the hepers live. It’s up to you. It really is up to you, I mean that.”
“If I rip it up, the Hunt gets delayed. Maybe by a few days, possibly as long as a week. I won’t last that long. I’ll be found out well before then.”
“I know,” she says.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because,” she says, her voice wavering, “I can see how something like this might eat you up. I couldn’t live with myself knowing I did this to you. But now, look, it’s in your hands now, literally. You choose.”
I stare at the envelope in my hands, square and fat. I shake my head. I cannot decide.
“Don’t do this,” I say, but she looks away from me, biting her lower lip, her eyes shining with a new wetness. I look at the Dome, the mud huts inside, doors and windows still closed. I think of the hepers inside, asleep in their beds, chests rising, falling, eyes closed, skin pulsing delicately with the pulse of blood.
The dawn sun peeks over the crest of the eastern mountains. A slate of pink orange radiates across the Vast, hitting the top of the Dome; the refracted rays bounce inside, shimmering the pond underneath with a reflected glow. Dawn has come.
Ashley June cannot look at me. Her eyes dart left and right over my shoulder. I stare at her, waiting for her eyes to finally come to a rest on mine. Sunrise orange lights a fire in her auburn hair. And finally, her green eyes, sparkling with diamond intensity behind the screen of tears, find mine.
That is all it takes, apparently. To fully convert me, to slay me. The warm glow of dawn’s light, the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known, the possibility of joining her in a life I’ve never even dared wish for.
“OK,” I whisper. I open the slot door and place the letter back into the Umbilical. The slot door clangs shut with finality.
We leave quickly after that, not wanting to be seen by any early-rising heper. Despite our longing to be together, we decide it’s best if we separate to our respective abodes. The Director’s order that we sleep separately – or, technically, awaken separately – seems pretty charged; and even though no one’s awake to notice, it’s probably best not to risk drawing his negative attention at this point. Plus, we need to have our wits about us tonight when the Heper Hunt starts, and some shut-eye – which we’re not likely to get much of if together – will only help.
“We’re doing the right thing,” she says reassuringly outside the doors to the Institute.
“I know,” I tell her, I tell myself, “I know.”
“You don’t have to take me up to my room. I can make it from here. Sun’s out now, we shouldn’t open and close these doors more than we have to.”
“OK.”
“I’ll see you in a few hours. We’ll join up with the hunters for the start of the Hunt. By that time, people will start realising that the lockdown failed. The mass stampede will begin. We’ll find a place to hide.”
“OK.” I frown.
“What is it?”
“Just wondering where all the hunters are. The staffers should have let us know where we need to be gathering for the start of the Hunt by now.”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll let us know.”
“OK.”
“Oh,” she says, “if you come to my room and I’m not there, check the Control Centre. I’ll be there, disengaging the lockdown. And I want to check out the monitors, find the best place to hide out during the stampede.”
We embrace, long and tight, our bodies tired but hearts aflame. She opens the door a sliver, slips in. The door closes quickly, quietly.
Minutes later, I’m back in the library. The door clicks shut behind me. Darkness inside broods, saturates everything; I need to give my eyes time to adjust. I walk slowly into the heart of the library, the darkness no different were my eyes closed, until I see a distant dot of light in the main section of the library. It’s the drilled hole in the shutter. No beam of light yet; it will be hours before the sun swings into position on that side of the library. For now, it’s merely a faint dot of light, like an eye staring at me.
Fatigue hits me like a waterfall. I lurch towards a nearby sofa chair. It doesn’t take long to fall asleep. Even as my body plummets into the sofa cushioning, even as my eyelids collapse down like velvet theatre curtains, I’m already tumbling headlong into sleep. And in that last moment before I succumb completely to slumber, a little thought raises its hand like a splinter, that something is amiss, something not altogether right. But by then it is too late and I am fast asleep.
I wake up, my heart racing. Even without opening my eyes, I sense wrongness. My muscles are tense, my back stiff. Slowly, I crack open my eyes. For a moment, all I can see is a splotch of light on the other side of the room, spouting out of the hole in the shutter, languidly, but solidifying by the second. And even now, as I watch, I see a beam start to form, angled and hazy, but lengthening like the stigma of a flower.
Judging from its intensity and columned angle, hours have passed since I collapsed asleep.
And still that feeling that something is awry permeates the air, only heightened now. I stand up very slowly, fear and thirst creaking my bones. The hazy light is cratered and splintered, like the fragmented face of the moon seen through the bare branches of a winter forest.
I make my way towards it, arms stretched forward, drowsiness still lingering despite the fear.
And then.
Long strands of hair brush against my face, a sickeningly intimate caress. A small, involuntary shriek slips out of my mouth. Like walking into a spiderweb, but so much worse; strands of hair that don’t dissipate on contact but drag upward along my face, across my cheekbones, along the sides of my nose, intertwining with my eyelashes and eyebrows, wispy fingers feeling my face like a blind person reading Braille.
It takes everything in me not to flail away at the hair. I drop to the floor and look up. Someone is asleep at the sleep-holds. Abs. Her long black hair flows down like a waterfall of disease, her white face looming above it like a sickened moon. The rest of her body is hidden over in the ceiling shadows, creating the illusion of a hovering, decapitated head.
I shut my eyes, count the seconds, willing her not to stir. I listen. Nothing but a faint, short creak of wood from across the room. I open my eyes, see the books on the floor, hundreds of them shoved roughly off the shelves, piled up at the bottom of the bookshelves like the canted slope of snow after an avalanche.
Phys Ed is dangling upside down on a bookshelf, asleep. His legs are tucked into the top shelf, his shoes wedged into a small opening to support him. He has found sleep in this shelf-turned-cot.
And not just him. As the room brightens, I see Crimson Lips a few shelves down, also hanging off the top shelf. And there is Gaunt Man, his belt looped around an air duct, dangling from the ceiling. Frilly Dress is tied to the centre chandelier; she rotates in a slow spin, the chandelier pulled askew by her weight. All the hunters. They came here last night. I’m not sure why.
I was sleeping this whole time in the hornets’ nest.
Trying not to panic, I survey the room. The room is turning from black to grey by the second, the columned light concentrating into a sharper, longer beam. And then I see the pile of equipment by the circulation desk, SunCloaks, pairs of shoes, packs of S
un-Block Lotion, and syringes filled with adrenaline boosters. Equipment and accessories for the Hunt.
They’re here for the Hunt. To sleep during the day. To be safely away from the Institute as it goes into lockdown. The library is the starting point.
But of course it is. How could I not have realised this before?
The sunbeam intensifies and lengthens; a dread sense of inevitability encloses around me like a noose tightening around my neck. And then, just like that, I realise what will happen in the next few moments.
First, the slumbering hunters will feel a slight burn, an irritation that will intensify as the light begins to singe their eyelids. Perhaps the effects of the light is already upon them, a nausea taking over their insides, a burn on their skin. They will awaken and flee from the light, frothing at the mouth. They will run screaming and hissing to the other end of the library, far from that light.
And there they will remain, cowering from the still bothersome sunbeam. They will wonder – for they will have hours to talk among themselves before nightfall – about the young male hunter who lodged in here, how he was able to survive. The young hunter who never complained about his lodging, about any problems with the lighting, who always seemed to carry about him the odour of the hepers, come to think of it.
I shake my head, snapping myself out of my morbid thoughts. Because there’s still time for action. I just need to plug up the hole. And quickly. I step carefully away from Abs’ dangling body, walk down the length of the room.
