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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.
Thirty-one
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, som
ething 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.
