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A slight shake of the head and then he sets his eyes on mine, a hardness flitting across his face. “Explain to me . . . all of this,” he says, his arms floating above him momentarily like a ballerina. “Explain the reason for this training orientation. After all, who needs training to hunt down hepers? Why the idiotic lectures, workshops, training sessions? And explain the festivities, the fanfare of the Gala, explain the reason for the media, reporters, and photographers flooding into this Institute as we speak. And explain why on earth we are arming the hepers with FLUNs.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know.”
“Don’t say sorry,” he says. And he waits.
“I don’t know.”
“Not so smart after all. Are you?” His upper lip snarls up reproachfully, exposing the lower half of his fangs. “Fact is, you’re just like everyone else around here, all the incompetent staff who need to be hand-fed intelligence, my intelligence. Clueless. Brainless. Empty-headed.” His eyes stare out at me, flaring down his nose and upturned chin. “Empty as this Institute,” he says, bitterness souring his words. “Empty as this Institute,” he says again, quieter.
He turns his back to me, stares out of the window. When he speaks, the cratered emptiness of his voice surprises me. “It wasn’t always this way. The hallways used to hum with foot traffic; classrooms spilled over with the very brightest first-rate minds; laboratories were hives of activity, brimming with experiments conducted by top-notch scientists. And the heper pens! They were filled, from top to bottom, with dozens of hepers, young to old. Our breeding programme – my breeding programme – was about to really take off. There was energy about this place, a spark running along the walls. We had purpose, recognition, admiration, respect, even envy. We had everything.” He stops speaking, stops moving, his chest so still, it is as if he has stopped breathing. “Everything but self-control.”
And then his eyes turn to the sentries and staff standing stiffly around us, his icy stare pinning each of them like moths to the board.
“Until one day, we had virtually no hepers left,” he continues, turning to face me. “This will be the very last Heper Hunt. The Ruler knows this. But he is most unwilling to have what’s been a popularity cow for him come to an end. So he has devised a way to keep feeding off this Hunt for years to come, in perpetuity, even.”
Ashley June, off to my right, hasn’t moved. Not a sound out of her.
“A book. A non-fiction account of this Hunt. The public has always been insanely curious about the Hunt. The good citizens, who salivate over every detail of the Heper Hunt, will keep this book on the best-seller list for decades. And this book will not be a dry journalistic work. No; rather – and here is the stroke of genius – it will be a memoir penned by the winner. The winner of this Hunt.”
He strokes his cheek with the backs of his fingers, up and down, up and down. “Do you see how everything fits together now? Do you see why we have a training period? the Gala? the media flooding the Institute?”
And I see it. It all makes sense now. “It’s all for the book,” I whisper. “To draw out the Hunt, stretch it out to a week-long event, to provide material for the book. To make it all the more exciting. To make the stakes that much higher. The experience of the Hunt all the more enhanced, the victory all the more rapturous.”
The Director nods me on.
“I mean, the training period alone will take up five chapters. And it’ll be a chance to flesh out the hunters. The competitiveness between us, the conflicts within, all that will only be grist for the mill. It’ll build up anticipation, leading up to the Gala, then, to the climax, the Hunt itself. The book will practically write itself.”
The Director’s eyes shine with reluctant approval. “And the FLUNs? Why arm the hepers with FLUNs? Go on, go on, you’re doing well so far.”
“For excitement. No, more than that.” I pause, thinking. “To slow the Hunt down. Because these are the very last hepers in existence. What a waste to devour them into extinction in mere seconds. Chomp, chomp, gone, scarfed down in a frantic feeding frenzy. It’ll be almost anticlimactic. No, better to draw out the experience, to kill off the hepers slowly, one at a time. One chapter stretched into three.” I fight the urge to furrow my brow. “But that’s possible only if the Hunt is slowed down – by arming the hepers. It’ll increase the drama, the excitement, the pay-off for the eventual winner. And then the last chapter will be amazing. Drama to the hilt as the winning hunter drinks down the very last drops of heper blood. Down, down his throat . . . into oblivion.” I look at Ashley June, then at the Director, understanding at last. “Everything is for the book. For the Ruler.”
The Director is staring with a look of genuine surprise, his eyes wide, his jaw drooped and slack. Then his head snaps forward, then back again, a sharp staccato movement that cracks his neck. “Well done,” he says. “You really are quite the surprise.” His neck cracks loudly one more time, a bone-snapping clap that ricochets down the library.
Then he pauses: his eyes suddenly narrow into a dark and intense disdain. “And so that brings us back to you. The one thing I cannot figure out. How do you fit into all of this? And why the directive I received just a few minutes ago, again concerning you?”
“What directive, sir?”
“Why is the Palace so interested in you?” he asks, ignoring my question. “Everything else, I’ve figured out.” And every last vestige of brightness in his eyes is flung away. Only razors of darkness stand in his eyes now, so keen on mine, I feel them slicing into my eyeballs.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying,” he says, caressing his forearm with the backs of his fingers as if stroking a hairless kitten. “Tell me. Now. Tell me what’s going on. The Palace thinks it’s so smart with these random directives, thinks it can keep me in the dark. Every other day comes some new directive willy-nilly, some new twist on this Hunt. They want to keep me on my toes, they want to keep me in the dark. But I have my ways of finding out.” His words drop out of his mouth, sharp icicles falling into a dark canyon. “And of coercing it out, if necessary.”
My fingers, hung by my side, begin to tremble. I press them against the side of my leg. “I don’t—”
“Tell me!” His voice booms off the walls. Even as his words echo down the length of the floor, I see the anger rising in his eyes. He begins to move towards me—
“I know why,” Ashley June suddenly whispers.
The Director stops. Everyone turns to look at her.
She looks at me briefly, as if about to commit an unforgivable betrayal, then says: “It’s because” – her voice lowers even more – “he’s different.”
“What do you mean?” the Director asks.
She is standing in the shadows; now she steps forward, into a splash of moonlight. “He’s exactly what the Palace is looking for.”
Hesitation. Then: “Explain.”
“You said the winner will pen this book. So they need someone who can write. And with the media here, there’re going to be magazine interviews, TV talk show appearances, radio interviews after the Hunt. So they need someone well-spoken. But Heper Hunt winners have typically been loutish brutes, masters of physicality but not exactly the most articulate or cerebral of people. The Palace needs someone who is well-spoken, thoughtful, restrained, detail-oriented.” She flicks her chin in my direction. “And with him, you’ve got all that. I know: I’ve been his classmate for years. He’s always been an academic star, unwittingly. His intelligence is effortless. He’ll be terrific. In press interviews, in front of the camera, penning the memoir. And the Palace knows this; it sounds like they’ve thoroughly vetted him. Of all the hunters here, he’s by far the most media-ready.”
The Director turns his eyes on me, scrutinising me as if from a newly discovered angle.
“He might be a bit on the shy, quiet side,” Ashley June continues, “but even that’s a plus: it’s a quietness that’s compelling and attractive. Girls love it.” She pauses. “Trust me on that one.”
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The Director shifts his stare away to look outside, a flicker of annoyance flitting across his face. “Who’s been giving you all this intel?”
