31

 

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, 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.

But something halts me. I close my eyes, searching for the answer. It’s somewhere in the dark of my mind, some—

It’s already too late. That’s what I realize. They’re too many bodies clumped around us. There’s no way the two of us—even armed—can blaze our way out of here. Even if every fired bullet inflicted a fatal wound, we’d be able to plug a dozen of them at most. Leaving thousands on the floor still alive, and tens of thousands more in the arena.

If we want to live, this plan can’t be now. It has to be never.

There has to be another plan.

I swing my gaze to the stage. Nothing there to help us. Left and right, nothing. Look up. Only the flotilla of balloons assembled above us. Nothing. There’s nothing.

A wail breaks out from balconies on the higher levels. Our odor rising, spreading. Heinous screams of hunger fling out. From the luxury suites. From the upper crust of society. They’re not used to being deprived of choice action, and they want in. I see dark shapes, men in suits, women in upscale dresses, scaling down the walls like ribbons of saliva drooling from the luxury suites.

Sissy turns to me. Her hand is pulling up her shirt, revealing a glint of metal from the handgun. She’s pulling off the Visor now for better vision, her bangs arching over her forehead like a pulled bow. She’s ready. To go down fighting, to cut holes into as many as she can on her way down.

The TextTrans buzzes manically in my pocket. So hot, it’s burning a hole into my thigh.

Sissy starts pulling out the gun.

It comes to me, right then. The plan. An imperfect, deeply flawed plan. But the only one we have.

Sissy is cocking the handgun. And I’m reaching out, snatching it away. Her eyes widen with surprise as I aim it toward the roof.

And fire off six quick rounds.