8

 

THEY COME AN hour later, gray phantoms gliding in the brine of darkness. Mercuric light spills out of their flashlights, giving them optimal vision. The dozen or so duskers stand before each enclave, shining their flashlights on the occupant before moving on.

Turn around.

Let us see your face.

When they reach Sissy’s enclave and peer inside, they perk up. I see the sudden infusion of energy in their silhouettes, a perky enlivening. Even from behind the glass wall, I can hear the cracking of their necks. Judging from their regal, highly decorated uniforms, these men must be the highest echelon of the Palace.

Then they turn around, walk toward my enclave. Their faces are orbs of sickly paleness.

Turn around.

Let us see your face.

Fingernails rap on the glass, insistently. Tap tap tap. I reluctantly lift my head to them.

They stare at me without speaking, and recognition flows into their eyes. For I know what I am to them: the heper boy who lived his whole life in their midst, who pulled the wool over their eyes by brazenly masquerading as one of them for almost two decades. The very one who then escaped from right under their noses during the Heper Hunt.

One face floats out of the darkness until it is almost pressed up against the glass. It is the Ruler. He’s smaller and more diminutive than his carefully crafted public image. Saliva drools from the corners of his mouth, twin lines that converge at his chin before dripping down in a glutinous ooze. His tongue snakes out, licks his thin lower lip.

Another face emerges. A man. I’ve seen him before. Not too long ago, in fact, but I can’t quite place him. He’s burly and tall, with mountain-range shoulders, so different from the other observers with their oversized uniforms and twig-thin arms. His eyes stare hard at me, circled by a pair of rimless round glasses.

The Ruler whispers to his retinue. A second later, they glide away as one. They apparently have no further need to inspect other enclaves. They’ve found what they were looking for.

I stare across the corridor, trying to locate Sissy in the darkness. I see nothing.

“Sissy! Can you hear me?” I press my ear against the glass. I hear her muted, faraway response but can’t make out a single word. I yell back, but her reply is again muffled. Eventually, we both give up, resigning ourselves to our isolation.

Three minutes later I jolt up, banging my head on the enclave ceiling. I remember the broad-shouldered man. I’d bumped into him at the Heper Institute only a few weeks ago, the night before the start of the Heper Hunt. During the Gala. The man had cornered me in an otherwise empty restroom at the Heper Institute. He had asked me questions about the Heper Hunt, made a few odd suggestions regarding it, and I’d dismissed him as a paparazzi hack. But then he told me—and I remember his exact words—something odd as he exited: Things are not as they appear.

A skein of fear shoots through me, cocooned inside a metal coffin, deep in the darkness of the earth. What is that man doing here? Who is he?

Things are not as they appear.

And I suddenly recall something else he’d uttered as he exited the restroom, words spoken with an almost flippant casualness but which now echo off the walls of the metal enclave. Cryptic words about Ashley June.

You need to watch out. She’s not who you think she is.