The Trap (35 page)

Blackness blots the night sky. An abrasive wind sweeps across the mountain face, freezing the evening dew on the meadows to glitters of ice. We squint our eyes against the bitter gust, staring
despondently at the distance between us and the cottages.

“Let’s go to Krugman’s office,” I suggest. “We can bunk down there. Use the fireplace.”

The office is unrecognizable. A constant wind blows through the smashed windows. The upturned furniture is pressed up against the wall, as if pushed there by the wind. We know that is not the
case. It was the rush of duskers into this office that destroyed everything—and everyone—in it. Even the heavy oak desk is flipped upside down, three of its four legs snapped off like
twigs.

Sissy walks to the desk. She stares at the deep claw marks gashed into the oak, at the white, splintered wood poking out at all angles like broken bones breaking skin. A semi-encrusted yellow
substance is puddled in one of the smashed drawers. The remains of a melted dusker. Sissy grabs her arms as if to ward off a sudden cold.

“What’s the matter?” I ask.

She only shakes her head. But something is clearly bothering her. Her shoulders are too bunched, her face too shaded gray.

“No, really. What is it?”

She draws a deep breath. “When are we going to talk about it?”

I sweep my eyes over her, trying to understand. “What is ‘it’?”

She looks at me uncertainly. “We should have talked earlier. But . . . the moment never seemed right. Not on the train, not with David . . .” Her voice trails off, and the sentence
hangs unfinished, as if waiting for me to complete it.

“What are you talking about?”

A silence descends between us. Her eyes are on mine, and when I look up our gazes meet and hold. And then I know. What she’s trying, reluctantly, to bring up. A topic conveniently pushed
aside the past few days by fight, flight, and fatigue, but which is now no longer avoidable.

“You know what, don’t you?” she says, her eyes almost pleading for this to be true.

I nod slowly, reluctantly. My next words, softer than a whisper, uttered like a forced confession. “Why it felt so natural. When we turned, why it felt so natural—so much better,
actually—to be a dusker.”

She walks over to me, arms snaked across her chest. “Why, Gene?”

I pull her gently into me.

“I don’t know,” I say.

W
E DON
’
T SLEEP
in Krugman’s office that night. The carnage inside it, the ghost of Krugman gliding between its walls, the cold
wind funneling in, makes the walk back to the cottages preferable. We sleep in the fabric and design cottage. We bed down in front of the fireplace, exhausted. I close my eyes, trying to stir up
the energy to make a fire. Sissy, next to me, still sitting, her body tense.

“How many GlowBurns do you have?” she asks.

“Only one left,” I say. “Why?”

She shakes her head.

“Sissy. What is it?”

“Nothing. Just difficult to fall asleep without some kind of weapon on hand.”

“No one’s coming tonight. Or tomorrow night. Or for several nights after that. We’re safe tonight.” I put my hand on her back to reassure her. Her body is tense.

“I know,” she says. “But still.”

“We’ll go get some GlowBurns tomorrow. From the lab, okay? There’s plenty of them in there. Let’s just go to sleep now. We’re safe.”

She doesn’t say anything, only stares out the window.

Less than ten seconds later, I plunge helplessly into a deep sleep.

I awaken. Perhaps hours have passed. My body stiff and sore. The room so cold, my frosty breath plumes above me. Next to me, the bedding is now empty. I touch the slight indentation in the
sheets. Cold. Not a hint of heat.

Outside, it’s freezing. My ears start to ache, and I pull the blanket tighter around my head like a shawl.

“Sissy?” I say into the still air. Not loudly, although there is no one else around. Although there is no reason to be afraid. Although we are alone up here in the mountains for
miles and miles.

“Sissy?”

The only answer is the crack of cold in the night air. I snap into operation the last remaining GlowBurn and hold it in front of me. Along the cobblestone streets, empty cottages flank me, dark
and silent. When I reach the edge of the village, I see, gashing across the meadows, her trail in a thin layer of snow. It leads away from the village toward the darkened forest. To the laboratory
where, on edge and unable to sleep, Sissy must have gone to get some GlowBurns.

I hurry along even as the light from the GlowBurn starts to fade, my boots crunching on the frozen grass and light powdering of snow. I am fifty meters from the laboratory, ten meters, one meter
from the opened door, and now as the GlowBurn blinks out I am looking into the laboratory, now I am walking through the doorway, now I am inside the dark, windowless building.

Sissy is slouched over a workbench. All energy drained from her body. A weak, diffused green light pools about her, silhouetting her form. She is trembling with—is it sadness, is it shock
or fear?—I do not know. The only thing I know is that something has ruptured inside her, and that she is changed, irretrievably.

“Sissy.”

She doesn’t startle at the sound of my voice. She’d heard my approach on the meadows. But she doesn’t turn to me, only continues to shiver. Even when I reach her from behind,
touching her on the shoulder, she doesn’t move. Her skin is ice-cold to the touch.

On the workbench in front of her is an opened trunk. I did not see it the last time we were here, when we’d turned this laboratory inside out for a clue we hoped my father had left for us.
Someone else had entered this laboratory in the interim, someone who’d somehow been able to find this hidden trunk, and who had gone through its contents.

Which now lie spilled onto this bench, hundreds of sheets of paper. They are mildewed and musty, only one crinkle from disintegrating into a fine powder. At the top of each page is a
silver-tinted insignia. Of a crescent moon.

I skim through these sheets, not understanding the formulas, the official memorandums, the maps, the equations, the diagrams, the correspondence. The typescript on these pages archaic and
indecipherable. A heavy musk of age wafts up from these pages, sour with the passing of countless centuries.

“Sissy? What are these papers? Where did this trunk come from?”

She points to the corner of the laboratory. I can just make out a cratered bowl of darkness in the floor. Where boards have been dug up, flung aside with the strength of five humans. Or one
dusker.

She puts her hand on another stack of papers immediately before her. These are Mission paperwork, administrative forms, bookkeeping riffraff. At first, I don’t understand. But then she
turns them over and on the backside of each sheet is my father’s handwriting. I rifle through a few pages. And quickly realize what I’m reading: my father’s transcriptions of the
ancient documents. It was his attempt to make legible the illegible. But he’d only transcribed the incomprehensible into the unimaginable.

Sissy turns to me now. The glowing green light marbles her face. I will forever remember the look in her eyes as she settles them on mine, how they seem saturated with brokenness, how a single
trail of tears falls from each eye.

“I know the truth now,” she whispers, her voice freighted with horror.

———

Transcription of Documents labeled 369–384

Excerpts of official correspondence between the Ruler and the Commander Scientist. Year of correspondence: unknown.

From: the Commander Scientist

To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler

Date: October 18

Subject: HEPER development

Your Highness,

The HEPER project (
H
ush-hush
E
xploration for
P
rovisional
E
nergy
R
esources) progresses
well. Thus far, all preliminary tests performed on mice corpses have produced the desired results. Injection of the HEPER virus into dead mice has turned their dead flesh into edible, palatable
food for living mice. Said dead mice have been consumed by live mice within the expected time frame.

———

From: the Commander Scientist

To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler

Date: January 5

Subject: Please reconsider

Your Highness,

I must beg for your reconsideration, Your Highness. As I tried to emphasize in our previous three correspondences, we are simply not ready to move on to people corpses as
test subjects.

If you will recall, the purpose of the HEPER project was to create a virus that would, to put it bluntly, transmogrify corpses of people into edible flesh. After the
catastrophic drought and subsequent famine of the last decade killed more than half of our population, we in the scientific community are pleased to follow Your Highness’s decree to create an
alternate meat source. This top-secret project, initiated by Your Highness, has thus far proven to be a roaring success. Injection of the HEPER virus into dead mice has resulted in live mice
devouring said corpses in as quickly as one night.

However, it is simply premature to move on to testing the HEPER virus on people corpses. There is far too much about the HEPER virus that we do not know. Even with the mice
corpses, we are finding disturbing results. Just last week, when we doubled the dosage the living mice developed a craving for the dead mice that bordered on madness.

I urge you to reconsider, Your Highness.

———

From: the Commander Scientist

To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler

Date: January 10

Subject: re: increase in HEPER dosage

Your Highness,

With all due respect, Your Highness, your request simply cannot be followed. You previously chose to ignore my advice when you ordered—over my vehement
objection—to start injecting people corpses with the HEPER virus. And now, you are exacerbating this mistake by insisting on an increase in dosage. The dosage level administered to the
corpses already exceeded what we consider to be the maximal input. The level that Your Highness is requesting is excessive, and will likely cause unforeseen and deleterious problems.

While I understand you are frustrated with our lack of progress with people corpses, simply increasing the dosage is not the most prudent or rational next step.

I must restate my objection to further HEPER injections in the strongest of terms.

———

From: the newly appointed Commander Scientist

To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler

Date: January 18

Subject: Thank you

Your Royal Highness,

First, allow me to express my deepest thanks for the honor you’ve bestowed upon me. This promotion to Commander Scientist (and chief of the HEPER project) is
humbling. And although the former Commander Scientist—whose recent and untimely death we still grieve—set a bar I cannot possibly hope to reach, please be assured that the HEPER project
will continue unimpeded. In fact, I am happy to report that tomorrow we will triple the dosage level on people corpses, as Your Highness had previously requested.

———

From: the newly appointed Commander Scientist

To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler

Date: February 2

Subject: re: live subjects

Your Royal Highness,

If I may be so emboldened as to query the purpose of Your Highness’s latest request? I know I am new to this post and thus lack experience, but even so, I fail to see
the rationale behind your Highness’s desire to inject
live
subjects with the HEPER virus. I know that the latest round of experiments with
corpses has produced unsatisfactory and disappointing results, but let me assure you that injecting live subjects with the HEPER virus
is highly inadvisable. In fact, it seems to go
against the purpose behind the HEPER project, which, if I may be so impudent as to
remind Your Highness, was to produce edible meats from
corpses
in order to replenish food supplies in the unfortunate event of a famine.

———

From: the Commander Scientist

To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler

Date: February 8

Subject: re: increase dosage

Your Royal Highness,

We have been observing subject FY013 over the past few nights. The injection of the HEPER virus has had little effect upon him except, apparently, to blind him. He cannot
see. He stumbles about with arms outstretched, constantly bumping into things. Also, he has lost his ability to sleep. Now, he simply faints, collapsing to the floor and lying there for hours. Yet
other than those minor changes, there is little else. Again, if I may state, I do not understand the purpose behind injecting
live
subjects with the
HEPER virus. And I am at a loss why Your Highness now wants to further increase the dosage to FY013.