The Trap (25 page)

“With Epap, right?”

“With Epap.”

Sissy nods. She takes out the TextTrans one last time. Nothing. She puts it back into her pocket, biting her lip. “You can leave now if you want, Gene. I can find my way around on my
own.” She places her hand on my forearm. “There’s no telling what’ll happen once it’s dark. This might be your last chance to get out of the metropolis
alive.”

“That’s not an option.” I take out the two guns from the backpack, hand her one, tuck the other into my waist. “We both live or we both die, but we do it together.
Understand?”

She holds my gaze for a moment. Then nods. We push through the revolving doors, and then we’re inside.

It is exactly as I remember it. The only slight difference is the lighting. Because it is later in the day than when my father and I usually ventured into the Domain Building,
the sunlight is more diffused. Instead of the sharp noon light that would gush down the sixty-four-story atrium and set the lobby afire with spinning flares of light, an orange haze burnishes the
inside.

Sissy stands amazed, briefly forgetful of the circumstances that brought us here.

“They designed this building to be the securest in the whole metropolis,” I tell her, gazing upward. “That’s why this glass atrium is so huge. And the top floor is all
glass—all the top-secret documents are kept there. With so much sunlight, there’s no way a dusker can break in during the day hours.”

“Well, day hours are about to end. Let’s get a move on.”

I nod. But as she turns around, I grab her arm. “Wait.”

“What is it?”

Something in the air. My head tilts down with concentration. Something off-kilter. My sixth sense, almost as reliable as any of my other senses, is ringing with alarm.

“Gene?”

Instead, I shake it off. “Stay in the sunlight,” I say.

“What is it?”

“Don’t know. Just stay in the sunlight at all times. Don’t be tempted into the dark for even a second. And let’s be quiet. Don’t call out for him too
loudly.”

Her face tenses. “Okay.”

We start out on the north side in front of small delis and kiosks. In the corner, a shoe-polishing stand. Next to that, a newspaper stand. Nothing moves. Everything is devoid of movement, of
life.

“Epap,” I hiss as loud as I dare. “Epap!”

Silence.

“The security desk,” Sissy says. “We didn’t check behind the counter.”

“He’s not there.”

“Did you check?”

I shake my head.

“I’ll just take a quick look.” And she walks away, her strides short and nervous.

I peer into a small café. Chrome tables and chairs stare blankly back at me. Cautiously, I check behind the counter. Nothing. No one.

Sissy’s at the security desk, her head disappearing below the countertop. She’s being thorough, no nook left unsearched.

Ping.

That’s the sound I hear. A small electronic beep, barely audible.

Ping.

I turn around. It takes me a second to notice it.

The glass elevator. It’s open now. Was it open before? I can’t be sure.

“Hey, Sissy, come here.” I move toward the elevator, glancing from side to side. She mumbles something in reply. I’ve taken this elevator many times in the past. It’s the
only way to reach the top floor. It travels along duo traction rails that rise all the way to the top floor. I used to love riding it as a child, the sensation of flying as the floor of the lobby
dropped away and you sailed up the atrium like a bird. I’d stare out, face pressed against the glass, sometimes gazing at the floor of the lobby, everything down there diminishing, fading
away.

I stand straddling the precipice of the elevator car. “Sissy, over here,” I say again. I hear her shoes click against the marble floor and echo up and down the atrium. And
that’s when I see something odd. Inside the elevator car. A security key is inserted at the top of the operating panel. It’s where my father used to insert his top-security key to gain
access to the top floor. I step into the elevator to take a closer look.

“Gene!”

I turn around at the sound of her voice. She is walking toward me. No, she is running, alarm rippling across her face.

And, too late, I see why.

The doors are closing. With wicked speed.

“Gene!”

Too late, I lunge forward. The doors clap together, and before I can reach the panel and start mashing buttons in panic, or kick at the doors, the elevator ascends. With sudden force, as if
I’m being catapulted into the air. Sissy falls away until she is only a dot, her cries (“Gene!
Gene! Gene!
”) fading, diminishing.

T
HE ELEVATOR ZIPS
past every floor. Only as it nears the top, my ears popping, does it slow down. The glass doors open. The sun, hovering
over the lower skyscrapers, shines directly into my eyes, burning a rust-red tint into my eyelids.

The elevator lobby on this floor is empty. On the far side, a reception desk and a small glass sculpture of the Ruler that’s been there for years. Otherwise, nothing. The glass wall across
the reception area is angled, and I see ghostly reflections of the floor beyond, faint outlines of desks and chairs. Nothing moves.

I stay pressed against the back wall of the elevator. Reaching out, I start pushing the L button on the panel. Nothing happens. Push the CLOSE button. Nothing.

I look down through the glass floor. I see Sissy below, tiny as a nit, standing by the security desk.

“Push the CALL button by the elevator!” I yell down. She doesn’t move.
“Sissy, push the CALL button!”
I shout again, cupping my mouth. I see her move
toward the wall. But nothing happens. The doors stay open.

I punch a few buttons in frustration. Nothing.

“Epap!” I shout out to the empty floor lobby. “It’s Gene. Epap! Are you there?”

Silence.

I study the panel, wondering if there might be some way I can pry it off, trip the wires behind. That’s when I see the intercom. I push the orange button. “Sissy, can you hear me? Go
to the security desk! I’m using the intercom. Go to the security desk!”

Below, the tiny dot that is Sissy races toward the security desk. A few seconds later, her voice crackles through, static distorting it.

“Gene!”

“Sissy, the elevator’s stuck on this floor! See if you can find some external controls at the desk.”

“—kay—” A crash of more static, obliterating her voice.

“Sissy, can you hear—”

“Help me.”

Those words. Not from the intercom panel. Not Sissy’s voice. But spoken with clarity and within close proximity. From somewhere on this floor.

“Help me!” Louder now, the fear in the voice obvious. The owner of the voice now obvious, too.

“Epap!” I shout. “It’s Gene! Come here, Epap, to the elevator!”

But he keeps on shouting, yelling as if not hearing me. “Help me! Help me!” His distress crescendoing into raw panic.

Sissy’s voice breaks out of the intercom. “Epap?! Oh crap, that’s his voice, that’s Epap—” She is shouting until she’s cut off again by static.

And still Epap keeps shouting. I peer out the elevator doors, trying to see him. But the angle is all wrong. I can’t see the rest of the floor unless I step out.

“Epap!” I shout. “Come here!”

But he only keeps shouting, his words overlapping with mine. “Help . . . don’t, please don’t,
no
!!!” he screams.

And then I’m sprinting out of the elevator, out onto the glass floor.

And as soon as I’m out, the elevator doors, as if waiting this whole time, snap shut behind me like a steel trap.

B
UT THERE
’
S NO
stopping me. I race forward, past the elevator lobby, hopelessly lulled deeper into the floor by
Epap’s pleading voice. I can see right through to the far side of the floor because everything is made out of glass. I sprint past the eight office suites, all identically decorated, and
sparsely so: a desk, a chair, a deskscreen, and little else. No sign of Epap in any of them. Splintered flares of dusk light refract off the walls, the color of rust and blood.

I reach the far end of the floor. No Epap, just his voice drawing me in. I fly into the conference room. Still no sign of him. Only his voice sounding from the flickering TV monitor mounted on
the wall. But no sooner do I raise my eyes than it suddenly turns off. And Epap’s screams as well, cut off mid-shout. His voice was coming from a video recording this whole time.

I spin around in the large conference room, certain that I’m about to get jumped. But there’s no one in here but me. With Epap’s voice now gone, an eerie silence—the
silence of watchful eyes, held breaths—clamps down on me.

Something is on this floor with me. I know it. I can sense it. Eyes watching me, gauging my every move and expression.

All the chairs are pulled under the conference table in perfect symmetry. Everything in order. Nothing under the table, the floor clearly visible through the glass top. But something is lying on
top of the table. A large hypodermic needle. I walk over, touch it tentatively with my fingertips. A yellow fluid in it.

I scan the room left to right again. I’m missing something. My eyes glide along the glass walls, the floor-to-ceiling windows, past the Panic Room, outside to the adjacent
skyscraper—

The Panic Room. It sits, on this top floor of the Domain Building, like a tiny black cataract in the sky. Everything else on this floor is bathed in sunlight, but tucked away in the northeast
corner is this small closet-like chamber. Tinted black as death.

The Panic Room was built after the DBS (Death By Sunlight) on this floor of a high-ranking official. He had indulged in a little too much wine throughout the night and fallen asleep in his
office. Dawn had caught him by surprise. Afterward, sleepholds were removed from all offices. And the Panic Room was constructed, designed to be an emergency last-resort option for anyone
accidentally left behind. A button in the Panic Room’s interior dropped the occupant down a shaft ten stories deep, into the dark safety of the shuttered floors below.

The Panic Room is black as night before me.

I train my eyes, trying to see through its thick black glass. The dark tint of the glass is a composite of rare glass and a compound—highly expensive and difficult to produce—that
supposedly neutralizes the deadly gamma rays of sunlight. Nobody’s ever dared test it out.

“Gene.”

I jump at the sound. The sound of my name, breaking the silence. The sound of the voice, that voice, shattering my heart.

I thought I’d forgotten her voice. But one whispered syllable of my name and instead of becoming afraid, I feel an immediate, deep solace in her presence.

“Gene, come to me.”

And I do, helplessly lulled toward the black chamber. I stop in front of the glass wall, my breath frosting on the surface. Yet still I see nothing. Then the tint of the glass lightens. Ever so
gradually and slowly, until I can make out the gray outline of a body standing inside. Then more: the curve of her shoulders, the length of her hair, the shape of her eyes. Despite the pain of
sunlight, she isn’t wearing shades. She wants me to see her eyes.

“Stop, Ashley June.”

But she continues to turn the glass from dark to a light-gray transparency, her fingers, which I can now see, moving one of many dials on some kind of remote control in her hand. She
doesn’t stop, not even as sunlight further illuminates the interior of the chamber and causes her to flinch with pain. She finally stops, stares into my eyes.

I thought I would feel fear. Or guilt. But what I feel instead is an emotion I never expected.

Tenderness.

I’m standing less than a meter from her, from her fangs, her claws, and I know I’m safe with her. That she can no more harm me than I could have pulled the trigger on her. It’s
a strange sensation, to be before such terrifying instruments yet to feel so completely at ease at the same time. Even back at the Mission, when she could have easily decapitated me with one slice
of her razor claws, the death blow never came.

Our eyes meet; I see the reciprocal tenderness radiating from her eyes, flowering off her porcelain-pale skin. This unexpected kindness makes me want to whisper a thousand pleas for forgiveness
for deserting her so many days ago at the Heper Institute.

I had forgotten. How my heart tugs so effortlessly and spontaneously for her. Despite everything my heart knows about her nature now, despite our separate shores. I turn my eyes away.

“Gene,” she says softly into a small mike she’s holding. Her voice whispers through the room’s surrounding speakers. She lifts her hand and presses the palm flat against
the glass. Pale, the whiteness of the midnight moon. “Gene,” she whispers, this time so softly, I don’t hear the word, only see her lips mouthing my name. Her lips curling around
the syllable of it, as if embracing the contours of every letter.

Slowly, I lift my hand, press it against the glass opposite from hers. I cannot feel heat, only the cold indifference of glass. And still, I cannot look into her eyes.

“Gene, please look at me,” she says softly.

And at that, I meet her emerald eyes, the piercing color visible even through the glass, glowing like gems aglow.

“Don’t be afraid, Gene. You’re safe with me. I can barely smell you—the chamber is hermetically sealed. So don’t—”

“I’m sorry,” I say. My voice juddering over those two simple words.

Her slender pale arms, slimming out of a sleeveless blouse, look fragile and vulnerable although I know they contain the power to smash through this glass and rip me apart in seconds. “Did
you ever get my letter?” she says. “I left it in the Umbilical.”

I nod.

“I knew you would,” she says, and her fingers scratch her wrist lightly, once, twice. She looks away for a second, then gazes softly back into my eyes. “I had so much more to
write. I had all these things I wanted to tell you.”

I lean forward until my forehead presses against the glass. “I’m sorry for deserting you. I’m sorry for never coming back. I should have tried—”