The Trap (36 page)

———

From: the Commander Scientist

To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler

Date: February 11

Subject: re: need another test subject

Your Highness,

Unexpected events have unfolded over the past two nights with relation to subject FY013. After we, at Your Highness’s behest, injected him with the increased dosage
of the HEPER virus, the subject began to exhibit rather peculiar symptoms. Of note: (1) stubs of hair began to show on his limbs and underarms; (2) his incisor teeth begun to go blunt; (3) he
developed an apparently unquenchable thirst (one cup of water per day); and (4), most oddly, he seemed to gain a resistance to infrared and ultraviolet light. Also of note, he has begun to give off
a particularly fragrant odor.

He has also, unfortunately, died. We request at this point another subject, a live one, to continue testing. Please do send said subject at your earliest
convenience.

In addition, there will be a short delay—perhaps only one or two nights—as we will need to do some repairs. Some laboratory equipment was recently damaged,
along with windows and doors, and the sooner they are fixed, the sooner we can resume testing. But please do send us one (or two! or three!) live subjects as soon as you can (or sooner!).

Also, Your Highness, would you let me know that you’ve received this e-mail. Just want to be sure you got it!

———

From: the Commander Scientist

To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler

Date: February 12

Subject: URGENT!

Your Highness,

Per our last correspondence, when might we be expecting you to send us more live subjects?

———

From: the Commander Scientist

To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler

Date: February 13

Subject: URGENT!

Dearest Royal Highness,

Can you send over some more test subjects ASAP?

———

From: the Commander Scientist

To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler

Date: February 15

Subject: young female test subjects

Dear Royal Highness,

Another round of testing completed. We’ve never used females as test subjects and were initially surprised when you sent us one as the subject. The result, however,
was quite enthralling. We would like to conduct more tests on young female subjects. Can you send over more subjects, please, as soon as you can? Young females preferred.

———

From: the Commander Scientist

To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler

Date: February 17

Subject: need more subjects

Dear Highness,

Testing continues at frantic and successful pace. Please send more subjects.

———

From: the Commander Scientist

To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler

Date: February 19

Subject:

Dear Highness,

We have lost some staff members. Please send replacements for the following positions:

(excerpt ends).

———

OFFICIAL ORDER OF THE ROYAL HIGHNESS THE RULER OF THE PALACE

CONFIDENTIAL

(excerpt begins, date uncertain)

. . . became quickly apparent that the HEPER project had spun out of control. So potent and immediate was the HEPER’s effect, whole groups of
Scientists—renowned, levelheaded, intelligent—soon turned on each other, and attempted to inject one another with the HEPER virus. Nothing could quell their desire for HEPER-transformed
flesh, and for the red liquid which ran under said flesh.

The HEPER project is more than an unmitigated disaster. It has produced—and this cannot be overstated—a potentially devastating weapon. One which, if unleashed
upon the population, accidentally or otherwise, would cause widespread death and violence, and, very possibly, complete extinction of our species. Though it appears the effects are easily
reversible, make no mistake. The HEPER virus, in the wrong hands, can be used as a Weapon of Mighty Devastation. It must be wholly and completely eradicated.

Thus, by Royal decree, it is hereby declared that all formulas and data and results and paperwork related to the HEPER project be permanently deleted, destroyed, and/or
burned. It never existed. The good citizens of the metropolis must never be told of its existence.

It is further decreed that the HEPER Bureau be established. The purpose of the HEPER Bureau is to give explanation for the existence of the hepers who managed to escape
into society. The citizenry are curious and are demanding answers. Said Bureau will fabricate a false evolutionary history and science behind the existence of the hepers. No expense will be spared
to ensure the denizens of the metropolis are forever kept from the truth behind the genesis of the hepers. To that end, the HEPER Bureau will be given unlimited resources in the years, decades,
centuries, and even millennia to come.

It is also ordered that the Commander Scientist and his colleagues be injected with the HEPER virus and then detained in the catacombs of the Palace. Their fate shall be
later determined by the Ruler.

In addition, it is (excerpt ends).

F
OR ALMOST A
half hour, I read my father’s transcribed pages. I turn the sheets slowly at first, uncertain of what I am reading, their
meaning still veiled. But as I follow the flow of my father’s hauntingly familiar handwriting, passing over the occasional ink blot where his pen, as if paused in stunned disbelief, had bled
into paper, I eventually, page by page, piece it all together.

These papers are obscene.

I pull away from the workbench, away from the stack of papers still only half-read. I stare outside. Nothing is the same; everything has changed.

“Back at the Domain Building,” Sissy says, her whispered words drained of life. “On the fifty-ninth floor. I saw documents just like these. Old, moldy papers, falling apart,
each with this crescent moon insignia. They were in an opened box half-empty. Somebody had broken into that floor, discovered the box.”

I stare at the pages, their crescent moons glinting. “It was my father who broke in,” I say. “Those were his shades you found.”

Sissy nods, sadly. “These are the papers. He stole them and brought them back to the Mission. Translated them here. And afterward, hid them himself, their contents too
unbearable.”

I glance at the cratered hole in the corner of the room. “Ashley June,” I whisper. “She was here. She found the papers, dug them up.”

Sissy steps toward the workbench. “Look to the moon,” she whispers, her finger trailing the moon insignia on a page. “The truth is in the moon.”

I remember those words. Ashley June’s words. And I remember something else she had said, how she had uttered them like a warning.

Sometimes the truth doesn’t set you free. Sometimes it haunts you. Sometimes you wish you never found out.

And I realize that I can’t talk. Not about this, like it is something that can be discussed, analyzed, grappled with, brought under control with mere words. And suddenly I’m bursting
out the door, needing to be away from the laboratory, needing to be outside, needing to have nothing between me and the stars and the moon.

“Gene!”

And still I keep running, as if pain in my legs and lungs might erase the truths learned, the knowledge acquired, the innocence lost. And even as I sprint as fast as I can, choking back tears, I
feel it: the encumbered body. So different from the soaring grace with which I’d sprinted across the Vast as a dusker, the harmony between my moving limbs, the segueing of brute power with
grace. Now, my human body jiggles upon my frame ungainly and burdensome.

“Gene! Wait!”

The lake looms ahead of me, the destination I never consciously set upon but toward which my eager feet now move ever swifter. The wind howls, whipping around the nape of my neck, nipping at my
exposed ankles. And then I’m running down the slight bank, leaping over driftwood logs. My feet smash through the smooth surface of the lake.

The cold cuts me like glass. But before I can wade any deeper, Sissy grabs my arm.

“Gene!—”

I pull my arm away. But she holds on and the sudden shift in equilibrium causes both of us to tumble into the water. My hand smacks into sharp rock sitting on the shallow floor; blood spills out
from my cut palm. We surface gasping and dripping, all air sucked out of our lungs. The cold is a thousand needles pricking into me.

“I should have turned years ago!” I shout, slapping at the water. “Why didn’t I just turn! Why the needless fight, why the struggle, night after night, month after month,
year after year!” My body is freezing, but my eyes are hot cauldrons of fury. “Why, Sissy? Why the daily struggle to survive when we’ve been nothing but mutants? When we’ve
been nothing but aberrations?”

“Gene—”

“We’re the ones at odds with the universe! We should have just turned!” Hot tears gush out of my eyes, burning twin trails down my face. “When I was five, when I was six,
seven, eight, when I was thirteen. I should have just turned! And this living hell would have ended! I’ve been one cut, one drop of saliva, from turning—turning back to normal, to the
real me, the natural me. Not this!” I pound my chest, slap my face. “Not what I’ve always thought was true! Not this freak show that I am!”

And she looks at me, her lips trembling, and she doesn’t know what to say. Something in her face crumbles, and strange gasps and cries tumble out of her twisted mouth. Because she knows
it’s true. We’re outcasts, aberrations. We’re germs, and this world of purity has no place for us.

“My
damn
father!” I yell, staring up at the stars, my anger unbridling. “You should have let me turn! Instead of using me as your test mouse, you should
have—”

“He didn’t know, Gene!”

“He must have known! He found the formula for the Origin, he must have known its backstory.” I look at Sissy, my chest heaving. “He knew. He knew we’re food.”

I see her wilt a little. She shivers, her eyes blinking faster. But then something happens. Resistance, insistence flash in her eyes. “He didn’t know,” she maintains in a
low-pitched voice. “Not in the beginning, anyway, not all those years he was with us at the dome. The way he treated us, it was like we were special. Like we were the originals, and
they
were the anomalies.”

She glances back in the direction of the laboratory. “I don’t think he had an inkling until he returned to the Mission. Until he transcribed all those old documents. On to
Mission
paper, did you notice that? It was here, after he left the dome, only after he transcribed those documents, that he realized.”

“How would you know what he thought—”

“Never forget who you are.”
She looks me square in the eyes. “He’d never have said that if he thought we were . . .”

“Freaks?”

“That’s not how I would put it.”

“Well, you better get used to the idea. Because that’s what we are.” A film of tears, acidic, stings my eyes. It is all coming to me now. Maybe Sissy is right; maybe my father
discovered the truth only after he returned to the Mission. I can only imagine the horror of his realization in the darkness and isolation of his laboratory. The truth so devastating, so repulsive,
he had to remove himself altogether from the Mission, live alone like a hermit in the woods. Away from the foul, the diseased, the impure, away from the colony of
hepers
.

She brushes aside wet hair strands dangling into her eyes. “I don’t feel that way. I don’t feel like a freak at all.”

Her words enrage me. I unleash on her. “Good for you, Sissy! Keep on trying to delude yourself! But you know what? Bad as this is, it gets worse. Because you and me? We’re not just
freaks, we’re not just
hepers
. We’re something more. Something worse. You might think we’re this wonderful Origin. But you know what we are? We’re a dirty bomb.
We’re a walking incubator of death and disease. The cure my father thought he discovered? He’d only rediscovered the lost formula for a deadly virus. We’re not the cure,
we’re the
contagion
. We’re not salvation, we’re a scourge. That’s what Ashley June was trying to tell me. We are the lethal bomb that will cause the extinction of
all people.”

Sissy’s fingers, unclenched and half-submerged in the water, tremble by her side, rippling the lake’s surface. Stars reflected in the lake, once perfectly mirrored dots, warp into
dissolution.

I turn my face away from her, gaze at the lake, at the trees, the mountain peak, the silhouettes of distant cottages. “That’s why he abandoned us. Why he flew off east. We became an
abomination to him.”