I pull harder on the trigger. A millimeter. And another. One more, surely, and the bullet will be sent flying. It’s centered in the crosshairs. Now. Now.

Then it’s gone. Just like that. One second in my crosshairs; the next, vanished. I search the side of the stage. There: just behind the curtain, it is surrounded by uniformed officers who are pulling it away deeper backstage.

Fire off a shot, damn it. Just fire off a shot—maybe it’ll hit her.

Another thought blazes into my mind.

Where’s Sissy? Why didn’t she take a shot?

Maybe Ashley June got off the stage too quickly for Sissy to react, to pull out the gun. Or maybe something’s happened to Sissy. Something terrible.

Something vibrates against my thigh.

It’s the TextTrans. A message has come in.

Ignore it, I tell myself. Take the shot. Before Ashley June completely disappears. I bend my head down, try to find her through the scope again.

The TextTrans vibrates with insistence, growing warm.

Exhaling with frustration, I release the trigger, fish out the TextTrans.

A message. From Epap.

It’s a trap. Run.

Thirty

I CAN’T MOVE. Even as I feel valuable seconds tick by, all I can do is stare at the TT screen, try to thaw the layer of frost that’s paralyzed my thoughts, my body. The audience suddenly starts stomping, snapping me out of my stupor. I type out a quick message.

Epap, where are you?

No reply. Inwardly cursing at myself for wasting time, I start to stand when the TextTrans suddenly vibrates again. Seemingly more frantic than before, it almost tumbles out of my hand.

Drop everything. Run.

Epap?

Run. Leave CC now. Get outside.

Where are you?

They’re coming. They know where you are.

Something snaps in me, a panic, an urgency. Fury and adrenaline in chaotic tandem. Finish the job, finish the kill. The mercy kill. But when I bend to the scope again, I can’t find her. She’s gone. There’s no sign of Ashley June.

The TextTrans buzzes in my hand.

They’re coming. Run.

Need to move. I drop the sniper. For a moment, I consider taking the backpack with me, but decide its weight will encumber my getaway. Stealth and quickness are going to get me out of here, not a blaze of gunfire. Still, I grab one handgun, and affix the silencer from the sniper to it. Kick the backpack under the sofa, tuck the handgun down my waist. I’m rushing out the door when the TextTrans vibrates in my hand.

Turn right when you exit suite.

I shut the door behind me. Glance left: the curved corridor outside is empty, only one worker behind the concession gift stand selling T-shirts and magnets and posters and other Heper Hunt–related paraphernalia. Glance right: on the far curved wall, three shadows on the wall are speeding around the bend. I have to turn right, I think to myself. Epap’s telling me to go right. The shadowy figures distort and loom larger as they race along the wall’s curvature.

I head left, quickly, staying close to the wall.

I’m not going to make it. They’ll come around the bend, see me walking briskly and suspiciously away. I sidestep in front of the concession stand, pretend to be examining the wares on display. My back to them, dillydallying as if I have all the time in the world.

Behind me, three security officers come around the bend, their boots clacking on the hard concrete, walking at a brisk pace. But they’re walking, which means they don’t believe they’re on the lookout for hepers, for Sissy and me. If they did, they’d be sprinting, bounding, foaming, and hissing.

They open the door to the Palace suite, walk in.

Now.

I spin around, stride quickly. Only as I approach the open suite door do I slow down. I walk past slowly as if strolling, glance sideways. The three security officers are standing with bent arms at their waists, looking casually around.

I start running. With as silent strides as possible. Need to create distance, get around the bend before they exit the suite and see me.

Only then do I realize I left my Visor in the suite.

The TextTrans starts humming again.

The walkway is empty, the curving ramp bereft of people. I fish out the TextTrans, reading as I run.

Head down ramp to Level 2. Walk to Section 33, exit there.

Quiet. Everyone is still in the arena. I run down to Level 4. Level 3. The sound of my footsteps echoing around the walls of the curved ramp.

Then the sounds of other boots hitting concrete echo from above, throwing disorder and chaos into the rhythmic pounding of my own running.

Level 2, now. My legs are wobbly, kneecaps about to pop like a cork out of a wine bottle. This is the level where I should get off, find the exit by Section 33. I pause. A sign above indicates that Sections 40 to 32 are to my right.

Footsteps, louder now, slaps of soles hitting cement.

The TextTrans starts vibrating against my thigh.

Sissy. All alone on the arena floor. Surrounded by thousands. Right now, she must be sensing something is wrong. I see her in my mind’s eye. Worry creasing her forehead. Her rib cage expanding, shrinking, expanding, shrinking, the air slack and insubstantial. Panic setting in. Stress odors chuting out of her pores. The crowd around her growing restless, beginning to press in. They will think it’s because of this Heper Hunt–related event that they are involuntarily salivating, that their necks are beginning to crack, their lips wobbling wetly. But soon they will realize their heads are snapping toward a locus, toward one person in particular whose head does not snap, whose lips are dry, whose mouth is not salivating.

I bolt. Not to Section 33. But down the ramp to Level 1, down its dark throat, the thin floor lights running along the edges of the ramp like trails of glistening saliva. The TextTrans hums insistently again. But still no time to take it out.

Footsteps pound louder from behind as I get off at Level 1. I force myself to walk slower, fighting the urge to glance back every step of the way. A man, attention fixed on the program sheet in his hand, bumps into me. He regards me coolly, his nose twitching. Head cocks to the side at a slight angle. Shakes his head, is about to start walking when he gives me a long hard stare. But by then, I’m walking through the entranceway to the arena floor. I’m in. I’m safe. In here, there are thousands of bodies with which to merge and disappear.

And then it hits me with fresh horror. I’m in. In the midst of them. In full view, without a Visor, without shades. Rubbing shoulders with the thousands on the floor, with a fresh layer of perspiration slicking my back. With dozens close enough to touch me. Claw me, gut me, fang me.

I stare ahead. Somewhere in this swamp of darkness is Sissy. I push deeper into the crowd. They tide against me, washing over me. I’m in.

Thirty-one

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.