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—”
“It’s okay, Gene.” She presses the flat white of her hand harder against the glass. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
The sun sets lower, its rays diminishing in strength, bleeding into a darker red. Already the skull of the moon is etched into the darkening parchment. Night will be upon us soon. And with that thought, the initial shock of seeing Ashley June wears off, and I glance suspiciously around me.
“That was you on the TextTrans, wasn’t it?” I say. “You used that to lure me here. To trap me.”
“Yes. And to save you. Back at the Convention Center it was me who sent the message to you. I saw you as soon as I walked onto the stage. Toting that ridiculous weapon. If I hadn’t sent that message, you’d have fired your weapon. And given away your position; you’d have been devoured in five seconds flat.” Tenderness on her face. “I’m always saving you, Gene. Like now. I’m about to save you. That’s why I brought you here.”
Her fingers turn the dial of the control in her hand, making the tint of the glass lighten even more. She is enduring the pain, wanting, for a reason I don’t yet comprehend, for me to see her more clearly. She blooms into sharper focus, her beauty more intense, more savage, now. The small mole at the corner of her eye peeks through. Again, I turn my eyes away.
“And where is he?” I ask. “The person you took the TextTrans from.”
Ashley June drops her hand from the glass. When she speaks, it is with timidity. “I’m sorry. He came to me in the hospital. He was somehow able to sneak into my room despite the security detail, despite the constant camera surveillance. He was going to kill me, Gene. With a loaded weapon. So when I killed him, it was out of self-defense. Partly, anyway.” A spittle of saliva dots the corner of her lips. Her tongue snakes out, erases it.
I take a step backward, bump into the table. Grab at the hard edges, glad for something solid to brace my wobbly legs.
“I recognized him immediately,” she says quietly, almost apologetically. “One of the dome hepers. I saw him a few nights ago up in the mountains. Saw him escape on the train. With you. So I knew he was your friend. And because of that, I tried to restrain myself, Gene.” She looks down at her feet. “You have to believe me. And when I knew I could not, I made his death as quick and painless as possible. Because I knew that’s what you would have wanted.”
Epap. Dead. I thought I’d already made peace with his death. But this confirmation knifes me. I remember what he said to me back at the Mission, his face ridden with guilt. I’ll make good. I will. I wish I could tell him now that he never had to make good. He didn’t owe a thing to anyone. He was always laying himself on the line: back at the Mission, carrying my collapsed body along the meadows toward the train, fighting off a trio of duskers from Jacob on the train platform. And here in the metropolis, venturing alone into this vast unknown labyrinth of death, determined to complete the impossible. For Sissy, for David, for me.
I hear Sissy’s words in my head. Loyalty is the proof of love.
“It wasn’t quick,” I say, my voice strained with accusation. “You made him beg. You made him plead. And you recorded his final moments, a recording you just played to lure me here. How sick can you be?”
She shakes her head vehemently. “My hospital room had a security camera and I stole the tape. I didn’t want to play it, but you forced my hand. When you refused to exit the elevator, as I’d predicted you would, you left me with little choice.”
“Well, I’m here now. What are you going to do? Eat me for yourself?”
“If I wanted to do that, you’d be dead now, and you know that.” Her fingers curl, causing her long nails to screech against the glass. “I’m here to save you, Gene.”
I shake my head, take a step toward her. “No. Ashley June, listen to me. There’s a cure. Something called the Origin. It reverses the infection. It re-turns you back to human. I can save you. Not just you, but every dusker. Back at the Palace, there’s a whole arsenal of Origin weapons. To restore, to re-turn everyone.”
