She wishes desperately for a GlowBurn stick. She’d toss it in front of her, let it illuminate the floor. But now all she can do is wait for her eyes to adjust.
Gradually, shapes emerge. She sees the edge of a table. And the hooded shade of a desk lamp. Yet still she does not move.
“Damn it,” she hisses as she realizes she has little choice. She can’t stay in here forever. Not with Epap’s desperate pleas for help still echoing in her head. She edges forward, arms splayed out in front, the side of her hip brushing against furniture. The air is mustier than she previously thought; dust motes waft into her eyes, making them water.
She walks to the desk lamp, locates the power switch. She’s surprised when a dim silvery light cones down onto the desk—she didn’t think it would work. There’s barely enough light to illuminate even the books directly under it, but for Sissy it’s the guiding light of a thousand pyres.
The desk lamp is the first in a row of mercuric lamps placed across the length of a long table. She can’t see where the table ends; it stretches into the darkness, disappearing. Cautiously, she makes her way down its length, switching on every desk lamp. Many don’t work, the bulbs apparently having died from overuse or, given the amount of dust settled over everything, from nonuse. Ten meters later, she’s switched on enough lamps to just make out three tiers of wrought-iron stacks around her, all filled with books.
And in the far wall, she sees a door. A door that could only lead to a stairwell. To the top floor. To Gene and Epap. She looks around, uncertain if she should proceed. Something strange about this place. Above her, she sees a metal-plated sign hanging on the wrought iron of the second tier:
ACADEMY OF HISTORICAL CONJECTURE
BUREAU OF HEPER HISTORY CREATION
Cold fingers of fear grab at her. She ignores them, focuses on the task at hand—getting to the door on the far wall. But her eyes keep flicking to that sign, then down to the volumes of books and notepads piled on the table, many of them spread open. Where they’ve lain undisturbed for years, or even, judging from the thick coating of dust, for decades.
She turns on another desk lamp. She’s almost at the end of the table. The light spits down on a rough sketch of something. She starts moving to the door—
What was that?
Her eyes drop back down to the sketch. It’s actually a map, but unlike any she’s seen before. This one encompasses not just the metropolis, or even, like the Scientist’s map in the journal, the larger surrounding terrain. This map captures the whole earth. Mountain ranges and valleys, vast deserts broken up by thickets of dense forests. A map that even illustrates the ends of the earth, cliffs dropping off into bottomless, endless chasms. She’s never seen a speculative map on this scale before. She stoops lower for a closer look, but her breath unsettles the layer of dust. Motes drift into her nostrils, and she sneezes loudly, forcefully. The map shifts, revealing another map underneath.
And another, and another, and another. A whole stack of them, in fact. These maps, using different cartographies, illustrate unique and often-clashing formulations of the earth. Some depict large landmasses surrounded by even larger bodies of water. Others show tiered levels of land, each separated and held up by massive earthen columns. The maps are filled with names of continents and other places she’s never read before: Hintotes Sea. Mynsento Mountains. Deroze Plains. Some landmasses are apportioned off into sections, dotted lines demarcating and separating nation from nation.
Sissy frowns, looks closer. Some of these sections are labeled—and also crossed out—with what must presumably be designations: Sevibo, India, Heyan, Malinorise, China, Cheung Chau. She stares back down the length of the table, at the ancient journals and maps and books spread under the lamps. This is a river of information, containing secrets old as history itself. And she suddenly, with an intense desire, desperately wants to read everything. Despite the danger, she needs to hear the secrets whispered in these pages, see the truths unveiled.
But there’s no time. Reluctantly, she moves toward the door . . . and she steps on something. There’s a crack of hard plastic under her boot. Curious, she bends down. A pair of shades. She holds it under the lamp for closer examination.
Odd.
It’s a newer model, a style that came into fashion only a year ago. So out of place in this ancient setting of archaic maps and moldy papers. She runs her finger lightly over its smooth plastic surface. No dust. These shades were left behind fairly recently.
By who?
She moves to the desk, picks up the lamp, swings it around slowly. She spots something: near the far wall, on the floor, not five meters away. She walks toward it with the lamp until the cord pulls taut. She sees a . . . well, it’s hard to say exactly. She should forget it, her instincts tell her, get away from here. But something draws her irresistibly toward it.
It’s a small cardboard box, mildewed and foul, its lid tossed to the side. The box had been secreted, from what she can tell, in the tight floor space between two shelves. Somebody had extracted it roughly out from there, upturning the box and causing sheets of paper to spill out. What immediately catches her eye is a symbol embossed in the top corner of the nearest sheet:
Tinted silver, it glimmers in the darkness. So alluring, she can’t help but run her fingers across it. Yet this crescent moon is ominous as well, seemingly capable of slicing her fingertips. It’s too dark to read what’s on the page except for three large words stamped diagonally across: TO BE DESTROYED.
Not just on that one page. But on every mildewed, crinkly sheet she flips to, those same words, that same embossed moon. Her fingers, by now, are filmed with dust. She sniffs them and is almost overcome by the pungent fusty musk. They speak of an age more antiquated than anything else on this floor. In this museum of relics and artifacts, what she holds in her hands easily predates everything by at least a few centuries.
She stares at the sheets scattered on the floor, at the half-empty box. Judging from the mess left behind (and the dropped shades), whoever had snuck in here must have had to beat a hasty retreat. And probably with some papers.
She is about to move the papers closer to the light when something causes her to look up. She stares down the length of the table, watchful. There, above the elevator door. A flash of light out of nowhere. The numbers on the floor position indicator are blinking on and off, suddenly working again. Heart pounding, Sissy watches as the numbers light up in the darkness.
48 blinking out to 47. Then 47 to 46.
The elevator is descending, moving away from her.
45, 44, 43, 42, 41, 40, 39.
And there it stops. For a few seconds. Then the 39 blinks out.
The next number lights up.
40.
The elevator is coming back up.
The papers fall from her hand. She does not notice.
41, 42. Gathering speed now. 48, 49, 50, 51.
Then slowing down—52, 53, 54, 55, 56—as the elevator nears its destination.
57, 58.
59.
Ping.
The doors open.
Forty-three
SISSY IS ALREADY dead.”
It takes a moment for Ashley June’s words to register. Then I’m spinning around, racing out of the conference room.
“Gene!” Ashley June cries from behind.
I ignore her plea. I tear down the corridor past empty glass offices. In the elevator lobby, I smash the buttons, glancing down the atrium to the lobby far below. Nothing. No movement, no sign of Sissy, not in the lobby, not in the elevator stopped many floors below me. Even the elevator buttons remain unlit and unresponsive.
“Sissy! If you can hear me, get out! Get out, Sissy!”
The only reply is the sound of my own echo.
When I return to the conference room, Ashley June is gazing outside. At the setting sun, touching the tops of the surrounding buildings. A red glaze fills the floor, but it is heavy and dark, the color of blood clotting. The opaque walls of the Panic Room are darker now, Ashley June having dimmed the walls in my absence.
“What have you done to Sissy? Where is she?”
“It was over the moment you stepped into this building.”
“Tell me where she is!”
“She’s probably in the guts of about a dozen people right now.” Ashley June turns to face me. “It’s too late.”
I move forward, slapping the glass so forcefully that Ashley June jolts backward.
“Tell me where she is. There’s still time. You don’t know Sissy. That girl cheats death like no one else. I can still help her. And after I help her, we’ll help you.”
“It’s over, Gene, she’s—”
“No, she’s not! I’d have heard screams and howls already.”
And at that, as if I’d inadvertently flicked a switch, a wail screeches from many floor below. And another. And another.
“Now it’s really over,” Ashley June says. “And in a few minutes you, too, will be killed. The sun has almost set. Night is upon us. And this building is filled with people. As is every building in a thirty-block radius. Rumors of two hepers on the loose last night sent the whole metropolis into a tizzy. Half the population came out, sniffing around, hoping, if not to find you, then at least to discover a drop of you, a smidgen. The dawn siren caught most by surprise; we had to find refuge in these buildings.”
She looks outside at the nearby skyscrapers. “We’re not just talking about thousands of people, or even hundreds of thousands. But millions. Millions who are awakening now, Gene, all around us. There’s no way out. Not out of this building, not out of the metropolis.”
I feel blood drain from my face. I knew there were people in the buildings. But not millions.
“Then just kill me already!” Spit flies out of my mouth, sprays the glass. “Just kill me yourself, put an end to this.” I take out the handgun from my belt. “I’ll shatter the glass for you, let you out. Okay? Isn’t that why you brought me here? So that you get first dibs on me? Well, here I am. Have at me.” I cock the handgun, aim it at the glass chamber.
“No, Gene, no!” Ashley June cries. “I brought you here so we can be together.” Her eyes glistening in the dark. “I’ve turned, yes. But some things still remain the same in me.” She pauses, and now her voice comes out as a whisper. “I still have the same feelings. I still feel the same way about you. But more intensified now. Purer.”
