“What do you want with me?” I say, taking in more of the chamber. No exit doors. No windows, either, at least not on this side of the glass partition. My eyes, like reluctant magnets, keep getting drawn to the tanks. To the dark shapes floating inside, in particular.
In the nearest tank, a gray blur gains size and definition as it drifts slowly toward me. And even as my mind is telling me to look away, I see. The dark mass sharpens into the shape of a body. The emergence of an ear, strands of hair, then the side of a face, pressing against the curved glass.
I flinch, almost cry out.
“The truth is,” the Ruler says again with an apologetic tone, “my love for the taste of hepers is so insatiable that I have to keep a few accessible at all times. For a midday snack to munch on, when insomnia once again claims this overburdened and overtaxed ruler. The taste of heper on my tongue relaxes me. I don’t need a full feasting, mind you, just something to tide me over to the next devouring.”
The body inside the tank slowly rotates. Distorted by the curvature of the glass tank, its features stretch sideways, smeared into an oblong. It is a girl. Her eyes are half-lidded, vacant, lifeless, arms drifting by her sides like useless, sodden rolls of paper. Cords dangle down, connected to her elbows. A face mask of some kind is attached over her mouth and nose, covering almost her entire lower half of her face.
“The liquid in these tanks is a technological marvel,” the Ruler intones with quiet awe. “It acts as a preservative—hepers remain edible for upward of three months. The liquid also functions, as you can see, as a source of light, illuminating this room evenly, and, in the right setting, quite seductively. And take a look at the base of the tanks. You might have already noticed the keg taps. I give myself a sip at least a few times during the daytime. I have to tell you, the natural secretions of the heper mixed with this liquid render an exquisite taste. Delectable, really.”
The girl’s eyes suddenly blink.
I cry out, an unintelligible gasp.
She blinks again, and consciousness and awareness seep into her. Her head drifts up; her fingers press white against the glass.
“What? . . . How?”
“Oh, I assumed . . .” He blinks in confusion. “They’re alive, of course they’re still alive; how else would they be able to produce the natural secretions I just mentioned? We pipeline oxygen to them. And transfuse liquefied foods. After they die—usually they stay alive a couple of weeks—we keep their bodies afloat in the liquid. During that time, their dead flesh ferments rather nicely. Preserved, pickled heper flesh—quite a delicacy, actually.” His eyes light up with an idea. “Would you like a sip? Go ahead, just use the keg taps. I’d serve you myself if I weren’t so . . . tied up.” His fingers scratch air, unable to reach his wrists. “Or how about a little bite? I could instruct you on how to use the pincers. The tanks are really tricked up. Really, try some; go ahead. It’s wonderfully soggy, simply melts on your tongue—” His mouth drops open, then closes. Opens again, flabbergasted. He’s trying to find the next words. “Oh dear. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I just didn’t; I mean I kind of forgot that you’re . . .” he says with genuine self-reproach.
The girl in the tank rotates slowly around, floats thankfully out of focus.
“Tell me why I’m here,” I spit out. “I know you didn’t bring me here just to gloat about these tanks.”
“Why, yes, of course,” he says, relieved to move past the awkward moment. “Why you’re here.” He starts to speak, pauses, trying to find the right words. “Well, you see . . . it’s just that . . . Well, there’s no other way to put it.” And still he pauses.
“What?”
“We need your help,” he says. His fingers scratch empty air again, trembling slightly with nervousness.
Seventeen
YOU NEED MY help?” I say, certain I must have misheard.
His fingers continue to scratch air, only faster now. “Do you mind,” he asks, “if I have the lights dimmed down? It’s rather painful. . . . Why, yes, thank you. Lights down, please.” Within seconds the tank lights dim. The glass partition loses its mirror quality, and the group of staffers emerges from behind the glass. Only now, the group has doubled in number. And standing in front, with a look of mild panic that is evident even with shades covering half his face, is the chief advisor.
“I like you,” the Ruler says with gentleness. “Can I just say that first off, before we get down to business? And if I ever do eat you one day, know it’s nothing personal, because I really do like you. You’ve got ingenuity and pluck, loads of it. Would we all shared your qualities.” Shadows pool into his eye sockets, hiding his deep-set eyes.
“What do you want with me?”
“What I want with you and what I need from you are, unfortunately, two very different things. What I want is your flesh, to devour it. What I need from you, however, is quite entirely different.”
I nervously glance at the crowd of staffers, at the tanks that are now thankfully too dim to reveal their interior. “Go ahead.”
He pauses. It is a pause tinged with embarrassment. “Quite simply,” the Ruler says, “we have a situation.”
“What kind of situation?”
His face remains bland, but his chest expands, pressing against the metal constraint. “First some background. During the Heper Hunt, we know you got away by boat. We know you were followed down the Nede River by the HiSS organization. You are familiar with the HiSS organization, yes?”
I nod. HiSS stands for the Heper Search Society, an underground grassroots organization that seeks to root out hepers rumored to have infiltrated society. Despite the Ruler’s best efforts to snuff out this group (its very existence was an affront to the Palace’s position that hepers were extinct), it had in recent years not only survived but also thrived. I remember Ashley June telling me she had joined the HiSS in order to both escape suspicion and keep tabs on suspected heper activity.
Seeing me nod, the Ruler continues. “Now, judging from the fact that you were forced to beat a quick escape by train, we can safely assume that the HiSSers hunted you down in the mountains, yes?”
The girl’s body inside the tank rotates slowly toward me again. Her face, her eyes, turning round as if to look at me. I turn my gaze from her.
“Those damn HiSSers,” the Ruler says, his lips curling. “Took us by surprise. The depth of their organization, their membership numbers, their ability to secretly build a fleet of sun-proofed boats. Must have decimated the heper farm.” His voice is bland, but the words come out as if marinated in acid.
“But having our farm raided is the least of our problems,” he continues. “It’s the train tracks that concern us the most. Any nincompoop would realize they lead to the Palace, and that the Ruler must have been hiding a secret stash of hepers for generations. News like that gets back to the metropolis and . . . it’d be all over for the Palace. And for me.”
The Ruler banks his eyeballs to his right, stares at the crowd assembled behind the glass. He’s staring in particular at the chief advisor. “But, as my chief advisor has informed me, there’s reason to be optimistic. A sufficient number of sunny days have passed since that raid to lead us to believe that all HiSSers have perished in the sunlit mountains. And with all the HiSSers dead, the gentle citizens of the metropolis shall never learn of the heper farm or the train track or the catacombs filled with hepers below.”
“I’m happy for you,” I say, not bothering to hide my sarcasm. “Congratulations. But you still haven’t told me why I’m here.”
He’s quiet for a moment.
“Turns out,” he says, “our optimism may have been a little premature.” His eyes swivel left and look to the far wall. “Would you do me a favor? Would you turn on that TV monitor over there? Hanging on that wall?”
Everyone stares—I feel their wet eyeballs on me—as I walk in front of the glass wall to the TV monitor. I push a button on the side of the screen. Immediately it blinks on.
“This is a recording of a live television report,” the Ruler says. “Breaking news that came through the airwaves only a few hours ago.”
I hear sounds before the images blur in. Of mass pandemonium, people shouting. With breathless excitement. Then images sharpen into focus onscreen. I see people rushing along one of the main avenues in the metropolis. Streets overrun with mobs, horses and carriages forced to come to a standstill, passengers leaping out of them. More images from different locations, likely from security cams, nonsensical and fragmented, as if the broadcasting producers were having a hard time piecing it all together. For no more than a couple of seconds I see a shot of the Domain Building where my father used to work. A shot of the Metropolis Hospital. A shot of the Convention Center, capturing the water show from the large fountain out front.
I don’t know what’s happening, but goose bumps nevertheless break out all over my skin. Voices whisper in my head, excited, frantic, overlapping one another, growing louder until I realize they’re not in my head but coming from the TV monitor.
“. . . incredible news that has shocked the citizenry of the metropolis . . .”
“. . . nobody believed anyone could survive so long out in the Vast . . .”
“—a face familiar to all as one of the selected hunters—”
And then the TV image suddenly shifts and we’re inside a studio; no, the décor is too bland, too clinical. It’s the inside of the Metropolis Hospital. Uniformed nurses and doctors line up against the walls. The curved, fish-eye quality of the footage tells me the shot is likely from a convex hallway security camera. A medical team is hurrying down the hallway. A trio of doctors in the lead, their arms swinging wildly, frantically waving aside reporters. They’re pulling a wheeled hospital stretcher. As the stretcher—a horizontal beam supported by two vertical poles on wheels—passes the camera, at first I can’t see the person hanging upside down on it. There’re too many reporters blocking the view, too many nurses and doctors surrounding the patient. I see only the patient’s feet secured in the footholds of the stretcher.