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devour him. To taste his flesh on her tongue, the warmth of his blood filling her, his body broken down and digested and fused seamlessly with
hers, merging with her muscles and bones and eyes and hair and molecules and atoms. To feel him saturate her as he passed through her and, in passing into death, into her very being.
    The inherent conflict between these two feelings overwhelmed her, stopping her in her tracks. Until a third feeling plowed right through her, dismantling everything. Jealousy. She saw the
girl standing next to Gene and noted all too easily the intimate, natural bond between them. Jealousy raged in Ashley June, springing her into action. She found a target and it was not
Gene.
    Ashley June sucked down the girl’s blood. Virginal and hot and pure, it flowed down Ashley June’s throat like lava. For a short spell, she forgot Gene. But only for a few
seconds. Another hunter moved in, eyeing him. A surge of protectiveness swept over Ashley June, and she made quick work of the interloper. But then Gene was gone. She chased after him as he fled
down the meadows, toward the train station. She ran not to hunt but to protect him. She raced to the front of the pack, broadsided many hunters, sent them tumbling away. But there were too many and
she was quickly overwhelmed.
    But Gene got away. She saw him crouched inside the train as the distance stretched between them. And then the train was across the bridge, gaining speed. But no matter. She stared at the
train tracks disappearing into the folds of the mountain. They would lead her to him. She would find him again.
    Resolve energized her, rendering sleep impossible. While everyone else—after every heper had been devoured, every spot of blood licked up, every bone chewed and sucked on—fell
into a sedated slumber, she roamed the streets, the buildings, the fortress wall. The night was hers alone. She was a solitary pale dot moving under a canopy of a billion stars.
    Stars. She remembered the night (it was not so long ago, yet how far away it seemed) when it was her with whom he held hands, the skin of their palms touching. They lay
(so bizarre a body contortion to her now) on the rooftop of the Heper Institute under the sprinkling of those bright, celestial dots, unaffected by the moon’s full brightness. The muted
sounds of the Gala beneath them lifted harmlessly into the night. Gene had whispered to her, and a weird slip of laughter escaped his lips as she scratched her wrists.
    Gene was careless that way, less disciplined than her. Or was it because his heperness was more native than hers, a life force that could be tamped down only with vigilant, deliberate
effort? Either way, it was she who succumbed first, and that fact still surprised her.
    Through the hours of the night, she roamed alone the streets of the village. She walked aimlessly, but at one point she caught a scent. Only a whiff, but it froze
her.
    It smelled of Gene.
    Not quite. Even with the scent so faint, she knew immediately it was a few degrees off. The way the scent of family members could be so similar yet slightly different along the edges.
Between siblings. Mothers and daughters. Fathers and sons.
    She followed the wispy trail, losing it when a breeze blew. She waited; she was patient—she had time. And after the breeze died, she found the scent again. The frailest tendril. It led
her away from the center of the village and toward an outcast building that sat alone at the lip of the forest. The building resembled a cinder block for its lack of windows and aesthetics. She
stood before the closed door, sniffing. The door, like the building itself, had been spared from violence. No heper had taken refuge in this outcast building during the night, and so no hunter had
pillaged and gutted the inside.
    It was a laboratory. The
almost
-Gene scent bloomed thicker inside, months of accumulated smells. They pulsed off test tubes and vials and flasks and goggles, off the workbench