Schmendrick buzzed through the Radio around my neck. “It’s happening.” She wasn’t whispering in inglés. It was Huntspeak, and it was one of the many things she’d been teaching me.

  I could hold my own in it; I’d been picking up a lot of languages lately, and would mix them up with Espa?ol, Gardenese, Day Cazador or English, but I could make myself understood.

  It was late at night. Nocturnal jungle birds called, the comforting sound of surf drifted through the windows. Moonlight left a curved line of squares on the floor of the Observatory. A single footprint, right there in the center of one. It was a small human footprint, bare with toes, and it was dark gray. I scratched at it. Sticky.

  I didn’t need the Cazador knack for tracking prey, though I’m sure that would have been pretty cool to have. However, I could see the Tag on Cassie, the QBRT Harrigan had given her, moving, bobbing as she went through the halls below, heading for the center of the Observatory.

  The Hunt surrounded me, ghostly and silent, in their camouflaged stealth mode, called the stalk. We hit the main floor, fanned out, surrounding Cassie and whatever she was doing.

  What was she doing?

  Going from machine to machine. The Observatory’s devices were inscrutable to pretty much everyone, except maybe me and the Radio. They were mine. But they could be operated by pretty much anyone, as long as I authorized it, set it in motion. I was covered by the glowing marks, remember. The devices looked for them, wouldn’t work without them, not at first.

  The central dome wasn’t dark, but it the activity there was much less at this time of night. The Bees were decidedly diurnal. They shut down between sunset and sunrise. Their sentries guarded their Hive, their little Spaceport, whatever one wanted to call it, but didn’t patrol the rest of the floor.

  Gary and his guys slept. They kept working, but only used half their brains, or a third, or something. They were still outside, dreamily tending their plants. They got jittery if they didn’t get to sleep that way, and only slept indoors if the wind was kicking up.

  So the dome was pretty empty. Cassie had waited until this time of night to do what she was doing.

  We watched. She went from machine to machine. Examining. Not touching. She entered a shaft of moonlight.

  Cassie wore a long gown of the Observatory linen, a garment that looked quite cozy, a long bathrobe-hoodie sort of thing, flapping sleeves. Her hands gleamed, glistened wetly. Her hood was up. Her chin shone underneath it, gray and coated.

  “Just once a night?” I asked in huntspeak.

  Husband Schmendrick responded. “So far. Some nights she stays in bed, doesn’t do it, none of the sticky, just asleep.”

  “Gets it on us,” Schmendrick said peevishly.

  I considered this. “Is she awake? Some Humans go to sleep and still move around.”

  The Hunt was silent, thinking this over. “That’s awful,” Schmendrick said. “Like Gary?”

  “I suppose, but Gary’s guys all do it, every night. This Human thing is rare.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Humans are awful,” said Schmendrick, “Awful like Gary.” The rest of the Hunt agreed.

  Cassie’s moving dot had stopped at a huge central device, a crazy steampunk collection of stone gears, ivory, gems and brass. It was perhaps the size of a dump truck, and I’d never seen it move. She flitted around the base of it.

  Schmendrick buzzed at me: “What is that?”

  “Central defenses for the Observatory,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Yes,” said the rest of them.

  “Kill her?” asked Husband.

  “No!” Both Schmendrick and I, and a few of the Hunt.

  “Cassie is good. She’s a nice Human, and that’s not a thing that happens a lot,” Schmendrick scolded.

  “The tar,” I said. “Look at it. It coats her body, under the outfit.”

  As Cassie stood near the central defense machinery, I checked for bonus content. I could see her Tag, of course. And now I looked more deeply. I could see the Hunt around her, their souls like fluffy murder campfires parked in various locations in the dome.

  “How,” Schmendrick asked.

  It was another soul. A coating. It was coating Cassie, clinging to her. It left a faint trail, glowing on the floor where she left the tar footprints. As we watched, the footprints dried, faded, disappeared, along with the residue of foreign soul. No trace.

  It was familiar, that soul. I’d seen it in person, up close. “It’s him,” I said. “Harrigan, doing this. Doing this to her.”

  “Oh good,” Schmendrick said. “Oh, that’s good.”

  “She’s his creation, remember. All Humans living here are his creations.” I was dipping in and out of huntspeak for words in spanglish. Schmendrick was getting it and translating to the others. “He created her, and we don’t know what that means. Can he do this to everyone? Maybe even to me? To Mandy?”

  “Soul,” said Husband. “No. Maybe no?”

  Probably. Otherwise I’d have found myself scrubbing the gray tar away myself. He’d sent someone here with no soul, one he could just remotely pilot.

  It hadn’t been to seduce me after all. That had been what she’d told her, sure. But this was the real ball game, right here.

  We watched as Cassie mooched around the central defenses. She seemed to have a timer go off, probably on a cheap tablet computer far from here, and fled the dome.

  “Moves wrong,” Schmendrick said. “Not her. I feel dumb for not seeing.” The rest of the Hunt agreed: they all felt dumb.

  Because Cassie was a graceful slip of femininity, leggy and athletic. This girl was lurching, lumbering. She walked ugly. Like she owned the place, or at least had a down payment on it. Entitled. Owed. Middle-aged.

  We followed as she went through the jungle, got something from the Mandy Tent. Another full-length hoodie. She folded it, covering her hands with her long sleeves, set it on the beach.

  Removed her long cozy garment, and underneath was all oozing lumpy gray, not the Promised Land of skinny naked girl. She was coated from the soles of her feet to the top of her blonde head, which was in spiky clumps. Then she plunged into the water, ducking under.

  And came up, yelling. The Harrigan glow was gone. She sounded confused, panicked.

  Then she started crying, scrubbing herself, trying to stay quiet. We waited until she stopped and shakily dressed.

  Then the Hunt charged her, knocking her over, telling her they loved her and that nobody was mad and please don’t be afraid…

  Cassie started crying again, wailing apologies. She saw me come out from the trees and fell silent, eyes wide, mouth that long terrified line once again.

  It hurt to see how afraid she was. This funny, silly girl, the one who’d egged me on today with Mandy. She’d booed me from my own damn window. Nobody deserved to be worn like a suit, but this girl? After all she’d been through?

  “Not your fault,” I said.