The Trap by Andrew Fukuda

see.” He strokes his left eyebrow with his right thumb, once,
twice.
    “Obviously,” he says, “by now you realize we’re your friends. We’re on the same side.”
    I tug at the restraints, making them clang nosily. “You have a pretty low bar for friendship.”
    The men scratch their wrists. “He has a sense of humor, this one,” one of them says, monotone and deadpan.
    “Where are David and Epap?” Sissy demands.
    The highly ranked man ignores Sissy’s question and places his hand on my shin. I try to pull away, but the restraints prevent movement. He strokes my leg, his palm sickly smooth and cold
to the touch. Like chilled plastic. “Seventeen years you lived among them, yet how quickly you revert to heper ways. You’ve let your leg hair grow out. Stubs and prickles of hair
everywhere,” he whispers with naked disdain. “On your arms, in your armpits, even a stubble on your face.”
    The other men, fascinated and disgusted in equal parts, also touch my leg with their fingertips, probing, rubbing the short stubs of leg hair, trailing their fingers down my ankle.
    “Stop touching me.”
    Their fingers pause. They look at their leader. He nods, and they remove their hands. He regards me for a long time.
    “Do you remember the first time we spoke?” he says. “Back in the Heper Institute, in the restroom?” His hands move to the bag of blood on the side of my bed. He expertly
seals the bag, careful not to spill a drop, and hands the bloated bag to one of the men. “It was the eve of the Heper Hunt. I was, if you recall, giving you invaluable advice. To let the
Heper Hunt take its course, then use the FLUNS on the other hunters. But you were too smart for your own good, weren’t you?” He titters. “That would have made things
so
much easier.”
    He moves over to Sissy’s bed, checks her bag. “And yet, despite it all, here you are. Both of you. Both halves of the Origin, safely tucked away in the Palace. That’s just one
example of your father’s genius. Even when things fall apart, it all somehow seems to work out in the end.”
    At the mention of my father, everything in the room seems to still. Everything except my heart, beating fasting now, harder.
    “He was the mastermind behind it all, you know. Our leader.” The man glances at me, scratches his wrist. “I can see by your obscenely readable face that you don’t believe
me. Well, doesn’t surprise me. You thought your father only a janitor. But he was so much more. Obviously, he had to keep you in the dark out of concern for your safety.”
    I turn my eyes to the floor. I suspected, but never fully knew, the passions hidden in the maze of my father's heart. Not for the first time in the last few weeks, I wonder if I ever really knew
him at all. “Tell me about him,” I whisper. “Tell me everything you know.”
    The man studies me with unnerving concentration. He sees the urgency in my eyes, senses my need to know, and draws out the silence. Clearly, he is enjoying this. “There’s a lot to
know. And we have a lot of time. Later—”
    “No,” I say. “Now.”
    The man stares back, rakes deep scratches into his wrist. “Very well. To show that we truly are on the same side, that we are comrades in arms, I’ll tell you what you want to know.
In bite-size portions for now.” He places his hand on the bed railing. “Your father and I grew up together. Up there in the mountains. The Mission was our home, the only home we’d
ever known.”
    His eyes roam across my face. “You look so much like him when he was younger. Your studied gaze, your thoughtful eyes. But I doubt you’re nearly as smart. The kid was a genius. While
the rest of us were romping around the mountains, he preferred his textbooks. He was constantly studying into the wee hours of the night. By the time he was—why, probably your
age—he’d come to believe that a cure for the duskers was possible.”
    “The Origin,” I say.
    He nods, examines