Vitro (11 page)

“I—your e-mail,” Sophie stammered. “You asked me to come.”
Now it was Moira who looked blindsided. “E-mail? What e-mail? I never sent you an e-mail, Sophie. What is going on? Where’s your father?”
Her stomach twisted. “He’s home. In Boston. He doesn’t know—you e-mailed me! I have it here—Oh.” The copy of the e-mail had been in the pocket of her jeans. She realized, with a shudder of horror, that whoever had hit her on the head must have also undressed her and put her in the gown she now wore. She wrapped her arms around herself, clamping her teeth shut to keep them from chattering. She felt violated, afraid, and suddenly all she wanted was for her mother to put her arms around her and tell her everything was going to be okay.
But Moira didn’t. Instead, she wrapped her fingers around Sophie’s wrist and pulled her down the hallway, walking at a pace that had Sophie jogging to keep up. They were the only ones in the hall but her mother glanced around anxiously, as if expecting someone to jump out at any moment.
“Ouch, Mom, you’re hurting me!”
Moira didn’t loosen her grip. “Stop talking. Do what you were doing before.”
“What?”
Moira stopped and whirled, going nose to nose with Sophie. Her blue eyes bore into Sophie, making the space between her eyes tingle. “It’s not safe here. Keep impersonating Lux. We’ll talk in private. Come on.”
Sophie swallowed and nodded.
Moira took her to a small office tucked at the end of the hallway where Sophie had woken to Andreyev and Strauss. The office was cluttered and worn; she could tell that her mother spent a lot of time here. Filing cabinets were crammed along one wall, and opposite them rose a massive floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall bookshelf overflowing with books, binders, and lab equipment. A whiteboard hung on the wall behind the desk, scribbled over with formulas Sophie didn’t understand; the multicolored ink was so old the reds were faded to pinks. Small photographs were taped to the frame of the board—children, all of them. They looked like younger versions of some of the kids she’d seen in the building already. There was a cherubic boy who had to be Clive, and the girl with the brown curls, and Nicholas, his hair short but his eyes holding the same odd expression that was a mingle of boredom and epiphany.
There was something missing, and it took Sophie a moment to realize what it was: there were no photographs of her. Not one. Maybe this is someone else’s office, and not my mom’s. But Moira sat in the chair behind the desk and folded her hands on top of the papers strewn before her with a familiar ease that told Sophie this was indeed her mother’s office, and that for reasons unknown to her, she was not allowed here. Not in photographs, not in the flesh. This room seemed to Sophie to be the heart of Moira’s life, the room that was the center of her world—and Sophie was very obviously not in it.
“Tell me everything,” Moira said. She nodded at a chair in the corner, and Sophie carefully set aside the coffeemaker on it and took a seat.
“You didn’t send me an e-mail telling me there was an emergency and that you needed me?” she asked flatly.
“No.” Moira kept glancing at the door, as if afraid they’d be discovered.
“Well, someone did.” Sophie’s face was growing very warm. That was one question answered, at least. There was no emergency. Her mother had never wanted her here, and that hadn’t changed. “All it said was that you needed me and that I should come, so I did. It was signed by you and sent from your e-mail address.”
Moira leaned back in her chair, regarding Sophie thoughtfully. “Someone on the island, then. They couldn’t access the servers from anywhere else.”
“Mom.”
“How did you even get here?”
“A pilot.” Better she doesn’t know which one. “It doesn’t matter. He’s come and gone.” At least, she hoped he’d left. She was sorry she’d roped him into her plans to begin with. If anything happened to him . . . I can’t think about that. Anyway, I’m sure he’s long gone by now. He’d been itching to leave since the moment they’d landed, and she imagined Jim had taken her continued absence as an excuse to clear out— that is, if he’d gotten the plane repaired. She uneasily forced her thoughts away from the pilot. She had enough to handle here in this room.
Sophie leaned forward on her elbows. “I heard everything. About the Vitros. And Lux.”
Moira’s face was expressionless. “I’m aware.”
Sophie jumped out of her seat and slammed her hands onto the desk, sending loose papers flying. “How can you just sit there? How can you be so calm? You’re making slaves.”
“It’s not what you think,” Moira said softly.
“Not what I think? I heard every word in there!” She pointed toward the hallway. “How could you?” she whispered. She lowered her arm and curled her fingers into a fist. “It’s sick and it’s wrong.”
“Do not presume to lecture me, young lady.” Moira’s voice was low and dangerous, and she looked up at Sophie from beneath a rigid brow. “Sit down and tell me how you got here.”
Sophie sat, her back straight and her shoulders high with tension. “Does it matter? You’re going to send me back to Dad, anyway. Well, fine. Try it. But I’m not going back there. Dad doesn’t get me, doesn’t want to let me make my own decisions.” She drew a breath, pausing on the edge of the words, and then she jumped. “I wanted to work with you,” she said, all in a rush. “I wanted to be part of this—” she gestured at the walls around her “—and I argued with Dad about it for months. Now . . . now I don’t know what to think. Now that I’ve seen what you really do it’s like I don’t know you at all. And if I go back . . .” I’ll have to admit he was right all along, that you are untrustworthy and deceitful. All those years I defended you, and in the end, I was defending someone who didn’t exist. The only thing that outweighed the shame she felt for having to admit her father had been right was the hollow and shocked disappointment she felt when she looked at her mother.
Moira opened her mouth, then thought better of it and sighed, steepling her fingers under her chin. “This is bad. You were never supposed to be here.”
“At least now I know why you’ve been hiding the truth from me. You knew I’d hate you for it.”
“Sophie. You don’t hate me.”
She wanted to, and she thought she was very close to it, but when she tried to say it the words caught in her throat. “Whatever. How is this place even legal?”
“How long were you unconscious down there?” Moira’s brows drew together inquisitively. “Just when, exactly, did you arrive?”
“Yesterday. Someone knocked me out and put me in this.” She fingered the thin gown. “Next thing I know, I’m staring at that Russian guy. Kids, Mom? Really? You grow and sell kids? I saw the others—Caleb and Clive. They’re nothing but puppets. And Nicholas—what’s he got to do with it?”
Moira stiffened. “You met Nicholas? When?”
“Just tell me why,” Sophie whispered. “Why would you do something like this? Something so horrible? And what about Lux? Why is she . . . what is she to me?”
For once, Moira dropped her gaze and Sophie was certain there was a flicker of shame in her eyes. Her mother stared at an empty mug on her desk and absently fingered the tea bag tag that draped over the side. “Sophie . . . I’m sorry you saw this. Your father . . .” Her voice dwindled to a whisper, and she pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “Your father was right about me.” She lifted her eyes, and they were filled with regret. Whether the regret was from her own guilt or just that she regretted that Sophie knew about her work, Sophie could not tell. Moira gave a short sigh and lifted her chin. “If Strauss knows you’re here, she’ll forbid you to leave. You’ll be stuck here for good. You’ve simply seen too much.”
“Strauss is a monster. I ought to tell her so, to her face.”
“No!” Moira rose to her feet and her nostrils flared as she exhaled in indignation. “You will not throw your life away. I won’t let you. This place—you’ve seen what it is. What it stands for. I won’t let you be a part of it.”
“You’re a part of it.”
“Strauss will never know you were here, and that is the end of this discussion. Now.” Moira put her hands on her hips. “Where is Lux?”
“I don’t know.”
“She isn’t downstairs with the other Vitros. I already looked.”
“Other Vitros?”
“There are twenty more of them who are still asleep. I found you this morning, when I was looking for Lux. You were lying unconscious in an empty room, arranged as if you’d been there—where she had been—all along. We need to find out who’s behind that. Few people have access to the sleeping Vitros. And speaking of Lux, she isn’t among them. So where is she?”
“I told you, I don’t know! I saw her last night, when I first got here. She was in that room, the same one I was in when I woke up and saw you and that Russian guy, and she was sleeping. That’s when someone hit me from behind.”
Moira pressed her hand to her mouth, her index finger tapping rapidly, as if she were hyped on too much coffee. “Then whoever hit you must have taken her and moved you downstairs. But why? And who?”
“Mom.” Sophie moved from her chair to the desk, and leaned across it so she could take her mother’s hands in hers. She looked Moira in the eye and felt her tears gathering. “Why are you doing this?” Her voice barely left her lips, a thin, pleading whisper.
Moira met her gaze for a moment, then broke it, turned her head aside and hid her expression. “It wasn’t supposed to be this. Not at first. But I lost control, Sophie. The Vitro Project slipped through my fingers and Strauss . . . no, not just Strauss, but Corpus . . . They changed it, made it what it is. Because that’s what they do.” She turned her head back, her eyes steely. “They consume you and bleed you dry and when they’ve exhausted you, they spit you out. You can’t win against them, because sooner or later you will always come to a line, a line you aren’t willing to cross—but they will. That’s how they win, every time. That’s why we can’t let them know you’re here. Corpus will swallow you whole, Sophie, and you’ll find yourself doing things you swore you’d never do.” She stared at her hands, still cupped in Sophie’s. “I came here to create. Instead, they’ve made me destroy. It’s not too late for you. Go home, forget about this place. Forget about me, if you must.”
Sophie pulled her hands away. The biggest questions of all still remained. “Why does Lux look like me? Is she a clone?”
“A clone? No, of course not. None of the Vitros are.” Moira twisted her fingers together, still staring at her hands. “She’s your twin sister.”
“Your own daughter.” Sophie felt cold all over. “How could you do that to your own child? Raise her in a tank? Strip away her will and sell her to a criminal who will just use and abuse her?”
“I . . .” Moira paused, licked her lower lip. “It’s not like that. When I . . . when I was pregnant . . . Lux was dying, Sophie. She was too weak and wasn’t going to survive. We almost lost her altogether, so we decided to give her the only chance she had—we made her a Vitro. We gave her life, at a cost, yes, but we gave it to her the only way we could. Anyway. That’s all in the past. You should forget about her.”
“How can I?” Sophie’s voice mounted in volume. She felt the urge to knock things off shelves, so she folded her arms tightly across her chest. “She’s my sister, apparently. Forget about her? Impossible!”
“We don’t even know where she is.” Moira groaned and planted her face in her hands. “Who am I kidding? It’s over anyway. Andreyev will find out that everything’s gone wrong and he’ll pull out. We’ll lose what little funding Corpus gave us. It’s over.”
“Is that a bad thing?” It seemed to Sophie that she’d arrived just in time. If by replacing Lux she’d thrown a wrench into Corpus’s plans to make and market mindless slaves, perhaps her coming to Skin Island wasn’t going entirely awry after all.
“Sophie.” Her mother gave her a grave look. “If they cut the Vitro Project, they cut the Vitros.”
At first, she didn’t get it. Then the reality of her mom’s words slammed into her brain and she felt sick. “You mean—”
“No loose ends.” Moira stood and turned around, and her fingers brushed over the photos on the whiteboard. “I know you see them as mindless. But Sophie. I’ve seen these children grow up. I was there when each of them opened their eyes for the first time. Maybe they’re damaged, maybe they’d have even been better off never being born. But they were. And I’m responsible for them.” When she turned back around, Sophie expected, from the catch in her voice, that there would be tears in her eyes. But Moira’s gaze was smooth as glass. “I will do whatever I must to save them.”
Sophie nodded once. “I understand, but . . .”
Her mother folded her arms on the back of her chair. “I know. You’re still judging me for what the Vitros are, and I don’t blame you. But you have to understand—it’s out of my control. I help them as much as I can, but in the end, I’m powerless.”
Sophie didn’t believe her. She thought that if it was her in Moira’s place, she’d fight tooth and nail to stop what was going on. The essential wrongness of Skin Island was noxious to her, but it seemed Moira had already given up without a fight. That isn’t really fair, Sophie thought. You don’t know the whole story. She always hated it when people assumed the moral high ground and judged others from a position of self-righteousness; but it was hard to be objective after what she had seen. She wondered, then, how much her father knew about the Vitro Project. After all, he’d once worked here too, side by side with her mother.
“Dad walked away, didn’t he?” she asked softly.
Moira nodded, her gaze going distant. “He was stronger than I was.”
“That’s why you two split.” For years Sophie’s mind had struggled to untie the knots of the past, and all at once the knots came undone, unraveling in her hands. “He wouldn’t do it, would he? He refused to be part of this and you argued about it and finally, he left. So . . . what? You compromised on me and Lux? I went with Dad, you kept Lux?”
“You don’t belong on Skin Island. You never have. It was right for you to go with your father. He is . . . he has always been the better parent.”
Sophie saw her father in a new light. She’d always thought he was the weaker one, the one who gave up and quit and went home while her mother stayed to continue what Sophie had thought was noble work for the good of humanity. Her mother had been the heroic, self-sacrificing scientist and her father had been the mundane biology teacher who envied her mother’s success and resented Sophie’s admiration for her. I got it all backward. All along, it’s been the other way around— Mom was the weak one, the one who left us, and Dad is the one who was strong. He had to know the truth about Skin Island. Had he hidden the truth from Sophie because he knew how much she adored Moira and he didn’t want to break her heart? Had he wanted her to come to the truth herself? Suddenly all the warnings her father had given her made sense. He was protecting me. Did she wish he’d just been truthful? Did she resent his secrets? At first she thought she did, that she should be as angry with him as she was with her mom. But then she wasn’t so sure. If I had known the truth, I would never have known my mom at all. Perhaps the happy memories she had of her mother were tinged with lies, but if she’d known what her mother’s work truly was then she’d have no happy memories at all.