Vitro (25 page)
Authors: Jessica Khoury
If Nicholas’s eyes were burning before, now they raged with reckless abandonment as he stared at Jim and Sophie’s interlocked hands. He was beyond reason. He was burning for revenge and blood. What could you say to someone like that? What words could possibly mend the wrongs he felt had been done to him—especially when she knew that in a dark, twisted way, he was right?
She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t bear the fury in his eyes, so she looked back at Jim and saw that his angry mask had slipped away and been replaced by horror—he wasn’t looking at Nicholas or the gun pointed at him, but at Lux.
She saw what he saw.
Her heart suspended in midbeat.
“Lux,” Jim said, “don’t you dare. Listen to me! You have to do what I tell you—so don’t you dare.”
LUX
“Don’t you dare,” he said.
She fought it. The urge to obey was overwhelming, consuming, a roar in her skull. Her finger trembled on the switch. Her brain vomited images of fire and burning and heat and all the things that would unleash if she flicked the switch. She knew the words: bomb, explode, fire, pain. They sent a torrent of images through her head, images so terrible they made her want to claw out her own eyes.
But if I don’t, Nicholas will shoot him.
He’ll die.
She had seconds. Not even seconds—milliseconds. Her mind was a battlefield. She stood still as a statue but
inside she rioted. She raged against the chip, against the endless, infinite stream of numbers, the ones and the zeroes that began and ended every thought, that burned on the inside of her eyelids and beeped in her ears. She could hear the chip in her brain, hear it whirring and processing, spitting out words, gathering data into neat packages and storing it away, reaching out with electric hands to every corner of her brain, scouring her from the inside. It clicked and murmured, hissed and sang; it had been there all along, every moment of her brief life, but until Moira had mentioned it she’d never known it was there. She’d thought the chip was her, and she was the chip. But no. If she concentrated very, very hard, she could find the line between them, fine as it was.
She pried at that line now, fighting back, pushing with everything she had within her, battering at the impulses it sent zinging through her body. If she weakened for the slightest breath of a moment, it would take control of her and she would obey Jim and she wouldn’t flick the switch and then Nicholas would shoot him—she could see his finger tightening on the trigger now—because she was moving, thinking, seeing at a speed outside human capacity, processing the way a computer processed, drawing in data and spinning it around and translating it at the speed of light.
It was so strong, the urge to obey. It pushed at her from the inside, battered at the lining of her skull, pushed at her eyes.
Don’t you dare don’t you dare don’t you dare Lux you have to do what I tell you so don’t you dare.
She fought it.
Tears sprang into her eyes with the effort.
She bit her lip so hard that blood ran over her chin—no, it came from her nose.
“Lux!” Jim yelled. “You’re bleeding! Sophie—why is she bleeding?”
Nicholas had turned around now. He looked at her hands, at her trembling finger, and his eyes widened. He knew. He met her eyes and—she saw it, she knew she saw it, but that didn’t mean she could believe it—he nodded, a tiny eyelash of a nod.
You can be your own person, Sophie had said. Sophie. Her sister. I can help you. Please—let me help you be free.
And even Jim had said it, so long, long ago: Lux, you don’t have to obey me.
But he didn’t understand. None of them did. They thought it was so easy, so simple to just say no but it wasn’t like that at all it was like it was like it is like pushing back the ocean like swallowing the sky like turning yourself inside out and it hurts hurts hurts—
Her vision blurred. Dark spots dotted her eyes. Her throat clogged, stopping air from flowing in and out, and her ears rang with a high, irritating buzz. But she pushed back. She fought, struggled, screamed aloud, her mouth stretching wide and she tasted blood and tears as she screamed to the sky and when the scream had all gone out of her she said it:
“NO.”
A click. A sigh. Her brain ran backward. The chip was shutting down. Her mind was shutting down. Her thoughts blinked out one by one. She felt her very cells turn inside out, wither, implode. I can turn it off, she thought. I can turn it off.
She smiled.
She looked up and saw the stars, a million billion sprinkles of light.
She was free.
She looked down at the two people she loved best in the world, and she said one last word to their astonished faces:
“Run.”
And then she flipped the switch.
JIM
B
efore he could move, before he could react, before he could even comprehend what had happened, Sophie grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the cliff’s edge.
Seconds passed in the form of years. He saw everything with dazzling clarity: the blood running from Lux’s nose, the swift, slight brush of her finger over the switch on the detonator, the sudden look of peace in her eyes.
But Sophie pulled him away from all of it. She sprinted to the cliff and dragged him with her. It seemed to take years to reach the edge. But why . . . ?
“Sophie!” He skidded to a halt, just in time, pinwheeled on the edge and grabbed her to keep her from toppling over. “Are you—”
“JUMP!”
She leaped, arcing into a swan dive.
“—CRAZY?” Jim yelled after her.
Then the blast caught him.
He weighed no more than a scrap of paper. The wave of heat flung him outward into open space; he flipped through the air like a paper clip from the flick of a giant index finger. Through space and darkness, moon and sea wheeling over each other in a dizzying, sickening blur until at last he crashed into the ocean.
The collision drove the air from his lungs with a shattering smack. His chest and stomach and face stung. The dark water sucked him down, pressed him against the ocean floor. He struggled to turn himself upright, managing to plant his feet on the sand and then push himself upward. He exploded out of the water in a fit of coughing to find the sky was on fire.
“Sophie!” he gasped, casting about. Burning debris rained from the sky like a shower of tiny flaming asteroids, littering the water around him. The blast from the explosion had thrown him far from the cliff, possibly saving his life. If he’d fallen to the foot of the cliff he’d have been killed on the rocks.
Sophie had dived before him, though. She might not have landed as far out.
He swam with all his strength toward the shoreline. Watching for any sign of her. The water burned orange around him as if he were swimming in a pool of fire. He kept calling her name, over and over until he was hoarse, choking on ash and saltwater.
He dove underwater and searched, but saw only a confusion of light and sand and patches of darkness. When he broke surface again, he was much closer to the shore.
“Sophie!”
The body was floating a few yards away, face down. He swam hard toward it, grabbed it and turned it over—then yelled and let go. It was the dead Vitro boy who’d fallen over the cliff. His eyes were still open and the side of his head was bashed in where it had hit the rocks. Jim’s stomach somersaulted and he gagged. He swam in the other direction, letting the body float off to sea.
The waves tossed him and crashed down on him, pulling him beneath the water. When he finally reached the shallows he stood up and wandered back and forth, bracing for each wave, coughing so hard his chest ached. Burning embers rained from the sky; would they never stop?
Lux had defied him.
She had looked as if she’d half killed herself in doing it. Her face white, her eyes nearly popping from their sockets, blood running from her nose.
But she did it. She broke free. Somehow, though sheer willpower, she broke the thread between them, snapped his hold on her. He could have cheered, could have celebrated with her— but she’d blown herself up, and Nicholas with her.
He cursed Lux as he searched for her sister. It wasn’t until he dragged himself, weary and aching, onto the shore that he realized the salt he tasted on his lips wasn’t entirely from the sea. The current had swept him around the island, tossing him onto an unfamiliar shore, on the eastern side if he was reading the sky correctly. Most of the stars above were blacked out by the plume of smoke pouring upward from the Vitro building. He could see where the smoke began, off toward the west, behind the trees. This shore was deserted save for an old broken pier and the flock of gulls sleeping on its rotting posts.
He lay on the sand, panting, chest heaving, mind struggling to come to grips with the world around him. Surely this can’t be real. The night had a surreal quality to it, half dream, half hallucination. He felt too disconnected from his senses for this to be reality. The colors were too dim, the sounds too distant, the sand beneath his hands too coarse and hot. Like ashes and embers.
He jerked to his feet, stumbled across the sand like a drunk as the world spun around him. He blinked repeatedly to wash the ash from his eyes and to make the whirling lights and colors stop long enough for him to get his bearings.
He tripped over a rock and landed heavily on his face, getting a mouthful of sand. Propping himself up on his elbows, he spat out the grit and looked back.
“Sophie!” It wasn’t a rock at all. She was lying in a crumpled heap; the surf rushed around her, slurping and nibbling at her hungrily. The same current that had left him here must have carried her also.
Jim gently turned her over, called her name. She groaned and tried to push him away, but she was alive. Dizzy with relief, he pulled her against his chest and murmured into her hair, feeling the pounding of her heart against his own. “Wake up, Sophie. Please.”
“Umph. You’re squeezing too tight!”
Embarrassed, he released her at arm’s length.
“You okay?”
“Oh, God,” she moaned. “That was a bad idea.”
“You must have hit the shallows. You’re lucky to be alive. You’re completely insane.”
“Yeah . . . What about Lux? Did she get away?”
“I don’t know.” But he feared that he did. She had been too near the building, too far from the cliff. He kept an arm around Sophie and hid his grim expression from her, afraid she’d see the doubt in his eyes. She murmured something unintelligible, her eyes slipping shut. He made sure she was breathing normally, then leaned against a rough, pockmarked rock and tried to find within himself the energy to climb up the beach and trek back to the site of the explosion.
But when he opened his eyes, dawn was beginning to spread across the sky before him. The horizon line glowed hot orange, as if a distant fire were devouring the sea. Behind him, in the trees, a gull screamed repeatedly, annoying as an alarm clock. Wait. It wasn’t a gull—it was a human voice, calling his name and Sophie’s.
“Here!” he called out, his voice throaty and dry, startling Sophie, who jolted in his arms.
“Where are you?” cried the voice.
“Down here! On the beach!”
“What’s going on?” Sophie mumbled, her eyes bleary.
“How you feeling?” Jim asked.
“Hurts,” she moaned, and a wave of shock washed over Jim as he dizzily recalled waking Lux just forty-eight hours earlier, and her saying the same thing when she opened her eyes.
“You’re alive!” a voice cried, and they turned and looked up. Andreyev stood over them, his face haggard. As ever, his silent bodyguards flanked him. They looked a bit worse for the wear, lacking their sunglasses, white ash on their shoulders.
“Carry her up,” he said to them. One of them scooped Sophie up as if she weighed nothing, and they followed Andreyev up the beach and through the resort. They’d been closer to the Vitro building than Jim had reckoned, and Andreyev told him they’d been searching the night through for any sign of him and Sophie. “We saw you jump from the cliff,” he said. “After that, nothing. We looked but it was so dark, and there were so many hurt by the explosion. We had to help them first.”
“My mom . . .” Sophie moaned.
“She lives. She’ll recover, but she may never walk again. It is too early to tell. The doctors have her.”
“Nicholas?”
“Nothing left of him.”
“And . . .”
“Lux,” he said softly. “We found her. But it was too late.”
Sophie shut her eyes. Tears leaked from their corners.
When they reached the area below the Vitro building, he saw the crowd of doctors and Vitros and guards, who were gathered beneath the restaurant with the thatched roof; some of them ran to and from the still-burning Vitro building, trying to put out smaller fires. Jim saw no sign of Strauss. The big, grand building still stood in skeletal form, but from the look of the flames, it would be burning for a while. A column of smoke coiled into the dawning sky and hung over the island like a dark, malevolent spirit. All the palms around the building were naked, smoking pillars, their leaves blasted away. How Moira had survived, he did not know.
When he saw Moira, he saw that her survival had come at a cost. She lay on one of the tables beneath the restaurant’s thatched roof, her face and arms covered with blistering burns.
Sophie demanded to be put down, but leaned on Jim for support as she limped toward Dr. Crue.
“You’re alive!” Moira cried, then she fell into a ragged cough.
“Mom,” Sophie whispered, gently brushing her fingertips to Moira’s hair, the ends of which were singed.
“Why . . .” Moira coughed. “Why do you still call me that?”
“You’re the only mom I ever had,” Sophie said simply. Andreyev pulled up a chair for her to sit.
“Lux is gone,” said Sophie abruptly. Jim lifted a hand to hide his face.
“I know.” Moira turned her head and stared at a still form covered with a sheet on the next table. Sophie went to it and slowly pulled back the cloth.
Lux could have been sleeping, except for the trail of blood from her nose, already dried on her face. Jim lowered his hand and felt his knees give out. He sat abruptly, his eyes fixed on her frozen face.
“She was thrown clear of the blast,” said Moira. “Her legs were burned pretty badly, but that isn’t what . . .”
It wasn’t what killed her, Jim thought. Sophie, her hands trembling, took a corner of the sheet and wiped her sister’s face clean. “Jim told her not to set off the bomb, but she did it anyway.”
Moira’s breath stopped, then she breathed out in a rasp. “That’s impossible.”
“I saw it.” Sophie’s voice was flat, emotionless. “She broke the bond. Went her own way. At the very end, she was strong enough. Do you think that’s what it was? Do you think in breaking the chip’s hold, she did this to herself?” Her eyes met Jim’s briefly, guiltily, and then it was he who looked away.
“I don’t . . . We’ve never seen this before. . . .” Moira fell silent for a long moment. Jim leaned against the table, his arms folded across his chest. He could feel his heart racing like a frantic animal in his chest. He watched Sophie as she leaned down and kissed Lux’s cheek, leaving a few tears on her skin before she raised the sheet over her face. For a brief, wild moment, he wanted to rip the sheet away and tell her to get up, to see if his influence on her reached beyond death. But he stayed still and lowered his eyes, fixing them on a beetle that was scurrying in circles beneath the table Moira was lying on.
“She broke the bond,” Moira said at last. “But then, of course she did. She was your twin. She had your strength.”
“Ha.” Sophie’s voice turned bitter. “Not strong enough to save her.”
“But strong enough to save me.” Moira lifted a burned hand, winced at the effort. “And to save every other Vitro on this island. You did this. Not that,” she glanced at the flames at the top of the hill, “but this.” She gestured at the doctors and Vitros around them.
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters. Don’t you ever get cavalier about life, Sophie Jane Crue. Don’t you ever think it doesn’t matter. Each and every one of them owes their life to you, and you owe your life to Lux. Don’t take that for granted.”
Sophie closed her eyes and nodded.
“We could toss blame around till the sun goes down,” Moira went on. “And I think you’d find that each and every one of us has a piece of it to bear.”
Jim turned away, his eyes smarting. He knew he bore more than just a piece; he wore his guilt like a chain around his neck. If I hadn’t woken Lux in the first place . . . If I just stayed away . . .
“Jim.” He turned around. Moira was looking at him. “Little James Julien. Was it only yesterday you two were running around under the palms, raising hell and laughing all the way? Happy days. Happy memories.” She sighed. “That goes for you, too, Jim. If you must trace blame to its source, look to Nicholas. And if you look to Nicholas, you must look then to me. He would never have become what he was if not for me.”
Tell me, who is the monster? The creation or the creator?
“But if you chase blame back to me,” Moira continued in a rasp, “then you have to ask why I did what I did. I did it because Corpus paid me to. Are they to blame? Where does it end? Listen to me, the both of you.” They each turned to reluctantly meet her fervent gaze. “You will walk away from here and you will leave all of this behind, do you understand?”
They exchanged guilty looks.
“Let it go.” Moira let her head drop, shut her eyes wearily. “Let it go.”
Sophie burst into tears. She laid her head on the table beside Moira and sobbed. Moira looked down at her, her eyes watering, and then up at Jim beseechingly. Of course. She couldn’t hold Sophie, not in her state. So Jim pulled her into his arms and let her weep onto his shoulder.
“Let it go,” Moira whispered, tears coursing over her burns.
They sat thus for several long minutes, until Sophie’s tears subsided. Jim sat stock still and held her tight. All around them, doctors were soothing frantic newborn Vitros; they seemed lost and confused without Nicholas. They would have to find a way to break the bond, Jim thought. If Lux could do it, so could they. He finally glimpsed Strauss, standing under a palm tree in the distance, talking to a few guards. The morning took on a dreamlike tempo: crackling fire, rushing sea, whispering wind. The smell of salt and smoke.
After a while, Moira said, “Andreyev. You should go.”
He stirred from where he’d been leaning against one of the roof supports. “Come,” he said to Jim. “Can she walk now?”
“Where are we going?”
“I will take you back to Guam. We must go now. I want to get a head start on Strauss. I need to reach Corpus before she does, to tell them of what happened here. I feel if they hear her version of these events first, they will not be as accommodating of the changes I wish to implement on Skin Island.”
Sophie sat up quickly. “I can’t leave my mother like this,” she said.
“The doctors will care for her. They have already proven their loyalty when they stood up to Strauss. Never fear, child.”
“Sophie.” Moira turned her head. “Go. If you don’t leave now, you may never leave at all. Strauss will do everything she can to contain this. She’ll trap you here if she can as one of the Vitros. I won’t have it. You go and live your life and leave this place behind.”
Sophie assented, her shoulders squaring as if a great weight had been lifted from her. “There’s just one more thing,” she said. “Something you should know.” She ran a hand through her hair, then bent over Moira. “I love you. You lied to me, used me, abandoned me—but I love you anyway. Not because I owe you or because I feel obligated to—that’s not really love anyway, is it? I love you because I want to, because I choose to. I love you, but I can’t . . . I can’t live for you anymore. Do you understand that?”
Jim looked away, embarrassed to be watching such a private exchange, but he heard Moira’s soft reply, “I have a lot to answer for in my life, and I’ve done a lot of things I regret— but you are not one of them. If there is any one thing I can point to and say I am proud of that; I would never change a thing, it would be you. You’re the one thing I got right, however unlikely that is. I brought you into this world and though I am not responsible for any of your virtues, I can at least say I had a hand in giving you a chance. I love you, Sophie.”
When Sophie joined him, her face was dry.
“Let’s go,” she said. “I’m ready.”
They followed Andreyev and his bodyguards up the hillside; the chopper was covered in ashes, but looked relatively unscathed.
“Wait,” Sophie said. “The keys! Nicholas had them. How will we—”
Andreyev held up a glimmering key ring. “The ones Strauss had her pilot hand over were not the helicopter keys. I believe she intended to shoot Nicholas before he ever reached the chopper.”
Jim stared at the keys. “Why do I feel as if the real psychopath is still running loose?”
“Because she is,” Andreyev said darkly. He jumped into the helicopter and offered Sophie a hand up. Jim climbed in with them and they settled into the backseat.
“Uh oh,” said one of the bodyguards, his accent shockingly Irish. “She’s seen us.”
“Go, go, go!” Andreyev said, slamming the door shut and slapping the back of the pilot’s seat. The Irishman laughed, a deep, warm laugh that put a small smile on Jim’s lips, it was so infectious.
