Vitro (6 page)

Slowly, she realized there were people around her, talking in low tones. She wanted to call out, to ask for help, for a drink of water, but her tongue betrayed her and remained leaden.

A sigh from the first speaker. A woman, Sophie noted. Her thoughts were languid, struggling to keep up. “I’ll speak with her later. Lucky we got here early. There’s no time to waste, so let’s get her upstairs and prep her for Andreyev.”

It was like straining to understand a foreign language; every word took an extra moment to register in Sophie’s brain. She vaguely remembered something happening, something before she blacked out . . . a room, a blue light, someone sleeping, someone impossible . . .

She felt movement. She was lying on a stretcher, and it was being rolled across uneven floor. Her body vibrated with every motion. She strained to open her eyes but they stayed soldered shut. Light and shadow rolled over her. Low in her throat, she managed the smallest groan.

The stretcher came to abrupt stop. “Did you hear that?” the woman asked. “I thought she—”
“She’s been off the anesthesia for half an hour.” The second voice was male, but high and a bit nasally.
“They don’t usually wake this fast. Hand me the xenon. If she wakes up now we’re all screwed—it’s too soon.”
Something plastic was pressed to Sophie’s face, and she heard a faint hiss. Oxygen mask, she thought. She tried to groan again, but her voice seemed to have evaporated completely.
They were moving again, and then she heard a metallic ding. The nature of the movement changed; the stretcher was still, but they were going up, in an elevator probably. It dinged again and then she was rolling.
The voices faded in and out; her consciousness was flickering like a dying light bulb. Sounds morphed into low, meaningless bursts of noise, like a tape put on slow motion.
“. . . snuck out again,” the man was murmuring. “Around dawn, they think.”
“Let them go. It isn’t as if they’re going to actually go anywhere. They are teenagers and they will roam.”
“Well. Not exactly teenagers, Moira.”
Moira. Sophie’s mind had been sinking deeper into a sea of mud, but at that name she lunged upward, grabbing hold of it like a life line. Mom!
“They’re not harming anything and anyway, maybe it’s better they’re out of the way when Strauss gets here. You know they like to cause trouble.” It was her mother’s voice. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? Mom, it’s me! I’m here—why can’t you see me? She wanted to scream. It didn’t make sense! Her mother was right there, so why wasn’t she trying to help Sophie? Why—Oh. The memory finally fell into place, the lost pieces of a jigsaw puzzle snapped together to form a complete picture. The girl in the bed, the one who looked like me. And not just like Sophie—identical to Sophie. Understanding flooded her thoughts. They think I’m her. But why? How? Just when she thought she’d figured it out, more questions followed. Where was the other Sophie? Surely when they saw that there were two of her, they’d realized something was up. Or were there a hundred girls like her on this island? What were they? Why were they? And her mother—Moira Crue sounded well and whole. She didn’t seem to be dying or running for her life. What is going on?
“This had better work,” said the man. “It’s hard to believe that two decades of research can come down to a single moment.”
“We’re ready for this.”
“You say it with more confidence than I have.”
“What can I say, Rogers? I’m an optimist.”
“Corpus has been breathing down our neck for years. We only get one shot. This day will make or break us.”
“Stop worrying. We need to keep our heads straight for this.”
“I’m just saying. Hashimoto knows how important this is. She should have prepped Lux better. I mean look at her.” A finger brushed Sophie’s shoulder, but she was so groggy she couldn’t even flinch. “Is that a bruise? And here’s another, on her cheek.”
“It happens, when they’re moved from one bed to another.”
“Well, at least she had the decency to put a gown on her.”
“Here we are,” Moira said. “And look here. Everything’s in place. Hashimoto isn’t completely incompetent. She just forgot to bring Lux up. Still, I’m going to have a few words with her.”
“Odd,” the man muttered. “This IV looks used . . .”
Sophie heard a sudden crash, as if the door had been thrown open. Her mind was clouding over, and she fought to stay awake. Whatever gas they were feeding through the mask, it was working fast to shut down her brain.
“They’re here!” a new voice shouted.
“Here? Strauss? Now?”
“Just landed.”
“They’re not supposed to arrive until nine!”
“Moira, it’s eight-thirty.”
“What, already? Good Lord, don’t just stand there! Laurent, stay with Lux. I’ll go meet them.”
No, Sophie thought. Mom, come back, it’s me, please see me, Mom!
But she heard receding footsteps, then the door slammed shut, and she couldn’t hold onto consciousness any longer.

island seemed twice as big as it had before. When he’d first lifted her, Sophie had felt light, but she grew heavier with every step he took. His physical exhaustion was catching up to him and had begun to wear on his mind as well, tempting him to stop, to give up, to leave her behind and save himself.

“No can do, compadre,” he muttered. “We’re both getting out of here.”
A glinting dragonfly buzzed around his head, as if urging him to hurry, and a warm wind shivered through the bamboo around him; the leaves danced and cast shifting green-tinted light across Sophie’s skin. She looked the opposite of everything Jim felt: peaceful, serene, even innocent. Her left arm was curled over her stomach, but the right one hung loose. He stopped and leaned against a tree so he could lift it and rest it on top of the other one; as he did, her fingers suddenly tightened on his.
He froze and stared intently at her face. “Sophie? Sophie, wake up. Please. Come on, kid, just open your eyes.”
Her lashes fluttered and his stomach tightened in anticipation, but she just sighed and seemed to sink deeper into her slumber.
Jim thought wildly of the old fairy tales, the ones where the sleeping princess would awaken only with a kiss. His eyes traveled inevitably to her lips, soft and pink. He shook his head. There was something . . . he couldn’t place it exactly, but there was something too innocent about her. A kind of childlike purity to her repose that made the thought of kissing her seem vile. Which was strange, given that he’d fantasized at least five times about kissing her. But now, it just felt . . . wrong, somehow. She looked more like the Sophie he knew when he was seven than the one who was supposed to be seventeen, an odd mingling of child and woman.
He hurried on, though the thick bamboo made his going slow. It grew so close together that he felt stifled, almost as if he were underwater.
A few minutes later, he heard voices ahead, muffled and distant, but unmistakable. He dropped into a crouch, cradling Sophie to himself, and listened. Those kids—the ones that went looking for me. He’d almost forgotten about them. Maybe Nicholas sent them to help, he reasoned. He knew I’d have trouble with the plane, so maybe Sophie convinced him to send them.
But a part of him doubted it very much. If Sophie’s mother trusted Nicholas enough to send him for her daughter, then surely Jim could trust him too. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something sinister moving beneath the surface, that Nicholas’s sharp eyes hid purposes of his own.
He tried to tell if the voices were getting closer, but the trees and wind played with the sounds around him, twisting and morphing them. He’d thought they were ahead of him, but now they sounded as if they were off to his right, closer inland. He looked all around, flinching at every little noise. There wasn’t much animal life on these islands, mostly just birds and insects, but as he listened even they began to sound more and more human.
Maybe the kids were only trying help, but still, he decided it would be best to avoid them.
The voices grew louder. Jim finally pinned down their direction—north, headed back from the airstrip, perhaps— and he hurried east, toward the center of the island, hoping they’d pass him by.
He was moving too slowly, encumbered by the girl in his arms. They were getting closer. If he was going to get away, he’d have to sacrifice either speed or silence. He went with silence, and began hurrying through the trees more quickly, his steps snapping branches and rattling the bamboo. Maybe he should have just ducked for cover, but it was too late now. If they’d heard him, they’d already be on his trail. He weaved through the tall green stalks and then burst out of the bamboo forest and onto higher ground, where the grass was high as his waist and twisted and bristly pines rose out of the ground like bent old warriors. They didn’t provide much cover, but he spotted a cluster of rocks at the crest of the slope, and he made for it.
The wind pushed at his back and slithered over the grass, which bent as if some giant invisible hand were running its palm over the hill. The grass hid the steepness of the incline, and he nearly lost his footing when it took a sharp upward ascent. Sophie jostled in his arms and made a sound halfway between a sigh and a groan.
He was nearly at the rocks when he chanced a backward look. He thought he could see someone moving in the bamboo, but it might have been a bird or the wind. Calling on the last of his energy, he broke into a run up the hill, his calves burning, and reached the rocks just as he heard a shout from the bottom. He spun and saw the three kids emerge from the bamboo, and he dove behind the rocks, unceremoniously dumping Sophie onto the ground. She moaned but lay still.
Jim gripped the rock with sweaty hands and watched the trio. The sun had finally risen over the trees to the east, its light washing over the hill like fire. But where his pursuers were, there was still shadow of the night, and he could not tell if they had spotted him or not.
He turned away and looked in the other direction. The land sloped downward into a narrow gulch before rising again into a green mountain supported by ribbonlike buttresses, their hollows purple shadows. There was no going back the way he’d come, so he scooped Sophie up and started down the gulch. The going was so steep that the grass couldn’t grow there; it was bare dirt and loose rocks. He skidded and slid more than he walked, and it was all he could do to keep her in his arms. If he dropped her, she’d tumble and fall onto a bed of jumbled stones at the bottom of the gulch. I won’t drop her. But his body protested every movement now, his muscles seizing and spasming mutinously.
I won’t drop you.
He reached the bottom and stepped quickly but carefully from rock to rock, working his way ever north. If the trio had seen him, they would likely know where he was going and try to cut him off further along. Still, he had no choice. He couldn’t go south; that only lead to the resort and now that he’d stolen Sophie back, they would know he was there and they would be looking for him. He felt like a fish in a net, slowly being drawn out of the water.
But he wouldn’t give up, not yet.
The gulch emptied into a bowl-shaped meadow of flowers and golden grass. Halfway through it, he came upon a narrow, almost imperceptible path, likely left over from the resort’s tourist days, some sort of nature trail. It led northeast, and he followed it.
Half a mile on, his legs gave out. He dropped to his knees and nearly dropped Sophie, but at the last minute managed to turn himself over so he fell onto his back with her on top of him. For a moment he lay there, gasping for air, his vision swirling with black spots. He was dehydrated, hungry, exhausted, and ready to give up.
Sophie stirred, her hand pawing vaguely at his chest. Her eyes remained shut, but a long, high whimper slipped from her lips, a pitiful, animalistic sound. He winced and sat up, holding the back of her head with his hand.
“Sophie? Hey. Hey, look here. C’mon, just open your eyes.”
“Over here!”
His head whipped up; it wasn’t Sophie who’d spoken. She murmured wordlessly, but was still unconscious. Across the meadow, Jim saw them—and they saw him.
He was up and running before he even had a chance to wonder where he’d found the strength. Instead of carrying her in his arms, he had Sophie draped over his shoulder—not a comfortable position for either of them, but at least this way he could run a bit faster. Not faster than the ones pursuing them, however.
A quiet, exhausted voice in the back of his mind whispered, You could just stop, you know. They don’t have guns— they might be here to help you.
But Jim’s instincts told him otherwise. He actively ignored the fact that it had been his instincts, more often than not, that got him in trouble.
He pressed on, not bothering to turn from the path to hide. They were too close now. He was fairly certain he couldn’t outrun them, either, but he was too stubborn to give up. Trust all my bad points to come up at once, he thought. If things go wrong out here, I have only myself to blame. But who was he kidding? Things have gone about as wrong as they can go.
Or maybe not.
The trail led directly into a steep ravine, its sides sheer rock faces to which only the most obdurate pines clung with spiderlike roots. An old rope bridge spanned the thirty-yard opening, and at the bottom of the ravine he could see a narrow but stony stream, about forty feet down. A fall at that height would more than likely break his neck.
He turned to see that he was trapped. The girl led the group, a thin smile slitting her face. Her curls bounced in the perpetual wind, giving her a Medusa-like quality.
“Hello,” she said lightly. “I’m Mary. This is Jay,” she threw a thumb toward a boy with close-shaven brown hair, and then at the red-head, “and this is Wyatt.”
“What do you want?” He took a step back, nearly stumbling when his foot came down on the edge of the cliff.
She scuffed a rock with her shoe. “Oh. You know. Just wanted to . . . chat.”
He narrowed his eyes, glanced at Jay and Wyatt. They stared back with twin looks of amusement.
“Lovely,” Jim said tonelessly. “But I really haven’t got the time.”
“The girl.” Mary jerked her chin at Sophie. “What do you want with her?”
“Who, her?” He shrugged, then winced as the movement made Sophie’s head knock against his back. “We’re running away together. Gonna get married, buy a beach house, have a whole bunch of kids. So if you don’t mind, I’m gonna go— preacher’s waiting for us.”
“Ha ha.” It was a statement, not a laugh, and unlike her friends, Mary didn’t look the least bit amused. “We were to make sure you get a proper welcome.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. “Sweet of you. Really. But we’re all good here, so just run on home, why don’t you?”
“You should stay a while. We love guests, don’t we, boys? But it’s so hard to make new friends out here, in the middle of nowhere.”
She was inching closer with every word, and Jim noticed each step. He felt behind him with his left foot, managing to get it onto the first rickety slat of the bridge.
“Next time, maybe,” he said, maintaining a neutral evenness to his tone that might have won him a small fortune in a poker match. “I have a knack for finding myself in crap situations. I’m bound to turn up again.”
He shifted his full weight onto the bridge. It swayed beneath him, but he kept his eyes locked on Mary. She’d noticed the movement, and for a moment they locked gazes, each waiting for the other to make a move. Every muscle in Jim’s body tensed, and she looked like a coiled cat about to spring at the moment the mouse twitched a whisker.
But it was Jay who made the first move, taking them both by surprise. “Get him!” he yelled.
Jim spun, nearly losing his hold on Sophie, and awkwardly crow-hopped over the bridge, his feet moving faster than his mind, dancing over gaps where the slats had rotted away, his free hand clutching the rope rail while the other kept a desperate grip on his limp burden. The bridge shook and swayed like a dinghy at sea during a storm, and his stomach lurched with it.
They were coming after him, he knew. He could tell it from the way the bridge began to spasm beneath him. He heard a shocked cry and a snap of wood; one of the slats must have given way under them. With a vicious surge of satisfaction, he continued doggedly on. Had the bridge only been thirty yards across? It seemed to expand threefold, stretching an infinite length ahead. Sweat poured down his neck and trickled over his shoulder blades, as much from nerves as from the heat and exertion. He was surprised, from his dehydrated state, that he had anything left to sweat out.
At last, he reached the end of the bridge, but a long gap of open space was between him and solid ground. He glanced back; the trio were careening across the slats with wild looks in their eyes, but they were progressing no faster than he had. He turned back around, sucked in a deep swallow of salty air, and leaped.
He landed awkwardly, losing his grip on Sophie. She flew out of his arms and rolled across the ground to rest in a thicket of ferns.
There wasn’t time to see if she was okay. He turned back to the bridge and began wrestling with the knots that held the rope in place around metal poles staked into the rock. The knots were practically congealed with time and wear, impossible to undo. So instead, he lifted a rock the size of his head and, with a grunt of effort, heaved it at the last few slats of wood. It crashed through them, widening the gap to an insurmountable distance, even if they took a running start. Any attempt to leap it, and they would drop into the ravine.
Mary froze, as did Jay and Wyatt behind her. Jim gripped the tops of the metal poles in either hand and flashed them a weary grin. “Oh, did I do that? Gosh, sorry. My dad always did say I had a knack for wrecking things.” Like his marriage.
Mary glared at him, her curls snapping like vipers, her grip on the ropes so tight her knuckles were the color of paper. “There are other ways around, you know. We know every inch of this island. You can run, but we’ll still catch you.”
He tossed her a sarcastic salute. “Challenge accepted, sweetheart. I’m a pretty slippery guy.”
Without waiting to hear her response, he gathered Sophie into his arms and charged off into the trees, moving with reckless abandon, not even bothering to steer himself. If he came across a bush, he bowled right through it. It was more from luck than skill that he avoided running headfirst into any trees.
At last, impossibly it seemed, he broke of the tangle of palms and pines and shrubs and onto the shore. He could even see his plane, bobbing faithfully across the channel, waiting for him. His feet turned to lead; he churned a short distance down the beach, then fell to his knees. He crawled a few feet before his strength left him completely, and then he only barely managed to set Sophie down before he faceplanted into the sand.
After a moment, when he finally couldn’t hold his breath any longer, he rolled over and panted for air. His eyes were shut against the sun, and for a moment, he simply reveled in the fact that he was alive. And lying down. His body felt as though the bones had been sucked out of him, leaving him in a viscous state, like a puddle of jelly.
It seemed an eternity later, though in fact it was just a minute, that he opened his eyes and turned his head to look at Sophie.
Her eyes were open, and she was staring directly back at him.