Eve decided to rewrite the letter she had started—slowly, parceling out the words a few at a time, as long as her aching fingers could stand it. She told her parents everything. Where she had been, where she was headed. By the time they got it, she’d be heading home.
She hoped.
Love, Eve she wrote, and then carefully inserted the letter into an envelope and sealed it.
As the train pulled into Huddleston Falls, Eve pressed her nose to the window. Darkness had swallowed up the suburban countryside, leaving a cozy tapestry of lights. The station was a fluorescent beacon in the midst of town. Several weary commuters stood at the platform, catching the end of evening rush hour.
No clone in sight.
Stepping off the train, Eve clutched the metal railing. Her ankles were screaming at her. She gazed up and down, watching people walk briskly to waiting cars. She dropped her letter into a mailbox near the newspaper vending machines.
And then she saw her.
A girl, wrapped in a thick, hooded down parka, emerging from a station door farther down the platform. She was gazing in the opposite direction. Eve couldn’t make out her features in the shadow of the hood, but the height was exactly Eve’s.
“Danielle?” she called out.
The girl spun around. “Eve?”
Eve hobbled toward her, gritting her teeth with the pain. “I am so glad to see you! I saw Holly. She told me all about—?
She stopped.
Blue eyes.
Blond hair.
“Oh. Sorry,” Eve said. “I thought you were…”
“Unbelievable,” the girl said, staring at Eve with wonder. “It’s as if I’m looking at her.”
Eve nodded. “So…you must be Danielle’s…”
“Older sister. Martina.”
Eve sat on a bench. She was short of breath. “Well, I guess…you know what happened…with the clones and all. And Dr. Black.”
“Yes, but we had no idea he’d made another one—after Danielle.” Smiling, Martina sat next to Eve. “Guess he still had some leftover genes.”
“You have no idea how frustrating it’s been—well, I guess you do, I mean, Danielle has been through this, but—oh, I am so relieved, Martina—my head hurts, my neck is killing me—?
“I’ll take you to our house. The car’s in the lot.”
Martina helped Eve up. Arm in arm, they walked toward the end of the platform.
“I can’t wait to meet Danielle,” Eve said. “I think it’s so weird to have, like, an identical copy of myself. Alive.”
Martina turned. Her smile had vanished.
Eve’s heart stopped.
“You thought…” Martina’s voice trailed off.
“She’s not?” Eve asked.
Martina shook her head. “About a year ago.”
And Eve suddenly realized whose voice she’d heard on that answering machine.
Martina’s.
Not Danielle’s.
WATCHERS
Case File: 0918
Name: Danielle Forbes
Age: 14
First contact: 39:11:27
DECEASED.
12
“DON’T…MAKE…A SOUND,” Martina whispered.
She and Eve tiptoed through the first floor of the Forbes house. A TV laugh track brayed from a room near the stairs.
“Hi!” Martina called out cheerfully.
Two absent-sounding hellos echoed from the den.
Martina gestured frantically for Eve to go up.
The first step was like climbing a fence. Eve’s calf muscles felt as if they’d rip. Her ankles wobbled. Her hips were on fire.
“Hurry!” Martina whispered.
“Help me!” Eve whispered back.
Martina took her arm. Eve leaned on her and painfully stepped upward.
“This happened to Danielle, too,” Martina said. “Some kind of clone disease, huh?”
“It’s happening to other kids across the country. Not just us clones.”
Eve grimaced. She wasn’t sure what hurt more, the physical pain or the despair.
She’s dead. She had my symptoms. She never found Dr. Black.
She was my last lead.
But Martina had insisted they come home. Look at Danielle’s stuff. Try to continue the search.
Martina had hope. Which was a good thing.
She would have to have enough for two.
Eve was exhausted when she reached the top of the stairs. “I…have to lie down,” she said.
Straight ahead was an open door into what must have been Martina’s bedroom. It looked neat but lived-in.
Martina was quietly opening a door to the left, flicking on a light switch.
The room was empty of furniture. Musty-smelling. Its wood-plank floor was covered with a thin coat of dust.
“This was Danielle’s room.” Martina’s whisper echoed faintly against the bare walls as she closed the door behind them and walked toward a closet. “Mom and Dad wanted to get rid of all visual reminders. They’re still so torn up. Which is why they mustn’t see you. Anyway, they stored some of Danielle’s stuff in here, the sentimental things they couldn’t bear to throw out. They would kill me if they knew I was doing this.”
“Don’t they know about the clones?”
Martina pulled open the closet door. She began rummaging around a pile of cardboard boxes inside. “Danielle managed to track Caroline down, not long before the end. She told Mom and Dad, and they were pretty freaked out.”
“How about Bryann and Alexis?”
“Who?”
“The other clones. Did Danielle know about them, too?”
Martina was carrying out a box now, setting it on the floor. “No. But she suspected there were others. Here—this is what I was looking for.”
She pushed aside an old bike chain. Under it was a small, battered spiral notebook. She began flipping through it. “Danielle had this with her on the bus when she died.”
“She died on a bus?”
Martina nodded. “She was looking for Dr. Black. By that time she was really sick. Mom and Dad wouldn’t allow her to go, so she snuck out.”
She held out the notebook, open. Eve took it and read:
“She never made it, huh?” Eve said.
Martina shook her head. “Mom and Dad are still devastated. And angry. And hurt. They couldn’t be with her. They couldn’t help. She died all alone. And in such pain.”
A sharp twinge shot through Eve.
And this is what she felt like. A body falling apart.
“You have to find him,” Martina said. “You don’t have much time—?
She stopped abruptly, cut off by the sound of thumping footsteps.
Heading up the stairs.
“Martina?” Mr. Forbes’s voice. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Four more. Today.
Deceased.
Two in North America—
Please. Later.
13
“GO!” MARTINA PUSHED.
Eve dived.
She landed on the closet floor with a soft thud. Martina shut the door behind her.
Pain.
Knifelike, searing pain. As if her brain had been smashed out of her ears.
Don’t scream.
Bite. Tongue.
Voices. Angry. Outside the door, arguing.
A metallic clank.
“…only a bike chain…” Martina’s words were becoming clear. “I need it, and Danielle would have wanted me to—?
“That’s not the point,” her dad interrupted. “These things are all we have of your sister. We’ve asked you to leave them alone until we could sort them out.”
“Sorry, Dad.”
“Now, clean up and come downstairs. And next time you need something, ask us first.”
Eve heard the bedroom door close. Footsteps down the stairs.
Then, silence.
The closet door opened. Martina poked her head in. “Are you okay?”
r />
“I’ve been better.”
“Anyway, you see why they can’t meet you? They’re still so attached. They would have heart attacks if they—?
“Martina,” Eve interrupted, “we…have to…hurry.”
Martina felt her forehead. “You’re feverish.”
“Jumping in the closet—I thought I broke my hip.”
“That’s not good.”
“I know it’s not. What am I going to do?”
“We,” Martina replied. “I’m with you, Eve. Just hang in there. Mom and Dad’ll be going to bed after the news. That’s about ten minutes. We’ll wait for them to fall asleep. Another twenty minutes.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll think of something. Just sit back and rest. And don’t worry.”
With that, she shut the door.
Eeeeeee…eeeeeee…
The stairway floorboards creaked beneath their feet.
As they reached bottom and tiptoed through the kitchen, Eve glanced at the stove clock.
12:07 A.M.
Martina pulled open the door of the attached garage.
“Are you sure this is all right?” Eve whispered.
“I’ve been to St. Louis a million times,” Martina replied, unlocking the family car doors.
“Your parents—aren’t they going to kill you for doing this?”
Martina gently helped Eve into the passenger seat. “Eve, I didn’t believe my sister when she told me about the clones. That’s why she snuck off alone—because no one took her seriously. I’m not going to let that happen again.”
Martina climbed into the car and backed it into the street. Then she took off, steering her way through the darkened town.
Within moments they were speeding along the freeway. Eve gazed listlessly out the window at the sleepy neighboring villages. The slanted roofs seemed to dance by, frosted by the light of the full moon. An occasional glowing window winked at her.
People still up. Watching a movie. Reading. Worrying.
She would change places with any of them in a minute.
“Why would he do it, Martina?” Eve asked. “Why the phony adoption agency?”
Martina shrugged. “To keep the clones a secret, I guess. So no one could trace him. Cloning is controversial. People think it’s wrong. Like messing with nature.”
“But if he’s afraid of being discovered, then why four of us? Why not stop at one?”
“Why don’t people stop at one atom bomb? Or one thousand? Once they make it, they have to do it again and again. Improving it.”
“How did he improve us? We’re all defective. We all die.”
Martina sighed. “Danielle thought he gave the gene to all of you. On purpose.”
“Why?”
“To observe you, then get you out of the way before you were old enough to figure out what happened. Sick, isn’t it?”
No. Not sick.
Worse than that.
Murder.
Eve gazed grimly back out the window.
That’s what I am—not just a scientific curiosity.
Worse than that. Worse than a nonperson.
A death experiment.
The wintry silence was broken only by the engine’s hum as Martina exited the freeway. She steered grimly through the outskirts of St. Louis, reading off the street signs.
Eve navigated the way to Laramie Drive, a long boulevard of commercial buildings.
“Slow down,” Eve said, reading off Danielle’s journal. “We need number one-seven-four-nine.”
Martina slowed down. “Sixteen ninety-seven…” she read.
Eve squinted.
1727 was a Laundromat.
1731, a flower shop.
Then a huge parking lot.
The next building was the Trueman Bell Hospital.
Number 1765.
“We missed it!” Eve blurted out.
Martina slammed on the brakes. “I didn’t see it.”
“Neither did I. Martina circled around the block and slowly passed the buildings again. She glided to a stop in front of the parking lot. “It should be here. Between thirty-one and sixty-five!”
Eve stared at a sign that stretched over the entrance gate:
PUBLIC PARKING
BRAND-NEW, SECURE FACILITY
REASONABLE RATES
“It must have been here,” Eve remarked. “They tore it down. For parking.”
“Okay. Okay. Don’t panic,” Martina said. “They didn’t tear down Dr. Black with it. We can ask at the hospital. Someone will know what happened.”
She pulled to a stop at the curb, climbed out, and began running toward the hospital entrance.
Eve squeezed the door handle. Her hands felt as if they’d burst into flames. “Martina!”
The door flew open. Eve swung her hips, but her legs stayed in the car.
She fell, missing the curb only because Martina caught her.
“My joints…” Eve said through gritted teeth.
“Hang on,” Martina urged, lifting Eve to her feet. “It’s not far.”
Arthritis.
Eve thought of her grandmother. The way she used to totter around before she was shut up in the nursing home. The way she always complained about the pain.
This shouldn’t be happening to me!
Arm in arm, she and Martina walked up the ramp, through the sliding doors, and into the front lobby.
A man eyed them curiously from behind a reception desk.
“Dr. Black, please,” Martina called out.
The man punched the name into a computer and shook his head. “No one by that name here.”
“He used to be at the address next door,” Eve insisted.
“Well, he’s not here now,” the man replied.
“Well, give us somebody who would know him,” Martina snapped.
The man shot her a dirty look, then spoke into an intercom: “Paging Dr. Rudin. Front desk.”
Eve’s ankle gave out. She grabbed Martina, nearly pulling her to the floor. “Owwwww…”
Cold. Hot. Freezing. HOT.
Eve’s body was short-circuiting. She pointed frantically to the seats near the wall.
By the time Martina settled her in, a crisply dressed, youngish woman with dark hair and glasses was walking toward them. “I’m Dr. Rudin, the night administrator. Can I help you?”
“Dr. Black!” Eve’s throat was burning now. The words hurt.
“Excuse me?” Dr. Rudin said.
“We know his old address—seventeen forty-nine—but the building’s not there,” Martina explained. “The guy behind the desk said you’d know him.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Black!”
“Dr. Black is no longer with us. But if you’ll tell me what’s wrong, I can direct you to any number of specialists—?
“You don’t understand!” Martina said. “Look. I have a car. You tell me where Dr. Black is, and we’re there. If he’s in Bermuda, we’re on the next plane. Just tell us.”
Dr. Rudin put her hand gently on Martina’s shoulder. “What I’m trying to say is, you can’t see him. No one can.”
Eve knew what was coming next. It was a pattern.
Don’t say it.
Just don’t.
“Dr. Black,” the administrator went on, “passed away about six years ago.”
Her.
Rudin.
The file is linked.
She was there. At the beginning.
Does the girl remember?
How could she?
14
DEAD.
Alexis, Bryann, Caroline, Danielle. And now Dr. Black.
“Did you know him?” Martina asked.
Dr. Rudin nodded. “No one did, really. I worked with him when I was just starting out, as an intern.”
The experiment is over.
Well, almost.
Just one more lab rat to go.
Congratulations, Dr. Black.
Eve
slumped into her seat.
But Martina was pressing on, asking questions.
“…He spent most of his time at home,” Dr. Rudin was saying, “especially after the death of his two daughters. He had a lab there, and he loved doing research.”
Two daughters?
Eve thought back to Danielle’s news clippings.
There was only one daughter. Laura…“died three years ago under circumstances he did not specify.”
“What happened to the stuff in his lab?” Martina asked.
Dr. Rudin shrugged. “Thrown out, I imagine. Why do you ask? Are you girls related to him?”
“Well, no, not exactly.” Martina shot Eve a look.
It’s over.
Go home.
Be with your family. Don’t die alone, like Danielle.
“Let’s just go, Martina,” Eve said.
She suddenly felt a hand on her forehead.
“You’re feverish,” Dr. Rudin said. “Come with me.”
“No,” Eve protested. “Dr. Rudin, I—I have something you can’t cure.”
Dr. Rudin smiled. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
“It’s the telomere thing!” Martina blurted out. “That weird disease, where the body ages? Have you heard of it?”
“Yes,” Dr. Rudin said, giving Eve a questioning look. “But there’s no reliable diagnosis—?
“Eve was given the disease, Dr. Rudin,” Martina said. “She’s a clone. I know it sounds ridiculous, but there were four of them. Dr. Black created them.”
Dr. Rudin narrowed her eyes at Eve. “What did you say your name was?”
“Eve Hardy. Look, I just need to get home—?
“Eve…” Dr. Rudin sat. She reached out and swept back Eve’s hair, examining the back of her neck.
The birthmark.
“Oh my lord…” Dr. Rudin muttered.
“My sister had that mark, too!” Martina said. “Her name was Danielle.”
Dr. Rudin nodded. “I…I know.”
“You do?” Martina exclaimed. “How?”
“I was there right after you were born, Eve,” Dr. Rudin said softly. “Danielle, too. He said you were both left at the hospital doorstep, anonymously. You must be…fourteen.”
Eve nodded. No words. Please. Too much pain.
“Danielle died at this age,” Martina explained. “She was convinced Dr. Black was working on a cure for the disease.”