“Catch him!” someone shouted, so close to Jim that he flinched and nearly hurtled down the stairs. But it wasn’t him they meant; he looked up and saw a blond-haired boy his own age—another Vitro, perhaps—standing on the edge of the cliff. The boy was dressed in a thin white gown that was too small for his nearly six-foot frame. He looked ridiculous, but Jim found no humor in the way the boy’s vacant eyes rolled disinterestedly over Jim and on to the rocks below.
What’s he doing? Jim wondered.
The boy leaned slightly forward, shifting his weight from his heels to his toes.
“Grab him!” a voice screamed.
A hand reached out and made a grab for the boy’s neck, but it was too late. He didn’t jump, didn’t shout, just fell forward. Jim had to press himself as flat as he could to avoid colliding with him. He nearly reached out to try to catch the boy, but he wasn’t quick enough.
The boy’s gown fluttered around him as he fell, and to Jim it seemed he was dead before he even hit the rocks. He didn’t scream or wave his arms or even look afraid; he just fell as if he were empty, didn’t care, had no sense of self-preservation whatsoever. The crunch his body made as it slammed into the rocks made Jim’s blood curdle.
His stomach heaving, Jim forced himself to stay utterly still as a doctor looked over the edge above him, down at the boy’s still, pale form, at his arms and head twisted into unnatural angles. Bile rose in Jim’s throat, but he dared not move or the doctor would spot him. The only thing concealing him was shadow, and if the doctor shifted his eyes even an inch lower, he would see Jim. Then, all it would take was a kick, and the doctor could send him hurtling to join the broken Vitro below.
“He’s gone,” the doctor called, and he turned away in a hurry. “There goes another! Quickly, someone—stop her!” His footsteps pounded off, out of Jim’s hearing.
Jim let out a soft, relieved sigh. His heart was turning somersaults in his chest, and he knew if he stopped to think about what he’d just seen he’d be sick, so he turned his mind to what lay ahead, and not below.
He chanced a quick look over the edge of the cliff. There were Vitros everywhere, all of them dressed in white gowns. They wandered with the same awkward clumsiness Lux had had when she first woke, as if they couldn’t tell foot from hand and knee from elbow. They looked like broken robots shuffling around in the grass, or very ineffective, disinterested zombies. And all of them were trying to head for the edge of the cliff. The doctors rushed around in a fervor, but all the guards must have still been out scouting for Jim and Sophie, because they were outnumbered by the Vitros. Jim watched as one by one, the Vitros reached the cliff and tried to throw themselves off of it, with the doctors hastening to pull them back in time. They were trying to herd the Vitros into the building, but every time they did, another made it to the cliff. It was like trying to dig a hole in the sand; the more they grabbed, more broke free.
Most of the activity seemed to be off to his right, where the floodlights were concentrated. To the left, the grass was more shadowy. He had a sudden inspiration—sneak inside, use the Vitros’ distraction as an opportunity to find a telephone, and call his dad or the police or the U.S. Navy.
He waited until he was certain everyone’s attention was averted from his general area, then slithered over the edge into the grass and took off at an awkward run, bent double in an attempt to make himself less recognizable. Maybe if someone did see him, they would mistake him for another Vitro.
He reached a lone palm between the cliff and the building and slipped behind it, heart hammering. A cautious look around the trunk revealed that he’d not been spotted. He slumped a little, relieved; the dash to the building would be easier, for the darkness was thicker ahead of him.
On the count of three. His legs tensed, ready to spring out like a runner from the line. One, two—
He stopped as a Vitro meandered past him, a slim Asian girl, with prim features and a dark curtain of hair that hung to her waist. She stumbled by as if sleepwalking. Jim looked around to see if someone was chasing her, but it seemed as if she’d wandered away from the pack and no one had noticed.
Conflicted, Jim looked again at the building. He was so close—and he could even see an open door on the side of the atrium, left ajar in some doctor’s haste, no doubt. He could be inside in seconds without being seen.
He whipped his head around to look at the girl. She walked in a clumsy, wavering line, but she was undoubtedly heading for the edge of the cliff. With her white gown and long hair fluttering in the wind, she looked like a broken, forlorn ghost.
Ah, screw it. He sprinted after the girl.
She reached the edge before he could reach her.
“No!” he yelled. “Stop!”
She teetered, leaned forward, her arms spread wide, her hair billowing behind her like a dark cloak.
“Stop!” Jim lunged at her, wrapped both arms around her waist, and for a moment they both swayed dangerously on the tip of the cliff; his heels were on the grass but his toes hung over empty space. His heart shot up his throat, and for a moment, all of time froze around him, as if the world were waiting breathlessly to see if they would fall. He could have sworn this was the exact spot in which the guards had nearly executed him.
With one last effort, Jim threw his weight backward and crashed to the ground, landing hard with the girl’s head knocking against his chest, driving the breath from his lungs. Wheezing, he blinked up at the stars and tried to steady his wheeling vision, but then the girl lunged upward—surprisingly spry—and crawled toward the cliff on her hands and knees.
“No . . . you . . . don’t!” Jim grabbed her ankle and dragged her roughly backward. “I’m trying to save your life!”
He sensed movement to his right; another Vitro, this one a skinny boy with a shaggy Afro, was within inches of plunging to his death. Jim threw out his free hand and grabbed the boy’s calf. The Vitro looked down, blinked as if unsure what to make of Jim’s hand, then tugged his leg in an attempt to break free.
With one struggling Vitro in each hand, Jim wriggled backward, dragging them both with him. “Hey!” he yelled. “A little help over here!”
He managed to wrap his arm around the girl’s waist, and he held her tightly and struggled for a better grip on the boy. He reached up, yanked the hem of the boy’s hospital gown, and slammed him onto the ground. Under other circumstances he might have felt guilty for hurting them, but at the moment he was burning with anger. He’d been shot at, shoved around, almost blown to bits, nearly drowned, nearly lost at sea, and now he was giving up his last chance at escaping to save the lives of two miserable kids who didn’t want his help in the first place. He cursed at them beneath his breath and held on doggedly, despite their struggles. The girl waved her arms as if they were swords, and she caught him hard across his nose.
Suddenly the doctors were there, two of them. They grabbed the Vitros and held them tight, whispering soothingly to them though it seemed to do zero good.
Jim scrambled up, and his eyes darted to the trees behind the building; he could make a run for it—but where would he go?
He never got to find out, because Strauss ran toward them with a pistol in her hand.
“On your knees!” she shouted to Jim. “Now!”
THIRTY
SOPHIE
Crack!
The gunshot echoed around the room.
Nicholas yelped as the wand flew out of his hand and crashed against the far wall, its metal plate severely dented by the bullet Moira Crue had fired at it. She stood framed in the doorway, her gun leveled at Nicholas.
Sophie bolted upright and started to call out Mom—but then she remembered, and the word stuck in her throat.
“Back away, Nicky,” said Moira. “Now.”
He didn’t move. His face hardly registered surprise as he said, “Did you like my little present?”
“Do you realize what you’ve done?” Moira said softly, her eyes fixed on Nicholas as if he were a snake about to strike. “Nicky, they won’t forgive you. They won’t tolerate you. You’ve given Strauss and Corpus every reason to end you.”
He shrugged. “We’ll see. I’ve got a few more cards to play.”
Moira looked sorrowful. “No. I’m afraid this ends now. You’ve gone too far, Nicky. Why did you do it? Everything was going so well. You had a life here, which is more than you would ever have had without this place.”
“Oh, don’t lie, Moira,” he snarled. “You hate me. You all do. Since the day I was born all I have been to you is a failure, a reminder that you’re not God.”
“That’s not true.” She lowered the gun slowly, straightening with a gentle sigh. “We raised you kids as if you were our own.”
Sophie sat frozen on the bench, her ears roaring. She watched Moira through hard eyes.
“Sophie,” Moira said, walking toward her but keeping an eye on Nicholas. She held out her free hand. “Are you all right? Your shoulder—”
“Don’t—” Her voice came out as a barely audible rasp. “Don’t touch me.”
Moira drew back, her eyes widening. “What did he tell you?”
“The truth,” Nicholas interrupted, a bit sulkily. “Which is more than you ever told her.”
“We’ll talk,” Moira said to Sophie. “When this is all over, we’ll talk about this.”
Sophie said nothing. She stared at the wall behind Moira , eyes wide and unblinking, refusing to look at the woman who had let her live a lie for her entire life.
“What are you trying to do, Nicky? Are you trying to imprint her?”
“She’s a Vitro.” He shrugged and leaned against the bench, inspected his nails. “Don’t you want her to live up to her full potential?”
“Yes, Dr. Crue, I’m a Vitro. Didn’t you hear?” Sophie’s voice was black and bitter. She still didn’t look Moira, but rather at the spot just over her shoulder. She wasn’t sure she could look her in the eye without crumbling.
“Nicholas, get out of here. Now. The Vitros are imprinted on you—you have to stop them. What you did . . .” She stopped, then swallowed. “This is evil, Nicholas, even for you. You went too far. Get your butt up there and help the doctors.”
He gave her an elaborate bow, then sidled out of the room. Then Moira turned to Sophie.
“No, Sophie, I’m not your mother,” Moira replied, looking impatient, as if she couldn’t be bothered to have this conversation right now. “I don’t even know who your mother is, though I’m sure we could track down her information in our records.”
“The thing you told me about Lux, about her almost dying and your making her a Vitro to save her—that was a lie. You lied through your teeth. All my life! You lied that you were my mother!”
“Yes. Yes, I did, but I had to—I needed you to believe me. Lux is your sister, because eighteen years ago we split a zygote into two embryos and thus created a pair of identical twins that would become you girls. That’s what all the Vitros are—leftover clusters of potential, frozen embryos locked in freezers in the basements of fertility clinics all over the world. We take them because no one else wants them, and we put them in ectogenetic tanks and raise them. We give them life when they had no hope of life, Sophie—is that wrong? If it wasn’t for me you’d still be nothing but a microscopic, frozen bunch of cells.”
“It’s not you I’ve been trying to get to all my life,” Sophie whispered, more to herself than to Moira. “It’s this island. This is my home. This is where I was born.”
“Nine months after we thawed you out,” said Moira. “You’re a Vitro, yes. The very first Vitro. Older than Nicholas by a week and a half. You’re a control, Sophie.”
Sophie held up a hand, shaking. “Wait. A control? Not the control?”
Moira fingered the buttons on her coat, her eyes slightly averted. “There are ten of them, ten sets of identical twins created in glass vials. Half of them are here, and the other half are out in the world, living normal lives. You were the first. I suspect Nicky’s known about you for years, though he hid his knowledge from me—but he can’t have known about the others. Their records are kept in another facility in . . . well, that doesn’t matter.”
Sophie fell silent a moment, imagining nine others like herself, all ignorant of their origins, living lives built on lies. “Did I ever know them? Were they on Guam too?” she asked softly.
“No. They were all placed in homes through private adoptions, long ago. We’ve monitored them in secret, at a distance. They have no inkling Corpus even exists, and they never will.”
Sophie forced herself to meet Moira’s eyes. “Then why not me? Why am I different?”
“You weren’t . . . you weren’t supposed to be.” A shade of weariness fell over Moira’s features, dragging the corners of her mouth down and settling on her brow in the form of a deep crease between her eyes. “You were to be adopted out like the others. But your father and I . . . well, Foster and I, we were young and we’d always thought we didn’t want children. But we saw you, just a baby, just a tiny, blue-eyed baby with a smile that split our hearts, and we . . . we bent the rules a bit.”
When she felt the corners of her eyes begin to sting, Sophie stretched them wide open, refusing to cry.
Moira went on. “We couldn’t keep them all, of course—all those baby Controls, with their twins still encased in glass. But you captivated us from the start. You must believe me. Choosing you, convincing Corpus to let us have you—it had nothing to do with the project or with our research. It was pure enchantment. We adored you from the start, don’t you see? We both did. We fell in love with you, darling, and we couldn’t stop ourselves.” Her voice gained momentum, as if tumbling downhill, her words getting away from her in a rush. “We took you and raised you as our own, and I have never regretted a moment of that.”
Sophie sucked in a breath and held it, felt it burning in her lungs as she glared at Moira. “Well, obviously that’s not true.”
Moira bit her lip, looked down at the floor. “Our separation had nothing to do with you. Nothing in the least. My greatest regret in life is letting you go—but don’t you see? It had to happen. You couldn’t have stayed in Guam. You were too close. Sooner or later you’d make your way here, and all the work we put into shielding you from this place would have gone to ruin. Though,” she laughed bitterly, “here we are, I suppose, so what good did it do? But what came between your father and I had nothing to do with you. There was so much more to it.”
“Do I have a chip?” Sophie asked, her voice hollow.
“No, of course not.”
“But . . . it beeped. That wand thing.”
“Nicholas was trying to intimidate you, make you fear him. He’s a psychopath.”
“Yes,” said Sophie, going monotone. “So I’ve heard.” He killed Jim. He killed Jim. The words chased themselves around her head, making her dizzy. It still didn’t feel real.
“His stunt with the wand . . . It’s a classic psychopathic move, a kind of display of power. Put it out of your mind. The only abnormal thing about you is that you were created in a glass box. Well. That, and your remarkable aptitude for stubbornness.” She sighed. “As for the Controls. Having never raised a fetus through ectogenesis—artificial gestation, being born from a machine instead of a mother—we needed to be able to measure ectogenic children uninfluenced by a chip against those who were. None of you have chips.”
“Proper scientific method, eh? Never change more than one variable at a time. You needed me and the other Controls to live a normal life—huh, well, as normal as could be, considering. So you posed as my mother. Watched me grow up. Measured me, as you say. Go on, then. Give it to me straight. No more lies.”
Moira exhaled slowly, then nodded. “Your father may have left the project here
, but no one can ever fully escape Corpus. He’s held up his end, keeping me updated on you. Written reports, sound files, videos. I’ve watched you grow up, Sophie, even after you moved to the States. You are a remarkable young woman. So brilliant, so motivated, so strong.”
You think you’re better than us, but you’re not. You’re not as special as you think, Sophie Crue. Nicholas’s laughter pierced her thoughts, and her skin prickled as if he were standing right behind her. The very first Vitro. And her own so-called father, spying on her for Corpus, never telling her the full truth. She had been able to forgive him for not telling her the truth about Skin Island—but could she forgive him for not telling her the truth about herself? She didn’t know. She needed time, time to think, to evaluate from this new perspective. She wanted to go back, pull out scrapbooks, memories, home videos, to review every moment of her past with clear eyes, unsullied by the lies that had tainted her years. Who am I really? What has my life truly meant? She could never look back at her days spent running wild on the beaches with Jim the same way. Her rough acclimation to New England, the exotic vacations around the world with Moira, every conversation, every look, every moment with her father was different now, with new meanings and undercurrents brought to light that she’d never even suspected were there.
She wasn’t even a Crue. She was just Sophie. Sophie Nothing.
She let out a long, slow breath as a peculiar feeling came over her: buoyant, exhilarating lightness, as if she’d swallowed a lungful of helium. She felt as though a thousand-pound pack had been lifted from her shoulders, and she could suddenly fly.