Sophie held her gaze as tears came into Moira’s eyes. Moira pressed the back of her hand to her lips and drew in a deep, shaky breath. She shook her head, lowering her gaze for a moment to the floor. Then, at last, Moira looked up and tipped her chin in the smallest indication of assent. “I can’t face her on my own—I don’t have the resources. For Strauss, it always comes down to numbers—costs and overhead and profit. Without financial backing, none of this matters. Sophie, it’s no use. I . . . I have to go. I’ve been down here far too long. I have to help the others.”
She reached out, awkward and shy, her eyes averted, and brushed her fingers along Sophie’s cheek. Sophie could feel her trembling; her skin burned where Moira touched her. Then her mother turned and fled out the door, her coat whipping behind her. It brushed a tray of clear glass vials on the counter and sent them spinning across the floor. Some of them rolled, bouncing and skittering into the shadows, but the rest shattered into a million glittering shards.
THIRTY-ONE
JIM
Jim dropped to his knees, slowly putting his hands behind his head. He wasn’t an idiot; he could tell when he’d been beaten. The Vitro girl made a clumsy dash for the cliff, but a silver-haired doctor snagged her before she could get three steps and held her tight.
He looked around and saw that all the Vitros had been rounded up. They were all sitting or lying on the grass, watched by a few doctors but relatively listless; they must have been sedated. Sure enough, the doctors slipped needles into the necks of the two Jim had saved, and in seconds, their eyes glazed over and they slumped to the ground.
“Where’s Dr. Crue?” Strauss asked.
The silver-haired doctor replied as she gently lowered the Vitro girl to the ground, “She went down to the vault, to see if there were any left.”
“Can someone please explain what the hell this is?”
“Someone woke them up. And, apparently, gave them one order—to march off the cliff.”
“Yes, obviously. But who?”
“It wasn’t any of us,” the doctor replied sharply.
“Someone give me some answers!”
“Can I buy a vowel?” Jim piped up before he could stop himself.
“You,” Strauss hissed, and she crossed the ground between them and pressed the barrel of her pistol against his forehead. She narrowed her eyes. “You did this, didn’t you?”
He did his best to look offended. “Uh . . . Kidnap your science project? Check. Steal your bulldozer? Check. But wake all those kids and tell them to jump to their deaths?” He shook his head. “What kind of sick bastard do you think I am? Oh, and speaking of sick bastards, has anyone seen Nicholas lately? Or how about Scary Mary? No? I didn’t think so. Maybe you should start questioning them.”
Strauss kept her eyes on him as she turned her head to shout to the doctors. “Where’s Nicholas? And all the other little psychopaths you keep as pets?”
Psychopaths? Well, Jim couldn’t say he was surprised. Of course they were psychopaths. Murderous teenagers, explosions, plane crashes, crazy women with guns, a girl who obeyed his every word—it seemed only a matter of time before psychopaths got thrown into the mix.
“I’ll go search for them,” said a tired-looking young doctor, and she sighed and headed into the building.
“Hey, buddy,” said Jim, in as reasonable a tone as he could muster with a gun pressed against his head. “You don’t have to kill me. I have money, lots of it—I can pay you. And I’ve got family that’ll notice, and they won’t give up looking for me. They’ll hire detectives and everything.” He wasn’t sure which was the bigger lie, but he was pulling out every card in his pocket, down to the jokers. If he could bluff his way out of this, he would, and the consequences be damned.
“Just stop talking,” said Strauss. She ran her free hand through her hair, and he realized she looked as exhausted as he felt. Well. Almost. He doubted she had been doing much leaping from exploding planes or swimming across half the Pacific. He felt as if he’d been taking part in an Olympic decathlon, one that involved running, swimming, jumping, dodging bullets, and carrying unconscious hundred-and-thirty pound girls up and down mountains.
Strauss had pulled a radio from her pocket and was calling the guards who were still out scouring the island, letting them know she had Jim. Then she paused, her finger hovering over the talk button. “The girl—Sophie—where is she? When you left she was with you.”
“She was hit by a bullet,” he said. “She’s dead.”
“You’re lying.”
“I am not. You people think I’m some kind of monster! Murdering your kids, lying to you.” He tried to look offended, but he ended up just grimacing. He told himself he needed to stop provoking her; he always seemed to react to trouble by piling more trouble on top of it.
“Michalski!” She snapped her fingers at a nearby doctor, a small man with round spectacles and a drastically receded hairline.
“Yes, Miss Strauss?” He jogged over and stood fidgeting nervously with his glasses.
“Have you questioned them?”
“Yes, Miss Strauss.”
“Well?”
“Ah.” He winced and scratched his scalp. “It would seem Nicholas woke them and had them imprint on him. Then he, ah, gave them one order.”
“To march off the cliff.”
“Yes, ah, yes ma’am,” Dr. Michalski mumbled to his shoes, as if he were the guilty one.
Strauss shut her eyes and pressed the gun to her forehead. Jim estimated the distance between him and the edge of the cliff; he might make it if—
Too late. Strauss opened her eyes and waved the gun at him. “Stand up,” she said. “Dr. Michalski. Dr. Laurent.” The woman holding the Vitro girl nodded and waited. “Tell everyone to take the Vitros inside.” She drew a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “I’m pulling the plug.”
“Victoria—” Dr. Laurent began, but Strauss spoke right over her.
“I thought this situation couldn’t be any more screwed up, but I was wrong. I told Moira years ago that Nicholas and the other failed Vitros should have been put aside, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“If you’ll just wait a few minutes,” Dr. Laurent said, her matronly face crinkling with distress, “I can get Moira. We can discuss—”
At that moment, Moira Crue burst onto the scene. “What’s the status here?” she demanded. “Victoria, have they all been rounded up?” She began counting the Vitros, her eyes flickering over Jim for a brief moment.
Jim started to call out to her, to ask if she’d seen Sophie or Lux, but at that moment Strauss set two guards on her. They took Moira by surprise, wrestling her to the ground before she had a chance to realize what was happening.
“Victoria!” Moira yelled. “What the hell?”
“No more discussion, Moira,” said Strauss primly. “No more excuses, no more empty promises. You are fired. You’re no longer in charge of so much as kitchen duty. I want you gone. You two,” she said to the guards, “take her inside and hold her until I’m ready to deal with her. Dr. Michalski, you’re in charge for now.”
“Ah.” He prodded at his glasses and looked as if he wanted to take a dive off the cliff.
Moira’s cries were muffled as the doors of the building swung shut behind her and the guards escorting her, and Jim lost sight of her as they dragged her away.
“Take them inside.” Strauss prodded the sedated Vitro girl with her foot, her expression a mingle of disgust and disappointment. “I want them put down. You do have a facility prepared for this, do you not?”
Dr. Laurent, who’d been staring in horror as Moira was manhandled off the scene, turned to Strauss and blanched. “That seems a rather hasty decision!”
“Hasty!” Strauss laughed, swinging her gun around in a way that had Jim twitching. “Hasty, Dr. Laurent? I think not. This place had one l
ast chance, one last shot at proving its worth. I’d hoped you would pull through—really, I did. But the risk is too great and the return too little. The Vitros are finished. They will be exterminated, and I want it done quickly. I’m supposed to be in South America by the end of the week, and I don’t plan on being delayed.”
She paused, looking around at the horrified faces of the doctors. “Well? Get to it!”
They snapped into action, passing word to the others. One by one, the doctors turned nauseated looks to Strauss, who thoroughly ignored them. She waved her gun at Jim.
“You. Get up.”
He rose warily, his throat dry. “Might be a bad time to bother you—but I was just wondering . . . what exactly do you mean by exterminate?”
“Exactly what you think I mean, young man. Now move.”
“Where to?”
“Inside,” she said acidly. “With the rest of them.”
“With the Vitros?” He tried to swallow, but his mouth felt packed with sand. “To—to be exterminated? Ah . . . I’d rather not, but thanks. Not my kind of party.”
“Move,” she said, and he jumped.
Prodded by her gun, which remained trained on the spot between his shoulder blades, Jim followed the gray-faced doctors and the groggy Vitros into the building. Each doctor had two Vitros in hand; they had to all but carry them, both because of the sedatives and because those Vitros still lucid enough to think were making vague, clumsy dashes for the door. Somehow the doctors kept them in check, and they made their way laboriously through the atrium and down a stairwell into the basement.
Jim’s skin prickled as they walked. He waited for an opportunity to escape, but none presented itself. This is so many kinds of bad . . .
Strauss was going to murder them all. That was the plain, short truth of it, and he could see no way out. At least Sophie isn’t here right now. But her chances of doing any better seemed slim.
Strauss was sending off some of the doctors now, telling them to round up the rest of the “failed” Vitros: Nicholas, Mary and company, and Lux. He wanted to say something to persuade them to stop, but he couldn’t think of what. He could only stand and watch helplessly as they departed.
He and the Vitros were shepherded down a long hall, past many closed doors, to the very last room. His scalp tingled as he passed through the doorway, and he knew exactly what this room was without having to ask.
It looked like a large community shower, akin to the ones in the gym locker rooms in his school back on Guam: tiled floor, a drain in the middle, and vents along the top of the wall. But there were no faucets, no towel racks, no benches. The room smelled of chemicals—had they used it before? He felt dizzy and sick to his stomach; he had to lean against the wall to keep from falling over.
Dr. Michalski stood in the doorway, his eyes averted, keeping the Vitros from wandering out. Most of them were too dazed by the sedatives to make an escape attempt and slouched against the wall or sat on the floor. The rest wandered around, disoriented perhaps, their eyes a little wild. He wondered what they’d do if they were kept from fulfilling Nicholas’s command indefinitely. Go mad? Forget what he’d told them?
But who am I kidding? We’re not going to find out, are we?
Strauss stood further off down the hall, muttering into her radio. Jim sidled up to the door and summed Dr. Michalski up.
“Hey,” he whispered, and the doctor looked up, startled. Maybe he’d forgotten Jim was among the Vitros and hadn’t expected any of them to realize what was going on and fight back. “You aren’t honestly going to let her do this, are you?” he asked.
“Stay back,” Dr. Michalski said, his voice cracking. He glanced at Strauss, and Jim took the hint.
“Easy, man. You don’t need to bother her. Just listen, will you?” He took a step closer, until he was looking down at the nervous doctor, who was several inches shorter than him. “This is mass murder, Doctor. I know you realize that. You look like a smart guy. So tell me—what do you think a judge and jury would say about shoving twenty kids into a gas chamber?”
“There is no law out here but Corpus,” Dr. Michalski said. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry,” Jim echoed in disgust. “Sorry or spineless?”
“Jim!” a new voice cried.
He looked down the hall to see several guards dragging Mary, Jay, Wyatt—and Lux. She’d spotted him and was smiling bright enough to light a room.
“Lux!” No, no, no. It was just getting worse. “Lux, fight!”
Her smile turned into a confused frown.
“Lux—they’re going to—just fight! Run! Get out of here!” If anyone could escape, it would be her. He felt the barest flush of shame for exercising his control over her. He didn’t want to inspire in Lux the wild-eyed, dogged obedience Nicholas’s Vitros had shown, but if it saved her life, he would gladly swallow any moral qualms.
She snapped into motion, driving her elbows into the sternums of the guards on either side of her. But before she twitch another finger, Strauss clubbed her on the back of the head with the butt of her pistol, and Lux crumpled.
“I told you to sedate her,” Strauss growled. “Put them inside. Where’s Nicholas?”
“No sign of him,” a doctor replied.
Panic ran rampant on Mary’s face. She clawed at her escorts, trying to gouge their eyes. They held her tight and propelled her along; behind her, Jay and Wyatt fought just as fiercely. Their wild yelling bounced off the narrow corridor and tiled walls of the chamber, magnified to a deafening chaos of noise.
“Just sedate them all!” Strauss ordered, a little wild-eyed herself; she had the look of someone who was driving without brakes but refused to take her foot off the gas. Even the guards looked uneasy as they held down Mary and the two boys for the doctors to sedate them.
Jim caught Lux as she was pushed through the doorway. She was barely conscious; her eyelashes fluttered and she groaned, but all the fight had been knocked out of her. He began to panic. The hallway was clogged with doctors and guards and guns and Strauss. He could never bull his way through them all. There were no windows, no stairs, not even so much as a ventilation shaft, except for the narrow ones set in the tiled walls around him—and even if he could fit through one, he’d only end up crawling toward his death.
“Stop!” he yelled, opting for begging—it was the only card he had left. “Don’t do this. Just listen to me—please!” Holding Lux with one hand, he reached out with the other and grabbed Dr. Michalski’s lapel. “They’re kids. They’re not even kids—they’re like toddlers! This is murder, man, can’t you see it? Look me in the eye and tell me this isn’t mass murder!”
But Dr. Michalski just wrenched Jim’s hand away and stepped back, his eyes unblinking and his face green. He looked to Strauss for support, and she stepped in with her handgun, which she pressed against Jim’s chest. She pushed him back with it, until she was standing in the doorway of the chamber.
“Look at them,” he whispered, his heart drumming a tattoo against his ribs. “They don’t deserve this.”
She met his eyes and he searched her for a trace of pity, of hesitation, but found none. Nicholas isn’t the only psychopath on this island, Jim thought.
“They’re not kids,” she said softly. “Look at them. They’re mindless, soulless. They’re just things we made, machines of skin and bone perhaps, but their every thought is ignited by a mechanical code.”
The Vitros weren’t people to Strauss. They were merchandise. It made him ill.
“Dr. Michalski,” she said, without looking away from Jim. The doctor lifted his head. “Ready the chamber.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled, and he turned around and opened a panel on the wall, began to flip switches and punch buttons.
Jim shook his head, slowly at first, then harder. “No. No, you can’t do this.”
“I can,” she sa
id, her voice calm. She backed away, reached for the door, and hesitated one moment. “You should never have come here,” she said. “If you like, I can have them sedate you. It will make it easier.”
He tightened his arm around Lux and realized he was trembling. “No,” he whispered. He wouldn’t spend his last moments in a senseless fog. And he still wasn’t giving up. There has to be something, some way out . . .
She shrugged, and the mask of indifference slipped back over her features. She slammed the door shut.
Almost immediately, pale white gas began filtering from the vents above their heads. A small window in the door gave Jim a view of Strauss’s grim face before she turned away. You’ll kill us all, but you don’t have the balls to watch.
The Vitros began to choke and cough. Only Mary, Wyatt, and Jay could possibly know what was happening, but they were so drugged Jim wasn’t sure they even knew their own names at the moment.
He crouched low and pulled Lux down with him. She was coming to slightly; he wished he’d asked for a sedative for her, but it was too late now. He hardly knew her, but she’d already become important to him. He’d never felt responsible for anyone in his life other than himself, and he’d never wanted to be. Lux had come out of nowhere, a sudden, unexpected shadow. He’d never realized how much someone needing him would make him need them in return. That being important to someone else suddenly made them important to you.
She finally opened her eyes and mumbled his name.
“Keep low,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”
Her gaze settled on him and she smiled; she trusted him when he said it, believed him with an innocence that made him rage inwardly. It wasn’t fair. He could accept that his own stupidity and ill luck had landed him in this room, though he was far from content with it, but Lux didn’t deserve this, and neither did her Vitro brothers and sisters.