The room was quickly filling with the toxic gas, and still it poured from the vents. Jim lay flat on his stomach and told Lux to do the same. He drew a deep breath and held it. Around him, body after body began to collapse. The sound of coughing and gasping roared in his ears; several of the Vitros were drooling and convulsing. He heard a thump behind him, and turned his head to see Mary lying on her side, twitching, her eyes rolling back in her head. Time dragged past. He could see now why Strauss had offered him a sedative; this was no quick, easy death. No, death took its time in this room. It hovered in the corners, lingering awhile, a spectator looking on and biding its time, seeing how long it could dance just out of reach.
“Lux,” Jim croaked. He shook her. Her eyes were shut, and he couldn’t tell if she was breathing. He rolled her over and pinched her nose, drawing once more on his lifeguard training as he placed his mouth over hers and breathed into her. The gas was making him light-headed and a bit delirious. Instead of choking, he heard waves rushing up and down a beach. Instead of the groans he heard his lifeguard instructor Cate, who lounged lazily on a beach towel giving halfhearted instructions to her class of young, overeager male students. Like most of them, Jim had signed up for the class only because Cate was the hottest senior in high school and every underclassman, including himself, was crushing on her.
But no, it wasn’t Cate on the towel, spreading sunscreen on her legs. It was Sophie, and she was snapping at him to get up, to save someone—but who? Oh. It was Lux. She was drowning out in the surf, but Jim had been too mesmerized by Sophie’s sunscreen application to notice. He had to get to Lux in time. He floundered into the waves, but they just pushed him back and pulled her further out. The water was too strong; it shoved him ashore and sucked Lux under.
“No!” he yelled, and he dove again and again only to land on the sand instead of in the water. “Lux!”
It was too late. She was gone.
He choked on the water; salt stung his eyes. This time when he dove, the water took him and dragged him down, down, down into darkness.
THIRTY-TWO
LUX
She had found him again. Peace flooded her, a calm that had nothing to do with Moira Crue’s needles. This peace began at her center, with Jim, and spread outward, intoxicating, warm, wonderful.
She had found him and all was well.
She was in his arms and he was looking down at her, saying “It’s okay,” and she believed him. All the anxiety, the panic, the chaos fell away, and at last she could breathe.
Jim shifted, told her to lie down. He stretched out on his stomach and she did the same beside him. Now that he was here and she was still, she could look around. They were in a small room with a lot of people, strange new faces. It was very noisy here, and she didn’t understand why they couldn’t go back to the beach, where it was quiet and open and beautiful, but if this was where Jim wanted to be, she wanted to be here too.
She became aware of a hissing all around them; it came from the walls. It looked as if clouds were pouring into the room—pretty, but it made her cough. She laid her cheek on the cold, slick floor and locked gazes with Jim.
He was coughing too. That wasn’t good. She frowned, tried to say his name, but she only fell into a fit of coughs. Her throat burned; her eyes burned. What was happening? Why couldn’t she speak?
They were all coughing, all the people around her, the boys and girls. She reached toward Jim. He covered her hand with his and squeezed it tight. When she tried to breathe in, nothing happened. Her lungs were on fire. Her muscles spasmed painfully as she struggled for breath, but none came.
She fell into darkness and terror.
Something was horribly, horribly wrong, but she didn’t know what it was. She had no name for it, no word, just a feeling, a terrible, sick, trembling feeling.
She felt Jim, heard him call her name, and she tried to answer but there was no breath in her lungs. I am here, she wanted to say. Jim, I am here. Help me!
She was sinking; she could feel herself growing smaller, weaker. She fought against it, but she was so lost in the darkness that she couldn’t find her way back.
Cold and dark and scared and lost and alone, she screamed in her mind but no sound left her lips.
Then: air.
She felt her chest expand, felt her mind clear a little. She could breathe again.
She opened her eyes, barely opened them, and saw Jim lying beside her, so very, very still that her body seized with terror and her mind screamed NO! She pressed a hand to his chest, over his heart. Check for a pulse, said her brain.
Was he dead?
Was he gone?
She crawled to him. Protect protect protect. She followed her instincts, followed the commands her brain fed to her: Open his mouth, breathe into him, give him her air, make him live, protect protect protect.
His chest rose. Her heart soared.
Again. Again. Again.
She had very little breath, but what she had, she gave it all to him. And every time his heart beat against her palm she smiled.
She was smiling still when she gave him her last breath, and smiling when her head hit the floor and her eyes slid shut.
THIRTY-THREE
SOPHIE
Sophie leaned against the wall until a wave of dizziness passed. She’d intended to follow Moira out, to help recover the lost Vitros, but the more she moved, the more her arm pained her, until it was all she could do to keep from passing out. When she finally reached the atrium, she spied activity through the glass doors—doctors running around, Vitros lying still or stumbling across the grass. She thought she heard her mother cry out, off to her left and down the first hallway, but when she looked that way she saw nothing and supposed it was a trick of her mind, the walls of the place bending sound in strange ways. She started toward the exit when a movement down one of the other hallways caught her eye. Nicholas! He was supposed to be helping outside. What was he up to, then? She looked from the glass doors to the hallway uncertainly, then drew a deep breath and went after Nicholas.
She’d caught only a glimpse of him as he disappeared through a doorway, and she wasn’t even sure which door it was. This hallway was between the one with the Vitros’ bedrooms and the one she’d just been on, and it seemed to be mostly offices. She passed one wide doorway and glanced in to see it opened to a cafeteria, a large, tiled room with carved columns and a glass wall overlooking the island’s interior. Constantin Andreyev was inside with his two bodyguards, who were wearing sunglasses even indoors at night. They stood with their hands folded in front of them while Andreyev sat at a table and ignored the food Dr Hashimoto was plying him with. Behind them, a long buffet sat dark and dusty; most of the tables were pushed against the walls, between towering stacks of chairs. Only a few tables were left on the floor, all of them deserted except for Andreyev’s. All the lights except those over the tables in use were out. The room was a disharmonious blend of past and present; stepping out of the shadows into the circle of light was like moving across four decades all in one moment.
They looked and saw Sophie standing in the doorway. She froze, uncertain whether to go on or not. Nicholas didn’t seem to be in the room.
She flinched when Andreyev called her name. “Sophie Crue! My little imposter. What are you up to? What is going on out there that these doctors are trying to hide from me, eh?”
“Uh . . .”
“Mr. Andreyev,” said Dr. Hashimoto, putting forth an admirably calm front, “everything is fine, I assure you! Isn’t everything fine, Sophie?” The smile she turned on Sophie was strained, and her eyes practically shouted for Sophie to go along with the act.
“I am tired of being babysat while you people sweep up more of your messes, trying to act as if everything is normal. I know it is not!” cried Andreyev, rising to his feet.
“No one is insulting your intelligence, Mr. Andreyev.
”
“Then speak.” He seemed to rein himself in a bit, and he sat down and folded his hands on the table. “What is Strauss trying to hide from me now? What is she doing to those poor sorry bastards she calls Vitros, eh?”
It was the way he said it, the softening of his voice, the concern in his eyes, that sparked the idea in Sophie. She straightened and pushed the fog of pain from her mind with a mighty inhale of air. “Dr. Hashimoto! My mother—Moira—she said you ought to go help the others outside. She said . . . she said they needed more sedatives.” She was pulling words out of thin air, crossing bridges as fast as she could build them.
“What?” Shaking her head in confusion, Dr. Hashimoto crossed the space between them. “What are you talking about? Strauss told me to—”
“They’re waiting!” cried Sophie. “Go on. Don’t worry. I’m sure Mr. Andreyev can hold his own fork and knife.”
Andreyev’s laugh bounced off the walls. “That I can. Go. Let my little imposter look after me, eh?”
Dr. Hashimoto went, though she looked far from convinced, and the moment she was out of sight Sophie wobbled across the floor and fell into the chair opposite Andreyev. His bodyguards flinched, their hands straying inside their coats at her sudden movement. Sophie didn’t spare a moment. She leaned across the table on her unhurt elbow, nearly nose to nose with the Russian investor.
“You want to know what’s going on?” she asked.
His eyes glimmered. He carefully placed his silverware on the table, pushed aside the plate of untouched mashed potatoes and filet mignon, and folded his hands on the tabletop. “Go on,” he said softly, locking gazes with her.
“Nicholas—you’ve met him I believe, one of the first Vitros?”
“Long hair, sneery look.”
“Yes. He woke all of the remaining Vitros who were lying in stasis, and they imprinted on him. He’s ordered them to jump from the cliff outside, and Strauss and the doctors are trying to stop them. I think he means for it to be a distraction so he can escape the island, but I’m not totally sure. He’s a hard one to predict.”
Andreyev blinked. Sophie wondered if he’d been expecting such a blunt, straightforward answer, but he seemed appreciative because he nodded slowly and leaned back. “You are a bold one,” he said. “I like you, Sophie Crue.”
She felt a surge of hope lift her heart. Her last-minute hunch about Andreyev had been little more than that—a whim, a vague, unreliable feeling—but perhaps she’d been right.
“We need your help,” she blurted out.
He arched his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“What I mean is . . . um . . . that I have a proposition for you.”
Andreyev folded his arms and slipped into a poker face, neither encouraging or discouraging. “You know that after what I have seen here, you are being extraordinarily presumptuous in making any proposal to me at all.”
“I understand.”
“You realize I owe you and this project nothing.”
“I just want you to hear me out.”
He stared at her with such searching intensity that she felt her face redden, but she met him without flinching. Then he nodded slightly. “I am listening.”
Sophie drew a deep breath and then told him everything that Moira had told her of Skin Island’s bright beginnings, of the creation of the psychopathic Nicholas and the failure to treat him, of the accidental creation of the Vitros, of Corpus’s revised plan for the project in making Vitros instead of pursuing the remedial properties of the chip. She even told him about her father’s decision to risk everything by leaving the project, and how she had only just discovered her own true origin on Skin Island. All the while, Sophie watched Andreyev carefully, but his expressionless mask never once slipped. He listened impassively, but closely.
“The Vitros are successful,” Sophie admitted. “But not in the way they were originally intended. They’ve been warped to fit a new vision, one my mother did not create, and . . .” She drew a breath, knowing she was taking a gamble, knowing she had to at least try, then dived ahead. “And I don’t think you like it. I saw you in the room with Clive. Something in you knows this is wrong, that it can’t be allowed to continue. You know that it won’t end here.”
Sophie tried to gauge his reaction, inwardly cursing his stoicism. “This ability to control people will never be contained once the world knows about it. It’ll be more than just Vitros—it will be entire populations. Escorts, workers, armies, nations—where does it end? In the wrong hands, this technology could enslave millions of people. It’s in the wrong hands now, and look what damage has already been done!” She stood up and leaned forward on her hands, never once breaking eye contact with the Russian. “But more than that, it destroys the foundation of a person’s humanity—it strips away their free will. The Imprima Code eradicates choice, thought, and identity. Mr. Andreyev, please. My mom—” She faltered on the word again, but plunged on. “She can turn this around before it is too late. She can build something good here, but she needs your help to do it. Something good, and something profitable. You’re a businessman, right? I’m asking you to believe in the potential the chip has to heal and not destroy. Because you know what I think? I think everyone out there”— she pointed in the general direction of every place that wasn’t Skin Island—“would agree with me on this. Maybe a hundred years from now you could convince them to buy into the idea of brainless slaves, but not now, not today, not in my world. In my world, people will pay a whole lot more for life. So.” She seemed to be running out of words to say, and sank back into her chair, swaying a little from exhaustion. “So I think any smart businessman would bet on life, and on developing a technology like the one my mom can make, that gives life and doesn’t take it away.”
Her eyes solemn, she leaned back and let out a soft sigh; everything was in Andreyev’s hands now. Sophie crossed her fingers beneath the table and hoped her gamble wouldn’t break them all.
“You have no results,” Andreyev said slowly. “You have no proof that this plan of yours will work. In fact, all you have to show me is your surrogate mother’s failure to cure a problem she created, in Nicholas. And yet you ask me to risk a fortune on this plan of yours.”
“Well . . . yes,” Sophie said, reddening a little. “But she never had the chance to—”
“Do you think I became the wealthiest man in Eurasia because I went about listening to little girls cry or wasting money on charities?”
Sophie’s face burned. This was a mistake. I should have known he was just like the rest of them. “I’m sorry I bothered you,” she said through clenched teeth.
Andreyev sniffed and turned back to his dinner. She started to rise to her feet, her blood boiling, when the door to the cafeteria burst open with bang, and both of them jumped—but not, Sophie noticed, the statuesque bodyguards, who merely slipped their hands back into their jackets, presumably to whatever firearms they had stashed in there.
Dr. Hashimoto ran into the room, looking stricken.
Andreyev rose to his feet. “What’s wrong?”
Dr. Hashimoto doubled over, her hands on her knees, panting for breath. “It’s—it’s Strauss.”
“What has she done?”
“They sedated all the Vitros . . . got Jay and Mary and Wyatt too . . . They’re in the—the—” Dr. Hashimoto’s eyes flooded with tears; she was choking on her own voice. “Moira tried to stop her, but Strauss had the guards take her.”
“Where is Moira?” Andreyev snapped.
“Follow me!”
Her heart pounding in her ears, Sophie followed Andreyev, his guards, and Dr. Hashimoto down the hall and into the first hall, the one Sophie thought she’d heard her mother in. Dr. Hashimoto gestured frantically at a door, and without waiting for the others, Sophie charged in.
She found her mother tied and gagged in a chair in some sort of small laboratory, gua
rded by two men who jumped to attention and drew their rifles at Sophie’s loud entrance. She froze, and so did they, as Moira called out unintelligibly from behind her gag. Andreyev and Dr. Hashimoto stopped on either side of her, the bodyguards behind them.
The guards moved first, grabbing Sophie and Dr. Hashimoto, spinning them around to face Andreyev and holding them tightly. They looked flustered and confused, but shouted for Andreyev’s bodyguards to drop their weapons and leave the room.
“This doesn’t concern you, Mr. Andreyev,” said one of them. “But Strauss will want this girl and this doctor for questioning, for helping Dr. Crue. Go on now, gently.”
“Go,” said Sophie coldly to Andreyev. “Find Strauss!”
He gave her a steady stare, then nodded once and turned to usher his bodyguards out. When the door shut, the guards relaxed their grips on Sophie and Dr. Hashimoto. They stepped away and whispered severely to each other, presumably about what they were to do with these two new prisoners. Moira struggled at her bonds and stared wildly around, but Sophie stopped to gather her thoughts and take stock of the situation.
“Dr. Hashimoto,” she whispered, and the doctor gave her a wild-eyed look. “Did you get those sedatives I told you to get?”
Her hand strayed to a set of syringes in her lab coat pocket.
Sophie nodded slowly. “Good. Hand them here.”
“Mmmph!” cried Moira, but Sophie ignored her. In the briefest of seconds before she could let her better judgment catch up to her, she took the syringes, slipped the caps off the needles, and lunged at the guards and slammed the needles into the backs of their necks, her thumbs pressing the plungers as hard as they could. She gritted her teeth against the pain that shot up her arm. The guards didn’t even have a chance to turn around. They wobbled, blinked owlishly, then slid to the floor, their rifles clattering.
When Sophie turned around, her hands shaking and her heart still paused in midbeat, Dr. Hashimoto was already untying Moira. The moment the gag slipped free Sophie’s mother burst out, “The Vitros! Strauss has them in the gas room!”