Vitro Page 11

  Dr. Rogers seemed disappointed that Andreyev wasn’t more impressed. He glanced at Lux. “Of course, Clive isn’t who you came to see, is he? Maybe you’d like to see Lux demonstrate her abilities.”

  Dr. Hashimoto cleared her throat. “Ah, Rogers, Lux is only just learning to access her motor functions. She isn’t up to—”

  “Bring her over.”

  “I really don’t think—”

  “Hana, who is the senior research partner here, you or me? I said bring her over.”

  “It’s really not necessary,” Andreyev said, looking a bit pale.

  “No, it’s fine,” Dr. Rogers said, waving a hand. “Just watch.”

  Dr. Hashimoto looked cornered, and turned to Gary for help. He shrugged as if to say, Don’t involve me in this. Clive just smiled and stood beside Dr. Rogers. Sophie realized he must be imprinted on the doctor, and that the boy in the hallway must have been imprinted on Dr. Michalski.

  “Oh, come on,” Dr. Rogers said impatiently. “We don’t expect her to be Bruce Lee—not yet, anyway. We just want a little demonstration. For our esteemed investor.”

  “Fine,” sighed Dr. Hashimoto. She muttered so that only Sophie heard her, “Anything to please the investors.”

  “Gary,” said Dr. Rogers, his eyes following Sophie’s progression across the room. She tried to keep her steps as clumsy as she could without falling onto her face, hoping that if she proved to them she was barely capable of standing he might let up. “See how you fare against Mr. Andreyev’s Vitro.”

  Andreyev’s eyes slipped to the door, as if he were trying to gauge how quickly he could reach it. Odd, Sophie thought. For someone investing in these Vitros, he doesn’t seem to want much to do with them.

  Dr. Hashimoto left her standing in the middle of the room, and Sophie, feeling abandoned and in way over her head, faced Gary uncertainly, her back to Andreyev. Dr. Hashimoto slipped out of the room, muttering some vague excuse, and Sophie hoped she was going to get Moira and Strauss. Check that. Just get Mom. Strauss seemed even more bloodthirsty than Dr. Rogers, and Sophie wasn’t at all sure she could count on her to intervene.

  “Well, get on with it,” said Dr. Rogers, waving a hand impatiently.

  Sophie couldn’t hold her vacant expression. She stared at Gary with open desperation. The guard was thickset and tall, with an Italian complexion and brooding eyebrows that gave him a permanent scowl. He seemed unsure what to make of her, whether to expect a female version of Clive or a helpless wisp of a girl who’d been “born” just an hour ago. Sophie didn’t know which part to play. This was a bad idea, she thought. A really bad idea. I should have run when we were in the hallway. I should have told my mom who I was the minute I saw her. I should have—

  She didn’t have time to add to her regret, because Gary lunged at her. His swing was halfhearted, but it still caught Sophie in the stomach with all the force of a brick. She dropped to her knees, doubled over and gasping. There was no acting about it. The air had been punched from her lungs, and she saw stars.

  “Stop this!” Andreyev said, stepping back with a stricken look. “It’s insanity!”

  Dr. Rogers was suddenly in front of her, crouching down to meet her eyes. “Get up, Lux.”

  “Uhn . . .” she moaned.

  “Get up.” His eyes flickered to Andreyev. “You tell her, sir; she has to listen to you.”

  Give it up, Sophie told herself. Before you get yourself killed.

  “I think not,” said Andreyev, his voice suddenly taking a sharp tone. “That is quite enough, Dr. Rogers. Let her be.”

  A look of uncertainty crackled over Dr. Roger’s features, as if he regretted what he’d done. Sophie couldn’t bear it any longer. She had to tell them the truth, and then trust her mother to back her up.

  “I—” She winced. Speaking made her chest hurt. “I’m not—”

  The door slammed open and Moira burst into the room. “What’s going on here?”

  Sophie groaned and climbed unsteadily to her feet as Moira rushed toward her. Her mother held her tightly and glared around at the others, waiting for an explanation.

  “It was my idea,” Dr. Rogers said tightly.

  “Well, it was a foolish one,” Moira snapped, and she looked as if she wished they were alone so she could unleash stronger vocabulary on Dr. Rogers. “She needs to be monitored and fed, not punched.” She turned a withering glare on Gary, who looked as if he wanted to crawl under the couch.

  Moira helped Sophie across the room, and Sophie cast a curious look back at Andreyev before her mother pulled her into the hallway and slammed the door shut, leaving them alone. Then she turned to Sophie and ran her hands over her hair, her eyes brimming with wrath.

  “Sophie Jane Crue,” she hissed. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  FIFTEEN

  LUX

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  And she had no answer.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  And she had no answer.

  It pained her that she could not tell him the things he wanted to know. Why didn’t she know the answers? What was wrong with her?

  Even when she tried to obey him, to swim across and get the plane, she did it wrong. She fell under the water and couldn’t get up again. She felt angry that she couldn’t do what he asked.

  There was just so much happening. The words were like the waves, sucking her down and overwhelming her until she couldn’t breathe. She wanted to understand him, but he moved so fast that trying to keep up with him was like drowning. She felt the same way when he asked her questions she could not answer: suffocating, choking, falling beneath the water. . . .

  When the feelings of inadequacy surged through her, her brain served up only the words I am sorry I am sorry I am sorry but they weren’t enough weren’t nearly enough to release what she felt she would bust if she couldn’t give him the answers!

  But then he moved on, talking and walking and looking all around and she could only watch and struggle to follow. He walked up and down and she walked behind him, stepping where he stepped, matching her footprints in his.

  The world tugged at her. So much to take in, too much to see. Shells and birds and leaves and rocks and water and sand, and she wanted to touch it all, smell it, understand it. The things that had terrified her at first now fascinated her. She wanted to hold it all in her hands, but when she tried she only dropped things, the shells and the rocks and the little white crab she found in a little sand hole.

  But more fascinating than sand and shells and crabs was Jim: how he moved and talked, how he turned and ran his fingers through his hair, how his face changed and his voice rose and fell like the water, how his shadow slid across the sand. She watched him and she learned. She did what he did, stepped where he stepped. When he scratched his ear so did she. When he stopped and looked up at the sky so did she. When he spoke she moved her lips.

  Every time he looked at her she felt brighter inside, and she yearned to keep his attention, to hold his gaze.

  This was her world, her world of sand and sea and the boy named Jim, and she was content.

  SIXTEEN

  JIM

  He decided to go for the police. Or possibly even the navy. This was beyond him, well and above his reach, and he hadn’t the slightest clue what else he could do. At the least, he could find some way to reach Mr. Crue, to let him know Sophie could be in trouble.

  He muttered to himself and kicked the sand up as he walked, and his hands worried at his hair and his face in agitation. The girl copied him, her hands matching his movements with eerie exactness. It made him so uncomfortable that he forced himself to keep his hands at his sides.

  Whatever she was, this not-Sophie, it seemed that he’d stolen her. They would notice she was missing, and they would come after him. Mary and her friends already were after h
im. He couldn’t fend them all off, and he doubted he’d be able to go back for Sophie. Her look-alike was no help at all. She seemed to know nothing about the island, the doctors, Sophie, Nicholas, any of it. His questions only got him traumatized looks, as if she wanted to give him answers but simply couldn’t. She was a conflict of appearances and behavior. A child in a nearly full-grown body. She might have looked identical to Sophie on the outward, but she wasn’t like Sophie at all, unless, perhaps, he compared her to Sophie as he’d known her a decade ago.

  At least he could take comfort in the hope that if it wasn’t Sophie with him now, maybe the real Sophie was okay after all. Perhaps she’d found her mother and all was well and it was just Jim who was in a mess.

  I could go back, he thought. Tell them I’m sorry, I made a mistake.

  But he couldn’t get past the fact that Sophie had gone into Corpus’s arms and hadn’t returned. And if Sophie was all right, she would have let him know. It followed, then, that she wasn’t and that the island really was hostile and the whole situation needed to be taken to the authorities.

  That only brought him to another obstacle—reaching the plane. The tide wasn’t going out any time soon, and if Mary was going to make good on her promise, he couldn’t afford to wait.

  “Okay.” He stopped walking and pressed his hands together and then touched his fingertips to his chin, staring at the girl, whose name even she didn’t seem to know. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll swim the channel and see if I can break through the current. Don’t know how but don’t know what else to do. In the unlikely event that I don’t drown, I’ll get to my plane, taxi it over here, and pick you up. And then . . .” His voice trailed off. And then we fly by the seat of our pants. “Stay here,” he told her. “Don’t wander off. I’ll be back for you. Maybe. If I don’t drown first.”

  He tugged off his shoes and his shirt and left them on the sand. Then he stood in the surf and inhaled slowly, trying to psych himself up for the swim. The water rushed at him and threw itself against him in taunting waves. He cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders, and then dove underwater.

  For a bit, all seemed to be going well. His hopes even rose; perhaps by some lucky chance he’d picked a time of day when the current was weaker than it looked. He stroked along, clawing his way through the water at a steady pace. Salt stung his eyes and lips, but he was used to that. He’d grown up on the beaches of Guam, and the sea was as familiar to him as the sky. Sea and sky and sand; they were his school, his home, his world. I can do this, he told himself. This is my turf as much as it is theirs.

  His mother had loved to swim, but she’d hated flying. She’d hated it when he flew. His dad had begun teaching him how to pilot when he was just ten years old, and some of his bitterest memories were of his parents arguing over his flying. It was in those arguments that the differences between his parents were most obvious. His mother liked order. Her life was a series of annotated planners and drawers of neatly sorted silverware. Nothing put her out of sorts quite like spontaneity. She couldn’t handle it. Either she shut down and retreated to her work as a professor at the University of Guam, or she lashed out at Jim’s father. Steve Julien was the yang to Elaina’s yin, but instead of coming together in a cohesive whole, they clashed like fire and water. Steve was laid-back, hated schedules, and acted entirely on whim. He lived on impulse, and Jim was very much like him. Father and son rolled like water, always changing and following the tide; his mother was an immovable island whose edges they slowly eroded. And eventually, they wore her too thin, and she flew off to the mainland with a naval officer named Lance.

  The current caught Jim completely by surprise, slamming into him like a wall of rock, sweeping him eastward into open sea. He was as powerless as a leaf on the wind. The water sucked him under, and he fought against it until his lifeguard training took over, and he remembered that it was better to go with a current than fight it. So he relaxed and let it take him, and he resurfaced long enough to gasp for air and get his bearings. He’d been swept wide of both islands and was quickly being borne even further out to sea. He could see not-Sophie on the beach watching him but not moving. He couldn’t expect aid from her, nor did he want it. She’d already proven she couldn’t swim.

  He knew he had to do something quickly or he’d be carried so far out that he’d never make it back, but he had to wait until the current weakened. It was a rip current; it couldn’t go on forever. Fighting it would only wear him out, and he’d drown for sure.

  Eventually he started to slow down, and that was his sign that it was time to get out. He started to swim north, toward the airstrip, but when he glanced back, his blood turned cold, and it had nothing to do with the temperature of the water.

  Mary and her two friends were walking out of the woods, and they’d spotted the Sophie look-alike. She sat with her gaze still fixed on Jim, unaware of their approach behind her.

  He hesitated, and the current, though weak, dragged him ever outward. He had to make a decision fast. Once he was out of the current, he wouldn’t be able to swim across it again.

  Gritting his teeth together, Jim thrust his arms through the water with all his strength. It wasn’t easy; the current was still strong, and for a moment it seemed he was standing still. But then he broke out of the stream as quickly as he’d entered it, and then he began churning water as fast as he could. He timed his strokes with the onrushing waves in an attempt to speed himself along. But they’d already reached her, and Mary gripped the girl’s hair and was pulling. He was a good distance away, but he could still hear her scream in pain.

  “Stop!” he yelled, expending precious energy. Either they didn’t hear him or they didn’t care. They watched him swim in with impatient expressions, as if they couldn’t wait to pounce on him. When he was close enough, the two boys charged into the surf and grabbed his arms, dragging him onto the sand. He was entirely spent, helpless in their hands. His body trembled with exhaustion, and he felt sick. He coughed up salt water, and that made him fall into a fit of retching. Then, abdomen aching, he collapsed and let them drag him onto the dry sand where Mary was waiting, her hands still entwined in not-Sophie’s hair.

  “Tsk,” she clucked when they dumped him at her feet. Her brown curls snapped in the wind. “Naughty little pilot, stealing our precious Lux away from us.”

  He was gasping and choking still, but managed to croak, “So she does have a name.”

  “What are you doing on our island?”

  “Hunting for pirate treasure.”

  Her eyes flashed at the boy on his left—Jay—and Jay delivered a kick to Jim’s side that sent him cringing into a fetal position.

  “Where’s Sophie?” he gasped. “What happened to her?”

  “I’m the one asking questions. Not that I particularly care why you’re here. I don’t.”

  He groaned and pushed himself onto his knees. Trying in vain to ignore the pain in his side, he cracked her a crooked smile. “You’re cute when you’re mad. Want to go out sometime?”

  She dropped Lux’s hair, and Lux, whimpering, drew her knees up to her chest and gazed at Jim with round, pleading eyes. Her look sent a wave of guilt through him. He didn’t like that. He didn’t want to feel responsible for her—he had nothing to do with her.

  Mary noticed their exchanged glances and scowled. “Do you know what you’ve done? What she is?”

  “Please,” he said. “Enlighten me.”

  “She’s a Vitro, you ass. We all are, really, but we’re not like her. Let me guess,” Mary sighed. “She does whatever you tell her, to the letter. She grovels at your feet.” She crouched beside Lux and pinched her cheek, speaking through pouty lips as if speaking to a puppy or a baby. “She just tries so hard to please her precious master.”

  “What?”

  Her eyes crackled at him. “She’s a pathetic puppet, like all the others. But you’ve made a mess. Oh, quite
a mess. The investor came today, you know, to see her.” She wrapped an arm around Lux and stroked her cheek. “And now there’s no doll to put on display for him—ah! I wish I was there to see it. Strauss must be murderous.”

  Jim had no idea what she was talking about. He narrowed his eyes. “What do you want? Who sent you after me?”

  She groaned. “I’m bored. You’re awfully boring, did you know that? Jay, Wyatt, just beat him up a bit. That’ll keep him put.”

  “You just want to keep me put? That’s it? Well, all you had to do was ask. I’d do anything for a pretty girl like you, Mary.” His voice grew frantic as Jay and Wyatt pulled him to his feet.

  Mary rolled her eyes. “I always have to clean up Nicholas’s messes. Didn’t I say the nails were a dumbass idea? Go on. Hit him until he’s unconscious. I want to get back to the Vitro building to see what’s going on. They’re probably stirred up like sharks over blood with Lux going missing.”

  “Wait! Let’s just talk about this for a—”

  They didn’t wait. One of them—he never saw who—cracked a fist into Jim’s jaw, and his vision went spotty. He reeled backward and slammed into the sand, tasting blood in his mouth.

  Then he heard a shout of surprise, and though he braced himself for a second blow, none came. He blinked away the black spots in his eyes and gaped.

  Lux had sprung up like a cat. She whirled and kicked, catching Jay in the stomach. He doubled over. In an instant, she was on Wyatt. Her movements were clumsy, uncoordinated, but effective. Her hair flared in the wind like a silken cape. A punch, a kick, and a head butt, and Wyatt was laid on his back, gasping. Mary’s eyes went wide, and she held up her hands, but Lux swiped her feet out from under her and then pounced like a tiger, her hands around Mary’s throat.

  “Lux!” Jim scrambled to her. Her eyes were flat, dead, unseeing, and her grip tightened around Mary’s slender throat. Mary’s eyes grew wide, and her cheeks turned a sickening shade of blue. “Lux, stop!” he yelled.