“What? You are hurt?”
A flutter of panic. A flurry of words. She spoke them as they came, desperate to speak. “No. Not . . . not hurt.”
He spoke faster and faster, pouring words across the sand. She raced to pick them up and turn them over and interpret them, but he was too fast and she was too slow. She caught them at random, a word here and there: boat and fly and away and remember and drug and Sophie and boat.
She seized on that last one with desperation. “Boat.” Ones and zeroes crowded her mind; faded into an image of a boat on water.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, stay with me. It’s me, it’s Jim. Jim Julien?”
It’s me, it’s Jim.
Her heart jerked. She could understand this! He was Jim. The boy was Jim. She held the word close and the whole of her identity hung upon it: Jim Jim Jim Jim Jim.
“Jim,” she said, delighting in the sound of it.
“Yeah, that’s right.” He followed with more words, but they rushed over her and evaporated before she could gather them in. That was okay. She had enough for now.
She had Jim.
And Jim was everything.
TWELVE SOPHIE
The second time Sophie woke was like a sudden fall, an instant leap into full consciousness. Her eyes shot open, and the first thing she saw was an unfamiliar face. It was a man, somewhere in his fifties she guessed, with a receding silver hairline and oddly dainty lips, as if he were halfway into a kiss, but it was his eyes that transfixed her: stunningly blue and focused sharply on her, his pupils pinpoints of black. When her gaze met his, the skin around his eyes tightened, forming a network of wrinkles from their outer corners. She swallowed, half hypnotized, confused, waiting for her other senses to catch up. It was as if her brain had forgotten to alert her ears to the fact she was awake, because the sounds around her were murky. They slowly took shape, forming into voices, words—her mother was there.
Sophie blinked, and the spell was broken. The man leaned back, his eyes still on her but his features relaxing a bit. She licked her lips, which she found were dry and rough, and moaned.
“Is that it?” the man asked. He was seated in a plastic chair, facing her squarely. She herself was sitting in a metal chair that looked like something out of a dentist’s office, slightly reclined, her hands perched on padded armrests.
Her mother stood behind the man, but a bright light was concentrated on Sophie and all else was in shadow. She could only see her mother’s shoes and the hem of her lab coat, and beside her someone stood in a pair of white heels, a woman dressed in a white pantsuit, so bright she seemed to glow. But her face was also lost in shadow.
“That’s it,” her mother replied. Sophie heard the click of a pen; somewhere behind her, someone was scratching on paper.
“ Mmmom,” Sophie moaned.
“What did she say?” The man turned around in his seat. He was wearing a silver suit that looked like it cost as much as Jim’s plane.
“Nothing. She can’t talk yet, of course. She’s disoriented.”
No, I’m not, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t form the words. She’d never been so thirsty in her life.
“What do we do now?” asked the man, turning around again. He studied Sophie with his frigid eyes, his mouth pursing even further. He seemed wary of her, as if she might bite.
“We wait a little,” Moira said. She finally stepped forward, into the light, and Sophie’s heart jerked painfully in her chest. Her mother looked the same as she always had, as if she were agelessly frozen at thirty, with short, tight black curls and large blue eyes; she looked like one of the Victorian china dolls Sophie’s stepsister Emily collected, minus all the lace.
Mom, look at me. It’s me, Mom, please see!
But Moira was looking at the man, not Sophie, and she remembered that her mother still thought she was the other Sophie. What was her name? The memory was vague, difficult to catch. She’d heard them talking earlier, when she’d started to wake up . . . Lux. That’s what they’d called her.
“It will take about twenty-four hours for her to acclimate,” Moira was saying. “Walking, talking, basic motor functions— it comes pretty quickly in the newer models, but still, it isn’t instant. She’s imprinted on you, Mr. Andreyev, and that’s the important thing.”
“Please,” he replied, a soft Russian accent curling around the edges of his speech, “call me Constantin. Or Connie.”
A tight smile danced across Moira’s face. “Thank you, Connie. Now, do you have any questions for us?”
“I have a question,” said the woman in white. She also stepped forward. Her brown hair was cut boyishly short, but that did nothing to soften the angularity of her features. Hers was a face you could cut yourself on. She regarded Sophie through half-lidded eyes, as if she were bored or dismally unimpressed.
“Of course, Victoria.” Moira’s voice came out soft and ended in a whisper.
Sophie looked curiously at her mother. She’s afraid of this woman. She could feel her strength returning, and sensed that if she were to speak up, her voice wouldn’t betray her again. But she didn’t. Instead, she stayed still and silent, watching to see what would happen.
The first thing, the most important thing—her mother seemed entirely well and whole. Whatever her emergency was or had been, it didn’t seem to affect her physically, not, at least, in any way that Sophie could tell. She didn’t seem to be held against her will. She seemed . . . fine. Perfectly fine.
Sophie felt as if she’d been punched in the gut. I don’t know the whole story, she thought. I have to give her the benefit of the doubt. But she felt used. Betrayed. Bewildered. It didn’t make sense, none of it. Why am I here? What is this about? Looking at her mother standing so composed, she almost sensed that Moira Crue had no idea that her daughter was on the island.
Had Nicholas told her?
Where was Nicholas?
And who had hit her on the head?
She had a feeling she knew the answer, and it only made her more nauseated. He tricked me. It had to be true. There was no other explanation. Somehow, Nicholas had known she was coming. He’d met her at the airstrip and lied about being sent by Moira when he’d probably had no intention of taking Sophie to her mother at all. But . . . why? What was his game? How did he factor into all of this?
She needed to know what Skin Island was, certain that that would answer half her questions at least. Her mother’s life’s work, Nicholas’s part in it, the mysterious emergency, the other Sophie . . . it all came down to the secrets in this room. I can play along a little longer. She had no idea what this Lux was supposed to be or why she looked like Sophie, but apparently she couldn’t talk. Or walk. That was pretty simple to stick to. Just shut up and listen, Sophie told herself. They’re bound to spill a few answers.
She’d been so lost in her own head that she’d missed what the woman—Victoria—had to say, and she struggled to catch up while trying to look as uninterested as possible. Her mother was speaking.
“The bond won’t be evident until she’s able to speak and function. But we’ve never had a case in which the imprinting failed.”
“If she has only just, for all intents and purposes, been born—how is it that within a day she will be able to speak and walk?” asked Andreyev.
“To answer that, I must back up a little. I’ll start at the beginning, though I’m sure you read all of this in the dossier Victoria gave you. Still, it’s a lot to take in, and I want to be sure we’re clear.” She drew a deep breath. “The Vitros are the result of a groundbreaking neurotechnology we call the Imprima Code, and the chip on which it is contained.” She held up a vial, and Sophie recognized it as one of the vials she’d seen in the freezer consoles the night before.