“There, see?” He stuffed a handful of coconut into his mouth. Lux stared at her coconut for a moment, then began to mimic his actions.
“Lux,” he said, and her head swiveled and her aquamarine gaze locked on him. “What are you?”
She tilted her head, like a puppy trying to hear better. “I am Vitro beta model 2.1.”
Despite his feast of coconuts, his mouth went dry. “Are you . . . human?” His voice cracked as he said it, because he couldn’t believe he was saying it. It was too weird, too inconceivable that this was actually happening. It wasn’t a question he ever thought he would hear himself ask.
“Yes,” she said, after a moment’s hesitation.
“Are you . . . a clone or something?”
She looked down at her hands, her brows lowered in thought, then back up at him. “The answer cannot be found,” she said cryptically.
He worked very hard to keep his expression blank. “Um. Okay. So, how old are you?”
Again she hesitated, then said, “Four hours, twelve minutes, fifty-seven seconds.” A pause, then, “Fifty-eight seconds . . . fifty-nine seconds . . .”
“Okay, I get it!” He waved his hand to stop her, though in truth, he didn’t get it at all. Well, that’s not true, is it? He understood what she was saying—in theory—but it was impossible. He sighed and leaned back, his head clunking against the trunk. “The answer cannot be found,” he muttered. “That should be my new life motto. You’re saying you woke for the first time just four hours ago.”
“Yes.”
He thought back to the moment he had found her lying unconscious, of her sleep so deep that his mad run across the island, over hills and rocks, with her in his arms had not woken her.
A gust of wind snapped a dead palm frond high above their heads, and it smashed to the ground off to Jim’s right. Lux flinched.
“Do you think those three will be back anytime soon?” Jim asked, not expecting an answer. “Or maybe we have time to nap . . .”
He relaxed against the tree; he hadn’t realized how much tension had been knotted in his muscles until he couldn’t hold it any longer and it seeped out of him and into the sand . . .
Jim woke with a start, and the first thing he saw was Lux watching him, eternally patient. He was lying on his side; he must have dropped off and then literally dropped to the ground, too exhausted to even wake. The side of his face was crusted with sand.
Jim sat up and stretched with a groan. He’d been lying on half of a drained coconut and now there was a stinging pain in his hip where it had left a deep indent in his skin. “How long was I sleeping?” he croaked, his throat dry.
“Six hours, nine minutes, four seconds,” said Lux.
“You counted?”
“Yes.”
Jim exhaled noisily and climbed to his feet. He was still sore, but the nap had taken the edge off his exhaustion. “Any sign of Mary and the gang?”
Lux looked around, inspecting every direction before answering. “No.”
The sun had crossed the sky while he slept and now sank in the west, but they were still several hours from night. He roved the vicinity restlessly, wondering if he should go ahead and strike out for the resort now or wait until full dark. He didn’t think they’d run into anyone if they rounded the eastern side of the island, keeping the mountains between them and the path that led to the resort, and then when he approached the buildings he’d come from the east, where they might not be looking for him. If Mary had told the guards about him, they’d have already converged on him and Lux by now.
There was one aspect of Lux that continued to disconcert him, and the more he dwelled on it, the more disquiet stirred inside him. She obeyed everything he said without hesitation, without question, without resentment. All the thoughtless commands he didn’t even realize he was dropping—Stop that and Come here and Try this and Look over there—she responded to with alacrity. It wasn’t just congeniality; it was deeper, instinctive. Mary had known. She just tries so hard to please her precious master, she’d said. And it seemed all too accurate a description.
Jim asked Lux again, “Why do you do everything I tell you?”
This time, she replied, “I must.”
“Why?”
“You are Jim.” She smiled, as if that explained everything.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “Can’t you disobey? If I tell you to go climb that tree, and you don’t want to—you can say no, Lux.”
This seemed to distress her. Her face twisted into a grimace. “I do not . . . The answer cannot be found.”
“Fine. Listen. Lux, you don’t have to obey me.”
She cocked her head, her eyes troubled.
“Now, go climb that tree,” he said.
She ran to the tree and threw herself at it, but it was a branchless palm and she could get no purchase on its trunk. He ran after her and saw her knees were bloody and scraped from trying to attempt the climb, but even so, she kept clawing at the bark, trying to find a way up.
“Lux!” he shouted. “Lux, stop!”
She went still, her hands at her sides, breathing heavily. Her hair hung in damp, bedraggled strings over her shoulders and a trickle of blood ran down over ankle. Jim watched her in mute horror, guilt souring his tongue. She stared at him, and it seemed to him that there was a little less bright spark in her eye and little more blankness.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Lux,” he said, his face hot. “Come on, let’s clean that up.”
She followed him to the water and stood silently as he washed the blood from her knees, though he knew the salt water had to sting the cuts.
When he was done, he was left with a deep sense of dread and guilt. He stared at her in helpless stupefaction and she stared back unsmiling.
“I’ve decided,” he announced. “We’ll leave now for the other end of the island so we can look around, maybe see some sign of Sophie before we go in after her.”
He said we because it gave him a slight sense of confidence, as if he weren’t going into this alone. But he wasn’t fooled; Lux was more of a liability, even if she could take out three people bigger than her without breaking a sweat. Maybe she was better at handling herself than Jim was, but she was so childlike that he couldn’t even imagine entangling her in his mess. He would tell her to stay put while he went after Sophie, and then the three of them could escape together. That was his best case scenario; he was fairly certain things wouldn’t go that smoothly.
“Okay, kid, let’s move out.” He held a hand to Lux, and she stared at it blankly. “Take my hand,” he added. “I’ll help you up.”
She did, and he pulled her to her feet.
They trekked along the eastern shore, walking just within the tree line where the ground was firmer and they were concealed from anyone on the beach.
Jim’s stomach grumbled at him as they walked; the coconut had taken the edge off his hunger but it had not entirely appeased it. He found himself fantasizing about cheese fries for the majority of the walk. He asked Lux if she’d ever had cheese fries and she said no, and once again he was reminded that she wasn’t the average seventeen-year-old girl.