“So you can imprint me,” Sophie said flatly.
“Now you’re getting it.” He was halfway around the room now, smiling encouragingly as a black-haired Asian girl blinked her eyes open for the first time and locked gazes with him.
“But you still haven’t said how you plan to do that.”
“And I’m not going to. I’d much rather show you.”
She twisted her hands against the cord; she thought the knots might be coming loose but it was hard to tell. A thin trickle of blood ran down her arm from where the cord had cut her, and she bit her lip, holding back whimpers of pain as she worked at the bonds. Whenever he turned her way she froze, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
After he’d woken all the Vitros, he began helping them out, making them stand on wobbly legs. They stumbled and swayed as if they were made of paper; if a kitten rubbed against their legs they would fall over. They clumsily clustered around Nicholas, making no sound but the shuffling of their bare feet. Each one wore a plain white gown that hung loose on their shoulders and fell to their knees. Some still bore white patches that clung to their faces and arms, where tubes had run into their veins until Nicholas pulled them out. Their nails were inches long on their fingers and toes, and their skin had a saggy, sallow look that made Sophie’s stomach turn. They looked almost like cadavers. Had Lux looked that way, before the doctors brought her out of this place and cleaned her up to present her to Andreyev?
When they were all awake and on their feet, Nicholas stood in their midst like a god, reaching out to touch their faces and shoulders as if he were blessing them. They reached out to grab his hair and his clothes, to press their fingers to his lips, their eyes wide with adoration.
Sophie resisted the urge to vomit. Everything about the scene was eerie and perverse; she felt nauseated just from watching.
“Come,” Nicholas murmured to his acolytes. “Follow me.”
He led his stumbling, disoriented crowd of newborn Vitros out the door, slowly and with much awkward shuffling. They could hardly stand, let alone walk, but he helped the ones who fell and led them by the hand. Sophie tried to trip him when he went by, but he just laughed and hopped over her.
“What will you do with them?” she asked when the last Vitro was in the hall.
“Set them free.”
“How?”
“I really don’t see why you should care. Soon, you’ll be one of them.” His Vitros waited in the hall, staring at him vapidly and blinking in the harsh fluorescent lights while he knelt and brushed her hair behind her ears. She jerked away but only succeeded in hitting her head against the door. “Wait here,” he murmured, then chuckled. “As if you had a choice.”
He returned to the Vitros and began leading them away down the hall. She heard the ding of the elevator; he likely didn’t trust them to handle the stairs. By scooting along the floor, Sophie could swing the door shut, which put her outside the room and in the hallway, her hands still tethered to the handle. She caught a glimpse of the last Vitro disappearing into the elevator before the doors slid shut.
Hollow silence fell across the basement hall. Sophie took the chance to wrestle at her bonds, pulling against them with all her weight. She twisted and bucked, then forced herself to stop and think. She couldn’t see the knots very well because her hands were bound behind her back, and though she was pretty limber, she couldn’t get herself turned around without pulling her shoulders out of their sockets. So she began feeling with her fingertips for any loose coils, but found none.
Her wrists were red and raw by the time Nicholas returned, not five minutes later. He glanced at her hands and raised a single eyebrow. “Get anywhere, did you? Maybe if you broke your wrists?”
She snarled at him like a trapped raccoon, but he ignored her and untied the knots himself, loosing her from the door but keeping her wrists bound. Then he dragged her down the hall to the next room and shouldered the door open.
“The Vitro prep room,” he said cheerfully as he pushed her onto a large, padded metal bench. “You’ve been here before, though you wouldn’t recognize it.”
“This is where you hid me after . . . wait. It wasn’t Mary, was it? If was you who knocked me out.”
He shrugged. “You shouldn’t have run off. I really didn’t think they’d find you here, I must admit. But I never planned on your pilot making off with Lux, or I’d have stashed you somewhere better. Ah, well, everything’s worked out in the end.”
The room resembled an exam room in a clinic, with a counter, sink, and cabinets, and assorted mystery equipment hung on the wall. The only thing missing was thin tissue paper to cover the bench. Nicholas flicked on a light that hung directly above Sophie; the bulb’s conical shade directed the glare in a kind of spotlight, illuminating her in yellow pool but leaving the corners of the room in shadows, like the room in which she’d awoken to Moira, Strauss, and Andreyev.
“This is where they usually wake the Vitros,” he said. “I’ve seen it several times. I’m not just the botched experiment they keep like a pet, you know. I help them.” He waited, perhaps to see if she’d be impressed, but she wasn’t. He shrugged and went on. “Granted, mostly they have me cleanings things, sorting their crap, changing sheets, and filling out dull paperwork they don’t want to deal with. But it lets me see everything. Everything. When you’re just standing in the corner wiping off scalpels, no one pays attention to you, especially when they think they know you.” He shut the door and locked it. The click of the lock gave Sophie a chill; the hair on her neck rose on end.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
He pulled the wand from his back pocket. “I’m activating your chip, Sophie.”
Her heart clenched. “How?” she whispered, her mouth suddenly dry. “I’m not a newborn like those others.”
“Did anyone ever tell you that you ask too many questions? I mean, God, you never shut up.”
“I swear, Nicholas, if you don’t—”
“Sh!” He pressed a finger to her lips. “Just listen . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . .”
An echoing blast shattered Sophie’s eardrums, but it didn’t come from the wand.
TWENTY NINE JIM
When he reached the shoreline, he didn’t recognize it. It was Skin Island, not the smaller airstrip island, but that was all he knew. The shore was a thin line of sand that quickly gave way to a short bluff overhung with roots and twisting pines. He rested for a while, exhausted from kicking his way through the water and then battling the surf to reach land. He’d let the wing go when he reached the shallows, and felt a pang of sorrow as it drifted away. It was the last piece of the Cessna he’d had, and letting it go was like relinquishing everything he loved about the sky. But he couldn’t very well lug the thing around on land.
Once he could stand again without his knees wobbling beneath him, he began trekking south, knowing that sooner or later he’d come across the Vitro building. Would Sophie have made it there by now? How long had he been in the water? It was difficult to judge; the moon seemed substantially higher by now, but it was still obscured by the trees.
He was tired. Tired of trekking back and forth across the island, tired of being nearly killed, tired of dancing one step out of disaster’s reach, tired of trying. His exhaustion began deep in his mind and spread outward like a disease, like a leech sapping his strength from within, but he planted one foot ahead of the other with dogged persistence. He let his muscles think for him, lost himself in the monotony of walking, and let his mind run on low, barely floating on the surface of consciousness.
The beach ran along the foot of a high cliff; he recognized it from his first ill-fated attempt to rescue Sophie.