“Ah.” He prodded at his glasses and looked as if he wanted to take a dive off the cliff.
Moira’s cries were muffled as the doors of the building swung shut behind her and the guards escorting her, and Jim lost sight of her as they dragged her away.
“Take them inside.” Strauss prodded the sedated Vitro girl with her foot, her expression a mingle of disgust and disappointment. “I want them put down. You do have a facility prepared for this, do you not?”
Dr. Laurent, who’d been staring in horror as Moira was manhandled off the scene, turned to Strauss and blanched. “That seems a rather hasty decision!”
“Hasty!” Strauss laughed, swinging her gun around in a way that had Jim twitching. “Hasty, Dr. Laurent? I think not. This place had one last chance, one last shot at proving its worth. I’d hoped you would pull through—really, I did. But the risk is too great and the return too little. The Vitros are finished. They will be exterminated, and I want it done quickly. I’m supposed to be in South America by the end of the week, and I don’t plan on being delayed.”
She paused, looked around at the horrified faces of the doctors. “Well? Get to it!”
They snapped into action, passing word to the others. One by one, the doctors turned nauseated looks to Strauss, who thoroughly ignored them. She waved her gun at Jim.
“You. Get up.”
He rose warily, his throat dry. “Might be a bad time to bother you—but I was just wondering . . . what exactly do you mean by exterminate?”
“Exactly what you think I mean, young man. Now move.”
“Where to?”
“Inside,” she said acidly. “With the rest of them.”
“With the Vitros?” He tried to swallow, but his mouth felt packed with sand. “To—to be exterminated? Ah . . . I’d rather not, but thanks. Not my kind of party.”
“Move,” she said, and he jumped.
Prodded by her gun, which remained trained on the spot between his shoulder blades, Jim followed the gray-faced doctors and the groggy Vitros into the building. Each doctor had two Vitros in hand; they had to all but carry them, both because of the sedatives and because those Vitros still lucid enough to think were making vague, clumsy dashes for the door. Somehow the doctors kept them in check, and they made their way laboriously through the atrium and down a stairwell into the basement.
Jim’s skin prickled as they walked. He waited for an opportunity to escape but none presented itself. This is so many kinds of bad . . .
Strauss was going to murder them all. That was the plain, short truth of it, and he could see no way out. At least Sophie isn’t here right now. But her chances of doing any better seemed slim.
Strauss was sending off some of the doctors now, telling them to round up the rest of the “failed” Vitros: Nicholas, Mary and company, and Lux. He wanted to say something to persuade them to stop, but he couldn’t think of what. He could only stand and watch helplessly as they departed.
He and the Vitros were shepherded down a long hall, past many closed doors, to the very last room. His scalp tingled as he passed through the doorway, and he knew exactly what this room was without having to ask.
It looked like a large community shower, akin to the ones in the gym locker rooms in his school back on Guam: tiled floor, a drain in the middle, and vents along the top of the wall. But there were no faucets, no towel racks, no benches. The room smelled of chemicals—had they used it before? He felt dizzy and sick to his stomach; he had to lean against the wall to keep from falling over.
Dr. Michalski stood in the doorway, his eyes averted, keeping the Vitros from wandering out. Most of them were too dazed by the sedatives to make an escape attempt and slouched against the wall or sat on the floor. The rest wandered around, disoriented perhaps, their eyes a little wild. He wondered what they’d do if they were kept from fulfilling Nicholas’s command indefinitely. Go mad? Forget what he’d told them?
But who am I kidding? We’re not going to find out, are we?
Strauss stood further off down the hall, muttering into her radio. Jim sidled up to the door and summed Dr. Michalski up.
“Hey,” he whispered, and the doctor looked up, startled. Maybe he’d forgotten Jim was among the Vitros and hadn’t expected any of them to realize what was going on and fight back. “You aren’t honestly going to let her do this, are you?” he asked.
“Stay back,” Dr. Michalski said, his voice cracking. He glanced at Strauss, and Jim took the hint.
“Easy, man. You don’t need to bother her. Just listen, will you?” He took a step closer, until he was looking down at the nervous doctor, who was several inches shorter than him. “This is mass murder, Doctor. I know you realize that. You look like a smart guy. So tell me—what do you think a judge and jury would say about shoving twenty kids into a gas chamber?”
“There is no law out here but Corpus,” Dr. Michalski said. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry,” Jim echoed in disgust. “Sorry or spineless?”
“Jim!” a new voice cried.
He looked down the hall to see several guards dragging Mary, Jay, Wyatt—and Lux. She’d spotted him and was smiling bright enough to light a room.
“Lux!” No, no, no. It was just getting worse. “Lux, fight!”
Her smile turned into a confused frown.
“Lux—they’re going to—just fight! Run! Get out of here!” If anyone could escape, it would be her. He felt the barest flush of shame for exercising his control over her. He didn’t want to inspire in Lux the wild-eyed, dogged obedience Nicholas’s Vitros had shown, but if it saved her life, he would gladly swallow any moral qualms.
She snapped into motion, driving her elbows into the sternums of the guards on either side of her. But before she twitch another finger, Strauss clubbed her on the back of the head with the butt of her pistol, and Lux crumpled.
“I told you to sedate her,” Strauss growled. “Put them inside. Where’s Nicholas?”
“No sign of him,” a doctor replied.
Panic ran rampant on Mary’s face. She clawed at her escorts, trying to gouge their eyes. They held her tight and propelled her along; behind her, Jay and Wyatt fought just as fiercely. Their wild yelling bounced off the narrow corridor and tiled walls of the chamber, magnified to a deafening chaos of noise.
“Just sedate them all!” Strauss ordered, a little wild-eyed herself; she had the look of someone who was driving without brakes but refused to take her foot off the gas. Even the guards looked uneasy as they held down Mary and the two boys for the doctors to sedate them.
Jim caught Lux as she was pushed through the doorway. She was barely conscious; her eyelashes fluttered and she groaned, but all the fight had been knocked out of her. He began to panic. The hallway was clogged with doctors and guards and guns and Strauss. He could never bull his way through them all. There were no windows, no stairs, not even so much as a ventilation shaft, except for the narrow ones set in the tiled walls around him—and even if he could fit through one, he’d only end up crawling toward his death.
“Stop!” he yelled, opting for begging—it was the only card he had left. “Don’t do this. Just listen to me—please!” Holding Lux with one hand, he reached out with the other and grabbed Dr. Michalski’s lapel. “They’re kids. They’re not even kids— they’re like toddlers! This is murder, man, can’t you see it? Look me in the eye and tell me this isn’t mass murder!”
But Dr. Michalski just wrenched Jim’s hand away and stepped back, his eyes unblinking and his face green. He looked to Strauss for support, and she stepped in with her handgun, which she pressed against Jim’s chest. She pushed him back with it, until she was standing in the doorway of the chamber.