His chest rose. Her heart soared.
Again. Again. Again.
She had very little breath, but what she had, she gave it all to him. And every time his heart beat against her palm she smiled.
She was smiling still when she gave him her last breath, and smiling when her head hit the floor and her eyes slid shut.
THIRTY THREE SOPHIE
Sophie leaned against the wall until a wave of dizziness passed. She’d intended to follow Moira out, to help recover the lost Vitros, but the more she moved, the more her arm pained her, until it was all she could do to keep from passing out. When she finally reached the atrium, she spied activity through the glass doors—doctors running around, Vitros lying still or stumbling across the grass. She thought she heard her mother cry out, off to her left and down the first hallway, but when she looked that way she saw nothing and supposed it was a trick of her mind, the walls of the place bending sound in strange ways. She started toward the exit when a movement down one of the other hallways caught her eye. Nicholas! He was supposed to be helping outside. What was he up to, then? She looked from the glass doors to the hallway uncertainly, then drew a deep breath and went after Nicholas.
She’d caught only a glimpse of him as he disappeared through a doorway, and she wasn’t even sure which door it was. This hallway was between the one with the Vitros’ bedrooms and the one she’d just been on, and it seemed to be mostly offices. She passed one wide doorway and glanced in to see it opened to a cafeteria, a large, tiled room with carved columns and a glass wall overlooking the island’s interior. Constantin Andreyev was inside with his two bodyguards, who were wearing sunglasses even indoors at night. They stood with their hands folded in front of them while Andreyev sat at a table and ignored the food with which Dr. Hashimoto was plying him. Behind them, a long buffet sat dark and dusty; most of the tables were pushed against the walls, between towering stacks of chairs. Only a few tables were left on the floor, all of them deserted except for Andreyev’s. All the lights except those over the tables in use were out. The room was a disharmonious blend of past and present; stepping out of the shadows into the circle of light was like moving across four decades all in one moment.
They looked and saw Sophie standing in the doorway. She froze, uncertain whether to go on or not. Nicholas didn’t seem to be in the room.
She flinched when Andreyev called her name. “Sophie Crue! My little imposter. What are you up to? What is going on out there that these doctors are trying to hide from me, eh?”
“Uh . . .”
“Mr. Andreyev,” said Dr. Hashimoto, putting forth an admirably calm front, “everything is fine, I assure you! Isn’t everything fine, Sophie?” The smile she turned on Sophie was strained, and her eyes practically shouted for Sophie to go along with the act.
“I am tired of being babysat while you people sweep up more of your messes, trying to act as if everything is normal. I know it is not!” cried Andreyev, rising to his feet.
“No one is insulting your intelligence, Mr. Andreyev.”
“Then speak.” He seemed to reign himself in a bit, and he sat down and folded his hands on the table. “What is Strauss trying to hide from me now? What is she doing to those poor sorry bastards she calls Vitros, eh?”
It was the way he said it, the softening of his voice, the concern in his eyes, that sparked the idea in Sophie. She straightened and pushed the fog of pain from her mind with a mighty inhale of air. “Dr. Hashimoto! My mother—Moira—she said you ought to go help the others outside. She said . . . she said they needed more sedatives.” She was pulling words out of thin air, crossing bridges as fast as she could build them.
“What?” Shaking her head in confusion, Dr. Hashimoto crossed the space between them. “What are you talking about? Strauss told me to—”
“They’re waiting!” cried Sophie. “Go on. Don’t worry. I’m sure Mr. Andreyev can hold his own fork and knife.”
Andreyev’s laugh bounced off the walls. “That I can. Go. Let my little imposter look after me, eh?”
Dr. Hashimoto went, though she looked far from convinced, and the moment she was out of sight Sophie wobbled across the floor and fell into the chair opposite Andreyev. His bodyguards flinched, their hands straying inside their coats at her sudden movement. Sophie didn’t spare a moment. She leaned across the table on her elbows, nearly nose to nose with the Russian investor.
“You want to know what’s going on?” she asked.
His eyes glimmered. He carefully placed his silverware on the table, pushed aside the plate of untouched mashed potatoes and filet mignon, and folded his hands on the tabletop. “Go on,” he said softly, locking gazes with her.
“Nicholas—you’ve met him I believe, one of the first Vitros?”
“Long hair, sneery look.”
“Yes. He woke all of the remaining Vitros who were lying in stasis and they imprinted on him. He’s ordered them to jump from the cliff outside and Strauss and the doctors are trying to stop them. I think he means for it to be a distraction so he can escape the island, but I’m not totally sure. He’s a hard one to predict.”
Andreyev blinked. Sophie wondered if he’d been expecting such a blunt, straightforward answer, but he seemed appreciative because he nodded slowly and leaned back. “You are a bold one,” he said. “I like you, Sophie Crue.”
She felt a surge of hope lift her heart. Her last-minute hunch about Andreyev had been little more than that—a whim, a vague, unreliable feeling—but perhaps she’d been right.
“We need your help,” she blurted out.
He arched his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“What I mean is . . . um . . . that I have a proposition for you.”
Andreyev folded his arms and slipped into a poker face, neither encouraging or discouraging. “You know that after what I have seen here, you are being extraordinarily presumptuous in making any proposal to me at all.”
“I understand.”
“You realize I owe you and this project nothing.” “I just want you to hear me out.”
He stared at her with such searching intensity that she felt her face redden, but she met him without flinching. Then he nodded slightly. “I am listening.”
Sophie drew a deep breath and then told him everything that Moira had told her of Skin Island’s bright beginnings, of the creation of the psychopathic Nicholas and the failure to treat him, of the accidental creation of the Vitros, of Corpus’s revised plan for the project in making Vitros instead of pursuing the remedial properties of the chip. She even told him about her father’s decision to risk everything by leaving the project, and how she had only just discovered her own true origin on Skin Island. All the while, Sophie watched Andreyev carefully, but his expressionless mask never once slipped. He listened impassively, but closely.
“The Vitros are successful,” Sophie admitted. “But not in the way they were originally intended. They’ve been warped to fit a new vision, one my mother did not create, and . . .” She drew a breath, knowing she was taking a gamble, knowing she had to at least try, then dove ahead. “And I don’t think you like it. I saw you in the room with Clive. Something in you knows this is wrong, that it can’t be allowed to continue. You know that it won’t end here.”
Sophie tried to gauge his reaction, inwardly cursing his stoicism. “This ability to control people will never be contained once the world knows about it. It’ll be more than just Vitros—it will be entire populations. Escorts, workers, armies, nations—where does it end? In the wrong hands, this technology could enslave millions of people. It’s in the wrong hands now and look what damage has already been done!” She stood up and leaned forward on her hands, never once breaking eye contact with the Russian. “But more than that, it destroys the foundation of a person’s humanity—it strips away their free will. The Imprima Code eradicates choice, thought, and identity. Mr. Andreyev, please. My mom—” She faltered on the word again, but plunged on. “She can turn this around before it is too late. She can build something good here, but she needs your help to do it. Something good, and something profitable. You’re a businessman, right? I’m asking you to believe in the potential the chip has to heal and not destroy. Because you know what I think? I think everyone out there,” she pointed in the general direction of every place that wasn’t Skin Island, “would agree with me on this. Maybe a hundred years from now you could convince them to buy into the idea of brainless slaves, but not now, not today, not in my world. In my world, people will pay a whole lot more for life. So.” She seemed to be running out of words to say, and sank back into her chair, swaying a little from exhaustion. “So I think any smart businessman would bet on life, and on developing a technology like the one my mom can make, that gives life and doesn’t take it away.”