Her eyes solemn, she leaned back and let out a soft sigh; everything was in Andreyev’s hands now. Sophie crossed her fingers beneath the table and hoped her gamble wouldn’t break them all.
“You have no results,” Andreyev said slowly. “You have no proof that this plan of yours will work. In fact, all you have to show me is your surrogate mother’s failure to cure a problem she created, in Nicholas. And yet you ask me to risk a fortune on this plan of yours.”
“Well . . . yes,” Sophie said, reddening a little. “But she never had the chance to—”
“Do you think I became the wealthiest man in Eurasia because I went about listening to little girls cry or wasting money on charities?”
Sophie’s face burned. This was a mistake. I should have known he was just like the rest of them. “I’m sorry I bothered you,” she said through clenched teeth.
Andreyev sniffed and turned back to his dinner. She started to rise to her feet, her blood boiling, when the door to the cafeteria burst open with bang, and both of them jumped—but not, Sophie noticed, the statuesque bodyguards, who merely slipped their hands back into their jackets, presumably to whatever firearms they had stashed in there.
Dr. Hashimoto ran into the room, looking stricken.
Andreyev rose to his feet. “What’s wrong?”
Dr. Hashimoto doubled over, her hands on her knees, panting for breath. “It’s—it’s Strauss.”
“What has she done?”
“They sedated all the Vitros . . . got Jay and Mary and Wyatt too . . . They’re in the—the—” Dr. Hashimoto’s eyes flooded with tears; she was choking on her own voice. “Moira tried to stop her but Strauss had the guards take her.”
“Where is Moira?” Andreyev snapped.
“Follow me!”
Her heart pounding in her ears, Sophie followed Andreyev, his guards, and Dr. Hashimoto down the hall and into the first hall, the one Sophie thought she’d heard her mother in. Dr. Hashimoto gestured frantically at a door, and without waiting for the others, Sophie charged in.
She found her mother tied and gagged in a chair in some sort of small laboratory, guarded by two men who jumped to attention and drew their rifles at Sophie’s loud entrance. She froze, and so did they, as Moira called out unintelligibly from behind her gag. Andreyev and Dr. Hashimoto stopped on either side of her, the bodyguards behind them.
The guards moved first, grabbing Sophie and Dr. Hashimoto, spinning them around to face Andreyev and holding them tightly. They looked flustered and confused, but shouted for Andreyev’s bodyguards to drop their weapons and leave the room.
“This doesn’t concern you, Mr. Andreyev,” said one of them. “But Strauss will want this girl and this doctor for questioning, for helping Dr. Crue. Go on now, gently.”
“Go,” said Sophie coldly to Andreyev. “Find Strauss!”
He gave her a steady stare, then nodded once and turned to usher his bodyguards out. When the door shut, the guards relaxed their grips on Sophie and Dr. Hashimoto. They stepped a few steps away and whispered severely to each other, presumably about what they were to do with these two new prisoners. Moira struggled at her bonds and stared wildly around, but Sophie stopped to gather her thoughts and take stock of the situation.
“Dr. Hashimoto,” she whispered, and the doctor gave her a wild-eyed look. “Did you get those sedatives I told you to get?”
Her hand strayed to a set of syringes in her lab coat pocket.
Sophie nodded slowly. “Good. Hand them here.”
“Mmmph!” cried Moira, but Sophie ignored her. In the briefest of seconds before she could let her better judgment catch up to her, she took the syringes, slipped the caps off the needles, and lunged at the guards and slammed the needles into the backs of their necks, her thumbs pressing the plungers as hard as they could. The guards didn’t even have a chance to turn around. They wobbled, blinked owlishly, then slid to the floor, their rifles clattering.
When Sophie turned around, her hands shaking and her heart still paused in midbeat, Dr. Hashimoto was already untying Moira. The moment the gag slipped free Sophie’s mother burst out, “The Vitros! Strauss has them in the gas room!”
“Mom!” Sophie yelled, as her mother leaped out of the chair, vaulted over the guards, and went barreling down the hallway, Sophie and Dr. Hashimoto hurrying to keep up. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“She’s killing them! We have to hurry!”
With those words, they passed Andreyev and his guards in the hallway, who turned astonished looks on them as they ran by, and then Andreyev slid smoothly into motion, staying right on Sophie’s heels. Moira skidded to a halt in front of the elevator and punched the button repeatedly until the door slid open. “Strauss has taken the Vitros downstairs. She’s pulling the plug on Skin Island! There’s a—a room in the basement. A gas chamber.”
Sophie’s stomach somersaulted. “What?”
Moira stepped into the elevator and the others squeezed in beside her, but the door slid shut before Andreyev’s harried bodyguards could get in.
“It was a precautionary measure,” Moira said, tapping her foot impatiently as the elevator lowered. “It was Corpus’s idea. They wanted a way to contain the Vitros if they ever . . . Well.”
“Revolted?” Sophie asked. “If they ever broke the Imprima bond and turned against you?”
“Yes,” Moira admitted.
The door dinged and slid open, and Moira darted out, Sophie on her heels. Andreyev followed at a more measured pace. A door in front of Sophie popped open suddenly and his bodyguards spilled out, nearly crashing into her. For once, they looked flustered, until they spotted Andreyev and caught up to him. Sophie could hear them muttering about Andreyev always running off, as if he were a naughty child in the grocery store.
The hallway was lined with silent doctors. They were slumped against the walls, seated in soggy, teary clusters on the floor. When they saw Moira coming, they rose and flocked to her, all talking at once. She pushed her way through them, and Sophie and Andreyev followed in her wake.
At the end of the hall Strauss stood with a gun clutched so tightly in her hand that her knuckles were white. Next to her, Dr. Michalski stood with his eyes as wide and round as his glasses.
“Moira.” Strauss lifted her gun. “Enough. You’re relieved of your duties on Skin Island and are ordered to return to Corpus headquarters with me.”
“Turn it off, Ed!” Moira ignored Strauss as completely as if she were a smudge on the wall. “Turn it off, now!”
He looked at Strauss uncertainly.