Slowly, she realized there were people around her, talking in low tones. She wanted to call out, to ask for help, for a drink of water, but her tongue betrayed her and remained leaden.“. . . told Hashimoto to bring Lux upstairs. Where is she?” “She has the morning off. Probably sleeping in.”
A sigh from the first speaker. A woman, Sophie noted. Her thoughts were languid, struggling to keep up. “I’ll speak with her later. Lucky we got here early. There’s no time to waste, so let’s get her upstairs and prep her for Andreyev.”
It was like straining to understand a foreign language; every word took an extra moment to register in Sophie’s brain. She vaguely remembered something happening, something before she blacked out . . . a room, a blue light, someone sleeping, someone impossible . . .
She felt movement. She was lying on a stretcher, and it was being rolled across uneven floor. Her body vibrated with every motion. She strained to open her eyes but they stayed soldered shut. Light and shadow rolled over her. Low in her throat, she managed the smallest groan.
The stretcher came to abrupt stop. “Did you hear that?” the woman asked. “I thought she—”
“She’s been off the anesthesia for half an hour.” The second voice was male, but high and a bit nasally.
“They don’t usually wake this fast. Hand me the xenon. If she wakes up now we’re all screwed—it’s too soon.”
Something plastic was pressed to Sophie’s face, and she heard a faint hiss. Oxygen mask, she thought. She tried to groan again, but her voice seemed to have evaporated completely.
They were moving again, and then she heard a metallic ding. The nature of the movement changed; the stretcher was still, but they were going up, in an elevator probably. It dinged again and then she was rolling.
The voices faded in and out; her consciousness was flickering like a dying light bulb. Sounds morphed into low, meaningless bursts of noise, like a tape put on slow motion.
“. . . snuck out again,” the man was murmuring. “Around dawn, they think.”
“Let them go. It isn’t as if they’re going to actually go anywhere. They are teenagers and they will roam.”
“Well. Not exactly teenagers, Moira.”
Moira. Sophie’s mind had been sinking deeper into a sea of mud, but at that name she lunged upward, grabbing hold of it like a life line. Mom!
“They’re not harming anything and anyway, maybe it’s better they’re out of the way when Strauss gets here. You know they like to cause trouble.” It was her mother’s voice. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? Mom, it’s me! I’m here—why can’t you see me? She wanted to scream. It didn’t make sense! Her mother was right there, so why wasn’t she trying to help Sophie? Why—Oh. The memory finally fell into place, the lost pieces of a jigsaw puzzle snapped together to form a complete picture. The girl in the bed, the one who looked like me. And not just like Sophie—identical to Sophie. Understanding flooded her thoughts. They think I’m her. But why? How? Just when she thought she’d figured it out, more questions followed. Where was the other Sophie? Surely when they saw that there were two of her, they’d realized something was up. Or were there a hundred girls like her on this island? What were they? Why were they? And her mother—Moira Crue sounded well and whole. She didn’t seem to be dying or running for her life. What is going on?
“This had better work,” said the man. “It’s hard to believe that two decades of research can come down to a single moment.”
“We’re ready for this.”
“You say it with more confidence than I have.”
“What can I say, Rogers? I’m an optimist.”
“Corpus has been breathing down our neck for years. We only get one shot. This day will make or break us.”
“Stop worrying. We need to keep our heads straight for this.”
“I’m just saying. Hashimoto knows how important this is. She should have prepped Lux better. I mean look at her.” A finger brushed Sophie’s shoulder, but she was so groggy she couldn’t even flinch. “Is that a bruise? And here’s another, on her cheek.”
“It happens, when they’re moved from one bed to another.”
“Well, at least she had the decency to put a gown on her.”
“Here we are,” Moira said. “And look here. Everything’s in place. Hashimoto isn’t completely incompetent. She just forgot to bring Lux up. Still, I’m going to have a few words with her.”
“Odd,” the man muttered. “This IV looks used . . .”
Sophie heard a sudden crash, as if the door had been thrown open. Her mind was clouding over, and she fought to stay awake. Whatever gas they were feeding through the mask, it was working fast to shut down her brain.
“They’re here!” a new voice shouted.
“Here? Strauss? Now?”
“Just landed.”
“They’re not supposed to arrive until nine!”
“Moira, it’s eight-thirty.”
“What, already? Good Lord, don’t just stand there! Laurent, stay with Lux. I’ll go meet them.”
No, Sophie thought. Mom, come back, it’s me, please see me, Mom!
But she heard receding footsteps, then the door slammed shut, and she couldn’t hold onto consciousness any longer.
TEN JIM
He was growing more and more concerned for Sophie with every passing minute. She didn’t wake, she didn’t move. Several times he stopped to check for a pulse. Whatever they had done to her, he just hoped it wasn’t permanent. If he could just make it to the plane, he could get her to a hospital. But that was the problem—getting to the plane. The
island seemed twice as big as it had before. When he’d first lifted her, Sophie had felt light, but she grew heavier with every step he took. His physical exhaustion was catching up to him and had begun to wear on his mind as well, tempting him to stop, to give up, to leave her behind and save himself.
“No can do, compadre,” he muttered. “We’re both getting out of here.”
A glinting dragonfly buzzed around his head, as if urging him to hurry, and a warm wind shivered through the bamboo around him; the leaves danced and cast shifting green-tinted light across Sophie’s skin. She looked the opposite of everything Jim felt: peaceful, serene, even innocent. Her left arm was curled over her stomach, but the right one hung loose. He stopped and leaned against a tree so he could lift it and rest it on top of the other one; as he did, her fingers suddenly tightened on his.
He froze and stared intently at her face. “Sophie? Sophie, wake up. Please. Come on, kid, just open your eyes.”
Her lashes fluttered and his stomach tightened in anticipation, but she just sighed and seemed to sink deeper into her slumber.
Jim thought wildly of the old fairy tales, the ones where the sleeping princess would awaken only with a kiss. His eyes traveled inevitably to her lips, soft and pink. He shook his head. There was something . . . he couldn’t place it exactly, but there was something too innocent about her. A kind of childlike purity to her repose that made the thought of kissing her seem vile. Which was strange, given that he’d fantasized at least five times about kissing her. But now, it just felt . . . wrong, somehow. She looked more like the Sophie he knew when he was seven than the one who was supposed to be seventeen, an odd mingling of child and woman.
He hurried on, though the thick bamboo made his going slow. It grew so close together that he felt stifled, almost as if he were underwater.
A few minutes later, he heard voices ahead, muffled and distant, but unmistakable. He dropped into a crouch, cradling Sophie to himself, and listened. Those kids—the ones that went looking for me. He’d almost forgotten about them. Maybe Nicholas sent them to help, he reasoned. He knew I’d have trouble with the plane, so maybe Sophie convinced him to send them.