“You’re pathetic, Sophie. Now get up.”
She heard him, but only distantly. Her brain moved as if she’d left the emergency brake on: haltingly, agonizingly. Where was she, again? What was the stunning revelation that had sent her into this dizzying spiral of insanity? Oh. Yes. I’m a Vitro. Imagine that. How stupid have I been, not to see it?
“Get up.” He hauled her up by her collar and kept a firm grip on her neck to keep her from sinking down again. She slipped on the glossy photographs of her past. “Get control of yourself, will you? There’s still so much to do!”
“You can’t make me!” she spat.
“Oh?” He seemed amused by her vehemence.
“I’ll fight you with every ounce of strength I have, you bastard.”
“Not after you’ve imprinted on me,” he whispered in her ear. “Now let’s move.”
Nicholas led her through the resort and smuggled her up the hill to the Vitro building, where he took her through a side door using a key he carried in his pocket, on a ring stuffed with them.
“You steal all of those?” she asked hollowly.
He rolled his eyes and pushed the door open.
The hallway was deserted, but she heard loud voices from
the atrium—her mother, Strauss, Andreyev, among others. They were arguing intensely, from the sound of it. Nicholas led her in the opposite direction, to a small door that lead to a downward staircase, and into a long hallway. They passed rooms with padded walls, and Sophie recognized the one in which she’d been kept after she’d blurted out her identity to Strauss. For a moment, she thought Nicholas was going to lock her back inside, and she panicked and jerked away, nearly tripping when the cord went taut and caught her ankles.
“Relax,” he said. “I’m not going to lock you up.” “What do you think you’re going to do?” she said. “Make me imprint on you, really? That’s impossible. It’s not like I’m a baby you can start hardwiring, like the rest of them.”
“You’d be surprised at what I can do.” He pulled her further along, past the padded cells. Her borrowed sneakers squeaked on the tile.
She felt raw inside, worked over like a lump of used chewing gum. He knew everything about her, all her darkest memories. Had her mother been whispering the secrets of Sophie’s life into his ear? Was she just a source of gossip for the people on Skin Island to laugh over? The control, it’s all about the control. His laughter echoed in her ear, and she looked up abruptly, but his face was solemn and the laughter was only in her head. Skin Island’s own special, very first Vitro.
She couldn’t process. Couldn’t breathe. A lifetime of lies. A mother who was not her mother. A father who was not her father. A sister she never knew existed. Lux is all I have—my only true family. And I don’t really have her at all. Her sister was an echo of another person, without a will or identity of her own. She felt as if she’d toppled off a high wall and was falling still, wind rushing in her ears, her stomach in her throat and her heart in her mouth.
She felt hollow with the loss of Jim and the baring of her soul to the person she now hated most in the world, more than her stepmother, more than Strauss. She didn’t know how many more blows she could take before she would deserve one of those padded rooms. She felt as if the layers of her life were being stripped away one by one; she was being whittled down, smaller and smaller, until she was nothing but a tiny speck on the face of the planet, a pebble, a scrap, a nothing.
Nicholas opened a door, and the room behind it glowed with faint blue light. It was completely empty.
No, wait . . . There was something odd about the walls. They were lined from floor to ceiling with panels made of filmy glass, and the blue light was shining from behind the panels. Trailing the cord between them, Sophie walked to one wall and pressed her hands to the panel; it was warm. She squinted at the glass, at the shadowy figure behind it.
Horrified, she pulled away, looking at Nicholas in sudden comprehension.
“The rest of the Vitros,” she whispered. “The ones that haven’t been woken yet.”
He nodded, a slight, intent smile on his lips.
She turned back to the panels, her eyes moving from one to another; she had to stare at the glass for a moment before she could make out the sleeping Vitro behind it. There were at least two dozen of them.
In vitro, she thought. In glass. They’re literally raised in glass boxes. She shivered, correcting herself. We, she thought. We are raised in glass boxes.
The place made her feel dirty, creepy, as if she were watching a stranger shower. These sleeping people were intensely vulnerable and she felt as if she’d broken into a private sanctuary.
Nicholas, however, seemed to feel no such compunction. He walked around the room, pressing buttons beside the panels. One by one, they hissed and slid open with a rush of white gas.
“What are you doing?”
“Sh.” Nicholas pressed a finger to his lips as he popped open a smaller panel in the wall that revealed a handheld instrument inside. “I’m creating a diversion. And also getting a little revenge. And also just creating general chaos. I’m very good at it, you know.”
“Very good at which one?”
He paused, then grinned. “All three.” He pulled out what looked like half a hair-straightener; it was a thick baton with a plastic grip on one end and a thin metal plate screwed to the other.
“What’s that?” asked Sophie.
“This is a . . . well, we don’t really have a fancy name for it. We just call it the wand. It activates the Vitros’ chips. Wakes them up.”
He walked back to the first glass panel, which was so low on the wall he had to get on his knees to look inside. The boy lying within—Sophie could see that they were all the same age, around sixteen—was pale, thin, and groggy. Nicholas pressed a button on the wand and held it over the boy’s head. After a moment, it beeped three times, and the boy’s eyes opened.
“Stop!” Sophie cried. “You can’t do this! They’re helpless—leave them alone!”
He looked up at her. “You want to do it instead?”
“You’re evil.”
“Oh, seriously,” he sighed, standing to wake the next Vitro. “You shouldn’t see the world in such black and white terms. It’s very naive of you.”
“I won’t let you!” she yelled, and she charged at him, intending to beat him over the head if she could.
But he still held the other end of the cord, and he pulled it quickly, bringing her crashing down. Her head hit the floor and stars exploded in her eyes; foggily she grappled with the knots around her ankles, but they were too tight, too complicated. Her skull aching, she tried to crawl toward Nicholas to pull his feet out from under him, but he just sneered and dragged her to the door, where he tied the cord to the handle, taking up all the slack in the line so her hands were forced up over her head. Her fingers tingled from the tight knots that hindered her circulation and her shoulder screamed; if she’d been hit directly she was sure she’d have died of sheer pain by now. She felt as if she’d been mauled by a mountain lion— what would a real bullet wound feel like? She couldn’t imagine anything worse than what she was already feeling.
“And it’s no use shouting,” he said. “They’re all outside hunting for you, so they won’t hear. But still. If you do make a sound, I’ll stuff your mouth.”
She could only watch in horror as he woke the Vitros one by one, taking the time to look each in the eyes, giving them a chance to imprint on him.
“I’ve wanted to do this for years,” he said amiably. “But I had to wait for the right time.”
“Why? What part do they play in your delusions?”
“I told you,” he replied, impatiently. “Don’t you listen to a word I say? I’m creating a distraction.”