Free Vitro by Jessica Khoury Page B

still early enough that most everyone should be asleep, for another hour anyway. He hoped the three kids had been an exception, and that no one else on Skin Island was such an early riser. What if they made it to the airstrip and found his plane, but not him? Would they tell someone, launch a search? There were just too many variables, too much risk.
He did a harried and not very thorough search. The rooms here were all labs or storage, all of them empty and quiet, though the lights in the hall were still lit. He grew less cautious as time progressed, both because it seemed unlikely that there was anyone awake, and because he knew he was running out of time.
He reached the last door in the hall before it opened to the atrium, and told himself that if Sophie wasn’t in it, then he’d leave. I tried. That’s good enough.
He opened the door and found himself in a room lit with blue light, just bright enough to see the sleeping girl on the hospital bed. His heart stopped. Sophie.
He crossed the room in two strides and wrapped his hand around her wrist. Her pulse was very faint, but it was there. He breathed out in relief. For a moment, he’d thought she was dead, she lay so still.
“What did they do to you?” he murmured. He ran his fingers through her hair. “Sophie?”
She did not stir. There was a metal stand beside her, and on it hung a bag of clear liquid that pumped into her arm through a plastic tube. He looked around, frantic, as if there might be a nurse in the corner who could help him. But they were alone. He looked back at Sophie. She was hardly breathing. I knew this was a bad idea, I knew it from the start. Had she been hurt? Perhaps the IV was meant to help her—but if so, that meant someone here had to have been the one who hurt her. Nicholas? The scientists or the guards? He locked his hands on the back of his neck and stared from Sophie to the door in agitation, then made a snap decision.
He clamped his teeth together and pulled on the tube, and it snickered out of her arm. He felt ill, and his head spun—he had never been one for hospitals and needles. But he forced himself to stay steady as he scooped Sophie into his arms. She was astonishingly light, or else he was running on an extra surge of adrenaline. His heart beat so wildly that he was surprised she didn’t feel it and wake up.
“I’m getting you out of here,” he whispered. She was wearing a thin white hospital gown, and he could feel every curve of her body through it. Whatever drugs they’d given her, they must have been powerful. She seemed to be halfway into a coma.
Jim kicked open the door and burst into the hallway. Now his only ally was speed; there was no way he could sneak around with Sophie in his arms. If she would only wake up, she could walk and they might have a better chance, but even as he ran down the hallway she slept on, her head bouncing against his chest.
He went out the same door he’d come in by, though he had to pause to click the lock. Outside, it was full morning. The sky was blue, but the building still cast a long shadow over the bluff, giving them a modicum of cover should anyone glance their way. He couldn’t run very well with her in his arms, but still he tried, and he made it to the cover of a wide patch of bamboo without being spotted.
“Hang in there, Crue,” he whispered to Sophie. She groaned and flexed her fingers, and he waited to see if she’d open her eyes, but though her lashes fluttered they stayed sealed. “I’ll get you out of here, I swear.”

NINE
SOPHIE
S ophie wasn’t entirely certain that she was awake; though she felt conscious, her eyes refused to open, as if her eyelids had been glued together. Light probed at them, red and white and painful. Her throat felt packed with cotton and her tongue weighed like a brick. A strange sensation flooded her body, almost as if she were floating. Her head was heavy and immobile, but the rest of her felt light and airy as a dollop of whipped