But I do. I duck under Luka’s arm and sprint to the door, pull it open, and freeze. The room’s the size of a large closet. It’s a lot colder than the bigger room behind me. My breath puffs little white clouds. There’s a single gurney in here, and a lone girl. She doesn’t look like the ones outside. She’s dark where they were fair, and she looks smaller, shorter, though I can’t be certain since she’s flat on her back. Hard to tell with her skin so pale and her eyes closed, but she looks older than the girls in the other room.
Jackson lifts his head. His fingers are clamped around the wires leading to her neck. His expression gives nothing away, but I don’t think he’s surprised to see me.
“You ever listen?”
I shake my head. “I’m more of a see-for-myself, think-for-myself kind of girl.”
My thoughts spin, tumbling one over the next. Why did he need to shut the door? Why is this girl isolated from the others? What doesn’t he want me to see?
And then the questions don’t matter because I see it. Her belly button. “She’s not a shell. She’s a person,” I whisper.
“She’s an original donor,” Jackson says, his tone flat.
“What does that mean? That they’ll use her to make an army like that?” I gesture toward the door behind me and the rows of shells beyond.
“Yes.”
“But the clones out there are from a different donor. . . .”
“They harvest genetic material and distribute it to growth labs all over the world.” He looks down at the body in front of him. “They’re still harvesting this one. They’ll keep her body alive until they’ve taken what they need, then ship out samples and terminate her.”
“So you’re just going to do the job for them and kill her? You can’t. Jackson, she’s not like the others. She wasn’t—” I make a futile gesture, at a loss for words. “She wasn’t grown like them. She’s human.”
“I’m not killing her. She’s already dead,” Jackson says.
I stare at the machines, the tubes and wires. “How do you know? She could still have a chance! She could—”
He pulls out his deadly black knife.
“No!” I lurch forward and clamp both hands around his wrist.
Tendons tighten beneath my fingers. He pulls away. His knife slashes down . . . around . . .
The top of her skull falls away. There are bloodstains inside her skull, but no brain. There’s no brain. They took her brain. I shiver and wrap my arms around myself.
“Why would they do that? Why would they take her brain?”
I think he isn’t going to answer me, and when he does, I wish he hadn’t.
“It’s a delicacy.” His tone is flat.
I stare at him openmouthed.
“They need her body, but they don’t need her brain for their purposes. So they took it.”
I press the back of my hand against my mouth, trying to hold back a howl of fear and revulsion and horror.
“She’s already dead,” Jackson says again, softer this time. He lifts his head. I desperately want to see his eyes, to know what emotions are mirrored there, to connect with him in our common humanity. But all I see is myself, pale and shaken, reflected in the lenses of his sunglasses. And suddenly it’s all too much.
Without a word, I reach up and rip the shades off. My gaze locks on his.
He stares back at me, his inhuman gray eyes beautiful and deadly and mercury bright.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I RESPAWN WITH AS MUCH GRACE AND ELEGANCE AS A PLANE crash. I’m on my driveway, facing my open front door, grocery bag in my hand, as though only two seconds, not almost two days, have passed.
The grocery bag’s handle slides down my palm, then along my fingers, impossibly slowly, just as it did before I got pulled. The world tips and tilts, and I flail for balance.
My head jerks up. My gaze collides with Luka’s. His eyes are wide and . . . brown.
I think of Jackson. His eyes. His beautiful, terrifying eyes. Confusion and panic swarm through my thoughts, spawning questions like maggots. But Jackson’s not here, and Luka isn’t the right person to ask.
The bag takes an eternity to fall to the ground, sending cans rolling in all directions. But they’re slow, too slow. I look up and see my dad coming out of the house, moving like he’s walking chest deep through a swimming pool, his expression taking forever to shift into surprise. The only things moving at regular speed are Luka and me.
There’s a throbbing behind my eyes and pressure in the joints of my jaw, then my ears pop and—as Luka said last time we respawned in real life—bam, we’re back. The world snaps into gear and Dad’s beside me, brow furrowed, hand extended.
Dropping to my knees, I reach for the rolling cans, glad for the excuse to avoid my father’s eyes. I don’t want to talk to him. Not right now. I can barely keep it together. The shells. The dead human girl. The machines.
Jackson’s eyes. A chill slithers along my spine. Jackson’s inhuman, mercury-bright eyes.
“Miki?” Dad says, and his feet are right there, beside me where I kneel by the fallen cans. I force myself to keep my head down. My hand is shaking. I grab a can and focus on that, only that, willing my dad not to notice my anxiety.