She turned then and saw him standing not two meters away, dressed in his black uniform. His hair was longer than she’d ever seen it, and it fluttered in the breeze. He did not wear his Shark pin on his collar. Belle didn’t know where her uniform was. She couldn’t imagine that she would have come down to Isaac’s Beach wrapped only in a towel.
“Are you okay, Belle?” Vaughan asked.
“I don’t know. I feel good. I feel like I’ve slept better than I’ve ever slept before.”
She took a few hesitant steps toward him, not really thinking about it, then stopped abruptly with her arms parted. She had intended to hug him. One arm still up, she froze and bit her lip, trying to gauge from his expression what he would accept from her. If anything, his face seemed open and welcoming. So she stepped into him and wrapped her arms around his slender waist. He returned the embrace and patted her back.
She leaned away and closed her eyes, pressing up on her toes to touch his lip with hers. He returned the kiss gently, chastely, before disengaging.
“You made it,” he said.
“Made it where?”
“Home,” Vaughan said, holding up one hand. “You are now an AI.”
The breeze stiffened suddenly and chills crept along her arms. She gasped as a memory of an intention floated into her awareness. She’d had some notion to save Jacey.
Senator Bentilius. I was going to save Jacey from being overwritten.
Which meant . . .
“I’m dead.”
“In the real world, your body is inhabited by Senator Bentilius. You changed places with Jacey. You saved her. I was able to collect a copy of you that Greta made and bring you here.”
Relief washed over Belle. For a moment, she had feared that this was the sweetest dream she had ever dreamed, that at any moment someone would shake her awake.
“Are we alone here?” she asked. “You? Me?”
“Yes.”
He took her hand and led her up the path, and they walked for a while along the familiar hills. The trek went faster than usual, and suddenly they were walking toward the quad.
By the time they got to the center of the quad, Belle realized that she was dressed in her uniform again. She put a hand to her head and tried to remember when she’d found the uniform, let alone put it on. And where had the towel gone? Sensei would be very angry if he discovered she’d left it somewhere on the path.
“I’m an AI,” she reminded to herself. “The rules here are different.”
She turned a slow circle. The campus was exactly as she remembered it. “Is it always this time of day here? Evening, just before sunset?”
“No. It can be any time of day you want.” And as he spoke, the sun quickly moved the wrong way to stand at noon. A second later it was nighttime and the sky full of stars.
“Go ahead, Belle.”
She pictured her favorite time of day, early morning just before sunrise, the grass wet with dew, the world mostly silent, the air slightly chilled. And so it was. She left the time there and leaned into Vaughan.
“I’m like a goddess here,” she said. “That should make me happy, but it doesn’t.” She laughed then, sadly. “It doesn’t really matter.”
He smiled back, face the picture of equanimity. She looked at him, gaze for gaze, and spoke the words that rose to mind. The only words that mattered. And they came out with no resistance, no guile. Just truth. “I love you. I always have.”
“I know. And I love you, too.”
“But not in the same way.” She said it without defensiveness. Just a statement of fact.
“No, probably not, but that’s not to say that I couldn’t someday. But you don’t have to wait.” He gestured and a twin materialized by his side dressed all in white.
The twin stepped close to Belle, put a finger under her chin, and bent down to kiss her. She melted into it, savoring it. Until a memory of Dr. Carlhagen popped into her mind. She had kissed him, mistaking the face and body for the person.
“I adore you, Belle,” said the twin Vaughan. “I want nothing but to be with you and make you happy for all eternity.”
“Stop!” she cried, backing away.
He froze, became a statue, unblinking, staring at nothing.
“You could have this,” Vaughan said. “You could have this now.”
Belle shivered and edged farther away from the twin. “But it’s not real. It’s not you. I want your heart.”
“Very well,” Vaughan said. “If you want the real me, you’ll have to get to know me. And as for you, I don’t know you either.”
“I’d like that,” Belle said. And then she did feel a moment of guardedness as a strange question popped to her mind, one that embarrassed her.
She looked away shyly. “Would you . . .”
She stopped. But Vaughan said nothing. He wouldn’t ask her to finish the question. So she steeled herself and turned to him. With tears welling in her eyes, lips quivering, heart shaking, she asked the question. “Could you teach me to see through your eyes?”
His brow furrowed and a beautiful but confused smile played on his lips. “What do you mean?”
“When I look inside, all I see is shadow. But you always see the light in everyone.” She pressed a hand to his chest. “If I could see how you see, maybe I could find a spark of light in myself.”
Vaughan placed both of his hands over hers, pressing her palm to his chest. His heart beat slow and strong. “There’s more than a spark in you. I’ve always known that. If there weren’t, you wouldn’t be here. If there weren’t, you never would’ve changed places with Jacey.”
“I didn’t do it for her. I did it so I could be with you. Besides, the others need her. They didn’t need me.”
Vaughan’s smile deepened. “Did you hear yourself just now?”
“I said I did it so I could be with you.”
Vaughan pulled her into a friendly embrace and stroked her hair, the way Mother Tyeesha had done when they were children. Except that when he did it, she liked it. His voice was soft, a rumble in his chest. “What I heard was that you did it for the rest of the Scions, because they need Jacey. You saved someone you hate to help people you love.”
“But I don’t love them. I only love you.”
Vaughan continued to stroke her hair. The sky slipped backward to night. The stars came out, and a breeze carried the sweet scent of frangipani blossoms. “Then you don’t know yet what love is.”
48
Enough Pleasantries
Jacey took a long sip of cool, clean water, then set the glass on the mahogany table in Dr. Carlhagen’s dining room. “Oh, that’s good.” She couldn’t seem to get enough of it after relying on intermittent rainfall for a couple days.
Humphrey sat across from her, deep in thought. He’d aged over the past few days. And it wasn’t just from the black wound over one eye.
“Mother Tyeesha’s going to be okay,” she said, trying to take his mind off the evening’s events. “Seems Orson couldn’t shoot an old woman. He put a bullet through her kitchen cabinets instead.”
“A real softy. Just like his brother.”
So they were back to the topic she’d wanted to ignore for at least fifteen minutes.
Jacey couldn’t bring herself to care about the butler. For the first time in she didn’t know how long, she had a chance to relax. Already, she’d enjoyed a long shower and now wore clean clothes.
She took another pull of the water and surrendered to the feel of the evening breeze blowing through the open window behind Humphrey. There was no hurricane whipping the island, no Progenitor about to arrive and overwrite someone. All the bad people—except one—were locked up. The Scions were all safe and sound.
For the time being.
She knew they only had a few days before the senator’s contingency plans went into effect, whatever they were. The senator had not been very forthcoming so far.
“Tonight I’m going to sleep like the dead.” She grimaced at her own c
hoice of words.
“You deserve it,” Humphrey said.
“And so do you.”
But Humphrey didn’t look convinced. He wore his old sour expression, which Jacey thought was directed more at himself than her. She wondered if his past behavior—back before they knew what they were—had been directed at himself, too.
The more she thought about what Belle had done, the more she believed that was true in general of people. If they were happy and cheerful, that’s because they were happy with themselves. And if they were full of anger, they were angry with themselves.
So what does that say about me? Was she tired of herself? She smiled at the secret thought. Not too far from the mark.
A beeper went off. It was Humphrey’s reader. “Time to try again,” he said.
She slid her chair around, and Humphrey called for Vaughan.
“Vaughan? If you can hear me, please—” Before he could finish, Vaughan’s face appeared.
“Hello, Humphrey. Hi, Jacey.”
Jacey’s mouth opened, and her head fell slightly to the side. “Hi, Jacey? All you can say is ‘Hi, Jacey?’ You’ve been unresponsive for hours and hours.”
“I was busy.”
The view zoomed out to show both Vaughan and Belle, each dressed in a Scion’s uniform but lacking the Shark pins. They stood side by side. Belle looked more relaxed than Jacey had ever seen her. And on her lips was a slight smile. Jacey was horrified, suddenly fearful that Vaughan had saved a version of Senator Bentilius in Belle’s body.
“Hello, Jacey,” Belle said. “I’m glad to see you’ve washed up.” She turned to Vaughan. “You wouldn’t believe the state of her uniform when I found her in the transfer room.” The words seemed typical of the pale girl, but there was something different in the way she said them, a sort of humor that Belle had never shown before.
“Did you change her somehow?” Jacey asked Vaughan.
Vaughan grew deadly serious. “I would never do such a thing. But this place . . . I don’t know how to explain it, but it shows you yourself.” He turned to Belle. “That little quip wasn’t exactly the best way to start the conversation.”
“I suppose you’re right,” she said. Meekly, Jacey thought.
Jacey dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. “Thank you for saving my life, Belle.”
“I think I got the best side of that deal.” She was looking at Vaughan.
Jacey thought Belle could be right about that. If Jacey had been overwritten, if she had woken up in a computer-simulated reality, perhaps she could’ve relaxed and just forgotten all the troubles of the real world. But even as she considered it, she knew it wasn’t true. She had work to do. The Scions needed her.
“Okay, enough pleasantries,” Jacey said. “We still have a big mess on our hands. We’ve got a bunch of people tied up in the medical ward. Dr. Carlhagen and the senator locked up. And the way I see it, we can’t protect the Scions as long as we’re on the island.”
“Don’t forget about Mr. Justin,” Humphrey prompted.
“And Mr. Justin is missing.”
“Missing?” Vaughan said. “Where could he have gone?”
“No idea. Sensei has Scions combing the campus for him, but my guess is that he slipped out the gate when the bus arrived. By then, it was clear we were back in control. By my reckoning, he had about as bad a day as a thief can have.”
Humphrey covered his face with a napkin in time to avoid spitting water everywhere. His blue eyes sparkled, and his face flushed. “Can you imagine what he must have thought when the senator told me she was coming to transfer early? The very day he’d set up to swipe all of the Scions off the island. No wonder he tried to talk us into giving Summer up.”
“Maybe he’s trying to get down to the boat,” Vaughan said.
Jacey squinted at Vaughan. “Wait a minute. How do you know about the boat?”
“I talked to Livy a while ago.”
“Livy? Why were you talking to her? We’ve been trying to get ahold of you.”
“When Livy calls, I answer. No offense, but you know how she is.” Vaughan’s tone was so matter-of-fact Jacey didn’t know what else to say. He was right. Livy did have that effect.
“She’s worried about you,” he finished.
Of course she was, Jacey thought. She resolved to go see the Dolphin before she went to bed. Though the thought of walking down the path made her want to weep. Still, she had promised to stop at Girls’ Hall to hear the poem Livy had written. Running away with Summer had delayed that plan.
Humphrey said, “So Vaughan, you were saying that Mr. Justin might head for the boat.”
“He’d have to know how to drive it,” Jacey said. “I’ve got Sang and Horace down there guarding it, just in case Orson brought anyone else to the island. He swears he didn’t, but I don’t trust him at all.”
Footsteps pounded down the hall, and Summer burst into the office. Between panted breaths, she gasped out a message. “I found him! I found Mr. Justin.”
49
Death’s the Price
Jacey wrinkled her nose as she knelt by a pallet of body bags. The chill air in the medical ward’s freezer room made her body shake. But her shivers weren’t just from the cold.
Senator Bentilius’s old body, the dead guards, and Alice lay on the far side of the room.
“I made the boys bring them in here,” Summer said. “They were starting to kind of smell, you know?”
Jacey grimaced. She could smell it.
Summer went on. “And then I remembered that when we were in here the other morning, there were five body bags.” She counted them off on her fingers. “Dante, Vin, Ping, Sarah, and Dr. Carlhagen. But now . . .”
“Six,” Jacey said.
The new one lay on top, its zipper already open. Jacey spread the opening a bit. Mr. Justin’s face stared at her, eyes definitely not crinkling, and no smile on his lips.
“How did he get in here?” Humphrey asked. He leaned against the door, arms folded across his chest. “Once you’re dead, you don’t just jump in a bag and hop into a freezer.”
The door swung open, and Humphrey nearly fell into the hall. Sensei pressed past him and joined Jacey by the pallet.
“I’ve confirmed that no one had seen Mr. Justin since lockdown,” he said. “The odd thing was that after he locked the Halls, he sent Elias, Horace, Dajeet, Bethancy, and Tytus to the hacienda. The pretense was to explain ‘what was going on.’”
“He never showed up,” Humphrey said.
Sensei zipped the bag shut and stood. “Wanda said she saw Belle driving the Jeep down the path from the hacienda. She was looking for Mr. Justin because she wanted some pills for Dr. Carlhagen. Wanda told her that Mr. Justin was stopping at the medical ward.”
“He stopped all right,” Humphrey mumbled.
Jacey rubbed her elbows. “I think I know what happened. At least, part of it.”
“You weren’t even here, how could you know?” Sensei asked.
“Simple deductive reasoning, my dear Sensei.”
He made a face. “Get on with it, Sherlock.”
Humphrey exchanged glances with Summer. They both shrugged. Apparently Socrates had neglected their literary training.
“Mr. Justin transferred into someone,” Jacey said. “And then he dragged his body in here, put it in a bag, and left. Who counts body bags after all?”
“He had the opportunity, I suppose,” Humphrey said. “The senator’s guards were off on the helicopter looking for Summer. The only people in the ward would’ve been the senator and her nurse.”
“Miss Dayspring!” Sensei said. “She had to have seen him.”
They bolted from the freezer room.
Bursting into the medical ward, Jacey scanned for the nurse. She sat in a corner, hands folded on her lap, head bowed.
“Miss Dayspring,” Jacey said, skidding to stop next to the woman.
The nurse started from her sleep. “What? Is it the boy?” She glanced toward Eli
as’s cot.
“No. Elias is fine. I need to know if you saw Mr. Justin come into the ward this afternoon?”
“Who?”
“Dr. Carlhagen’s butler.” Jacey described him.
“No. I didn’t see anyone. I was so worried about the senator, you know?”
Jacey squatted and made the woman meet her eyes. “Are you absolutely certain?”
“I think so. I—” She burst into tears. “I don’t know what I’ve seen today. There’s been so much death and murder and killing!”
Jacey patted the woman’s knee and straightened. Miss Dayspring wouldn’t be of any use.
Who would Mr. Justin transfer into? His name hadn’t been on the Scion/Progenitor list, but Mr. Justin had said many Progenitors used false names. Jacey had assumed his Scion was at Children’s Villa. Maybe he wasn’t.
But if recent events had proven anything, it was that one didn’t have to transfer into a clone. “And I thought I’d have a night to relax,” Jacey said. “But with Mr. Justin out there . . .”
“We can start by identifying who he couldn’t have transferred into,” Humphrey said. “That includes everyone who was at the hacienda with me. That’ll narrow it down a lot.”
Jacey sighed and hugged him. “I guess we’ll sleep next week.” She went up on tiptoes for a kiss. It lingered and deepened.
Summer cleared her throat.
Jacey broke the kiss, face flushing. She unwrapped herself from Humphrey and guided Summer away. “I’m sorry about that. That was insensitive of me.”
“Huh? You were more patient with Miss Dayspring than I would’ve been.”
Jacey rolled her eyes. “I was talking about what just happened with Humphrey.”
“Oh, that! Don’t worry. I’m over him.”
“You are?”
Summer looked past Jacey. “Did you see how Elias took down that enormous woman? And he got shot!”
“Oh dear,” Jacey said, following Summer’s gaze toward the boy’s cot. “Try to be a bit more subtle this time. He won’t thank you if you go blabbing to everyone about how much you love him.”
Child of Lies Page 28