When Amy opened the front door to her best friend, she could see that Tasha was bursting with news.

“Have you seen this?” Tasha Morgan asked, waving a newspaper in the air.

Amy recognized the infamous tabloid and groaned. “No, I don’t read the Universal Reporter, and neither should you. It’s worse than the National Enquirer!”

Tasha drew herself up haughtily. “For your information, Amy Candler, I don’t normally read the Universal Reporter either. But I was standing in the checkout line at the supermarket when I saw this headline and thought I’d make an exception.” Dramatically, she held the front page up to Amy’s face. In letters twice as big as those found in any respectable newspaper, the headline blared, MASTER RACE CREATED ON ISLAND PARADISE.

Using her speed-reading skills, Amy absorbed the entire article in slightly more than three seconds. Which was good, since it wasn’t worth any more time than that.

The article was highly sensationalized, of course. According to the Universal Reporter, there was an island in the Pacific Ocean where mad scientists were hard at work developing a colony of superhumans. Their plan was to use this new, powerful generation to take over the world. What the story lacked in details it made up for in exclamation points.

“Garbage,” Amy declared.

“Of course it’s garbage,” Tasha agreed. “But the description of the island sounds just like that place where you went.”

Amy shrugged and tossed the newspaper onto the coffee table. “I’m starving.”

Happily, Tasha agreed with that statement too. “I’ll order the pizzas. What do you want for toppings?”

“Anything except onions and anchovies.”

Tasha went into the kitchen, and Amy found her eyes straying to the coffee table. Quickly, she read the front-page story again.

She had to admit that Tasha was right. The island described in the article sounded exactly like the island where Amy had spent a very strange week less than a year ago. But this description would probably fit a million places. Didn’t all island paradises have sunshine, exotic flowers, palm trees swaying in the breeze, stuff like that? Hers certainly had. In all honesty, it had been a beautiful place—although Amy’s trip hadn’t exactly been a tropical vacation.

Tasha called to her from the kitchen. “Who’s going to be here? How many pizzas should I get?”

Amy made a list out loud. “You, me, Eric, Chris, Andy. Mom’s working late, so we’re five. Get two large.”

Andy Denker had been on the island with her. All Project Crescent clones had been brought there, mostly against their will. They’d been tested for various behavior.…

Tasha’s voice broke into the ugly memory. “Should I get those twisty curly cheesy things? They’re only a dollar more.”

“Okay.” Amy was still looking at the article. She had practically committed it to memory by now. What will Andy say about it? she wondered. Surely he’d agree with her that it was nonsense. After all, just about everyone had escaped from the island.

Not all of them, though. How many had remained behind? She knew about the seven clones who had been through the treatment that wiped out emotions by waking a dormant gene. And then there was that awful Annie Perrault, who was so nasty she hadn’t even needed a treatment. Four Amys, four Andys. Was that enough to create a master race?

With determination, Amy pushed the thought out of her head. This was the Universal Reporter, for crying out loud! It didn’t deserve her attention.

Tasha returned. “I ordered three pizzas,” she told Amy. “You know how my brother can eat.”

Amy nodded. “Yeah, that was probably smart. Chris and Andy can put it away too. They’ve been eating over here a lot lately.”

The two boys had been back in Los Angeles for two weeks, and they were currently living in the condo on the other side of the Morgans. Amy’s neighbor, Monica Jackson, was off on a two-week meditation retreat in Nepal, and she’d been pleased to give her place to the boys temporarily in exchange for getting her plants watered, her cats fed, and her mail collected. Since neither of them really had a home or a family, Andy and Chris had gladly taken her up on her offer.

“How come they’re eating over here?” Tasha asked. “Doesn’t Monica’s place have a kitchen?”

“Of course it has a kitchen. But neither of them can cook.”

Tasha rolled her eyes. “That’s no excuse. All Andy would have to do is read a cookbook and he could be a professional chef. So could you, for that matter.”

“Probably,” Amy acknowledged. With her altered and enhanced genetic makeup, she could learn to do anything quickly, and Andy had the same capabilities.

“So why aren’t we having a gourmet dinner tonight instead of pizza?”

Amy shrugged. “I can’t do everything.”

“Sure you can,” Tasha stated.

Amy grinned. “Okay, I can. I just don’t want to. If I did it once, people would expect me to cook for them all the time.”

Tasha understood. “I guess genetic superiority doesn’t make you any less lazy than me.”

“Exactly,” Amy said. But just to show off the difference between them, she said, “Andy and Chris are here.”

There hadn’t yet been a knock on the door, but Amy’s supersensitive hearing had picked up the sound of footsteps getting closer. Of course, she couldn’t swear the visitors would be Andy and Chris. Her abilities didn’t include seeing through walls, and she wasn’t psychic. But it was a good guess, and she was right.

“Hi, guys,” she greeted them as she opened the front door. “What’s up?”

“Not much,” Andy said.

“You seen this?” Chris Skinner asked. He was carrying a newspaper.

Andy groaned. “Chris, I told you, it’s garbage.”

“Is that the Universal Reporter?” Tasha asked.

“No, it’s something called the World Examiner,” Chris replied. “They’re running a series about cloning.”

“Yeah, along with the latest reports on UFO and Elvis sightings,” Andy said.

“Let me see that,” Amy said. The World Examiner was another supermarket tabloid, but it was a little more respectable than the Universal Reporter. She read part three of the series the paper was calling A NEW HUMAN RACE.

It was vague, just like the story in the Universal Reporter, but there were several more details in this article. It referred to a secret organization and experiments in human cloning that had begun seventeen years ago. The cloned beings had a human genetic source, it said, but then their genes had been altered and advanced to make the clones as close to humanly perfect as possible. Twelve males had been followed three years later by twelve females. And now that the clones were ready to mate …

“You’re not ready to mate,” Tasha declared. She’d been reading the article over Amy’s shoulder.

“Not emotionally,” Amy murmured. “But physically …”

“Are the pizzas here yet?” Andy demanded.

Amy didn’t answer him. “Andy, they’ve got the dates and numbers right.”

“Coincidence,” Andy declared. “They don’t mention Project Crescent by name, and they don’t know about the new acceleration process.” That was something Chris had discovered at the organization’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Scientists had developed a means to accelerate the clones’ growth hormones so that they could age more rapidly and generations of perfect people could be produced practically overnight.

The newspapers clearly didn’t know everything. Even so … “This is creepy,” Amy said. “There was something in the Universal Reporter, too, about clones on an island.”

Andy took the newspaper away from her. “Amy, if something like this was really going on, we’d know about it already. Mr. Devon would have contacted us.”

His patronizing tone was annoying. “Well, I still think we should come up with a plan of action,” Amy declared.

Andy grinned. “The only plan I’m interested in right now is the plan for dinner.” He cocked his head to one side. “Someone’s coming. I hope it’s the pizza guy.”

It wasn’t. Eric Morgan, Tasha’s brother, was the next arrival. But the pizzas arrived soon after. Amy gathered plates, Tasha put some music on, and everyone gathered around the dining room table. For a while there was no more talk of cloning.

Amy was still thinking about it, though. When two tabloids reported on the same nonsense, maybe it wasn’t nonsense—at least not all of it. She and Andy couldn’t sit around and do nothing. If the organization’s goals were in the process of being achieved, they had to get involved. She needed to convince him that they should take action.

But clearly not tonight. Everyone was relaxed and in a good mood. School was out for spring break, and the topics of discussion were beaches and picnics, not master-race conspiracies. Amy tried to join the conversation. It wasn’t until later, when everyone had left, that she took the newspapers up to her room and read the articles again.

She’d just finished when she heard the front door open downstairs. “Honey, I’m home,” her mother called.

Hastily, Amy shoved the newspapers under her mattress. There was no point in upsetting her mother until she found out more. “There’s leftover pizza in the fridge,” she called back.

Nancy Candler appeared at her doorway. “Thanks, but I’m too tired to eat. I think I’ll go right to bed.”

Amy blew her a kiss. “ ’Night, Mom.” As soon as her mother disappeared, Amy took a pad of paper out of her desk drawer and started thinking about a plan.

#1, she scrawled at the top of the paper. Find Mr. Devon.

She had no idea where to find him, the man who had always provided her with inside information about the organization. But she had several phone numbers and e-mail addresses. And she’d ask Andy, since he was the last to see Mr. Devon.

#2, she wrote. Contact Amys.

Not all of them, of course. She didn’t even know how to reach most of her sister clones. But she had an e-mail address for Amy Sherman, Number Eight, who lived in New York. She also had a phone number for Aly Kendricks, but she wasn’t sure she’d call. Aly was the thirteenth clone, the only one whose genes hadn’t been successfully altered. In the past, Aly had posed as Amy, Number Three, who died, but Aly had no real powers. Still, she might know how to reach some of the others.…

The phone in her bedroom rang, and Amy snatched it up before the noise could wake her mother. “Hello?”

“It’s me,” Andy said. His voice was tense. “Have you checked your e-mail?”

“Not since this morning,” Amy said. “Why?”

“Look at it now.”

Amy opened the file and ran a mail download. There was one new message, from an unknown sender. She clicked on it.

The message had been sent to twenty-four mailboxes. It was brief and to the point.

There have been alarming developments in Project Crescent. We must take action. I am calling for all Amys and Andys to meet with me this Thursday at 2:00.

Amy recognized the name of a town on the southern California coast, not too far from San Diego, and the address given was for the town’s public library. The message was signed Amy 5.

She remembered Amy, Number Five, very well. When they’d first met, at a hospital in New York, she’d discovered that Five was aligned with the organization. But then on the island, Five had revealed herself to be a double agent, only pretending to be working with the organization people in order to fight them.

“I think we should go to this meeting,” Andy said.

Amy was taken aback. “So you’re willing to believe her when you wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Well, Amy Five struck me as being pretty savvy,” Andy said.

Amy bristled. “Like I’m stupid?”

Andy sighed. “Look, I’m just saying that now I think maybe there is something going on. So do you want to go or not?”

Amy found it irritating that Andy was so quick to respond to someone else’s plea when he’d essentially ignored her own concerns. Personally, she doubted that Amy Five had any inside info.

But if something was happening, or was about to happen, she definitely wanted to be in on it. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”