“DON’T…MAKE…A SOUND,” Martina whispered.
She and Eve tiptoed through the first floor of the Forbes house. A TV laugh track brayed from a room near the stairs.
“Hi!” Martina called out cheerfully.
Two absent-sounding hellos echoed from the den.
Martina gestured frantically for Eve to go up.
The first step was like climbing a fence. Eve’s calf muscles felt as if they’d rip. Her ankles wobbled. Her hips were on fire.
“Hurry!” Martina whispered.
“Help me!” Eve whispered back.
Martina took her arm. Eve leaned on her and painfully stepped upward.
“This happened to Danielle, too,” Martina said. “Some kind of clone disease, huh?”
“It’s happening to other kids across the country. Not just us clones.”
Eve grimaced. She wasn’t sure what hurt more, the physical pain or the despair.
She’s dead. She had my symptoms. She never found Dr. Black.
She was my last lead.
But Martina had insisted they come home. Look at Danielle’s stuff. Try to continue the search.
Martina had hope. Which was a good thing.
She would have to have enough for two.
Eve was exhausted when she reached the top of the stairs. “I…have to lie down,” she said.
Straight ahead was an open door into what must have been Martina’s bedroom. It looked neat but lived-in.
Martina was quietly opening a door to the left, flicking on a light switch.
The room was empty of furniture. Musty-smelling. Its wood-plank floor was covered with a thin coat of dust.
“This was Danielle’s room.” Martina’s whisper echoed faintly against the bare walls as she closed the door behind them and walked toward a closet. “Mom and Dad wanted to get rid of all visual reminders. They’re still so torn up. Which is why they mustn’t see you. Anyway, they stored some of Danielle’s stuff in here, the sentimental things they couldn’t bear to throw out. They would kill me if they knew I was doing this.”
“Don’t they know about the clones?”
Martina pulled open the closet door. She began rummaging around a pile of cardboard boxes inside. “Danielle managed to track Caroline down, not long before the end. She told Mom and Dad, and they were pretty freaked out.”
“How about Bryann and Alexis?”
“Who?”
“The other clones. Did Danielle know about them, too?”
Martina was carrying out a box now, setting it on the floor. “No. But she suspected there were others. Here—this is what I was looking for.”
She pushed aside an old bike chain. Under it was a small, battered spiral notebook. She began flipping through it. “Danielle had this with her on the bus when she died.”
“She died on a bus?”
Martina nodded. “She was looking for Dr. Black. By that time she was really sick. Mom and Dad wouldn’t allow her to go, so she snuck out.”
She held out the notebook, open. Eve took it and read:
“She never made it, huh?” Eve said.
Martina shook her head. “Mom and Dad are still devastated. And angry. And hurt. They couldn’t be with her. They couldn’t help. She died all alone. And in such pain.”
A sharp twinge shot through Eve.
And this is what she felt like. A body falling apart.
“You have to find him,” Martina said. “You don’t have much time—?
She stopped abruptly, cut off by the sound of thumping footsteps.
Heading up the stairs.
“Martina?” Mr. Forbes’s voice. “What do you think you’re doing?”