dark hair falling around her face. Peter had never before seen a photograph of someone he’d actually known, and for a moment his mind struggled to comprehend the notion that this image was the same person who was sleeping in the next room. But there was no question; her eyes were Amy’s eyes. See? her eyes seemed to say. Who did you think I was?
He came to the file for Wolgast, Bradford J. There was no photograph; a rusty stain on the top page showed where one had once been clipped. But even without it, Peter was able to form a picture in his mind of this man who, if what Lacey said was true, had brought each of the Twelve to the compound, and Amy as well. A tall, sturdy man with deep-set eyes and graying hair, with large hands good for work. A mild face but troubled, something moving under the surface, barely contained. According to the file, Wolgast had been married and had had a child; the girl, whose name was Eva, was listed as deceased. Peter wondered if that was the reason he had decided, in the end, to help Amy. His instincts told him it was.
It was the contents of the last file, though, that told him the most. A report by someone named Cole to a Colonel Sykes, U.S. Army Division of Special Weapons, concerning the work of a Dr. Jonas Lear and something called “Project NOAH”; and a second document, dated five years later, ordering the transfer of twelve human test subjects from Telluride, Colorado, to White Sands, New Mexico, for “operational combat testing.” It took Peter a while to put the pieces together, or mostly. But he knew what combat was.
All those years, he thought, waiting for the Army to return, and it was the Army that had done it.
As he put down the final file, he heard Lacey rising. She passed through the curtain and stopped in the doorway.
“So. You have read.”
At the sound of her voice, a sudden exhaustion washed over him. Lacey restoked the fire and sat at the table across from him. He gestured over the piles of paper on the table.
“He really did this? The doctor.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “There were others, but yes.”
“Did he ever say why?”
Behind her, the fresh logs caught with a soft whump, blazing the room with light. “I think because he could. That is the reason for most things people do. He was not a bad man, Peter. It was not entirely his fault, though he believed it was. Many times I asked him, Do you think the world could be unmade by men alone? Of course it could not. But he never quite believed me.” She tipped her head toward the files on the table. “He left these for you, you know.”
“Me? How could he have left them for me?”
“For whoever came back. So they would know what happened here.”
He sat quietly, uncertain what to say. Alicia had been right about one thing: all his life, since the day he had come out of the Sanctuary, he had wondered why the world was what it was. But learning the truth had solved nothing.
Amy’s stuffed rabbit was still on the table; he took it in his hand. “Do you think she remembers it?”
“What they did to her? I do not know. Perhaps she does.”
“No, I meant before. Being a girl.” He searched for the words. “Being human.”
“I think that she has always been human.”
He waited for Lacey to say more, and when she didn’t, he put the rabbit aside.
“What’s it like, living forever?”
She gave a sudden laugh. “I do not think that I will live forever.”
“But he gave you the virus. You’re like her. Like Amy.”
“There is no one like Amy, Peter.” She shrugged. “But if you are asking what it has been like for me all these years, since Jonas died, I will say that it has been very lonely. It surprises me how much.”
“You miss him, don’t you?”
He instantly regretted saying this; a look of sadness swept over her face, like the shadow of a bird crossing a field.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
But she shook her head. “No, it is perfectly all right that you should ask. It is difficult to talk about him like this, after so long. But the answer is yes. I do miss him. I should think it a wonderful thing to be missed, the way that I miss him.”
For a while they sat in silence, bathed