Replica (7 page)

The mosquitoes, at least, had been chased off by the smoke, although no-see-ums were still hovering in swarms over the water, and Lyra got some in her nose
and mouth and even beneath her eyelids. From here, the sound of the fire was strangely musical and sounded like the steady roar of a heavy rain. But the sky was green-tinged and terrible, and the ash floated down on them.

Her arms were shaking from trying to keep Cassiopeia on her feet. Even the pillowcase felt impossibly heavy. Cassiopeia was clinging so tightly to her neck, Lyra could hardly breathe. Cassiopeia was passing in and out of consciousness, and Lyra imagined her mind like a series of ever-branching tunnels, like the marshland crisscrossed by fine veins of water, going dark and then light again.

“How much farther?” Speaking hurt.

72 just shook his head. She knew that human men were in general stronger than women and wondered whether the same thing was true of replicas. He looked strong—the muscles of his back and shoulders stood out—though he couldn't have been eating well since he escaped. She wondered where he'd gotten his food. She wondered why he'd been so desperate to get out, and whether he knew something she didn't. Or maybe he was just crazy—plenty of replicas had lost their minds before, like how Lilac Springs had lost her mind during her examinations, had forgotten all the numbers she was supposed to remember. There was Pepper, who'd used a knife to open her wrists, and number 220, who'd simply stopped eating,
and number 35, who'd started believing she was one of the rats and would only crawl on all fours. Maybe 72 was like that. Maybe he believed he was an animal and should roam free.

She couldn't go on anymore. Cassiopeia was too heavy. Every breath felt like it was hitching on a giant hook in her chest. She tried to call out to 72 but realized she didn't have the energy even for that. Instead she struggled with Cassiopeia into the reeds, finding footing on the muddy banks that stretched like fingers through the water, until the ground solidified and she could sit. 72 had to double back when he realized she was no longer behind him.

“We aren't safe here,” 72 said. He didn't sound like he'd lost his mind. She noticed how dark his eyes were, so they appeared to absorb light instead of reflecting it. “I should leave you,” he said after a minute.

“So leave,” she said.

But he didn't. He began forcing his way through the reeds, snapping them in half with his hands when they resisted too strongly. The grass was so high and thick here it cut the sky into pieces. “Lie down,” he instructed her, and she did. Cassiopeia was already stretched out in the mud, lips blue, eyes closed, and that sick animal smell coming off her, like the smell in the Funeral Home that no amount of detergent and bleach could conceal. Lyra
could see now the glint of something metal wedged in her back, lodged deep. The muscle was visible, raw and pulsing with blood. Instinctively she brought a hand to the wound, but Cassiopeia cried out as if she'd been scalded and Lyra pulled away, her hand wet with Cassiopeia's blood. She didn't know how to make the bleeding stop. She realized she didn't know how to do anything here, in this unbound outside world. She'd never eaten except in the mess hall. She'd never slept without a nurse ordering
lights out
. She would never survive—why had she followed the male? But someone would come for her. Someone must. One of the doctors would find her and they would be saved. This was all a mistake, a terrible mistake.

Lyra squeezed her eyes shut and saw tiny explosions, silhouettes of flame drifting above Haven. She opened her eyes again. Cassiopeia moaned, and Lyra touched her forehead, as Dr. O'Donnell had once done for her. Thinking of Dr. O'Donnell made her breath hitch in her chest. There was no explanation for that feeling either—none that she knew of, anyway.

Cassiopeia moaned again.

“Shhh,” Lyra said. “It's all right.”

“It's going to die,” 72 said flatly. Luckily, Cassiopeia didn't hear, or if she did, she was too sick to react.

“It's a she,” Lyra said.

“She's going to die, then.”

“Someone will come for us.”

“She'll die that way, too. But slower.”

“Stop,” she told him, and he shrugged and turned away. She moved a little closer to Cassiopeia. “Want to hear a story?” she whispered. Cassiopeia didn't answer, but Lyra charged on anyway. “Once upon a time, there was a girl named Matilda. She was really smart. Smarter than either of her parents, who were awful.”
Matilda
was one of the first long books that Dr. O'Donnell had ever read to her. She closed her eyes again and made herself focus. Once again she saw fire, but she forced the smoke into the shape of different letters, into words floating in the sky.
Extraordinary.
In the distance she heard a mechanical whirring, the sound of the air being threshed into waves: helicopters. “Her dad was a used-car salesman. He liked to cheat people. Her mom just watched TV.”
Safe,
she thought, picturing the word pinned to clouds. “Matilda liked to read.”

“What is that?” 72 asked, in a low voice, as if he was scared of being overheard. But he sounded angry again.

“It's a story,” she said.

“But . . .” He shook his head. She could see sand stuck to his lower lip, and dust patterning his cheekbones. “What
is
it?”

“It's a book,” she said. “It's called
Matilda
.” And then,
though she had never admitted it to anyone: “One of the doctors read it to me.”

72 frowned again. “You're lying,” he said, but uncertainly, as if he wasn't sure.

“I'm not,” she said. 72, she'd decided, was very ugly. His forehead was too large and his eyebrows too thick. They looked like dark caterpillars. His mouth, on the other hand, looked like a girl's. “I have a book here. Dr. O'Donnell gave it to me. . . .” But all the breath went out of her lungs. She had reached into the pillowcase and found nothing, nothing but the file folder and the pen. The book was gone.

“I don't believe you,” 72 said. “You don't know how to read. And the doctors would never—” He broke off suddenly, angling his head to the sky.

“I don't care whether you believe me or not,” she said. The book was gone. She was suddenly freezing. She wondered whether she should go back for it. “I had it right here, it was
here
—”

“Quiet,” he said, holding up a hand.

“I need that book.” She felt like screaming. “Dr. O'Donnell gave it to me so I could practice—”

But this time he brought a hand to her mouth and pulled her into him as she kicked out and shouted into his palm. She felt his warm breath against her ear.

“Please,” he whispered. The fact that he said
please
stilled her. No one said please, not to the replicas. “Be quiet.”

Even when she stopped struggling, he kept her pinned to him, breathing hard into her ear. She could feel his heart through her back. His hand tasted like the mud of the marshes, like salt. Sweat collected between their bodies. Insects whined.

Now the air was being segmented, cut into pulsing rhythms as if mimicking a heartbeat. The helicopters were getting closer. The sound became so loud she wanted to cover her ears. Now a wind was sweeping across the marshes, flattening the grass, driving up mud that splattered her legs and face, and just as the sound reached an unbearable crescendo she thought 72 shouted something. He leaned into her. He was on top of her, shielding her from a roar of noise and wind. And then he relaxed his hold and she saw a dozen helicopters sweep away across the marshes toward the ruins of Haven. Inside them and hanging from the open helicopter doors were helmeted men wearing drab brown-and-gray camouflage. She recognized them as soldiers. All of them had guns.

Lyra, Cassiopeia, and 72 lay in tense silence. Several helicopters went and returned. Lyra wondered whether they were bearing away the injured like they'd done for the man who'd lost his leg to an alligator, who lay screaming
in the darkness while the guards lit up the water with bullets. Every time one of the helicopters passed overhead she was tempted to reveal herself, to throw up an arm or stand up out of the long grass and the knotted trees and wave. But every time, she was stopped as though by an enormous, invisible hand, frozen on the ground where she was. It was the way they churned the air to sound that made her teeth ache. It was the memory of the guard with his gun drawn, shouting at her. It was 72, lying next to her.

For a long time in the lulls they could still hear men shouting and the roar and crackle of the fire blazing on the island. Voices hung in the ashy haze, were carried by it like a bad smell. After a while, however, Lyra thought the fire must have stopped, because she could no longer hear people yelling. At the same time she realized that she could hardly see. The sky, which for hours had been the textured gray of pencil lead, was now dark. The sun was setting, and the wind when it hissed into life carried a heavy chill. The rain swept in next, the thunderstorms that always came in the early evening, quick and ferocious, punching down on them. By the time it had passed, the sun was gone.

Cassiopeia was completely still. Lyra was afraid to touch her and find she was dead, but when she did she felt a pulse. Periodically the sky was lit up with helicopters
passing back and forth, and every so often, a shout carried over the water. Lyra thought of her small clean bed under the third window in the dorm and had to swallow back the urge to cry again. She wouldn't have thought she could be so cold, and so afraid, and also have to fight so hard against sleep. At some point she must have drifted off because she woke from a nightmare of monsters with long metal snouts, and felt 72 put a hand against her mouth again, and lean his weight against her to speak into her ear.

“They're searching the marshes,” 72 whispered. “Stay quiet. Don't move. Don't even breathe.”

Her heart was still racing from the nightmare. It was so dark, she could hardly make out Cassiopeia lying even a few feet away. But after a second she saw light flashing through the tall grass, tiny suns blazing and being drowned. She heard voices, too—not the panicked and indistinct shouting of earlier but individual voices and words.

“Over here. That's blood, boys.”

“Christ. Like a slug trail.”

“You bring any salt . . . ?”

She was afraid. Why was she afraid? She didn't know. She wasn't thinking clearly. The guards were on her side. They had kept the others out—they kept the replicas safe. But still fear had its hand down her throat. This was her
chance to change her mind, to call out, to be rescued. 72 shifted next to her, and she stayed silent.

“Here's one.” One of the men raised the cry and lights flashed again, dazzling over the dark water, as several other soldiers joined him where he stood. She wanted so badly to look—but even as she started to raise herself onto her elbow, 72 jerked her back to the ground.

“Stay put,” he whispered. She heard laughter from the soldiers, more words half blown by wind.

“Bring a—?”

“No point . . . dead . . .”

“No bodies . . . left . . .”

“It looks real, doesn't it?”

Lyra was filled with a cold so deep it felt like a pit.
It looks real, doesn't it?
She knew they'd found another replica—a dead one—and wondered what she would look like to them if they came across her with their flashlights: like something mechanical, a machine, or like a doll with moving parts. She imagined herself like a jigsaw puzzle—she had seen one, once, in the nurses' break room—well-crafted, neatly jointed, but full of seams and cracks visible to everyone else. She wondered whether humans had some invisible quality, the truly critical one, she'd never be able to replicate.

They were coming closer, slowing through the water. Now she couldn't have cried out even if she wanted to.
Her lungs had seized in her chest. She had to grind her teeth to keep them from chattering.

“More blood over here, see?”

Lyra's heart stopped. The men were just on the other side of the embankment. Their flashlights slanted through the grass—were they well enough concealed? Would they be seen?

“Keep an eye out for gators. These marshes are crawling.”

“Maybe we should give Johnson up for bait.”

More laughter. Lyra squeezed her eyes shut.
Move on,
she thought, still uncertain whether this was the right thing. All she knew was that she didn't want them to see her. They couldn't see her.
Move on.

Then there was a horrible sucking, gasping noise, like water fighting through a stuck drain. For one confused second, Lyra couldn't tell where it was coming from. Then she realized Cassiopeia was trying to speak.

“Help.”
The word was mangled, distorted by the sound of liquid in her lungs.

“No, Cassiopeia,” Lyra whispered, dizzy now with panic. But already she knew it was too late. The soldiers had gone silent.

Cassiopeia spoke a little louder. “Help.”

“In here.” One of the men was already crashing through the trees toward them, and the marshes were once again
alive with lights and shouting. “There's someone in here.”

“Leave her.
Leave
her.” 72's voice, when he whispered, was raw with panic. This time Lyra didn't resist, didn't even argue. 72 was going elbow over elbow into the tangle of growth. She crawled after him as fast as she could on her stomach. The ground trembled under the weight of the soldiers' boots as she fought deeper into the growth. Pine needles grabbed her face and arms and scored tiny cuts in her skin. She was too scared to look back. She was certain they would be heard, crashing through the grass, but the soldiers were loud, calling to one another in a rapid patter she didn't understand.

Then the trees released them into a heavy slick of puddled mud and water: they'd reached another sudden opening in the land, a place where the marsh became liquid. 72 slid into the water first and Lyra pulled herself in next to him just as a beam of light swept over the bank where she'd been. She slipped down to her chin, gasping a little, certain they must have heard her, and then submerged herself to her eyes. The beam of the light continued sniffing along the mud like something alive. Twelve inches from her, then ten . . .