Ringer (Replica)

by Lauren Oliver

  “Next one,” she said. She was suddenly having trouble breathing, and after only a few seconds her feet and legs felt numb and bloated, as if they’d been submerged in freezing water. What if she ran into the driveway and then froze, couldn’t remember where she was or where she was going? She hoped Caelum would hold her hand the whole way, but she didn’t want to ask.

  “No,” Caelum said. “We wait for a car going in. The headlights will give us time. The guard will go blind for two, three seconds.”

  He was right. They waited. She squeezed her toes. She named all the bones she could think of—ankle, clavicle, tibia. She would have looked for the stars, too, but they were invisible behind the light-smear from the city.

  Lyra lost track of time. Minutes went by, or hours. The parking lot continued to empty. All the traffic flowed the wrong way. But at last a car approached from the direction of the Kmart, its headlights skimming the stone wall and then latching on to the guard hut, the fence, the harried-looking trees.

  “Now,” Caelum said, as the gate began to grind open and the rhythm of conversation reached them—how ya doing, another late one, huh? Suddenly Lyra found that she could not remember how to stand. She tried to shout the urge to her legs, but they didn’t hear her. She was stuck where she was, and as Caelum tried to get her to her feet, she simply landed knees down in the grass instead, barely missing the stone wall with her chin. It was as if her ankles had been bound together by invisible cording. Stand, run, walk, she thought, but her body remained blankly unresponsive, filled with a useless static.

  It was too late now: the car was passing inside the complex, tires fizzing on the pavement. Lyra’s heart was so swollen with fear she could feel it in her head, in her mouth, in the bottom of her stomach.

  “What happened?” Caelum’s face was unexpectedly illuminated: fluid cheekbones, dark eyes. He was so perfect, so alive, and she was so broken. White cluster. Control. His blood, she imagined, was a deep and royal blue, hers dark and sludgy. “What’s wrong?”

  Then she realized why she could see him so clearly, why every eyelash was drawn so vividly: yet another car was coming. This time she didn’t even have to tell her body to move. She didn’t have to think at all. She was on her feet. Caelum cursed, but he was right behind her. She made it over the fence but tripped getting over the curb.

  The guard had once again moved into the light to greet the driver, and she was so close Lyra could see the blunt bob of her hair cut to her chin, see her uniform straining over her breasts and revealing a narrow slice of her bra. Lyra couldn’t believe the guard didn’t see them, that she didn’t begin to shoot, but Caelum was right: with the headlights in her eyes, she couldn’t see.

  They came at an angle, scuttling low around the back of the car—a sleek and silver thing, like an elegant fish—until they were pressed up against the passenger side. Lyra thought even if the guard couldn’t see them, she would surely hear the way Lyra’s breath tore at her throat. A second woman’s voice, high and laughing, touched off a nerve inside of Lyra’s whole body, like the memory of something bad that had once happened to her. The smell of exhaust made her dizzy.

  “You have a good night.” The guard was retreating to her hut. The gate churned open and the car eased off its brakes.

  Lyra tried to keep pace, flowing through the gate at the same time the car did—but even as she stood up, the darkness stood too, the sense of vertigo and falling. She was pulled up and down at the same time. She was trying to leap over holes burning open at her feet. Her mouth tasted like gravel, like chemicals, like metal. Someone was shouting. She was at Haven and coughing blood.

  “Get up, Lyra. Get up.”

  Her ideas rotated. They pivoted and suddenly the true picture emerged: she was on the ground. She’d tripped. She wasn’t at Haven. She was here, at CASECS, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and the person shouting wasn’t a doctor but a guard, the guard, who must have heard her fall.

  The silver car had stopped. A woman leaned out the window to shout. What happened, what’s the problem, I can’t understand you.

  “Not you, not you,” the guard said. But the woman in the silver car was still confused, and the car exhaust kept stinging Lyra’s eyes. “Those two, behind you, two kids, out of the way.”

  Caelum grabbed Lyra by the elbow. The guard was running, and Lyra, still on her knees, saw the shiny polish of her boots, the walkie-talkie strapped to her belt, the gun holster. “Hey, you. Hey, stop.”

  Lyra made it to her feet, finally, just in time. But Caelum’s hand was torn free—she lost him, they started off in different directions. Now she heard the crackle of radio interference and the guard shouting again and at the same time Lyra hurtled to the left, the car decided to turn too: she was blinded by a funnel of white light, she saw the grille leap toward her shins and she couldn’t turn, she had no time.

  The car hit her or she hit it. She cracked against the hood, rolled off an elbow, and went down.

  A woman screamed. Caelum shouted to her but she couldn’t call to him. She was on her back now, breathless beneath a starless sky. She couldn’t move at all, couldn’t feel her arms or legs. Maybe her spine had snapped, maybe her head had rolled off her body.

  A car door opened and slammed closed. Footsteps, muted voices, an explosion of radio static and distant voices communicating in a slang patter. The headlights made a halo of her vision. Someone came toward her—Caelum? the guard?—but in the high beams faces became formless shadows.

  “Look at her. She’s just a girl.” It was the driver, her voice like a hand that tugged at an ancient memory. Haven and clean sheets and pages that turned with the soft hush-hush of wind through the grass. Then: “Oh my God. My God.”

  The guard was talking into her radio, so many words that they themselves became static bursts. “That’s right, just two kids, some kind of prank, the girl’s down, the boy beat it when I tried to grab him, looks like he headed into the parking lot—”

  “I know her. Do you understand? I know her.”

  Fingers cool on Lyra’s cheeks. The woman slid like an eclipse across the blinding bright lights. Her hair was dirty-blond and gray and loose, and tickled Lyra’s face where it touched her.

  “She belongs to Haven. I’m sure of it, I’m absolutely positive. . . .”

  Lyra fell. She sank toward a warm and forgiving darkness. The pavement softened beneath her back, the night dissolved into a memory of other nights and other places.

  “Can you hear me, hon? Can you hear my voice? Open your eyes if you can hear me.”

  She thought she opened her eyes. It didn’t matter anyway. In the dark behind her eyelids she saw a face, so familiar, so often recalled: the freckles and the wide, flat mouth, the smile that said welcome, I love you, you’re home.

  “She must have hit her head bad. . . .”

  “Her name . . . I wish I could remember. . . . She was one of the earliest ones. . . .”

  “What?”

  Dim voices, trailing across her mind like distant comets. One a flinty blue. One the soft white dazzle of a shooting star.

  “We named them. Some of the replicas. It was a game we played. They only had numbers before. It wasn’t Cassiopeia . . . what was her name?”

  Lyra, Lyra thought. She opened her mouth. Her words evaporated into bubbles of air.

  “Jesus. Looks like she’s trying to talk.”

  The woman leaned closer. Her hair tickled Lyra’s cheekbone. “What’s that, honey?” she whispered.

  “Lyra,” Lyra managed to say, and the woman cried out softly, as if the word was a bird, some soft thing that had landed in her palm.

  “Lyra,” she said. “Of course. Can you open your eyes, Lyra?”

  Lyra did, surprised by how much effort it took. The pavement hardened beneath her again. There was pain in her ankle, a sharp pain behind her eyes. Her mouth tasted like blood.

  “Do you remember me, Lyra? My name is Dr. O’Donnell. I knew you at Haven. Remember?”

&nb
sp; She reached up to touch Lyra’s face. Her fingers smelled like lemon balm.

  Turn the page to continue reading Lyra’s story. Click here to read Chapter 15 of Gemma’s story.

  SIXTEEN

  LYRA WOKE UP AND FOR a confused moment thought she was back at the Winston-Able Mobile Home Park: in the distance she heard the thud of music and people laughing, the scattered catcall of loud and joyful conversation. But it was too clean, and it didn’t smell right. When she moved, she thumped her head on the arm of a sofa.

  “Sorry for all the noise.” When she heard Dr. O’Donnell’s voice, Lyra remembered: the car, the driver, the cones of light, and Dr. O’Donnell’s hair tickling her face. She turned and a flock of birds took off in her head, briefly darkening her vision. She must have cried out without meaning to, because Dr. O’Donnell reached out and touched her cheek.

  “Poor thing,” she said. “We wrapped your ankle up nice and tight. It doesn’t look broken to me, thankfully.”

  Lyra noticed then that her ankle had been wrapped tightly in tape, and various cuts and bruises had been treated with CoolTouch: it had left a shiny film on her elbow and shins.

  “Is this CASECS?” she asked. The room looked nothing like a hospital. There was a desk cluttered with belongings in one corner, and shelves filled with books. A miniature fridge hummed in the corner, and a stuffed bear wearing a Number One Boss shirt gathered dust on top of it. Lyra was lying on a scratchy dark-wool sofa. There were framed posters on the walls, giant posters of people she didn’t recognize. There was a clock on the wall, and a paper calendar with cats. There were no keypads on the door and the only lock was the handle variety.

  “This is part of it,” Dr. O’Donnell said. She wasn’t even wearing a lab coat—just jeans and boots and a light sweater. Maybe that was why Lyra felt so shy around her—that and the gray in her hair, the lines around her eyes, the sharp angle of her nose, all features Lyra hadn’t remembered. She had changed or she was different from the start, and either way, Lyra was nervous. “We’re a small operation. We keep a staff of just under a hundred and fifty. That includes the cleaning crew.” She smiled.

  Then Lyra remembered Caelum, the way he’d veered off in the darkness when the headlights swept him, and the guard radioing for backup. “Where’s Caelum?” she asked, sitting up and blinking at another rush of birds in her head.

  “Caelum. Is that what you call him?”

  “That’s his name,” Lyra said, and felt anxious for reasons she couldn’t exactly say. The laughter, the distant drumming of music, a faint smell of alcohol—maybe it all stirred memories of Haven Christmas parties, when the researchers would remove their shoes to slide down the halls in their socks, and the air was edged with a taut, superficial tension, like the lip of water in a glass about to overflow.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Dr. O’Donnell said, and that, at least, reassured her: Dr. O’Donnell still had that skill. She could look at something, or someone, and understand. “He looked hungry. Sonja—she’s my research assistant—went for pizza. Caelum’s probably halfway through it by now.” Her smile made new wrinkles appear and others collapse. “Are you hungry?”

  Lyra shook her head. She was dizzy, and nauseous, and thirsty. But not hungry. I’m sick, she wanted to say. Help me. But she was too shy. She wished Dr. O’Donnell had been wearing a lab coat. Wished she’d looked more like a doctor, and that the room looked more like a hospital. Here she felt her sickness was a stain, that it would be terribly out of place.

  Dr. O’Donnell got a bottle of water from the miniature fridge, which was also stocked with Diet Cokes.

  “Drink this, at least,” she said, once again as if she’d read Lyra’s mind. She took a seat, and Lyra was aware of how closely Dr. O’Donnell watched her drink, no doubt taking note of the way Lyra’s hand shook. But Dr. O’Donnell didn’t comment on it, and she didn’t offer to help, either. “I still can’t believe it’s you. Number twenty-four, wasn’t it?”

  Lyra nodded. It was strange to hear the words out loud, even after only a few weeks, strange to think of herself again that way, one of a series, something that could be stacked or arranged.

  Dr. O’Donnell was watching her. “A Green. Is that right?”

  Lyra nodded again, this time because her throat seized.

  “And Caelum,” Dr. O’Donnell said, “is he a Green, too?”

  “Caelum is a control,” Lyra said, surprised the words brought a bad taste to her mouth. She was expecting Dr. O’Donnell to look sorry for her and was glad she didn’t. But she was also confused. Did Dr. O’Donnell know what that meant? Did she know that meant Lyra was dying, and Caelum had to watch?

  Dr. O’Donnell was good, but she had known about the sickness. She had known about the variants and the prions and the holes opening up in Lyra’s brain, and she had lied, like all the others, and claimed that Haven existed for the replicas’ protection.

  But maybe Dr. Saperstein had forced her to lie.

  In the silence, she heard a new swell of music. Someone shouted, “turn it up, turn it up,” and there was laughter.

  “Is there always music here?” she asked.

  Dr. O’Donnell laughed. “Sometimes. Not usually so late, though. Some of the staff members are celebrating tonight.” She seemed to hesitate. “We had some good news today.”

  Lyra waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. It was, she realized, the longest conversation she’d ever had with Dr. O’Donnell. “What kind of good news?”

  Dr. O’Donnell looked surprised. She didn’t know that Lyra had learned how to ask, how to say please and thank you, how to put on mascara and speak to males. Boys. “We’ll be able to continue our work here,” she said carefully. “We had—well, call it a contest. CASECS was up for an important award. And we won.”

  “Award.” Lyra held the word on her tongue, and found it tasted like coins. “You mean like money?”

  Again, Dr. O’Donnell looked startled. But almost immediately, she was serene again, and Lyra thought of a stone disappearing beneath the surface of a still pond. “Yes, like money.” She pronounced the word as if it were unfamiliar to her. “But more than that. Support. People who believe we’re doing the right thing.”

  Lyra wanted to ask her about a cure, and about whether Dr. O’Donnell knew how to cure the twisted shapes deforming her brain. But before she could, Dr. O’Donnell leaned forward and took her hands, and Lyra was startled by their dryness, by the coolness of her touch, both familiar and totally foreign. For some reason she thought of Rick and felt a strong impulse to run, to backpedal into the darkness, to rewind the miles they had covered and return to Winston-Able.

  But almost immediately, the impulse passed, and she couldn’t have said where it had come from. Rick was gone. The past was gone. Dead. You had to sever the lines and let it float off on the ocean, or you would simply sink with it.

  “Tell me what happened to you, Lyra,” Dr. O’Donnell said softly. “Tell me everything that happened. It’s important.”

  “Haven burned down,” she said simply. “Everything burned.”

  She waited for Dr. O’Donnell to express surprise, but she didn’t.

  “I heard,” she said finally, when Lyra said nothing more. “It was in the news. And besides, Dr. Saperstein—well, we stayed in touch, in a manner of speaking.” But a shadow had crossed her face and Lyra knew enough, now, to read Dr. O’Donnell’s unhappiness. They had always been fighting, Dr. O’Donnell and Dr. Saperstein. Most of what they’d said was above her head, full of scientific words that had washed over her like breaking water. But there had been one memorable fight about the rats, and whether or not the replicas should be allowed to have some toys and games.

  Still—if Dr. O’Donnell had left Haven because she wanted to help, why hadn’t she come back when she heard about the fire?

  Lyra was having trouble pinning her ideas of Dr. O’Donnell down onto the face in front of her. That was always the problem with faces, with bodies: they told you no
thing. Like the genotypes who looked the same but acted completely different. Cassiopeia was proud and strange and angry, but she collected seashells, she scooped insects from the path so they wouldn’t be stepped on.

  Then there was Calliope, who would catch spiders just to pull their legs off, one by one. Who’d once stepped on a baby bird, just to hear it crunch beneath her shoe.

  “Caelum escaped with me,” Lyra said. “We ran and hid. We didn’t want to go back to Haven. They were making us sick.”

  She waited for Dr. O’Donnell to apologize or say that Dr. Saperstein had forced the doctors to obey. But she just said, “That was weeks ago. Where have you been all this time?” She seemed truly curious. “Who fed you? Who gave you clothes? Who brought you here, to see me?”

  It annoyed Lyra that Dr. O’Donnell assumed someone else had brought them. She didn’t want to tell Dr. O’Donnell about Gemma, or about Rick—they were hers, she decided suddenly, like bed number 24 had been hers, like The Little Prince had been hers after Dr. O’Donnell gave her a copy.

  “No one,” she said. Her voice sounded loud. “We came ourselves. We took the bus and a taxi. We slept where we could. And we took what we needed.”

  “You mean you stole it?”

  “We took it.” Lyra was more than annoyed now. She was angry. “Everybody else has things. Why shouldn’t we?” Dr. O’Donnell’s cell phone was sitting there, on the counter, next to a coffee mug ringed with lipstick, and this infuriated Lyra more: it was evidence. Proof. “People take things all the time. They took what they wanted from us at Haven, didn’t they? Didn’t you?” She didn’t mean to say it, but the words came out and she wasn’t sorry. She was happy when Dr. O’Donnell released her hands, happy to think she had caused Dr. O’Donnell pain.

  But when Dr. O’Donnell spoke, she didn’t sound upset. She actually smiled. “You’re tired,” she said. “You’re sick. And, of course, you’re right. You’re right.” And Lyra couldn’t understand it, but Dr. O’Donnell began to laugh.