Replica (Replica #1)
Lauren Oliver
A NOTE FROM LAUREN OLIVER
Dear Reader, I’m thrilled to introduce you to the world of Lyra and Gemma and their intertwining stories. Replica is really two books in one and can be read in several different ways. Don’t be intimidated. The structure is designed to invite exploration and to promote unique reading experiences, in keeping with some of the book’s themes: fluid perception and unstable reality; the way our lives both touch other people’s and are changed by our contact with others; and the complex web of cause and effect in which we are all bound together. Both Lyra and Gemma must go on journeys in this book, and I hope that the reading experience will be, for you, a kind of journey.
Look for the cues at the end of each chapter to guide you. If you would like to read Lyra’s story or Gemma’s story in its entirety before switching perspectives, simply read as you normally would, swiping to continue at the end of each chapter. If, however, you want to read Lyra and Gemma’s stories in alternating chapters, the links at the end of each chapter will move you back and forth and allow you to pick up at any point from where you last left off, in either girl’s story.
However you choose to read, I hope you love reading Lyra and Gemma’s stories as much as I loved writing them.
Best regards, Lauren Oliver
DEDICATION
To my sister, Lizzie
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although in many cases you will find identical portions of dialogue occurring from both Gemma’s and Lyra’s perspectives in their respective narratives, you may also notice minor variations in tone and tempo. This was done deliberately to reflect their individual perspectives. Gemma and Lyra have unique conceptual frameworks that actively interact with and thus define their experiences, just as the act of observing a thing immediately alters the behavior of the thing itself.
The minor variations in the novel reflect the belief that there is no single objective experience of the world. No one sees or hears the same thing in exactly the same way, as anyone who has ever been in an argument with a loved one can attest. In that way we truly are inventors of our own experience. The truth, it turns out, looks a lot like making fiction.
ONE
ON VERY STILL NIGHTS SOMETIMES we can hear them chanting, calling for us to die. We can see them, too, or at least make out the halo of light cast up from the shores of Barrel Key, where they must be gathered, staring back across the black expanse of water toward the fence and the angular white face of the Haven Institute. From that distance it must look like a long green jaw set with miniature teeth.
Monsters, they call us. Demons.
Sometimes, on sleepless nights, we wonder if they’re right.
Lyra woke up in the middle of the night with the feeling that someone was sitting on her chest. Then she realized it was just the heat—swampy and thick, like the pressure of somebody’s hand. The power had gone down.
Something was wrong. People were shouting. Doors slammed. Footsteps echoed in the halls. Through the windows, she saw the zigzag pattern of flashlights cutting across the courtyard, illuminating silvery specks of rain and the stark-white statue of a man, reaching down toward the ground, as though to pluck something from the earth. The other replicas came awake simultaneously. The dorm was suddenly full of voices, thick with sleep. At night it was easier to speak. There were fewer nurses to shush them.
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s happened?”
“Be quiet.” That was Cassiopeia. “I’m listening.”
The door from the hall swung open, so hard it cracked against the wall. Lyra was dazzled by a sudden sweep of light.
“They all here?” It sounded like Dr. Coffee Breath.
“I think so.” Nurse Don’t-Even-Think-About-It’s voice was high and terrified. Her face was invisible behind the flashlight beam. Lyra could make out just the long hem of her nightgown and her bare feet.
“Well, count them.”
“We’re all here,” Cassiopeia responded. One of them gasped. But Cassiopeia was never afraid to speak up. “What’s going on?”
“It must be one of the males,” Dr. Coffee Breath said to Nurse Don’t-Even-Think-About-It, who was really named Maxine. “Who’s checking the males?”
“What’s wrong?” Cassiopeia repeated. Lyra found herself touching the windowsill, the pillow, the headboard of bed number 24. Her things. Her world.
At that moment, the answer came to them: voices, shrill, calling to one another. Code Black. Code Black. Code Black.
Almost at the same time, the backup generator kicked on. The lights came up, and with them, the alarms. Sirens wailed. Lights flashed in every room. Everyone squinted in the sudden brightness. Nurse Don’t-Even-Think-About-It stumbled backward, raising an arm as though to shield herself from view.
“Stay here,” Dr. Coffee Breath said. Lyra wasn’t sure whether he was speaking to Nurse Don’t-Even-Think-About-It or to the replicas. Either way, there wasn’t much choice. Dr. Coffee Breath had to let himself into the hall with a code. Nurse Don’t-Even-Think-About-It stayed for only a moment, shivering, her back to the door, as if she expected that at any second the girls might make a rush at her. Her flashlight, now subsumed by the overheads, cast a milk-white ring on the tile floor.