Replica (Replica #1)(19)

“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.