Replica (Replica #1)(22)
Turn the page to continue reading Lyra’s story. Click here to read Chapter 8 of Gemma’s story.
NINE
SHE WOKE UP WARM, SWEATING, from a dream she couldn’t remember. The smell of smoke was fainter now. Her cheek was crusty with mud. The shock of what had happened had passed. She knew immediately where she was but not what had woken her. But something had woken her.
She sat up, wondering what time it was. Her body ached. She knew from the darkness it must still be the middle of the night. Beside her, 72 was sleeping with both hands folded beneath his head and his mouth open. He looked much younger when he slept.
Even before she heard a footstep she knew that someone was nearby and that this, the sound of someone close, was what had woken her. She took hold of 72’s arm, and he came awake at the same time she heard a girl speak.
“What now?” she said. “Do you think we can still get—?” But she abruptly fell silent, and Lyra realized she had made a sound without meaning to.
They must be more soldiers sent to comb the marshes. And yet the girl didn’t speak like a soldier, and wasn’t moving like one, either, with a fearlessness born from their guns. These people—she had no doubt they were people, and not replicas—were doing their best to stay quiet. Almost as if they, too, were afraid of being seen.
Who were they? What did they want?
72 was alert now, listening. The people—whoever they were—seemed to be just on the other side of the misshapen trees that grew all through the marshes; Nurse Don’t-Even-Think-About-It had said they were bad luck. Lyra and 72 had to move. She shifted into a crouch, and a twig snapped beneath her weight.
“Don’t move,” 72 whispered. “Don’t move.”
But it was too late. She heard crashing in the brush. In the darkness all the sounds were confused, and she didn’t know what had happened and whether they’d been found.
“Who’s there?” 72 called out. But no one answered.
Lyra stood up and plunged blindly in one direction, sliding a little on the mud, her own breath harsh and alien-sounding. Pain ripped through her heel where she stepped: the marshes were full of toothy things, plants and animals that bit back, a world of things that only wanted to draw blood, and for a second she was aware of the stars infinitely high above her, the distance and coldness of them, a long dark plunge into emptiness. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to run. In the world outside Haven she was nothing, had no past and no future.
Shadows moved on her left. Something heavy hit the ground, and the girl cried out.
Lyra froze. She’d run in exactly the wrong direction, straight toward the strangers and not away from them.
“Jesus. Jesus Christ.”
“That voice.” The girl spoke again. “Where did it come from?”
“I don’t know. Christ, Gemma. Look . . .”
Lyra heard coughing, as if someone was trying not to throw up. This, the evidence of side effects, calmed her. Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe these were replicas who’d somehow escaped the way she did. She inched forward, parting the tangle of grasses with a hand, until she saw a boy silhouetted in the moonlight, his hand to his mouth, and the girl crouching beside him, whimpering.
“What the hell? What the hell?” he kept saying.
The moon broke loose of the clouds and clarified their features. Forgetting to be afraid, Lyra went forward.
“Cassiopeia,” she said, because she was confused, still half in shock. Of course the girl couldn’t be Cassiopeia, just like it couldn’t be any of her genotypes, 7–10: Cassiopeia was dead, and her genotypes didn’t have soft brown hair, soft everything, a pretty roundness to their faces and bodies. Lyra stopped again, seeing in the grass next to the girl the body, the slender ankles and familiar wristband, the blood darkening her shirt. Cassiopeia. And yet the girl crouching next to her had Cassiopeia’s face and round little nose and freckles. A genotype, then, like Calliope and Goosedown and Tide and Charmin, but one that Lyra didn’t know. Were replicas made in other places, too? It was the only thing she could think of that made sense.
The boy stumbled backward, as if he was afraid Lyra might attack him. The girl—Cassiopeia’s replica, identical to her except for the extra weight she carried and the hair that grazed her shoulders—was staring at Lyra, mouth open as though she was trying to scream but couldn’t.
Finally Cassiopeia’s replica said, “Oh my God. I think—I think she’s one of them.”
“Who are you?” Lyra managed to say. “Where did you come from?”
“Who are you?” The boy had a nice face, geometric, and she found it easy to look at him.
“Lyra,” she said, because she decided there was no point in lying. “Number twenty-four,” she clarified, because wherever they came from, they must have number systems, too. But they just stared at her blankly. She couldn’t understand it. She felt as she had when she had first started to read, staring at the cipher of the letters, those spiky evil things that kept their meaning locked away.
“Oh my God.” The girl brought a hand to her mouth. “There’s another one.”
Lyra turned and saw 72 edging out into the open, holding a knife. He must have stolen it from the kitchen before escaping, and she doubted it was very sharp, but the strangers didn’t know that. Now the boy had both hands out. Lyra thought he looked nervous. For a split second he reminded her of the nurses, and the narrow way they looked at the replicas, and she almost hoped that 72 would hurt him.