Replica (Replica #1)(45)

But for the first time Lyra felt not shame, but anger. She hadn’t asked to be made. She’d been brought into the world a monster and then hated for it, and it wasn’t her fault, and there was no meaning behind that.

None at all.

“It doesn’t make sense,” 72 said. “Why kill us, then?”

“Something changed,” Lyra said. She could hardly remember Dr. Haven. She may have seen him once or twice. She could vividly recall his face, but then again she’d seen pictures of him her whole life: Dr. Haven in oils staring down at them from the framed painting at the end of the mess hall, Dr. Haven in black and white, pictured squinting into the sun in front of G-Wing.

They stood there again in silence. Had Lyra been intended originally for the human parents of a child who had died? But if so, why had they never come for her? Maybe they had, but found the substitute terrible.

Maybe they hadn’t been able to stomach looking at her—the flimsy substitute for the girl they’d loved and had to grieve.

“She mentions a cure,” 72 said quietly. “Maybe you were right. Maybe she did know something that could help us.”

“Well, she’s dead now,” Lyra said. Her voice sounded hollow, as if she were speaking into a cup.

“Lyra.” 72 touched her elbow, and she pulled away from him. His touch burned, physically burned, although she knew that was impossible. His skin was no hotter than anyone else’s. She turned away from him, blinking hard, and for a second, looking out across the park and to the houses in the distance—all those parents, families, moms and dads—she transformed the afternoon sun striking the windows into white flame, and imagined burning the whole world down, just like they’d burned down Haven.

“On the bus you asked me why the cuts,” 72 said. This surprised her, and she momentarily forgot her anger and turned back to look at him. His skin in the light looked like something edible, coffee and milk. “When I was younger I didn’t understand what I was. If I was.”

Lyra didn’t have to say anything to show she understood. She had wondered the same thing. She had confused it for I, had pinched number 25 to see if she herself would feel it, because she didn’t understand where she ended and the herd began.

“I started thinking maybe I wasn’t real. And then I started worrying that I wasn’t, that I was disappearing. I used to . . .” He swallowed and rubbed his forehead, and Lyra realized with a sudden thrill she knew what he was feeling: he was scared. She had read him.

“It’s okay,” she said automatically.

“I got hold of one of the doctor’s scalpels once,” he said, in a sudden rush. “I kept it in my mattress, took out some of the stuffing so that no one would find it.” Lyra thought of the hole in Ursa Major’s mattress, and all the things they’d found stashed inside of it. She thought, too, of how Ursa had just stood there and screamed while her mattress was emptied—one high, shrill note, like the cresting of an alarm. “I used to have to check. I felt better when I saw the blood. I knew I was still alive, then.” He raised his eyes to hers, and in her chest she had a lifting, swooping sensation, as if something heavy had come loose. “You wanted to know. So I’m telling you.”

She didn’t know what to say. So she said, “Thank you.” She reached out and moved her finger from his elbow all the way to his wrist, over the ridge of his scars, to show him it was okay, and that she understood. She could feel him watching her. She could feel him, everywhere he was, as if he was distorting the air, making it heavier.

She had never felt so much in her life.

“We’ll go back,” 72 said, so quietly she nearly missed it.

“Back?” she repeated. He was standing so close she was suddenly afraid and took a step away from him.

“The girl, Gemma. And Jake.” He hesitated. “You were right all along. They might be able to help. They know about Haven. Maybe they’ll know about a cure, too.”

“But . . .” She shook her head. “You said you didn’t trust them.”

“I don’t,” he said simply. “But I don’t trust anyone.”

“Even me?” Lyra asked.

Something changed in his eyes. “You’re different,” he said, in a softer voice.

“Why?” She was aware of how close they were, and of the stillness of the afternoon, all the trees bound and silent.

He almost smiled. He reached up. He pressed a thumb to her lower lip. His skin tasted like salt. “Because we’re the same.”


Lyra knew they’d never be able to backtrack. They’d left the house in the middle of the night and they’d hardly been paying attention—they’d been thinking of nothing but escape—and she could remember no special feature of the house to which they’d been taken, nothing to distinguish it from its neighbors.

Fortunately, 72 remembered that Jake had written down his address and phone number. They couldn’t call—72 had stolen Jake’s phone, and besides, Lyra had never made a call before and, though she had often seen the nurses talking on their cell phones, wasn’t sure she knew how to do it—and so they started the process again of asking strangers how to get to 1211 Route 12, Little Waller, Florida.

A woman with hair frosted a vague orange color directed them to a car rental agency, but almost as soon as they entered, the man behind the counter began asking for licenses and credit cards and other things neither one of them had. Lyra got flustered again, upsetting a small display of maps with her elbow so the maps went fanning out across the counter. 72 got angry. He accused the man of shouting.