Replica (Replica #1)(50)

Turn the page to continue reading Lyra’s story. Click here to read Chapter 14 of Gemma’s story.





FIFTEEN


THEY HAD NO TIME TO do anything but duck behind a neighbor’s car before they saw a dark-blue sedan edge out from Jake’s driveway and nose into the street. They waited until the noise of the engine faded, then stood and started down the rutted dirt road, turning onto the next street they came to, this one thick with growth and lined with a ruin of old houses. They needed to get back to town. But Lyra was mixed up. Which way had they come?

They turned again and froze. Several blocks away, the sedan was coming toward them at a crawl. They pivoted and began to run. Lyra didn’t know whether they’d been spotted and was too afraid to look. There was a roaring in her ears. The car, getting closer?

“Town.” Lyra’s breath was coming in short gasps, like something alive inside her chest. “We need to get back to town.”

She didn’t know whether Caelum had heard. He made a hard right and took off straight across a front yard overgrown with high weeds. A dog began to bark, but no one came out. They squeezed into the narrow dark space between the garage and the house just as the sedan came around the corner, and looking back, Lyra saw the woman’s face, white with concentration, scanning the streets through the open window. Lyra’s legs were shaking so badly Caelum had to put his arms around her to keep her on her feet. His chest moved against her back, his breath was in her hair and on her neck, and she wished the world would end so she could end with it, so she didn’t have to run anymore, so Caelum could stay with her in a dark, close space that felt like being buried.

But the world didn’t end, of course. When the sedan was once again out of view, Caelum released her. “Now,” he said. But she found she couldn’t move. She was so tired.

“Wait. I don’t think I can.”

“Okay.” Caelum looked young in the half dark, with the sky a narrow artery above them. “We’ll stay here for a bit.”

“No. I don’t think I can. Go on.” Lyra was still having trouble breathing. It felt as if her lungs were wrapped in medical gauze. She leaned back against the garage, which was made of cinder block and very cool, and closed her eyes. The space was full of spiderwebs and wet leaves. It smelled like decay. What was the point, anyway? How long did she really have?

Half of her wanted simply to walk out into the road and wait for their pursuers to find her. Where would they take her? She would be reunited with the rest of the replicas, she was sure. Or maybe she would be killed and her body disposed of. Maybe they were erasing the experiment, slowly eradicating all indications that Haven had ever existed. But it would be easier. So much easier.

“You can’t give up now,” Caelum said. “Lyra. Listen to me.” He put a hand on her cheek and she opened her eyes. His thumb moved along the ridge of her cheekbone, as it had last night. His lips were very close. His eyes were dark and long-lashed. Beautiful. “You named me. That means I’m yours, doesn’t it? I’m yours and you’re mine.”

“I’m scared,” Lyra said. And she was—scared of the running, scared of what would happen to them, but scared, too, of how close he was standing, of how her body changed when he touched her and became fluid-feeling, as if something hard deep inside of her were softening. She knew that there were electrical currents in the body and that was what she was reminded of now, of currents flowing between them, of thousands of lights.

“I’m scared too,” he said. He leaned forward and touched his forehead to hers. And still her body called out for something, something more and deeper and closer, but she didn’t know what. She wished them out of the bodies that divided them. She thought of the word love, and wondered whether this, this feeling of never being able to get close enough, was it. She had never been taught. But she thought so.

“I love you,” she said. The words felt strange, foreign to her, like a new food. But not unpleasant.

“I love you,” Caelum repeated back to her, and smiled. She could tell the words were just as surprising to him. He said them again. “I love you.”

Inside her chest, a door opened, and she found she was at last breathing easily, and now had the strength to go on.


They made it back into town without seeing the sedan again, but they were standing at the first bus stop they could find, debating where to go next, when Lyra spotted the man from the house in a parking lot across the road, passing between the businesses, delis, and retail shops that were clustered together, like beads someone had strung along the same necklace. She took Caelum’s hand and they hurried to the most crowded place they could find: a dim restaurant called the Blue Gator, separated from the road by a scrub of sad little trees. Dozens of men were crowded around a counter, drinking and watching sports, occasionally letting out a cheer or a groan in unison. Lyra and Caelum moved toward the back of the restaurant, past old wood tables filled with kids squabbling over plates of french fries and couples drinking and staring dull-eyed at the TVs. A hallway led back toward the kitchen. A girl with a haircut almost like Lyra’s was standing beneath a sign that indicated a restroom, her fingers skating over the screen of her phone, her chin prominent in the blue light cast by its glow. Lyra had an idea.

She took Jake Witz’s phone from her pocket.

“Hello.” Lyra held out the phone. The girl’s eyes jumped from her screen to Lyra to Caelum. “Can you please help?”