Replica (Replica #1)(7)

“I’ll do it,” Lyra said. She felt breathless even though she hadn’t moved, and she wondered whether Lazy Ass would notice. But no. Of course she wouldn’t. Many of the nurses couldn’t even tell the replicas apart. When she was a kid, Lyra remembered staring at the nurses, willing them to stare back at her, to see her, to take her hand or pick her up or tell her she was pretty. She had once been moved to solitary for two days after she stole Nurse Em’s security badge, thinking that the nurse wouldn’t be able to leave at the end of the day, that she would have to stay. But Nurse Em had found a way to leave, of course, and soon afterward she had left Haven forever.

Lyra had gotten used to it: to all the leaving, to being left. Now she was glad to be invisible. They were invisible to her, too, in a way. That was why she’d given them nicknames.

Nurse Go Figure and Lazy Ass turned, staring. Lyra’s face was hot. Rosacea. She knew it all from a lifetime of listening to the doctors.

“What’d it say?” Lazy Ass said, very slowly. She wasn’t talking to Lyra, but Lyra answered anyway.

“It can do it,” Lyra said, forcing herself to stay very still. When she was little, she’d been confused about the difference between I and it and could never keep them straight. Sometimes when she was nervous, she still slipped up. She tried again. “I can bring the files to Admin for you.”

Go Figure snorted. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she said.

But Lazy Ass kept staring, as though seeing Lyra for the first time. ?“You know how to get to Admin?”

Lyra nodded. She had always lived at Haven. She would always live at Haven. There were many rooms locked, forbidden, accessible only by key cards and codes—many places she couldn’t enter, many closed doors behind which people moved, helmeted, suited up in white. But she knew all the lengths of the hallways and the time it took in seconds to get from the toilet to the Stew Pot and back; knew the desks and break rooms, stairways and back ways, like she knew the knobs of her own hips or the feel of the bed, number 24, that had always been hers. Like she knew Omiron and latex, Invacare Snake Tubing and Red Caps and the Glass Eyes.

Her friends, her enemies, her world.

“What’s Admin, Lyra?” Lilac Springs asked. She was going to ruin everything—and she knew where Admin was. Everybody did. Even Lilac Springs wasn’t that dumb.

“I’ll be quick,” Lyra said, ignoring Lilac Springs.

“Dr. Sappo won’t like it,” Go Figure said. Dr. Sappo was what the staff called God, but only when he couldn’t hear them. Otherwise they called him Dr. Saperstein or Director Saperstein. “They ain’t supposed to get their hands on nothing important.”

Lazy Ass snorted. “I don’t care if he do or don’t like it,” she said. “He ain’t got blisters the size of Mount St. Helens on both feet. Besides, he won’t know one way or the other.”

“What if it messes up?” Go Figure said. “Then you’ll be in trouble.”

“I won’t,” Lyra protested, and then cleared her throat when her voice came out as a croak. “Mess it up, I mean. I know what to do. I go down to Sub-One in A-Wing.”

Lilac Springs began to whine. “I want to go to Admin.”

“Uh-uh,” Nurse Go Figure said, turning to Lilac Springs. “This one’s coming with me.” And then, in a low voice, but not so low both Lilac Springs and Lyra couldn’t hear: “The Browns are going like flies. It’s funny how it hits them all differently.”

“That’s because they ain’t got it right yet.” Lazy Ass shook her head. “All’s I know is they better be for real about how it doesn’t catch.” She was still watching Lyra through half-narrowed eyes, evaluating, drumming the stack of test results as if an answer might come through her fingertips.

“I’ve told you, it isn’t contagious. Not like that, anyway. I’ve been here since the start. Do I look dead to you?”

Lilac Springs began to cry—loudly, a high, blubbering wail, like the cry of one of the infant replicas in the observation units. Go Figure had to practically drag her to her feet and out into the hall. Only when Lyra could no longer hear Lilac Springs’s voice did she realize she’d been holding her breath.

Lazy Ass slid the papers a half inch toward her. Lyra stood up so quickly the chair jumped across the tile floor.

“Straight through and no stopping,” Lazy Ass said. “And if anyone asks you where you’re going, keep walking and mind your own business. Should be Werner down at the desk. Tell him I sent you.”

Lyra could feel the muscles around her lips twitching. But Lazy Ass would be suspicious if she looked too happy. She took the papers—even the sound of paper was delicious—and held them carefully to her chest.

“Go on,” Lazy Ass said.

Lyra didn’t want to wait, fearing Lazy Ass would change her mind. Even after she’d turned into the hall, she kept waiting for the nurse to shout, to call her back, to decide it was a bad idea. The linoleum was cold on her bare feet.

Haven consisted of six wings, A–G. There was no E-Wing, for reasons no one understood, although rumor among the staff was that the first God, Richard Haven, had an ex-wife named Ellen. Except for the Box, officially called G-Wing, all the buildings were interconnected, arranged in a pentagon formation around a four-acre courtyard fitted with gardens and statues, benches, and even a paddleball court for staff use. Electronic double doors divided the wings at each juncture, like a series of mechanized elbows. Only the Box was larger—four stories at least, and as many as three more, supposedly, underground, although given that they were at sea level, that seemed unlikely. It was detached, situated a solid hundred yards away from Haven proper and built of gray cement.