Replica (Replica #1)(86)

Here in the shallows was even more garbage, accumulated trash frothing against the grass. She angled her phone to the ground as a makeshift flashlight. She found a small rectangular sign, the kind that hung on office doors, indicating the way to Storeroom C, whatever that was. Its plastic was melted at the edges, so the sign looked as if it were bleeding out. She saw bits of plaster and white things studded between the rocks that she realized with a surge of nausea looked like pieces of bone. There were occasional stretches of sticky-dark stains, blacker than shadow, that she knew must be blood. The explosion must have been tremendous. And then of course had come the wind, which had carried the smell of burning all the way to Barrel Key and blown the fire into a conflagration.

After five minutes the trees thinned and the smell of charred plastic and campfire and something sweeter and deeper and more unpleasant intensified. At last she could see buildings—or at least, a single building—huge and rectangular and stained with soot, its windows shattered so that it appeared to be staring blankly out over the water. She was shocked to see the fire still burning, glowing dimly inside the building so that the walls were turned the strange translucent pinkish glow of a heart. She dropped into a crouch when she saw movement, pocketing her phone. Dimly she heard people calling to one another, and saw as her eyes adjusted people outfitted in firefighters’ rubber pants and heavy boots. As she watched, she realized they were in fact stoking the fire, keeping it going, keeping it under control. And she understood that they’d been charged with burning the rest of Haven down, to make sure there was nothing left. She could go no farther, not without risking being caught.

Although the firefighters must have been a thousand yards away, she still winced when she stepped backward and heard a sharp crack. Turning, she saw that she’d stepped on a framed photograph, further shattering the cracked plastic that encased it. She bent down to retrieve it but could make out nothing more than a blur of dark figures. She pocketed it anyway and moved down the beach again, back in the direction she’d come. She waited until she could no longer hear the people or see the glow of fire through the trees before fishing out her phone again for light.

She recognized the man in the photo, heavily bearded and wearing a lab coat, as Dr. Saperstein, the current Haven director, from a picture she’d seen on the internet. He was outside, squinting against the sun, and in the distance she recognized the building she’d just watched burning, although the photograph was taken at a different angle, as though from an interior courtyard. Behind him was a statue—the statue.

In her memories, indistinct as they were, she’d always assumed that the statue represented some kind of god, but now she saw it was a David-like figure, a mortal, one arm thrown to the sky, one arm reaching down as though to draw something from the earth. In the photograph she could just make out a strand of DNA, represented by ribbons of interlocking stone, beneath its hand. The man in the statue had the posture of God forming Adam from the dust. It was a statue meant to represent the people at Haven and the work they were doing, the way they formed life from the earth, the way they had taken over for God.

And she, Gemma, remembered it. It was her earliest memory. Which meant: she’d been here before.

Made here. The idea was there, lodged in her mind, before she could unthink it. Made, manufactured, like the weird veggie patty they served in the cafeteria in school. She felt wild, dramatic, desperate. She thought for a second she might simply sit down and refuse to move, just wait for the salt to eat through her and the crabs to pick apart her bones.

But no. A new idea struck her and this time it felt like salvation, like finding a rope in the middle of a freezing riptide—she couldn’t have been made at Haven, not cloned like the girl and boy claimed they had been. Like her double must have been. She’d seen dozens of pictures of her mom in the hospital, clutching an infant Gemma to her chest, sweaty and exhausted-looking, just moments after birth. There was one of her parents together, and minutes-old Gemma red and swaddled in a yellow blanket, and another of a nurse with a bottle of champagne. It was obviously Gemma in the pictures. Even then she’d had soft curls of brown hair and a snub nose that made it look as if it were being supported by an invisible thumb.

She felt calmer. She could breathe again. She was being silly. She might have visited Haven with her dad. And although she associated the statue with the idea of a long stay, she knew she might have made that up, or confused Haven with another one of the hospitals she’d been to as a child.

It was just after five thirty—time to get back, although she dreaded the return, of getting close to that horrible other who would rot out here with no one to mourn or bury her. But already, long electric tentacles of pink were swimming up through the darkness from the horizon. She knew she had to wake the others. It was time to get off the marshes.

She removed the photograph from its broken frame, folded it, and pocketed it next to the laminated ID she’d found entangled in the weeds. She was almost tempted to leave the photograph behind—carrying it made her feel jumpy and also ashamed, as if it were contraband or evidence of a crime. And it was evidence, although she didn’t know, hadn’t yet figured out, exactly what the crime had been.

Paddling felt even harder on the way back. Her arms ached and the lack of sleep had taken its toll. She was thirsty and exhausted. Even as it was driven off by the rising sun, the darkness played tricks on her. She kept thinking she saw movement in her peripheral vision, kept whipping around, half expecting to see another bloodied version of herself, holding her paddle like a weapon, only to see nothing but an insect skimming the water or a bullfrog blinking at her between the rushes.