Replica (Replica #1)(87)

It was lucky that the sky was lightening or she might never have found her way back. She passed dozens of mangrove trees extending out over the water, many of them overhung with mosses that in the dark might have looked like her sweatshirt. But she made it back a little after six and was surprised to find Jake and both clones still asleep. She knelt next to Jake.

“Hey,” she said. He woke suddenly, and for a second as he was still enveloped in sleep, Gemma saw a look of terror seize him. He blinked and it passed. She wondered whether he’d been having a nightmare.

She didn’t want to touch the others—she hadn’t forgotten how the girl had jerked away from her. Instead she stood at a careful distance and called to them until the boy came awake with a start, on his feet and reaching for his knife before he was fully awake.

“It’s okay,” Gemma said quickly, as his eyes slowly found focus. “It’s just me. Gemma, remember?” The boy wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. His chest rose and fell beneath his T-shirt, and again Gemma was struck by how beautiful he was, beautiful and strange and wild-looking, like a new and undiscovered species. She couldn’t fathom that he’d spent his whole life behind a fence. He was the kind of person who looked like he should be sailing on open seas, or parachuting down a mountain.

The girl had come awake, too. She looked even sicker than she had the night before. Her skin was a blue, bruised color Gemma associated with frostbite. But she couldn’t possibly be cold. Gemma was sweating.

“There are still men on the island,” Gemma said. “They’re burning what’s left of Haven.”

“You saw them?” Jake stood up. His hair was messy and his eyes were slightly puffy from sleep, but he still looked like he could be in an ad. “You got close?” She nodded, and he frowned. “You should have woken me. It’s not safe.”

“What do you mean, they’re burning what’s left of Haven?” The girl stood up unsteadily. She brought a hand to her eyes as if she was dizzy.

“Just what I said,” Gemma said.

“Then there’s no going back?” The girl spoke so quietly Gemma nearly missed it.

Before Gemma could answer, the boy said, “There’s no going back. I told you that. They’ll kill us if they find us. One way or another, they’ll kill us.”

The girl shook her head as if she didn’t believe that, but she said nothing. Gemma wanted to know what he meant by that—one way or another, they’ll kill us—and thought he was probably exaggerating. But they were running out of time. Even now she could hear the distant roar of a motorboat engine.

She made a sudden decision: the girl was sick and needed help. Food, water, somewhere to sleep. Somewhere to hide. And Gemma needed to understand who she was, and whether she and the boy were telling the truth about the number of clones at Haven, and what they were being used for. She needed to understand who the girl who had Gemma’s face was, and how she’d come to be. Maybe she could even figure out what her father knew and what he didn’t. “We have to get off the marshes. There will be new patrols now that it’s light. They’ll be looking for survivors.” And for the dead bodies, she thought, to count them. “Come with us, and we’ll get you clothes, and hide you someplace no one will be looking for you. Then you can figure out where to go. We can figure it out.”

Jake shook his head but didn’t object. She noticed, however, that when he looked at her, he seemed almost afraid. She wondered what he thought about her now, after their discovery of the body, and felt a small cold hand grip her heart. But she had bigger things to worry about.

“Okay.” It was the girl who spoke. The boy shot her a look, either surprised or irritated or both—Gemma couldn’t tell. But he didn’t argue. “Okay,” she said, a little louder. “We’ll go.”

There was nothing to pack up, and no breakfast besides two granola bars, which Jake offered to the replicas. Gemma was, for maybe the first time in her life, not hungry. The roar of distant powerboats was growing louder and more constant. They’d be taking things off the island, files and equipment too expensive to burn. But at some point soon, bodies would be counted, and three would be found to be missing. Then the soldiers would come looking for them.

Gemma had no desire to approach the dead girl again, but she felt bad leaving her there, too, to be used as a nest for flies and picked apart by wild animals. She hoped that someone would at least give her a decent burial. She shoved aside the idea of her own face lying in a chilly morgue somewhere, the freckled chest she knew so well split from sternum to stomach. Before they left, Gemma fought her way back through the mangroves and took a picture of the girl, forever still, forever sightless. A beetle was tracking across her left ankle, and Gemma wanted to reach down and brush it off but was too afraid. She didn’t want to feel the iciness of the skin that was hers. She had a stupid idea that the girl might come roaring back to life, grabbing Gemma’s wrist, furious that her double had lived when she had died. She backtracked quickly, zipping her phone into a pocket: her ever-growing stash of evidence.

Neither the girl nor the boy knew how to swim, and she guessed that made sense, although it was strange because they’d lived only a few feet from the ocean—but of course, on the wrong side of the fence. They would take the kayak while Jake and Gemma walked or half swam. Jake stashed his backpack at the girl’s feet, and Gemma added the Windbreaker Jake had lent her to the pile as well. She didn’t care if the rest of her clothes got wet. But she needed proof of what she’d seen and where she’d been.