Replica (Replica #1)(90)

April’s eyes went to the car. “Is that—I mean, are they in there?” Gemma nodded. April licked her lips. She was tan and relaxed-looking, her shoulders peeling, and standing next to her, Gemma felt a thousand years old. “You’re serious about . . . you think they’re really clones? Real clones?”

“No, fakes,” Gemma said, and then saw that April was too distracted to catch sarcasm. “Yes, real,” she said. “At least, that’s what they told me.”

“But you don’t have proof,” April said, sounding almost disappointed. “You haven’t seen, you know, doubles.”

Gemma thought again of the body stretched out in the grass, a body just like hers except so much thinner than her own. She hadn’t told April about seeing the girl who had to be her clone, her replica. She wasn’t ready for that. Not until she understood more than she did now. Instead she said only, “I think they’re telling the truth. Why would they lie? They were raised on that island. They were made there. They’ve been told they’re less than human. The boy doesn’t even have a name. Just a number.” That was what the girl, Lyra, had told them in the car.

April hugged herself. “God,” she said. She was still staring into the car. Turning, Gemma was relieved to see that because of the direction of the sun, Lyra and 72 were no more than blurry silhouettes. She had a feeling that once word got out—which it had to, there would be no way to keep the truth secret now—they’d have plenty of people staring at them. “Can I meet them? Is it safe to let them out?”

“They’re not animals,” Gemma said, surprised by the harshness of her tone. April flinched, and Gemma felt instantly guilty. “Sorry,” Gemma said. “I’m tired. They’re tired.”

April ignored that. “And who’s that?” Her eyes had landed on Jake. She looked as if she wanted to lick him. Gemma was surprised her tongue wasn’t lolling out of her mouth.

“Look, let me just get everyone into the guesthouse, okay? And then we can talk, and I’ll tell you everything.”

“You better,” April said, still staring at Jake. “I’ve been covering your ass for days.”

“I know,” Gemma said. “You’re the best friend in the world.”

“Universe,” April corrected her.

They’d stopped at Walmart on the way to April’s house and bought clothes, food, and toiletries with the credit card her parents had given her, trusting that they never reviewed the statements too closely—one of the few benefits of having parents who kept you on the world’s tightest leash, and at least occasionally felt guilty about it. She was dying to ask both replicas about Haven, but the lack of sleep was catching up to her. She felt as if her brain had been replaced by sludge.

The guesthouse was cool and decorated in lots of beach pastels. The boy held himself very carefully, as if he was afraid to break something. Lyra stopped in front of the bookshelves, staring up at the old warped paperbacks, mass-market romances, and thrillers with time-smudged spines, as if she’d never seen books before. Maybe she hadn’t. Gemma wondered whether she’d been educated, whether she knew how to read and that there were seven continents, that the earth orbited around the sun. So many questions, so many things she needed to understand.

“Get some sleep,” Gemma told them. She was feeling calmer since they’d made it to April’s house without getting arrested or swarmed by SWAT teams or whatever. They were safe. They had time.

Jake and Gemma left the replicas to rest in the guesthouse. Gemma was exhausted, but as soon as they stepped outside, Jake—who had been quiet through almost the entire car ride—began to talk. “You know what doesn’t make sense to me?” he said. “Why all the secrecy? People have dreamed of cloning humans for years. They’ve barely been able to clone animals. Most clones die early. The scientists at Haven should get the Nobel Prize. They should be on TED Talks. They should be billionaires, you know? So why haven’t they told anyone?”

“I don’t know,” Gemma said, as they skirted the pool toward the main house. The sun was dazzling off the water. She wished she had sunglasses. “But Fine and Ives has military contracts, like you said. They always have. Maybe Haven was using the clones for drug testing. Isn’t that what you thought they were doing out there, Dr. Whatever-his-name-is and his orphan charity and his human experiments?”

Clones no one knew about, no one cared about—they could be used as human guinea pigs. No wonder they’d been given numbers, not names.

It would explain, too, the fact that her father had known Richard Haven, had been photographed with him and spoken about his genius in interviews. It might explain his sudden change of attitude and abrupt departure from Fine & Ives right after Richard Haven’s death, and just when Fine & Ives had begun to invest. Gemma could imagine her father excited by the idea of human cloning, by the scientific possibility of it, only to feel disgusted should it actually succeed. And no matter how horrible he was, she couldn’t imagine that he would willingly get involved in testing deadly drugs or toxins on human beings, cloned or uncloned, without their consent. It had nothing to do with empathy. He simply liked rules too much.

Still, no matter which way she thought about it, her father must have known what was really going on at Haven. He’d known, and he’d turned his back on what was happening. He had retreated with his family to Chapel Hill, hiding behind tall gates and manicured lawns and money. Despite what she knew about her father—his coldness, the way he hardly seemed to care about his own family—she couldn’t believe it. How would she ever look at him again?