Replica (Replica #1)(94)

“Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies,” Jake said, and Gemma jumped. This was it: they were on the verge of understanding. Suddenly all her fear left her at once. It was like standing at the top of a really steep sledding hill and then letting go. There was nothing to do anymore but ride. “That’s a category of disease. Mad cow is a TSE.”

“Okay.” Gemma went to sit next to Jake on the couch again. It was better than standing next to Lyra, the living evidence of whatever deranged experiments they were doing at Haven. “But what does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” Jake rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache. “There are just references to it in the report.”

At the sink, Lyra released her bowl with a clatter. Gemma looked up and saw she’d gone very still. “You shouldn’t be looking at that,” she said. Gemma wondered at Lyra’s loyalty to Haven—was she trying to protect its secrets?

“Why not?” Jake turned to Lyra. “You stole it, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Lyra said evenly. “But that’s different.”

“It’s not like they’ll miss it now. The whole place is an ash heap.”

“Jake,” Gemma said quickly. For the first time, Lyra had flinched.

He shrugged. “Sorry. But it’s true.” He didn’t sound sorry at all. He sounded angry. And Gemma knew how he felt. If even a fraction of what they suspected of Haven was true, she was glad it had burned to the ground. She bent forward over the report again, trying to make sense of the baffling medical terminology and shorthand. Among the jumble of terms she couldn’t understand, she spotted repeated references to Human Model 576, generation seventeen, cluster yellow. “Lyra, do you know what these groups mean?” Gemma kept her voice light. Lyra was still motionless by the sink, as if she was waiting for someone to tell her what to do. Maybe she was. “The patient—the replica, I mean.” She looked up, wondering whether she had used the term correctly. After a second, Lyra barely nodded. “She was in the yellow cluster?”

“The Yellows died,” Lyra said. Gemma went cold. There was something terrible in Lyra’s matter-of-factness. “There were about a hundred of them,” she went on, “all from the youngest crops.” She could have been talking about anything. Groceries. The weather. Toilet paper. “Crops are for different generations. But colors are for clusters. So I’m third crop, green cluster.” She held up her wrist, and Gemma saw the green hospital bracelet, truly saw it, for the first time. “They must have made a mistake with the Yellows. Sometimes they did that. Made mistakes. The Pinks died, too.”

“They all died?” Jake asked.

Lyra nodded. “They got sick.”

“Oh my God.” According to the report, Human Model 576 hadn’t been even two years old when she died. “It says here she was only fourteen months,” Gemma said, because somehow she needed to speak the words, to get them out of her chest where they were clawing at her. Not a specimen. A child. Small and fat-cheeked with little fists that wanted to grab at things. Gemma loved babies, always had. Who didn’t?

“You said colors are for clusters,” Jake said slowly. “But clusters of what?”

Lyra shrugged. “There are different clusters. We all get different variants.”

“Variants of what?” Jake pressed, and Gemma almost didn’t want to know the answer.

For a second, Lyra looked almost annoyed. “Medicine,” she said, so sharply that Jake briefly glanced at her.

“Look, Jake. It’s signed by Dr. Saperstein, just like you said.” She had the urge to take pair of scissors to it, to cut it into little shreds as if doing so would hurt the real person, too. Below Dr. Saperstein’s signature—which was hard and angular and fit Gemma’s impression of Dr. Saperstein as someone made all of angles and corners, someone from whom human feeling had been carved away—a nurse, Emily J. Huang, had signed as well.

“Dr. Saperstein is in charge of the growth of new crops of replicas,” Lyra said, and Gemma tried not to wince when she used that word, crops. She was surprised when Lyra voluntarily came closer. She didn’t sit, but she hovered there. Maybe she could read. Her eyes were moving in the right way. Normally Gemma found people who read over her shoulder intensely annoying, but she was afraid of doing anything to startle Lyra away. “He signs all the death certificates.” Gemma was surprised when Lyra smiled faintly. She reached out and touched Emily Huang’s name with a finger—gently, as if it were something fragile, a ladybug or a butterfly. “Nurse Em signed, too.”

Nurse Em. Something burst across Gemma’s mind—an electric pulse of understanding. She leaned back and closed her eyes. She saw whiteness, as if she’d been staring at the sun, and silhouettes stumbling in front of it, chanting soundlessly to her. “Nurse Em,” she said out loud, testing the sound of it. Yes.

“Holy shit,” Jake said, and she knew that he, too, had understood.

Emily J. Huang.

Nurse M.


Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 10 of Lyra’s story.





ELEVEN


GEMMA FELT CLAUSTROPHOBIC EVEN ONCE she was outside. She’d felt in that small bright box of a living room as if the ceiling were going to collapse—for a second she’d almost hoped it would. Now she knelt and plunged her head into the pool, which was shockingly cold, and came up gasping, her hair running water down onto her sweatshirt. But still she sensed a terrible pressure all around her, as if an invisible hand was trying to squeeze her into a sandwich bag. But she knew that in fact the pressure came from inside, from the weight of the truth and all that Jake had found out.