Replica

“Let it go, Maxine.” Nurse Dolly was climbing to her feet, wincing, holding on to her lower back. Lyra was unaccountably angry at Cassiopeia. Nurse Dolly was one of the nicest ones. “It doesn’t understand.”

Nurse Don’t-Even-Think-About-It stood for a moment, still gripping Cassiopeia’s wrists. Then, abruptly, she released her and turned away. “Unnatural,” she muttered. “Devil’s work, all of it.”

“Enough.” Nurse Curly spoke up this time, addressing everyone. “You two”—she pointed at Goosedown and Bounty, still watching, frozen—“help number six clean up.”

But Cassiopeia bolted for the door instead, pushing past Nurse Don’t-Even-Think-About-It and shaking Lyra off when Lyra went to touch her arm.

“Grab it!” Don’t-Even-Think-About-It shouted, but Nurse Dolly shook her head.

“She’ll be back.” She sighed. She looked exhausted. There were dark circles under her eyes, and Lyra found herself wondering briefly about the nurse’s other life, the one off the island. What would it be like to have a secret world, a private place away from Haven, away from the replicas and the nurses and the Glass Eyes? She couldn’t fathom it.

Nurse Dolly met Lyra’s eyes, and Lyra looked quickly away.

“There’s nowhere for her to run, anyway,” Nurse Dolly added, but gently, as if in apology.

Cassiopeia wasn’t at lunch. The replicas didn’t speak about her. They didn’t speak at all. It was difficult to feel comfortable surrounded by half the nursing staff and several guards, all of them posted around the perimeter of the room, silent, expressionless, watching the girls eat, many of them wearing masks or full hazmat suits that made them resemble inflated balloons.

Lyra had no appetite. She was still nauseous, and the smell of the Stew Pot made her stomach clench, as if it wanted to bring something up. But she didn’t risk skipping lunch. She didn’t want to go into the Funeral Home. So she lined up with the other replicas and filled her plate with mashed potatoes and chicken floating in a vivid red sauce the electric color of inner organs and pushed her food around, cut it into small pieces, hid some in her napkin.

Lyra needed to find a new hiding place. The dorm was no longer safe. She was responsible for changing her own linens—but what if one day she forgot, and the book and the file, her pen and her Altoids tin, were discovered? They’d be taken away and destroyed, and Lyra would never get over it. The book especially—that was her last piece of Dr. O’Donnell, and the only thing that Lyra had ever been given, except for standard-issue clothing and a scratchy blanket for cool nights.

Lyra headed straight to the bunks after lunch. The dorm was mostly empty: after lunch, the female replicas had a half an hour of free time before afternoon physicals. Only a half-dozen replicas had preceded her back, and there was a single nurse on patrol, Nurse Stink, an older woman who chewed special candies made of ginger and garlic for indigestion, and who always smelled like them as a result.

Lyra went straight to bed 24 and, keeping her back angled to the nurse, began stripping the sheets from the bed. At a certain point, she slid a hand between the mattress and the frame and drew out the book, and then the file, at the same time stuffing them down into a pillowcase so they were invisible. Then she headed for the door, pressing the linens tight to her chest, as if they might help muffle the sound of her heart.

“Where are you going?” the nurse asked. She was sitting in a folding chair by the door, fumbling to unwrap one of her candies.

“The laundry,” Lyra answered, surprised that her voice sounded so steady.

“Laundry day was yesterday,” Nurse Stink said.

“I know,” Lyra said, and lowered her voice. “But it’s my monthly bleeding.”

The nurse waved a hand as if to say, Go on.

Lyra turned left to get to the end of D-Wing. But instead of going downstairs to the laundry, she ducked out of the first exit, a fire door that led to the southeastern side of the institute, where the land sloped very gently toward the fence and the vast marshland beyond it. Birds were wheeling against a pale-blue sky, and the stink of wild taro and dead fish was strong. From here, the marshes were so covered in water lettuce they looked almost like solid ground. But Lyra knew better. She’d been told again and again about the tidal marshes, about fishermen and curiosity seekers and adventurers from Barrel Key who’d lost their way among the tumorous growth and had been found drowned.

Lyra hid the bundle of sheets behind a trimmed hedge. She tucked the pillowcase with her belongings in it under her shirt and kept going, circling the main building. She spotted Cassiopeia, sitting motionless by the fence, staring out over the marshes, hugging her knees to her chest. Lyra thought of going to her but wasn’t sure what she would say. And Cassiopeia had caused trouble. She’d pushed Nurse Dolly. She’d be put in solitary or restrained to her bed, kept like that for a day or two. Besides, Lyra was still weak, and even the idea of trying to comfort Cassiopeia exhausted her.

She’d need to find a place not too remote; a place she could sneak off to easily without arousing suspicion, but a place unused for other purposes, where no one else would think to look.

She kept going, toward a portion of the island she’d rarely explored, praying nobody would stop her. She wasn’t sure whether she was breaking any rules, and if anyone asked what she was doing or where she was going, she’d have no answer.

The northern half of the island remained undeveloped and largely untouched, since it had, decades earlier, belonged to a timber company. Now it was a repository of old equipment, sealed chemical drums, and trailers mounted on cinder blocks and padlocked off, for the most part, with heavy chains. Lyra paused at a rusted gate hung with a large sign warning of biohazardous material. But the gate was unlocked, and she decided to risk it. Half of Haven contained biohazardous material anyway.