Replica Read Free Page B

terror that gripped her, a feeling like waking in the middle of the night, surrounded by darkness, and having no idea where she was.
    She’d nearly reached C-Wing when she heard the sudden rise of angry voices—one of them Dr. O’Donnell’s. She drew back, quickly, into an alcove. She could just make out Dr. O’Donnell and God, facing off in one of the empty testing rooms. The door was partially open, and their voices floated out into the hall.
    â€œI hired you,” God said, “to do your job, not to play at Mother goddamn Teresa.” He raised his hand, and Lyra thought he might hit her. Then she saw that hewas holding the old, weathered copy of The Little Prince Dr. O’Donnell had been reading.
    â€œDon’t you see?” Dr. O’Donnell’s face was flushed. Her freckles had disappeared. “What we’re doing . . . Christ. They deserve a little happiness, don’t they? Besides, you said yourself they do better when they get some affection.”
    â€œStimulation and touch. Not weekly story time.” God slammed the book down on a table, and Lyra jumped. Then he sighed. “We’re not humanitarians. We’re scientists , Cat. And they’re subjects. End of story.”
    Dr. O’Donnell raised her chin. Her hair was starting to come loose from her ponytail. If Lyra had known the word love , if she’d really understood it, she would have known she loved Dr. O’Donnell in that moment.
    â€œThat doesn’t mean we can’t treat them like regular people,” she said.
    God had already started for the door. Lyra caught a glimpse of his heavy black eyebrows, his close-trimmed beard, his eyes so sunken it looked like someone had pressed them back into his head. Now he stiffened and spun around. “Actually, it does,” he said. His voice was very cold, like the touch of the Steel Ear when it slipped beneath her shirt to listen to her heartbeat. “What’s next? Are you going to start teaching the rats to play chess?”
    Before she left Haven, Dr. O’Donnell gave Lyra her copy of The Little Prince . Then Lyra was pretty sure Dr. O’Donnell had been crying.
    â€œBe sure and keep it hidden,” she whispered, and briefly touched Lyra’s face.
    Afterward, Lyra lay down. And for the afternoon, Lyra’s pillow smelled like antiseptic and lemon lotion, like Dr. O’Donnell’s fingers.
    Turn the page to continue reading Lyra’s story. Click here to read Chapter 3 of Gemma’s story.

FOUR
    COG TESTING TOOK PLACE IN a large, drafty room of D-Wing that had once been used to house cages full of rabbits and still smelled faintly of pellet food and animal urine. Lyra didn’t know what had happened to the rabbits. Haven was large, and many of its rooms were off-limits, so she assumed they had been moved. Or maybe they had failed to thrive, too, like so many of the replicas.
    Every week Cog Testing varied: the replicas might be asked to pick up small and slippery pins as quickly as possible, or attempt to assemble a three-dimensional puzzle, or to pick out visual patterns on a piece of paper. The female replicas, all nine hundred and sixty of them, were admitted by color in groups of forty over the course of the day. Lilac Springs was out of the Box and took the seat next to Lyra’s. Lilac Springs had named herself after a product she’d seen advertised on the nurses’ TV. Evenafter the nurses had laughed hysterically and explained to her—and everyone—what a feminine douche was and what it was for, she had refused to change her name, saying she liked the sound of it.
    â€œYou don’t look so good” was the first thing Lilac Springs said to Lyra. Lilac Springs hardly ever said anything. She was one of the slower replicas. She still needed help getting dressed, and she had never learned her alphabet. “Are you sick?”
    Lyra shook her head, keeping her eyes on the table.