Replica Read Online Free PDF Page B

stopped.
    â€œHey.” It was the stranger who spoke. “Hey. You.” His eyes were practically black. He turned to God. “Which one is this?”
    â€œNot sure. Some of the nurses can tell them apart on sight.” God looked at Lyra. “Which one are you?” he asked.
    Maybe it was the stolen file pressed to her stomach, but Lyra had the momentary impulse to introduce herself by name. Instead she said, “Number twenty-four.”
    â€œAnd you just let them wander around like this?” The man was still staring at Lyra, but obviously addressinghimself to God. “Even after what happened?” Lyra knew he must be talking about the Code Black.
    â€œWe’re following protocols,” God said. God’s voice reminded Lyra of the bite of the syringes. “When Haven started, it was important to the private sector that they be treated humanely.”
    â€œThere is no private sector. We’re the ones holding the purse strings now,” the man said. “What about contagion?”
    Lyra was only half listening. Sweat was gathering in the space between the folder and her stomach. She imagined it seeping through the folder, dampening the pages. The folder had shifted fractionally and she was worried a page might escape, but she didn’t dare adjust her grip.
    â€œThere’s no risk except through direct ingestion—as you would know, if you actually read the reports. All right, twenty-four,” God said. “You can go.”
    Lyra was so relieved she could have shouted. Instead she lowered her head and, keeping her arms wrapped tightly around her waist, started to move past them.
    â€œWait.”
    The Suit called out to her. Lyra stiffened and turned around to face him on the stairs. They were now nearly eye to eye. She felt the same way she did during examinations, shivering in her paper gown, staring up at the high unblinking lights set in the ceiling: cold and exposed.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with its stomach?” he asked.
    Lyra tightened her hands around her waist. Please, she thought. Please. She couldn’t complete the thought. If she were forced to move her arms, the file would drop. She imagined papers spilling from her pants legs, tumbling down the stairs.
    God indicated the plastic wristband Lyra always wore. “Green,” he said. “One of the first variants. Slower-acting than your typical vCJD. Most of the Greens are still alive, although we’ve seen a few signs of neurodegenerative activity recently.”
    â€œSo what’s that mean in English?”
    Unlike the man in the suit, God never made eye contact. He looked at her shoulders, her arms, her kneecaps, her forehead: everywhere but her eyes.
    â€œSide effects,” he said, with a thin smile. Then Lyra was free to go.
    Lyra wasn’t the only replica that collected things. Rose kept used toothbrushes under her pillow. Palmolive scanned the hallways for dropped coins and stored them in a box that had once contained antibacterial swabs. Cassiopeia had lined up dozens of seashells on the windowsill next to her bed, and additionally had convinced Nurse Dolly to sneak her some Scotch tape so she could hang several drawings she’d created on napkins stolen from themess hall. She drew Dumpsters and red-barred circles and stethoscopes and the bust of the first God in his red-and-blue cape and scalpels gleaming in folds of clean cloth. She was very good. Calliope had once taken a cell phone from one of the nurses, and all her genotypes had been punished for it.
    But Lyra was careful with her things. She was private about them. The file folder she hid carefully under her thin mattress, next to her other prized possessions: several pens, including her favorite, a green one with a retractable tip that said Fine & Ives in block white lettering; an empty tin that read Altoids ; a half-dozen coins she’d found behind the soda machine; her worn and battered copy of The