Replica

  She recognized the man in the photo, heavily bearded and wearing a lab coat, as Dr. Saperstein, the current Haven director, from a picture she’d seen on the internet. He was outside, squinting against the sun, and in the distance she recognized the building she’d just watched burning, although the photograph was taken at a different angle, as though from an interior courtyard. Behind him was a statue—the statue.

  In her memories, indistinct as they were, she’d always assumed that the statue represented some kind of god, but now she saw it was a David-like figure, a mortal, one arm thrown to the sky, one arm reaching down as though to draw something from the earth. In the photograph she could just make out a strand of DNA, represented by ribbons of interlocking stone, beneath its hand. The man in the statue had the posture of God forming Adam from the dust. It was a statue meant to represent the people at Haven and the work they were doing, the way they formed life from the earth, the way they had taken over for God.

  And she, Gemma, remembered it. It was her earliest memory. Which meant: she’d been here before.

  Made here. The idea was there, lodged in her mind, before she could unthink it. Made, manufactured, like the weird veggie patty they served in the cafeteria in school. She felt wild, dramatic, desperate. She thought for a second she might simply sit down and refuse to move, just wait for the salt to eat through her and the crabs to pick apart her bones.

  But no. A new idea struck her and this time it felt like salvation, like finding a rope in the middle of a freezing riptide—she couldn’t have been made at Haven, not cloned like the girl and boy claimed they had been. Like her double must have been. She’d seen dozens of pictures of her mom in the hospital, clutching an infant Gemma to her chest, sweaty and exhausted-looking, just moments after birth. There was one of her parents together, and minutes-old Gemma red and swaddled in a yellow blanket, and another of a nurse with a bottle of champagne. It was obviously Gemma in the pictures. Even then she’d had soft curls of brown hair and a snub nose that made it look as if it were being supported by an invisible thumb.

  She felt calmer. She could breathe again. She was being silly. She might have visited Haven with her dad. And although she associated the statue with the idea of a long stay, she knew she might have made that up, or confused Haven with another one of the hospitals she’d been to as a child.

  It was just after five thirty—time to get back, although she dreaded the return, of getting close to that horrible other who would rot out here with no one to mourn or bury her. But already, long electric tentacles of pink were swimming up through the darkness from the horizon. She knew she had to wake the others. It was time to get off the marshes.

  She removed the photograph from its broken frame, folded it, and pocketed it next to the laminated ID she’d found entangled in the weeds. She was almost tempted to leave the photograph behind—carrying it made her feel jumpy and also ashamed, as if it were contraband or evidence of a crime. And it was evidence, although she didn’t know, hadn’t yet figured out, exactly what the crime had been.

  Paddling felt even harder on the way back. Her arms ached and the lack of sleep had taken its toll. She was thirsty and exhausted. Even as it was driven off by the rising sun, the darkness played tricks on her. She kept thinking she saw movement in her peripheral vision, kept whipping around, half expecting to see another bloodied version of herself, holding her paddle like a weapon, only to see nothing but an insect skimming the water or a bullfrog blinking at her between the rushes.

  It was lucky that the sky was lightening or she might never have found her way back. She passed dozens of mangrove trees extending out over the water, many of them overhung with mosses that in the dark might have looked like her sweatshirt. But she made it back a little after six and was surprised to find Jake and both clones still asleep. She knelt next to Jake.

  “Hey,” she said. He woke suddenly, and for a second as he was still enveloped in sleep, Gemma saw a look of terror seize him. He blinked and it passed. She wondered whether he’d been having a nightmare.

  She didn’t want to touch the others—she hadn’t forgotten how the girl had jerked away from her. Instead she stood at a careful distance and called to them until the boy came awake with a start, on his feet and reaching for his knife before he was fully awake.

  “It’s okay,” Gemma said quickly, as his eyes slowly found focus. “It’s just me. Gemma, remember?” The boy wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. His chest rose and fell beneath his T-shirt, and again Gemma was struck by how beautiful he was, beautiful and strange and wild-looking, like a new and undiscovered species. She couldn’t fathom that he’d spent his whole life behind a fence. He was the kind of person who looked like he should be sailing on open seas, or parachuting down a mountain.

  The girl had come awake, too. She looked even sicker than she had the night before. Her skin was a blue, bruised color Gemma associated with frostbite. But she couldn’t possibly be cold. Gemma was sweating.

  “There are still men on the island,” Gemma said. “They’re burning what’s left of Haven.”

  “You saw them?” Jake stood up. His hair was messy and his eyes were slightly puffy from sleep, but he still looked like he could be in an ad. “You got close?” She nodded, and he frowned. “You should have woken me. It’s not safe.”

  “What do you mean, they’re burning what’s left of Haven?” The girl stood up unsteadily. She brought a hand to her eyes as if she was dizzy.

  “Just what I said,” Gemma said.

  “Then there’s no going back?” The girl spoke so quietly Gemma nearly missed it.

  Before Gemma could answer, the boy said, “There’s no going back. I told you that. They’ll kill us if they find us. One way or another, they’ll kill us.”

  The girl shook her head as if she didn’t believe that, but she said nothing. Gemma wanted to know what he meant by that—one way or another, they’ll kill us—and thought he was probably exaggerating. But they were running out of time. Even now she could hear the distant roar of a motorboat engine.

  She made a sudden decision: the girl was sick and needed help. Food, water, somewhere to sleep. Somewhere to hide. And Gemma needed to understand who she was, and whether she and the boy were telling the truth about the number of clones at Haven, and what they were being used for. She needed to understand who the girl who had Gemma’s face was, and how she’d come to be. Maybe she could even figure out what her father knew and what he didn’t. “We have to get off the marshes. There will be new patrols now that it’s light. They’ll be looking for survivors.” And for the dead bodies, she thought, to count them. “Come with us, and we’ll get you clothes, and hide you someplace no one will be looking for you. Then you can figure out where to go. We can figure it out.”

  Jake shook his head but didn’t object. She noticed, however, that when he looked at her, he seemed almost afraid. She wondered what he thought about her now, after their discovery of the body, and felt a small cold hand grip her heart. But she had bigger things to worry about.

  “Okay.” It was the girl who spoke. The boy shot her a look, either surprised or irritated or both—Gemma couldn’t tell. But he didn’t argue. “Okay,” she said, a little louder. “We’ll go.”

  There was nothing to pack up, and no breakfast besides two granola bars, which Jake offered to the replicas. Gemma was, for maybe the first time in her life, not hungry. The roar of distant powerboats was growing louder and more constant. They’d be taking things off the island, files and equipment too expensive to burn. But at some point soon, bodies would be counted, and three would be found to be missing. Then the soldiers would come looking for them.

  Gemma had no desire to approach the dead girl again, but she felt bad leaving her there, too, to be used as a nest for flies and picked apart by wild animals. She hoped that someone would at least give her a decent burial. She shoved aside the idea of her own face lying in a chilly morgue somewhere, the freckled chest she knew so well split from sternum
to stomach. Before they left, Gemma fought her way back through the mangroves and took a picture of the girl, forever still, forever sightless. A beetle was tracking across her left ankle, and Gemma wanted to reach down and brush it off but was too afraid. She didn’t want to feel the iciness of the skin that was hers. She had a stupid idea that the girl might come roaring back to life, grabbing Gemma’s wrist, furious that her double had lived when she had died. She backtracked quickly, zipping her phone into a pocket: her ever-growing stash of evidence.

  Neither the girl nor the boy knew how to swim, and she guessed that made sense, although it was strange because they’d lived only a few feet from the ocean—but of course, on the wrong side of the fence. They would take the kayak while Jake and Gemma walked or half swam. Jake stashed his backpack at the girl’s feet, and Gemma added the Windbreaker Jake had lent her to the pile as well. She didn’t care if the rest of her clothes got wet. But she needed proof of what she’d seen and where she’d been.

  Jake kicked off his sneakers, tied the laces together, and slung them over one shoulder. He rolled up his pants legs and waded into the water.

  Gemma kicked off her shoes too and followed him in. The water was the temperature of a kiddie pool after someone had peed in it. It smelled a little like pee, too, and Gemma knew that was just because of all the decay, the singed plant life and dead bugs and the fish. The footing was silt-soft and slippery. Jake had told her last night that there were alligators in the marshes, and cottonmouth snakes, too. Gemma prayed they wouldn’t encounter any.

  The going was very slow. Jake held his phone high to keep it out of the water and directed the replicas which way to point the kayak. In places Gemma and Jake managed to stick to the shallows, where the water was only shin-deep, and move more quickly, but often the water was waist high or deeper and it was like a huge, outstretched hand was halting their progress. They slogged forward as the replicas drifted behind them, scanning the sky for helicopters. The sun rose and soon they could hear the noise of boat traffic, and see it in the miniature waves kicked up in the water by the boats’ distant passage. Gemma had never known you could be in the water and sweaty at the same time, but she was both, and dizzy from the heat and the effort and the fear. Her lungs felt like they’d been strapped and squeezed into too-tight leather, like they might burst at any second.

  “I can’t go on,” she said. She could barely get the words out. “I need to rest.”

  Jake turned around as if he was going to object. But one look at her and he just nodded. She must look horrible, red-faced, sweaty, soaked up to her pits. But she was too exhausted to care.

  They sloshed up onto solid ground again. Gemma wished Mrs. Coralee, her stupid gym teacher, could see her now. Wilderness Gemma. In the past twelve hours she’d paddled a kayak and hiked nearly two miles through a slog of swamp. She’d probably keel over and die of shock.

  Gemma’s legs were shaking, and she sat down immediately in the mud. The replicas followed, disembarking clumsily from the kayak. Jake helped them drag it up beneath the shade of a mangrove, and not a second too soon.

  “Get down,” Jake said hoarsely. They crouched together, shaded by the network of moss-fuzzed branches, while a roar grew steadily above them and the water splintered into waves. Then a helicopter swept overhead, so close it drove the dirt up into Gemma’s eyes and stripped the leaves from several branches. But they hadn’t been spotted. That she was sure of. Luck.

  Jake stood up. She could read the tension in his whole body, in the set of his jaw and shoulders. “I think we can make it back to the car overland from here,” he said. “We can’t be far. Can you walk?”

  Gemma nodded, even though her thighs ached and she was desperately thirsty.

  “We’ll have to leave the kayak,” Jake said. “Dragging it will slow us down.”

  “You’ll lose your deposit,” Gemma said stupidly. She was so tired she could think only that they’d get in trouble with the rental shop.

  Jake helped Gemma to her feet again but tightened his hand on her wrist to keep her from pulling away. “Gemma, I want you to understand something. We’re in very big trouble.” He spoke in a low voice, so the replicas wouldn’t hear, and he kept his tone neutral, pleasant, even, as if they were just discussing the weather. “The people running Haven are very powerful. They’re going to be extremely unhappy that two of their experiments are walking free. They’re going to be tracking us. They might already be tracking us. I need you to understand that.”

  “We can’t just leave them on the marshes,” Gemma whispered back. Over Jake’s shoulder, she could see the girl watching her. The fuzz of brown hair cropped so close to her head made her look like a baby bird. Gemma looked away, lowering her voice further. “They’re half-starved. They could have been abused, for all we know. You heard what she said about not being human. Who the hell taught her that stuff?” Gemma thought of her father grinning proudly in front of Haven and felt nauseous all over again. “Besides, the girl is sick or something. Take a look at her.”

  “That’s another thing,” Jake said. His eyes were so dark they seemed expressionless. “We don’t know what’s been done to them. They could be carrying diseases.”

  “Carrying diseases?” Gemma repeated. She pulled away from him. She was still shaking. “You make them sound like animals.”

  “Gemma, think about it.” He caught her arm again before she could turn away. “We don’t know what they were doing in Haven. They weren’t making clones for the glory of it.” So he’d already come to the same realization that Gemma had: If Haven’s goal had been to successfully clone a human being, why all the secrecy? “They could be testing toxins, or studying smallpox. The point is, we don’t know what they were doing.”

  Gemma knew he was right. But she saw no other way of getting at the truth. And she was angry—angry because he wasn’t meeting her eyes, because he acted as if it was painful even to touch her now. She turned away from him. “This is what you said you wanted,” she said. “Your father spent his life studying Haven and now, now that you have the chance to know, you’re too scared.”

  “Of course I’m scared,” he said quietly. “They killed my father, remember?”

  Now, on top of her anger, she felt guilty—which just made her even angrier.

  “I’ll take them back on my own, then,” she said. It was ridiculous: she would never find her way back. “I don’t care what you do. You have your answers. You finished your little quest.” She knew she was being unfair, but she couldn’t stop. She was dizzy, and so damn thirsty, too. “Come on,” she said, a little louder, to the replicas, who were standing there looking uncertain. Even Gemma was surprised by how harsh her voice sounded. The boy looked startled, then sheepish, and, perversely, she felt a rush of pride: she’d scared him, the big baddie with the knife.

  Jake caught up with her before she’d gone even two steps. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. To her relief, he didn’t seem mad. Already she felt terrible. His father had died. “We’re in this together. Besides, no way am I letting you get all the credit.” His smile was strained, but at least he was smiling, and Gemma felt a wave of relief. She hadn’t realized how afraid she was of losing Jake’s help.

  Jake took the lead again. He was right: they were able to make it back to the car on foot, circumnavigating the narrow veins of water, although he had to stop frequently to consult the compass and the GPS on his phone, once cell phone service patched in again. At some point the composition of the ground shifted subtly beneath their feet, but it wasn’t until Gemma saw a No Littering sign that she realized that Jake had led them safely back onto the nature reserve. After another two minutes they were within sight of the car, and Gemma nearly shouted with joy. There was a case of bottled water in the trunk, and they each downed a bottle. It was, Gemma thought, the best thing she’d ever tasted.

  They piled into the car. Gemma felt better once they were no longer standing in the open. In the car, they could be anyone. Picnickers, back
packers, sightseers, friends. The replicas, on the other hand, seemed very nervous. It occurred to Gemma they had likely never been in a car before, and the boy jumped when Jake turned on the ignition and the radio blared to life.

  Gemma had been without cell service since they’d first paddled out onto the marshes, but as soon as they pulled back onto the dirt road that led to Wahlee, her phone came alive with texts, voice mails, and alerts, almost all of them from April.

  She dialed April immediately, praying she would pick up.

  “Jesus. You were supposed to call me ASAP. I thought you’d been dismembered by an ax murderer or taken to Guantánamo or something. What the hell happened?”

  Gemma didn’t know why, but hearing April’s voice—so familiar, so April—made her want to cry. For the first time she let herself think that they were safe. They were okay. They were speeding along a dirt road toward civilization and fast-food burger chains and bad pop music and normal life. Being on the marshes had been disorienting, like a nightmare that keeps its hold on you even after you wake up. Except this time they’d pulled two people from the nightmare. They’d brought proof of its reality back.

  She took a deep breath, blinking rapidly to keep the tears back, aware that Jake was watching her. “It’s a really long story,” she said. “Did my mom call?”

  “Only about seven times,” April said. “I told her you ate bad sushi and were puking your brains out and then went to sleep. I’m telling you, Gem, you owe me major on this one. I’m talking free lunches for a month. Maybe a year. I’m talking vacation-to-Disney-World owe me.”

  “Okay.” Gemma closed her eyes and leaned back against the headrest. The sun was warm on her face, and the air-conditioning smelled reassuringly of chemical exhaust. “Listen. Did your grandparents leave for their health conference thingie?”