Free Replica by Lauren Oliver Page B

into words floating in the sky. Extraordinary. In the distance she heard a mechanical whirring, the sound of the air being threshed into waves: helicopters. “Her dad was a used-car salesman. He liked to cheat people. Her mom just watched TV.” Safe, she thought, picturing the word pinned to clouds. “Matilda liked to read.”
    â€œWhat is that?” 72 asked, in a low voice, as if he was scared of being overheard. But he sounded angry again.
    â€œIt’s a story,” she said.
    â€œBut . . .” He shook his head. She could see sand stuck to his lower lip, and dust patterning his cheekbones. “What is it?”
    â€œIt’s a book,” she said. “It’s called Matilda .” And then,though she had never admitted it to anyone: “One of the doctors read it to me.”
    72 frowned again. “You’re lying,” he said, but uncertainly, as if he wasn’t sure.
    â€œI’m not,” she said. 72, she’d decided, was very ugly. His forehead was too large and his eyebrows too thick. They looked like dark caterpillars. His mouth, on the other hand, looked like a girl’s. “I have a book here. Dr. O’Donnell gave it to me. . . .” But all the breath went out of her lungs. She had reached into the pillowcase and found nothing, nothing but the file folder and the pen. The book was gone.
    â€œI don’t believe you,” 72 said. “You don’t know how to read. And the doctors would never—” He broke off suddenly, angling his head to the sky.
    â€œI don’t care whether you believe me or not,” she said. The book was gone. She was suddenly freezing. She wondered whether she should go back for it. “I had it right here, it was here —”
    â€œQuiet,” he said, holding up a hand.
    â€œI need that book.” She felt like screaming. “Dr. O’Donnell gave it to me so I could practice—”
    But this time he brought a hand to her mouth and pulled her into him as she kicked out and shouted into his palm. She felt his warm breath against her ear.
    â€œPlease,” he whispered. The fact that he said please stilled her. No one said please, not to the replicas. “Be quiet.”
    Even when she stopped struggling, he kept her pinned to him, breathing hard into her ear. She could feel his heart through her back. His hand tasted like the mud of the marshes, like salt. Sweat collected between their bodies. Insects whined.
    Now the air was being segmented, cut into pulsing rhythms as if mimicking a heartbeat. The helicopters were getting closer. The sound became so loud she wanted to cover her ears. Now a wind was sweeping across the marshes, flattening the grass, driving up mud that splattered her legs and face, and just as the sound reached an unbearable crescendo she thought 72 shouted something. He leaned into her. He was on top of her, shielding her from a roar of noise and wind. And then he relaxed his hold and she saw a dozen helicopters sweep away across the marshes toward the ruins of Haven. Inside them and hanging from the open helicopter doors were helmeted men wearing drab brown-and-gray camouflage. She recognized them as soldiers. All of them had guns.
    Lyra, Cassiopeia, and 72 lay in tense silence. Several helicopters went and returned. Lyra wondered whether they were bearing away the injured like they’d done for the man who’d lost his leg to an alligator, who lay screamingin the darkness while the guards lit up the water with bullets. Every time one of the helicopters passed overhead she was tempted to reveal herself, to throw up an arm or stand up out of the long grass and the knotted trees and wave. But every time, she was stopped as though by an enormous, invisible hand, frozen on the ground where she was. It was the way they churned the air to sound that made her teeth ache. It was the memory of the guard with his gun drawn, shouting at her. It was 72, lying next to