“Gemma Ives,” she lied quickly. Before leaving Haven she hadn’t been a good liar, but this was a skill, she’d rapidly learned, that most humans had perfected; it was necessary to lie, living in the human world.
“Nice to meet you, Gemma Ives,” he said. His eyes were big enough to root her in place: as if he wasn’t just seeing her, but absorbing everything about her, her past and even her future. “You can call me Kevin.”
“Detective Kevin Reinhardt,” she recited, and he laughed.
“Just Kevin is fine, like I said.”
Lyra was glad that his suit was rumpled, and smelled like soft old wool. Not sharp, like the suits the military men and women wore when they came. “Why don’t you wear a uniform?” she blurted out.
He smiled. “I’m a detective,” he said. “We travel under the radar.”
Lyra nodded, though she didn’t know what a detective did, exactly. But she was glad he wasn’t in uniform. Uniforms made her think of Haven and its guards, of the soldiers who’d pursued them out on the marshes. You know how expensive these things are to make?
“Now,” Detective Kevin Reinhardt said, “why don’t you tell me what you need a police station for?”
She wasn’t used to being spoken to in that tone, as if she might have something valuable to say. She told him her cousin had been picked up for stealing.
“You know what precinct got him?” he asked.
She shook her head, and repeated what the man at the 7-Eleven had said: “He tried to lift a package of beef jerky and a can of Coca-Cola. They took him down to the station.”
They were stopped at a red light. The policeman turned to look at her again. She felt the way his eyes moved from her hair, still shorter than most of the boys’ she had seen since leaving Haven, to her bare arms, to the flimsy backpack with someone else’s name written on it in marker.
“You know if you’re in trouble, you can tell me,” he said, still in that same low and gentle voice, as if he was singing instead of speaking. He wasn’t like other police officers she had seen on TV, or even the few she’d encountered since leaving Haven. His face looked as if it had been dimpled permanently into an expression of understanding. “If someone’s hurting you, you can just let me know right now, right here, and I’ll help you out, and make sure you’re safe and no one hurts you again. That’s my job.”
The darkened city outside their windows was a wash of blue tones and hazy cones of color from the streetlamps; then she realized, to her shock, that her eyes were leaking. That’s what they’d called it at Haven. Never crying. Tear duct inflammation, leaking eyes, overactive lachrymal production. Crying meant feelings, and the replicas didn’t feel, or at least the humans pretended they didn’t. Probably that made it easier for them not to feel, either. That way they could do their jobs, draw their paychecks, and sleep soundly.
For a second she fantasized about telling Detective Kevin Reinhardt everything: about all the pills and medications and lies, the harvesting procedures and the testing and the MRIs, the small prions, deformed like bits of melted plastic, whirring through her blood and bone marrow. In the end, what came out was half-truth.
“I’m sick,” she said. “I’m dying. My cousin takes care of me. He’s the only person in the world who does.”
“What about your parents?” the policeman asked. “Where are they?”
She thought of Rick and the dry skin around his mouth, the way he squinted through his cigarette smoke when they were target shooting. The smell of hot dogs and frozen soup. She thought of Dr. O’Donnell, her blond hair like a vaporous haze barely clinging to her head. She thought of Cassiopeia bleeding out in the marshes, of the Yellow crop bundled up for disposal, of Jake Witz hanging by his own belt.
“My parents are dead,” she answered. “Everyone’s dead. We came all the way from Florida on our own.”
“Florida,” he repeated. “Must have been a long trip.”
“It was.” Suddenly, she couldn’t stop talking. Words skittered off her tongue like insects trying to beat a path home before they were trampled. “We lived on a small island and saw all the same people every day. There was water everywhere, in all directions. And alligators that lived in the marshes. There was a fence—” She sucked in a quick breath. She’d nearly revealed too much. “There was a fence to keep them out.” She looked down at her hands, surprised at how badly she actually missed Haven. “There were birds there. Lots of birds. More birds than people.”
“It sounds like a beautiful place,” Detective Kevin Reinhardt said, and turned off the car engine. They had arrived somewhere she assumed was a police station: a one-story brick building, and big windows through which more police in uniform were visible. “How old are you?”
This lie came easily, too. “Twenty-one,” she said, because she had learned from Raina that this was a magic age, even if she didn’t quite understand why. Raina had complained about not being twenty-one yet, about all the bars and concerts and parties that were twenty-one and over, about getting kicked out of someplace for not being twenty-one, so Lyra figured that once you turned twenty-one you got special rights to exist.
“My niece had brain cancer,” he said finally. “Jamie, the one in the picture. Took her when she was fourteen years old. Cancer’s what you’re sick with, isn’t it? But there are clinics. Treatments. You should be under the care of a doctor.”
“I am,” Lyra said. “That’s where I’m heading. To UPenn in Philadelphia. To see my doctor.” As soon as she said it, she knew it was exactly what they had to do.
Lyra and Caelum had been wrong about Nashville. There was no God here. Which meant they had only one option left: they had to find their original God.
They would ask him to help. They would demand it.
Detective Reinhardt’s relief was obvious. She could almost smell it coming off him, like a particular odor of sweat. “My daughter almost went to UPenn. Opted for Columbia instead. Philadelphia’s a great city. I know a guy at UPenn Hospital.” He looked at her sideways. “Who’s your doctor up there?”
This time, Lyra couldn’t think fast enough to lie. She said, “Dr. Saperstein,” hoping he wouldn’t recognize the name. Luckily, he didn’t appear to.
He just gave her a quick pat on the knee. “I’ll take care of your cousin, don’t you worry. No one’s going to jail for wanting a soda, all right? You just leave it to me.”
They got out of the car. A rush of black overtook Lyra when she stood up. The rain had turned to a heavy, hot vapor that hung in the air. Who knew what would happen to her once she followed Detective Kevin Reinhardt inside? He seemed okay, but the doctors and nurses at Haven had seemed okay, and all the time they’d been filling her up with disease, tending not her but the disease inside that would eventually sweep away her memories and her words, seize her arms and legs, numb her throat until she couldn’t swallow.