The guard had once again moved into the light to greet the driver, and she was so close Lyra could see the blunt bob of her hair cut to her chin, see her uniform straining over her breasts and revealing a narrow slice of her bra. Lyra couldn’t believe the guard didn’t see them, that she didn’t begin to shoot, but Caelum was right: with the headlights in her eyes, she couldn’t see.
They came at an angle, scuttling low around the back of the car—a sleek and silver thing, like an elegant fish—until they were pressed up against the passenger side. Lyra thought even if the guard couldn’t see them, she would surely hear the way Lyra’s breath tore at her throat. A second woman’s voice, high and laughing, touched off a nerve inside of Lyra’s whole body, like the memory of something bad that had once happened to her. The smell of exhaust made her dizzy.
“You have a good night.” The guard was retreating to her hut. The gate churned open and the car eased off its brakes.
Lyra tried to keep pace, flowing through the gate at the same time the car did—but even as she stood up, the darkness stood too, the sense of vertigo and falling. She was pulled up and down at the same time. She was trying to leap over holes burning open at her feet. Her mouth tasted like gravel, like chemicals, like metal. Someone was shouting. She was at Haven and coughing blood.
“Get up, Lyra. Get up.”
Her ideas rotated. They pivoted and suddenly the true picture emerged: she was on the ground. She’d tripped. She wasn’t at Haven. She was here, at CASECS, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and the person shouting wasn’t a doctor but a guard, the guard, who must have heard her fall.
The silver car had stopped. A woman leaned out the window to shout. What happened, what’s the problem, I can’t understand you.
“Not you, not you,” the guard said. But the woman in the silver car was still confused, and the car exhaust kept stinging Lyra’s eyes. “Those two, behind you, two kids, out of the way.”
Caelum grabbed Lyra by the elbow. The guard was running, and Lyra, still on her knees, saw the shiny polish of her boots, the walkie-talkie strapped to her belt, the gun holster. “Hey, you. Hey, stop.”
Lyra made it to her feet, finally, just in time. But Caelum’s hand was torn free—she lost him, they started off in different directions. Now she heard the crackle of radio interference and the guard shouting again and at the same time Lyra hurtled to the left, the car decided to turn too: she was blinded by a funnel of white light, she saw the grille leap toward her shins and she couldn’t turn, she had no time.
The car hit her or she hit it. She cracked against the hood, rolled off an elbow, and went down.
A woman screamed. Caelum shouted to her but she couldn’t call to him. She was on her back now, breathless beneath a starless sky. She couldn’t move at all, couldn’t feel her arms or legs. Maybe her spine had snapped, maybe her head had rolled off her body.
A car door opened and slammed closed. Footsteps, muted voices, an explosion of radio static and distant voices communicating in a slang patter. The headlights made a halo of her vision. Someone came toward her—Caelum? the guard?—but in the high beams faces became formless shadows.
“Look at her. She’s just a girl.” It was the driver, her voice like a hand that tugged at an ancient memory. Haven and clean sheets and pages that turned with the soft hush-hush of wind through the grass. Then: “Oh my God. My God.”
The guard was talking into her radio, so many words that they themselves became static bursts. “That’s right, just two kids, some kind of prank, the girl’s down, the boy beat it when I tried to grab him, looks like he headed into the parking lot—”
“I know her. Do you understand? I know her.”
Fingers cool on Lyra’s cheeks. The woman slid like an eclipse across the blinding bright lights. Her hair was dirty-blond and gray and loose, and tickled Lyra’s face where it touched her.
“She belongs to Haven. I’m sure of it, I’m absolutely positive. . . .”
Lyra fell. She sank toward a warm and forgiving darkness. The pavement softened beneath her back, the night dissolved into a memory of other nights and other places.
“Can you hear me, hon? Can you hear my voice? Open your eyes if you can hear me.”
She thought she opened her eyes. It didn’t matter anyway. In the dark behind her eyelids she saw a face, so familiar, so often recalled: the freckles and the wide, flat mouth, the smile that said welcome, I love you, you’re home.
“She must have hit her head bad. . . .”
“Her name . . . I wish I could remember. . . . She was one of the earliest ones. . . .”
“What?”
Dim voices, trailing across her mind like distant comets. One a flinty blue. One the soft white dazzle of a shooting star.
“We named them. Some of the replicas. It was a game we played. They only had numbers before. It wasn’t Cassiopeia . . . what was her name?”
Lyra, Lyra thought. She opened her mouth. Her words evaporated into bubbles of air.
“Jesus. Looks like she’s trying to talk.”
The woman leaned closer. Her hair tickled Lyra’s cheekbone. “What’s that, honey?” she whispered.
“Lyra,” Lyra managed to say, and the woman cried out softly, as if the word was a bird, some soft thing that had landed in her palm.
“Lyra,” she said. “Of course. Can you open your eyes, Lyra?”
Lyra did, surprised by how much effort it took. The pavement hardened beneath her again. There was pain in her ankle, a sharp pain behind her eyes. Her mouth tasted like blood.
“Do you remember me, Lyra? My name is Dr. O’Donnell. I knew you at Haven. Remember?”
She reached up to touch Lyra’s face. Her fingers smelled like lemon balm.
Turn the page to continue reading Lyra’s story. Click here to read Chapter 15 of Gemma’s story.
SIXTEEN
LYRA WOKE UP AND FOR a confused moment thought she was back at the Winston-Able Mobile Home Park: in the distance she heard the thud of music and people laughing, the scattered catcall of loud and joyful conversation. But it was too clean, and it didn’t smell right. When she moved, she thumped her head on the arm of a sofa.
“Sorry for all the noise.” When she heard Dr. O’Donnell’s voice, Lyra remembered: the car, the driver, the cones of light, and Dr. O’Donnell’s hair tickling her face. She turned and a flock of birds took off in her head, briefly darkening her vision. She must have cried out without meaning to, because Dr. O’Donnell reached out and touched her cheek.
“Poor thing,” she said. “We wrapped your ankle up nice and tight. It doesn’t look broken to me, thankfully.”
Lyra noticed then that her ankle had been wrapped tightly in tape, and various cuts and bruises had been treated with CoolTouch: it had left a shiny film on her elbow and shins.