Page 68 of Ringer
But they didn’t need to get far. They didn’t need distance to disappear.
Being invisible had benefits: it was easy to shoplift, as long as you picked a crowded store (Caelum’s mistake in the 7-Eleven had been to steal when there was no one around to deflect the clerk’s attention; when he had, for a brief, flaring moment, become visible); to edge a little too close, or lean a little too hard, and come away with a phone or a wallet; to pass into a restaurant and then stand up and leave again before anyone could ask that you pay.
Lyra was now throwing up almost everything she ate, but that was all right, that didn’t stop her.
They’d agreed their best chance of getting into CASECS to see Dr. O’Donnell was at night. They were thinking, of course, of Haven’s security and of Caelum’s escape, which could never have been accomplished during the day. By evening Caelum had two cell phones and a new wallet of his own, plus more than fifty dollars he’d skimmed from the tables of restaurants and cafés, and Lyra had a leather billfold and several credit cards, plus a necklace she’d found coiled at the bottom of a woman’s purse when she’d dropped her hand casually down inside it.
Everything she added to her backpack made her feel better, less nauseous, less dizzy. She didn’t understand gravity, but she knew intuitively every bit of weight, no matter how small, slowed her, made her mind turn less quickly, made her feel less as if she might drop down into a place where no one could find her.
It wasn’t yet dark when they hired a car to take them to Allentown: their first time in a taxi. Though they didn’t have an address for CASECS, the driver managed to locate it easily enough on his phone, and told them the route would take roughly an hour and a half in traffic.
Maybe she should have felt bad. Maybe she should have felt sorry for all the things they’d stolen. She wondered whether Sebastian was angry, whether the woman with the bright-pink lips from whom she’d taken the necklace would be sad.
But she didn’t feel bad. They were going to see Dr. O’Donnell, and Dr. O’Donnell would make it all better. She was happier than she’d ever been, sitting in a sticky backseat that smelled like bubble gum, her backpack heavy on her lap, Caelum’s hand occasionally brushing her thigh, her hand, her shoulder, like a bird exploring the territory. She felt human. Didn’t humans, after all, take what they needed? Wasn’t that what humans like Dr. Saperstein, like Richard Haven, had always done?
They reached Allentown just as dusk lowered like an eyelid. From one minute to the next, streetlamps blinked on, and buildings lost form and instead became beaded strings of lit windows. They wheeled off the highway into long bleak alleys of car lots, parking garages, blocky office buildings, industrial complexes with names like Allegra SolutionsandEnterprise Data. Lyra lowered the windowand smelled gasoline and tree sap, frying oil and a faint chemical tang.
The taxi driver slowed, leaning over his steering wheel to squint hard at every street sign. Finally, they turned down a street identical to all the other streets except in name. On the corner, a Kmart showed off a cheerful block facade that reminded Lyra of Haven. A good sign. They kept going, past a fenced-in parking lot and a flotilla of bright-yellow school buses, all sickly in the fading light and pointed in the same direction, like fish suspended in the deep.
Several blocks later, the street dead-ended in a scrub of thinned-out, trash-filled woods. But as they approached, a narrow drive appeared behind a low stone wall, moving out of the shadow of the trees like some kind of optical illusion.
CASECS was marked by a single sign planted low in the grass. TheNo Trespassingsign next to it was leaning at an angle, and half-swallowed by a hedge that had begun to lose its shape. There were no patrolling soldiers, no guard towers, no obvious security measures: just a long, narrow sweep of driveway that pointed to a simple guard hut. The institute itself was concealed by the curvature of the drive, but the distant lights winking through the overhanging trees suggested a building much smaller than she’d been expecting.
Her heart began gasping, and she imagined the organ like the bird she and the other replicas had once found near A-Wing, sucking in frantic breaths.
“Here,” Lyra said.
The driver met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Here? You sure?” When Lyra nodded, he said, “You want me to wait?”
“No,” Lyra said. Suddenly her happiness broke apart. It lifted into her chest and throat, and beat frantic wings against her rib cage. What if Sebastian had lied? What if he was wrong? What if Dr. O’Donnell didn’t remember her?
The driver turned around in his seat to peer at Caelum and Lyra, as if he’d just noticed them. “You sure you gonna be okay getting back?”
“We’re not going back,” she said, and he just shook his head and accepted the money they gave him. Too much, probably—Lyra was too nervous to count and let Caelum do the paying.
They waited until the cab light became distant and then blinked out. From where they stood, Lyra could see one of Allentown’s major arteries. But this road, sloughed off by the main thoroughfare, was totally without movement, except for the occasional approach of a car toward the Kmart. Haven’s security had depended on its remoteness. But CASECS was hiding in plain sight. No onewould ever believe anything of importance would happen here, down the street from the school bus depot.
They went parallel to the driveway, on the shadowed side of the stone wall that continued along its length, concealed by a vein of trees that ran parallel to the pavement. They moved in silence, stopping every few feet to wait, and listen, and watch for security. But there was no movement, no distant voices or footsteps. Lyra should have been reassured, but instead, she only grew more anxious: she didn’t understand what kind of place this could possibly be.
They stopped a short distance from the guard hut, edging closer to the stone wall in a crouch, hoping to be mistaken for rocks. Now they had a clear view of the CASECS complex. It was a fraction of the size of Haven: three stories high, blocky white and bleakly rectangular. Security was tighter than it first appeared. A fence ringed at the top with barbed wire marked the periphery and made climbing impossible. Lyra noted, too, the presence of Glass Eyes everywhere, and small glowing pinpricks, like the burning embers of cigarette butts.
That left only one option: they would simply have to walk in, and hope they wouldn’t be shot.
They crouched, and they waited, learning the rhythm of the traffic in and out—almost all of it, at this hour,out. A sweep of headlights, the occasional patter of conversationas the guard—a woman with a sweep of blond hair and a booming laugh—leaned down to greet the driver. The mechanical gate clanked and shuddered open, then closed again. They counted seconds: twelve, thirteen, fourteen. The gate was open for anywhere from ten to twenty seconds. More than enough time to run, if they were quick, if Lyra didn’t stumble.
Still, they would be heading for the guard directly, and Lyra was sure that she had a gun. She thought she could even see it: a dark bulge on the woman’s hip.
For the first time the whole thing struck her as funny, that they were risking their lives to get back into a facility like Haven after risking their lives to escape in the first place.
“Let me go alone,” Lyra said to Caelum. Suddenly it seemed important to her, critical, even. She would die anyway, whether pulled apart by the ricochet of bullets or by falling into holes that got ever deeper and harder to escape. Caelum was White. He could go anywhere—he could continue stealing wallets and cell phones, he could drift and disappear and reappear again. There would be other girls who loved him, and saw him as beautiful: human girls, who never knew where he came from and didn’t care. They would do what Lyra had done with him in the hotel room. They could turn themselves into living strands of music that played together.
“Don’t be stupid,” Caelum said. “We’re together.” He stood up. When she hesitated, he reached back and took her hand again. “Come on.”
They moved a little closer, until they were only a few feet from the perimeter fence and another, larger sign that announcedCASECSto visitors. The headlights of a departing car made Lyra throw a hand up, momentarily dazzled. The gates clanked open again and then closed. The car swam past them, so close that Lyra could make out the silhouette of a man behind the wheel, turning to fiddle with the radio.
“Next one,” she said. She was suddenly having trouble breathing, and after only a few seconds her feet and legs felt numb and bloated, as if they’d been submerged in freezing water. What if she ran into the driveway and then froze, couldn’t remember where she was or where she was going? She hoped Caelum would hold her hand the whole way, but she didn’t want to ask.
“No,” Caelum said. “We wait for a car going in. The headlights will give us time. The guard will go blind for two, three seconds.”
