Page 77 of Ringer
They turned again, and this time Lyra’s heart leapt: an exit sign pointed through a set of doors only twenty feet away. She was so happy she failed to register the sudden swell of voices. She slipped easily away from Caelum even as he tried to grab her.
“Lyra, wait.”
But she had started toward the sign already, hooked on the glowing comfort of its syllables.Exit.A funny word, and one she had only lately come to love. At Haven, she had always thought the exit signs were taunting her.
She was halfway there when the wave of voices finally broke across her consciousness; as if the sound was a physical substance and she had mindlessly stepped into its current. Forty or fifty people were gathered in a conference room to crowd around a wall-mounted TV. Had they been turned to face the hallway instead, Lyra would have been visible. She was rooted directly in the middle of the doorway, frozen with sudden terror.
Dr. Saperstein was staring directly at her.
For a confused and terrified second, she mistook the image for the real thing and thought he was really there, staring bleakly over all the CASECS employees, pinning her with his eyes. But of course he wasn’t. It was just an old picture, an image made huge by the television. Almost immediately, Dr. Saperstein vanished, and a female newscaster with stiff black hair and an even stiffer smile took over the screen.
The rush of blood in Lyra’s ears quieted. But just for a minute.
“... confirmed that Dr. Mark Saperstein was indeed found dead this morning at an undisclosed location...”
A microwave beeped. No one bothered with it. They were all still. Lyra felt as if the air was being pressed out of her lungs.
“Though Dr. Saperstein had just undergone a spectacularly public fall from grace, culminating in this week’s protests at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, the police have denied reports that his death was a suicide....”
Dead. Dead. Dead. The word kept drilling in Lyra’s mind. Dr. Saperstein was dead. God was dead. She should have been happy, but strangely, she was just frightened. It had never occurred to her that God would die, or that it was even possible.
She was less than fifteen feet from the exit. No one had seen her. And yet she couldn’t move, and even Caelum hesitated, teetering on the edge of the doorway as if it were a river he was worried about crossing.
Eight seconds, maybe ten. Twelve at a stretch.
God had died, and with him, the replicas’ only reason for being.
Was a terrible reason better than no reason at all?
“There they are. Get them.Getthem.”
Lyra turned and saw Dr. O’Donnell charging them and trailing a small crowd of people behind her; among them were three guards and the girl who’d dropped the bakery box.
And at the same time, in response to her shout, everyone in the conference room turned and spotted Lyra.
She ran. Caelum was shouting over the sudden chaos, and though she couldn’t hear him, she could feel him a step behind her. They had a small advantage, but it was enough. They were steps from the door, inches, they could get outside, they would be free—
But even as Lyra reached for the door, it opened forcefully from the other side. Caelum managed to pull up, but Lyra was thrown backward by the blunt collision, as with a hard and hollow smack the door caught her in the side of her jaw. She landed on her back, breathless and dizzy. Through a fuzz of dark shapes she saw a whip-thin man,soaked with toppled coffee, gaping at her.
Caelum tried to get her to her feet but by then Dr. O’Donnell had caught up, and the guards drove him to his knees, and Lyra saw a thicket grow above her: a nest of mouths and unfamiliar faces, long arms that looked like weapons. Cold fingers locked her wrists in place. Someone sat on her ankles.
They look so real,somebody said.
You’d never know.
Be careful how you handle them, please.That was Dr. O’Donnell.It looks like they may be the last ones.
Turn the page to continue reading Lyra’s story. Click here to read Chapter 19 of Lyra’s story.
TWENTY
THIS TIME THEY WERE PLACED in an unused office whose only furniture was a set of metal filing cabinets and two chairs brought in for Caelum and Lyra to sit on, although Caelum remained standing. The door required a key. Dr. O’Donnell had locked them in herself.
“Give me a minute,” she’d told them, almost apologetically. She couldn’t stop pretending that she was on their side. She probably didn’t know the difference.
Standing with her ear to the door, Lyra could hear Dr. O’Donnell speaking to someone in the hall.
“She says they came here on their own, with no help. I doubt she knows a thing.”
