Ringer

by Lauren Oliver

  “Hang on a second,” Pete said. “We didn’t do anything.”

  “Please step out of the car.” She showed her badge—a flash of gold, and then it retreated.

  “But we didn’t do anything,” he insisted. “We were just driving home and we came across the accident.”

  “I understand. If you would both just step out of the car, we’ll get you on your way in a minute.”

  “Just do it,” Gemma whispered to him. Now the other cop was sauntering over, hands on his belt, working a piece of gum in his mouth.

  They got out of the car. The backs of Gemma’s thighs were slick with sweat from where they had stuck to the seat leather. It was bright and very quiet. A dozen cows stared dolefully at them from behind a rotting fence. From their perspective, Gemma and Pete were the ones fenced in.

  “You see what happened?” the female cop asked.

  Pete was getting agitated. “No. I already told you. We had nothing to do with it.”

  Now the male cop chimed in. “You from around here, then?”

  Pete hesitated. His eyes slid to Gemma’s. Once again she felt a pinch of worry—could they be sure these were real cops? She’d only seen the woman’s badge for a second. They weren’t driving a squad car, and though they were in uniform, it wasn’t like she could pick out a fake. Still, she knew they were safe so long as there were witnesses.

  “We’re from Chapel Hill,” Gemma said. Right away, she knew she’d made a tactical error.

  The male cop’s eyebrows blew up to his hairline. “You’re quite a little ways from home,” he said. “Whatcha doing in Tennessee?”

  “It isn’t any of your business,” Pete said. Gemma nearly told him to calm down, but she didn’t want to make things any worse.

  The cop gnawed his gum some more. “You two got some ID?”

  Gemma’s heart sank. She didn’t have ID—she’d given Lyra her wallet. Pete seemed as if he might argue the point, but at a look from Gemma, he turned and moved back to the car, muttering. Gemma waited in the agonizing silence, half wondering why the truck driver and the woman he’d smashed were being so patient. If she’d been in an accident, if the cops were wasting their time on two nobodies instead of helping, she would have lost her shit. But they just stood there, dumb and practically silent, as if the cops’ arrival had turned them into statues.

  Pete was taking too long. He searched the front seat. He appeared to crouch, as if searching the floor. When he straightened up, his face was hollowed out with fear.

  “I—I can’t find my wallet,” he said.

  Gemma felt the ground buck like an animal beneath her. “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think I mean?” He threw open the door to the backseat and disappeared again. “I can’t find it. It’s gone.”

  “That’s—that’s impossible.” But as Gemma closed her eyes, she remembered that they’d stopped for coffee a few hours before dawn. She saw Pete, juggling a Styrofoam cup and a water bottle, slide his wallet on top of the car so he could reach for his keys. What if he’d left it there? They’d been so tired.

  It was possible.

  Pete slammed the door shut. Then, suddenly, he aimed a kick at the rear tires. Gemma shouted. The cops started toward him and he backed off, holding up both hands. “I’m all right,” he said. “I’m all right.”

  “Why don’t you have a seat here on the curb?” The male cop reached for his belt—Gemma saw a flash of metal handcuffs.

  “What—are you going to arrest me now? We. Didn’t. Do. Anything.”

  “Settle down, son. No one’s accusing you. No need to get so defensive.”

  “I’m not defensive—”

  “Early in the morning, wearing party clothes, maybe you been drinking some, decided on a little joyride—”

  “Jesus Christ. This is insane. We weren’t joyriding—”

  “Pete.” Gemma’s voice cracked. Everything was happening too fast. Gemma felt as if she were listening to a song at triple, quadruple speed. There was a high ringing in her ears, like the sound of electricity through a live wire. Danger. “Please. We weren’t joyriding. And we haven’t been drinking. We have . . . we have friends nearby.”

  “Friends?” Too late, Gemma knew she’d made another tactical error. “These friends have names?”

  Pete jumped in again. “We don’t have to tell you anything. You don’t have any reason to hold us.” He was almost shouting. But for a second, the cops seemed to realize the truth of this, and froze where they were. “Can I have my phone, please?”

  These words he directed at the female driver, the one who’d originally flagged them down. Funnily enough, however, she didn’t move. She didn’t even blink. Again, Gemma had the impression of a statue.

  No. Not a statue. An actor—a bit-part actor whose lines have come and gone, contentedly watching the rest of the play from the wings.

  Too late, Gemma understood. Too late, Gemma knew there were no witnesses, and no one to hear them scream.

  Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 6 of Lyra’s story.

  SEVEN

  THE WORST THING ABOUT BEING kidnapped with your boyfriend, it turned out, was having to go to the bathroom. First Gemma thought she could hold it. Pete tried to get his hands free so he could at least pee in the corner, in a pile of rags or the empty water bottle that rattled across the floor whenever the van made a turn.

  But he couldn’t get his hands free.

  She pretended to be asleep, choking on her own panic, on tears she couldn’t even wipe away, while the van filled with a sharp metallic stink. Later it was her turn, and she felt a flood of shame that made her want to die, truly die, for the first time in her life.

  Instead, she slept. Unbelievably, improbably, mercifully, she slept, with her head knocking against the filthy floor and the stink of ammonia everywhere.

  Every hour or so, the van came to a stop: the drivers were in no particular hurry. Every time, Gemma woke with a start, hoping they’d come to a checkpoint, or a roadblock—hoping, though she knew it was impossible, that someone had already realized she was missing, that police had been mobilized across fifty states—but no one came to let them out, and every time, after they lay there in the sweating quiet for agonizing minutes, the van simply started up again. Who knew whether the strangers who’d cuffed and gagged them were fake cops or the real thing, just paid off by somebody higher up? She understood that the truck had been brought, and the accident staged, specifically for the abduction. It was likely Fortner’s friends had blocked off all the roads around Winston-Able with more fake accidents or fake checkpoints, scanning for a boy and girl traveling together, acting weirdly, no convincing story about who they were or where they’d come from.

  By the time the van stopped for good, Gemma and Pete hadn’t looked at each other in hours. Her jeans were wet. His, too. She was still wearing her party top, which had beaded sequins along the hem. He was in his Hawaiian shirt.

  She nearly toppled over when she had to stand. The man who’d masqueraded as the truck driver took her arm, surprisingly gentle, as if they were on a date and she had caught a heel in the sidewalk. But the woman who’d posed as a cop stepped forward and seized Gemma roughly.

  “I’ll take this one,” she said simply.

  It was dark except for a ring of headlights in the distance that might have been Jeeps, more vans, some kind of security cordon. There were streetlamps, but most of them were missing bulbs. People on foot patrolled with flashlights, and in the distance, Gemma made out a big, low, slope-roofed building, barely speckled with light.

  Long runways of pavement, distant fists of furry trees, signs (A-32i, B-27a) blinking in the sudden clarity of the guards’ flashlights. It was an old regional airport; she could even now make out a single hangar, illuminated by the temporary sweep of passing headlights.

  Where were they? Not Tennessee. They must have been driving for twelve hours at least. She smelled running sap, till
ed mud, even a very faint tang of fertilizer. Farmland.

  Crickets cut the air into sound waves. Stars wheeled prettily above them. Ohio? Indiana?

  Their abductors removed their gags at last; they were wet and heavy with saliva. Tears of relief burned Gemma’s eyes, even though she still couldn’t speak: her tongue felt swollen and painful, her lips were raw, and her throat dry. She wondered why they’d been gagged in the first place—whether it was just to keep them from talking to each other, or so they would be afraid.

  Voices shouted in the dark. Someone called, “Hot shit!” and there was even a smattering of applause, as if the people who’d seized Gemma and Pete had instead won several rounds in a bingo tournament.

  “Where are you taking us?” Pete’s voice was hoarse, too. She wanted to reach over and squeeze his hands. But she was filthy, ashamed, and besides, her hands, still cuffed behind her back, were numb.

  “Nowhere.” The guy who’d been playing male cop sounded tired. Almost reproachful. Like, hey, buddy, I’ve had a long day too. At least you didn’t have to drive.

  “Don’t answer it,” the woman said. Hearing Pete referred to like that, like an it, sparked a new terror.

  “My name is Gemma Ives.” Gemma’s words tasted a little like vomit. They were coming up quickly on the airport—too quickly. A few distant lights had swelled from fireflies to windows: in a few of them, she could make out concrete interiors, wires nested like intestines in the ceiling, banks of leather chairs still bolted to the floor. “I’m the daughter of Geoffrey Ives. My dad was one of the original investors in Haven. This is my boyfriend, Pete. You’ve got it all wrong. We’re not who you think we are.”

  “I told you”—the woman sighed, speaking directly over Gemma’s head, as if she were nothing but air—“not to talk to it.”

  “What does it matter, anyway? You want to know where we’re going, kid?” Her partner, or whatever he was, wouldn’t look at Pete or Gemma, even when he was addressing them. “Nowhere. We’re already here.”

  The old airport terminal rose steep-faced and ugly, like someone’s blunt and splintered jaw. There was a faint hiss in the dark, and then the wheeze of rusted hinges: a door.

  Gemma had known they were in trouble—big trouble. In the van she’d sat there grinding her teeth and trying to force her thoughts to settle, to pin them down whenever they flitted out of reach, like trying to catch horseflies by hand. They’d been followed. The military, or whoever was in charge, had figured out that they were trying to help Lyra and Caelum. Maybe they even knew that Caelum had managed to slip away, and somehow they blamed Gemma and Pete.

  But now, for the first time, she understood. The people who’d abducted them didn’t think Gemma and Pete had helped the replicas escape.

  They thought Gemma and Pete were the replicas.

  Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 7 of Lyra’s story.

  EIGHT

  INSIDE: THE SMELL OF SHOE polish, sweat, gunmetal. Two soldiers wearing military fatigues straightened up at their post. They were in a tight corridor, carpeted and filthy. A narrow set of stairs, dirty with footprints, rose into the darkness. Gemma knew once she went up the stairs—wherever they led—things would be hopeless.

  “You’re making a big mistake.” Gemma’s voice cracked. How many hours had it been since she’d had anything to drink? “Call my dad. Call him.”

  “We should have left the gags on,” the man holding Pete muttered. He nudged Pete toward the stairs. Unexpectedly, Pete broke loose, reeling like a drunk. His hands were still bound, but he cracked his head into the man’s jaw; Gemma heard the impact of it, a hollow sound.

  Suddenly, everyone was shouting. Gemma screamed as both soldiers launched for Pete at once.

  “Don’t hurt him! Please. Please.” She was too scared even to cry. For a second, she lost sight of him in the shuffle of human bodies. One of the soldiers accidentally caught her with an elbow and she bit down on her tongue.

  “Easy, easy, easy.” The two soldiers hauled Pete to his feet, pinning him between them. Still, he struggled to break loose. Gemma had never seen him look the way he did then, and she thought randomly of a video April had once shown her during her vegetarian phase: how fighting dogs were burned with cigarettes, beaten with sticks, until they were so angry and desperate they would tear each other up, actually tear each other into pieces.

  The dogs in the video knew they were going to die, and that was what made them fight. They had nothing to live for.

  “Let go of me.” Pete’s face was so twisted with raw anger, even Gemma was afraid of him. “Get your fucking hands off me.”

  “You better tell your boyfriend to calm down.” The man who’d been holding Pete was massaging his jawbone. He glared at Gemma. “Or he’s going to get his head blown off.”

  “Please.” Gemma’s voice cracked. “Please, Pete.” At the sound of her voice, he finally went still.

  “Good boy,” one of the soldiers said. “We don’t want to hurt you.”

  Neither Gemma nor Pete bothered pointing out that that was very hard to believe.

  “Take him up,” the man said, still rubbing his jaw and looking pissed about it.

  This made Pete go wild again. “Let me stay with her.” But the soldiers pivoted him, with difficulty, toward the stairs. “Let me stay with her. Please.”

  Gemma let herself cry then. She couldn’t help it. She felt as if she were watching Pete through the wrong end of a telescope, getting smaller and smaller, though he was only a few feet away.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she kept repeating, even as his voice splintered into echoes and then grew fainter, even though it was obviously not okay, nothing was okay, nothing would be okay ever again.

  “Please.” She tried one last time to make them listen. “Please,” she said. “I’m telling you the truth. Geoffrey Ives is my father. Ask Dr. Saperstein, ask anybody—”

  But she went silent as, down the hall, a door opened and spilled a gut of light.

  “What’s all the shouting for?” A woman’s voice, low and surprisingly warm, floated out to them. For a moment, she was silhouetted in the light. As she came forward, Gemma experienced a shock of displacement: the woman looked like a soccer mom, like one of Kristina’s lunch crew. She was even wearing yoga pants.

  “Nothing.” The man finally quit massaging his jaw and straightened up. “Is Saperstein back?”

  The yogi shook her head. “Tuesday,” she said.

  Gemma’s mouth tasted like plaster, like the soft crumble of a pill. Saperstein knew her father. She’d been counting on the fact that he, at least, would be able to help. She’d comforted herself with the idea that wherever she was being taken, Saperstein would be there.

  What would happen to her, and to Pete, before Tuesday when he returned?

  “He didn’t go to Penn after all, did he?”

  “No. Washington.” The yogi’s eyes swept Gemma. “Where’d you find her?”

  “Where we were supposed to.” Gemma’s captor was squeezing her arm so tightly, Gemma could feel her fingernails. “She says it was all a big mistake. She says she doesn’t belong here.”

  “Is that right?” The yogi was still watching Gemma curiously—not meanly, not with disgust or contempt, but with true curiosity. “Well, someone’s been feeding her, at least.”

  A fist of hatred tightened in Gemma’s stomach. “I’m not lying,” she said. “I can prove it. Call Saperstein. Ask him yourself.”

  Gemma couldn’t tell whether the yogi woman was even listening. She only looked puzzled, as if Gemma were speaking in a different language. After a moment, she withdrew, and Gemma heard the murmur of distant voices: she was speaking to people out of sight. Gemma was dizzy with fear. What was she doing?

  A minute later, several people wearing medical scrubs flowed down the hall and moved up the stairs without acknowledging either Gemma or the man and woman who’d brought them. They had the same look as al
l medical staff: harried, professional, too busy to be bothered. The colossal, patchwork strangeness of it all—the yoga pants and the doctors’ scrubs and the soldiers with assault rifles and the reek of sweat—made a sudden rise of hysteria lift in Gemma’s chest.

  The woman in yoga pants returned, turning her face to the ceiling as if listening to the pattern of footsteps above them.

  “Should I take her up?” Gemma’s captor asked, and she shook her head.

  “In a second. I’m going to bring them down first.”

  “Bring who down?” Gemma blurted out.

  The woman didn’t answer right away. Just then, the sound of footsteps above them grew louder. The door at the top of the landing creaked open, and the doctors, or nurses, or whatever they were, returned.

  They had brought along three Gemmas.

  Three Gemmas crowded the stairwell. Three Gemmas gazed down at her. Three Gemmas, scalps shaved clean, wearing filthy T-shirts and pants that bagged from the hollows of their hipbones, chittered like small mice, as if at a fun-house reflection.

  Gemma lost her breath. A hole opened up beneath her feet. She dropped straight through the floor.

  Dimly, she was aware that the woman in yoga pants had turned at last to address her. “My proof,” she said simply.

  Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 8 of Lyra’s story.

  NINE

  FINALLY, GEMMA WAS ESCORTED UPSTAIRS. The airport terminal was crawling with military personnel, but also people in medical scrubs, rendered identical by their dirty hair and look of shared exhaustion. One woman dressed in a pantsuit, who resembled a fashion mannequin on Fifth Avenue, kept massaging her forehead with perfectly manicured fingers. Gemma didn’t even want to know what government agency she’d crawled out of.

  The airport was dizzying not so much because of its size, but because of its regularity, the identical halls stripped of furniture, counters, vendors, arrivals screens. There were very few working lights, and new ribs of plywood divided room from room. The ceiling panels were missing.