Page 23 of Ringer
“I don’t know where she came from.” Her eyes on Gemma’s face felt like mosquitoes, circling and circling without landing anywhere. “She’s not one of ours.”
“Itoldyou,” Gemma said, though it was obvious the woman wasn’t speaking to her. She let her hatred narrow like a knife inside her. “You guys fucked up, big-time.”
Not-Laverne was still staring. “Werner, pull up Sources, will you?” She pivoted, finally, and moved behind the computer again, leaning over to point. “D-101,” she said. “See here? Some of our first donor tissue. And these are the genotypes that took. Numbers six through ten.”
“Number six is Disposed,” the man, Werner, said.
The woman in the suit was sweating. “You told us a boy and a girl. This one and her boyfriend fit the description.”
“They aren’t ours.” Not-Laverne looked green. Werner was chewing on an unlit cigarette. Then: “Dr. Saperstein will nail you to the wall for this.”
Gemma was sick of being spoken about as if she wasn’t in the room. “My name is Gemma Ives. Ives,” she repeated, and saw Not-Laverne register the name, saw it pass through her like a current.
“Ives.” Werner nearly choked. He wet his lower lip with his tongue. “Is that like... ?”
But he trailed off nervously as behind Gemma another door opened and then closed firmly with a click. The sudden silence filled the room by emptying it of pressure. She felt a pop in her ears, as if they’d just dropped altitude on a plane.
She turned, knowing already what she would see: Dr. Saperstein, smiling, holding his glasses in one hand, shaking his head, like some kindly guidance counselor who’d discovered a mistake in her first-period schedule.
“The last time I saw you, you were six months old,” he said. He looked shorter and older than she’d been picturing him—of course, the photographs she had were outdated, and she’d been a baby when her father had severed his connection to Haven.
She felt a surge of hatred so strong it scared her: it was a hand from the dark side of the universe that reached up to turn her inside out. “You’ve seen plenty of me,” shesaid, but heard her voice as if it was a stranger’s. “Four, by my count.”
“Looks can be deceiving, believe me. There is only one Gemma Ives.” He smiled again at this. Patient, indulgent, very slightly embarrassed.Sorry about the confusion. These little mix-ups do happen.“Your parents, I’m sure, would agree.”
“Dr. Saperstein—” The woman in the suit began to speak, but he cut her off.
“Later.” For a split second she saw, from beneath the surface of his expression, something sharp and mean solidify: it was like the sudden vision of a very sharp tooth. But almost instantly, it was gone. He smiled at Gemma again and opened a door that led to a small and very ordinary-looking office. “Why don’t you have a seat inside? I’m going to grab a soda. You want a soda? Or something to eat?”
Gemma shook her head, although she was desperately thirsty, and weak with hunger, too. But she didn’t want to take anything Dr. Saperstein offered.
“Go on. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right with you.” When she didn’t move, he hitched his smile a little wider—she could actuallyseethe effort, watch individual muscles straining to achieve the right look. “Go on. It’s all right.”
“No,” she said. She wanted to scream. She wished shecould open her mouth and let her rage come up like a sickness. “It’s not. It’s definitely not all right.”
“Well, that’s what we’re going to try and sort out.” He spread his hands. As if she were the one who’d screwed up and now refused to admit it. “Look, I highly doubt you want to stay here. Right? So go on and have a seat, and I’ll be with you as soon as I can scare up some caffeine.”
Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 13 of Lyra’s story.
FOURTEEN
DR. SAPERSTEIN RETURNED WITH TWO cans of warm Diet Coke, even though she’d said she didn’t want one. She didn’t want to sit and planned to say no, but at the last minute she was worried about her legs, which had begun to shake. So she sat, tucking her ankles together, pressing her hands between her thighs, hoping he wouldn’t see how afraid she was.
He poured his soda into a plastic cup, took a sip, and made a face. “Why does the diet stuff always taste like the back of a spoon?” He shook his head. “The real stuff always goes first around here.”
Gemma felt more confused than ever. Dr. Saperstein didn’t look evil. She tried to paste what she knew about him onto his face, to make the images align. Emily Huang, those photographs of the two of them together. Jake Witz and his father. Those hundreds and hundredsof starved and broken people he treated like possessions, disposed of by burning them in the middle of the ocean after drilling their bones or opening their skulls for marrow and tissue and cell samples.
But she couldn’t make it hang there. She couldn’t make it fit.
He leaned forward. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that you’re here,” he said. Shockingly, she believed him. “I’ve been in Washington, DC, crawling around on my knees trying to save this place....”
“What—whatisit?” She had to swallow hard against the feeling that she would begin to cry. “What are youdoingwith all of them here?”
He shook his head. “Nothing, now,” he said. “I drove straight from DC this morning. Our funding’s been cut.” This time, his smile never traveled up past his lips. “Twenty years of research. Twenty years of effort, incremental gains, mistakes and corrections. All of it...” He gestured as if to scatter something into a passing wind.
“And what happens to them?” Gemma said, through a hard fist in her throat. She was still too afraid to ask what she really wanted to know: What would happen to her? And to Pete?
Dr. Saperstein took off his glasses to rub his eyes. “How much did your father tell you about Haven?”
