One (One Universe) Read online

  Even through his glasses, the colors in his eyes stand out, like a kaleidoscope, and they completely mesmerize me.

  “I thought that was always the plan,” I say, my voice low. “Skip prom. I’d rather be flying.” I flash him my most charming smile.

  “You and me flying in prom clothes? Tux and gown?” he asks, chuckling. “Mer, you’re gonna make me feel like Superman. Give me a complex or something.”

  I laugh. “No way. You’re as handsome as Superman,” I say, brushing my fingers at the hair right above his ear, enjoying my extra height, “but if you even suggest that I’m anything like Lois Lane ever again, I’ll kill you.” Then I lean in, lowering my voice. “Plus, you’ll always need me to fly.”

  There’s something behind the slight smile he gives me in return, but I can’t put my finger on it. It’s not sadness. Maybe resignation.

  “So what did you think of Fisk?” Elias sways with me to the music. I try to focus on the conversation.

  “President Fisk? Um…it was kind of surreal talking to him,” I say.

  Elias nods, his mouth turning down into a bit of a frown. “The way he talked to you bothered me. I don’t like how he knew so much about you. How he just assumed you’d want to work here.”

  “What do you mean? The summer internship, Elias? That’s amazing! That’s…”

  Elias’s face drops. “Everything you dreamed of, I know. But this place… I don’t think it’s what it seems.” His eyebrows bunch up, and his face has that look again, like he’s trying to decide if I can handle something.

  “What do you mean?”

  He shakes his head and looks off into the distance. He thinks I don’t know all his faces, but I do. This is the one he uses when he’s angry but not at me and doesn’t want me to think he’s angry at me, so he just glares at nothing.

  “Okay, seriously, Elias.” I stop really dancing and kind of sway in place. “What are you talking about?”

  His mouth twists down on one side, and he looks down and to the side, at nothing for a second before he says, “You know how Fisk’s son died.”

  “Cancer.”

  “Yes…kind of. But that’s not the whole story. He was a One.”

  My heart lurches. “Okay…?”

  “And they tried to cure him.”

  “Cure him of the cancer?”

  “No. Of the Oneness.”

  I have trouble finding my breath.

  “He was doing really well for awhile. Displaying some signs he was going to go Super, even. He was a kid, then — they figured his genes were still malleable.”

  “Real-time mutations aren’t possible. I mean, you’re either born with a Super or you’re not.”

  Elias nods, once, slowly. “Right. That’s what we’ve always thought. But…it’s epigenetics.”

  “Epigenetics only influence development on organisms with short life spans. Plants, fungi. The things whose survival depends on the short term.”

  “That’s what they thought.”

  “That’s what’s in my grad-level bio book.”

  “You’re taking grad-level bio?”

  I nod. “Med school level. With, uh… It’s a private tutor.”

  Elias looks at me with drawn eyebrows. “You should have… Mer, I had no idea.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, for the last 30 years or so, the Hub has known differently. With us mutants…”

  “Supers,” I say firmly.

  “Okay. Yeah. Or Gifteds. Whatever. Our adaptations happen much more quickly. A layer of code extraneous to DNA.”

  I roll my eyes. “I know about epigenetics, Elias.”

  “So this’ll make sense to you,” he says, sounding exasperated. “For Ones…they think it might be even more accelerated. We were born with only one Super, so…”

  “Our genes are looking to adapt.”

  He just looks at me for a few moments.

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  “My dad… We have a lot of…resources lying around our house. Classified ones.”

  My eyebrows go up.

  “I can’t understand most of the scientific reports about Charlie Fisk, but this much I do understand. Something about attempted Super gene replication, the mutated DNA causing a cell growth explosion. But only the genes displaying the One replicated. Massive tumors invaded his body everywhere within weeks, out of control. The One took over.”

  I gasp. I can only imagine what a nightmare it must have been.

  “Of course, the Hub continued ‘treatment,’ except now it was actually…treatment.”

  “But he died.” I’d read all about the difference between mutations that caused cancer and mutations that cause Supers back in seventh grade. I remember being terrified even then at how similar they were. “Must have been so fast.”

  Elias nods again. “Something like a month. Six weeks, maybe.”

  “Why didn’t they wait? Test it on rats or something?”

  “They did. And they thought they had the human formulas all set. Even tailored it to his specific mutation. And it kind of…exploded. Like his One genes got excited or over-stimulated or something.”

  “And he was a kid.”

  “I know. Sucks, right?”

  “No, I mean…that’s why. Everything I’ve been able to figure about malleability… Well, there’s not much, but it’s only going to work on rapidly growing bodies.”

  Elias nods. “Little kids. Teens, at the latest. That makes sense.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He does that thing where he looks off into the distance again and kind of blows out a breath. “The Hub has been kind of hyper-interested in me since I was a kid. Because I’m a One, you know? Testing my power, trying to strengthen it… I’m a mystery because my sisters are so awesome.”

  If Elias is a mystery, so am I. And the two of us together are freaking Grand Unification Theory.

  “Anyway, I don’t know if you want to become kind of a resident freak around here like I was, you know? You can make your own way. We can make our own way. We don’t need the Hub.” Suddenly, Elias seems more distant than ever. There’s something behind his eyes, like he’s holding something back from me.

  “I don’t know.” I shrug, try to look nonchalant. “I always thought maybe I’d figure out a way…”

  “To become a Super?” Elias shakes his head again. “If they could have figured it out, they would have. The existence of Ones… It bothers Fisk. Always has. You read the news feed, right? You sat in that lecture? He’s been trying to solve us forever when no one else really seems to care.”

  No one cares except me.

  I’ve never really wanted to tell anyone else about the flying, not even Leni and Daniel. I haven’t minded that it’s just ours. Especially since I’ve known I couldn’t duplicate the dual power I feel with Elias on my own, not the full extent of it. No matter how hard I try. But now that we’re here and there’s so much interest in Ones, maybe we can help. Maybe our bodies have the answers.

  “Should we… Do you think we should say something? About what we can do?”

  Elias shakes his head, fast. “No. No, Mer.”

  “Seriously, Elias. They’re researching it, and maybe we could even – ”

  “Merrin, I said no.”

  Suddenly, this dance feels a whole lot less romantic. I barely put up with my parents talking to me like that. My eyes flare at his sudden change of tone, and Elias sees it.

  “Hey,” he says, “Hey, Mer. Let’s get out of here for a sec, okay?” From the tone of his voice, I know he wants to talk to me for real, not on a dance floor and not to find somewhere dark to kiss. So I nod and follow him, trying to keep the tears behind my eyes instead of spilling out from them.

  SEVENTEEN

  We get within about 15 feet of the ballroom exit, and Elias drops my hand and says, “Follow me in a couple minutes, okay? I’ll wait around the corner two hallways down.”

  What are we about to do that we don’t want the cameras to catch?r />
  I nod and do as he asked. I wait a few minutes and then walk down the hallway, trying to keep my heels from making too loud of a noise in the empty, cavernous space. The lights have been dimmed so that the stark white seems much softer, probably trying to achieve the sense of evening in a space without natural light. I pass the first hallway to the right, and it stares back at me, a tunnel of more unknown emptiness, the turned-out lights leaving it pitch black.

  The second hallway is just as dark, and as I approach it, Elias’s hand shoots out and grabs mine. I squeak, surprised even though I knew he’d be waiting there for me. He pulls me to him and kisses me, his palm pressing against the small of my back. In the dark of the hallway, it’s exhilarating, and for a second, I forget that that’s not why we’re here. At least I didn’t think it was.

  Elias pulls back and touches my face, running his thumb along my lips, and the outline of his face, dark-on-dark in the slight shadows, smiles at me. He speaks in a low whisper. “I could get used to this ‘Merrin-in-heels’ thing,” he murmurs. “Much easier to just grab you and kiss you.”

  My head swims. He’s right. And if they weren’t so damn painful, I’d wear them all the time.

  I would be pretty thrilled with this whole standing-in-a-dark-hallway scenario if we weren’t right in the middle of the Hub. Or if Elias hadn’t just shut me down for no freaking reason. But there’s too much of everything that makes me happy or excited everywhere around me to focus on just one thing. Even Elias.

  I step back and push his shoulders playfully. “What are we doing down here?”

  “I want to show you something.” He tugs at my arm and pulls me behind him down the hallway. As he steps, the lights flare up to the blinding levels I’m sure they’re set on during the day.

  “Low lights,” he commands, and they dim to nighttime levels. My eyebrows go up. How does he know to do this? I look at him, and he gets it. He gets the question.

  “Um, my cuff gives me clearance. I’m actually here kind of a lot,” he says quietly, nodding toward his cuff. “The security system senses its presence whenever we walk through a checkpoint. That’s why no holodoors have flown up in our face yet.”

  We come to a solid door, probably the eighth on the right, even though the hallway stretches much farther down.

  “No retina scans?”

  He shrugs. “No, the process to get into the Hub in the first place is intense enough. Once you’re in, the cuff is good enough. And besides, no retina scan at every door frees up funding for…other things. Like this.”

  He opens the door, grinning, and pulls me in behind him. I stare into a black abyss. When Elias asks, “Ready for this?” his voice echoes off the walls, and I know whatever lays waiting in the dark is huge. I nod, and his voice booms, “Lights bright.”

  A white light fills the room, blinding me momentarily once again, and half a second later when I can see, I gasp.

  I stare at the gigantic room before me, the size of four football fields at least. Two tracks circle one end of it, one long and one shorter, running concentric with one another. Simulation stations holding giant gyro-chairs with controls staring at the largest holoscreens I’ve ever seen; huge clear cubes; and two swimming pools, triple Olympic length, stretch out to my right. The vaulted ceiling curves high in the air, at least five stories up, much higher than I’ve ever flown with Elias.

  “The testing arena,” Elias says, chest puffing with pride. “This is where my sisters are training — this is where the gap year does their stuff. I haven’t seen them yet, but I will tomorrow.” He pulls me along. “Come on. It’s like the ultimate Super testing ground.”

  We walk through the arena for a few minutes, him pointing out 10 different kinds of the highest-tech equipment I’ve ever seen, until we come to an empty stretch of floor over which the roof domes slightly. Only the barest light reaches up into it, but when I squint, I see that it’s actually made up of a formation of blades, their wide ends around the circumference, all coming to a point in the middle. Elias, still holding my hand, stretches behind him and hits a huge red button on the wall. The blades slowly retract into the edge of the circle, opening up to a dark purple sky that sparkles with the brightest stars.

  I know my mouth hangs open, and I don’t even care. This room could be my future. This room could be where I learn to fly. On my own.

  He motions up. “The ceiling’s like that…you know…”

  “For the fliers,” I finish.

  He nods. “I knew you’d think this was incredible. Knew it. So. Do you want…you know…the aerial tour?”

  “No.” I shake my head. “No, I want to see all of it close up, from down here. Show me everything.”

  Elias intertwines his fingers with mine, and suddenly, I’m jerked back to reality — the question of how he even knows this exists. My head swims.

  “So,” I say and clear my throat, “You’ve been, uh…coming here.”

  “Yeah,” he says, smiling. “Awesome, huh?” He looks down at me, and my smile fades.

  No, I think, it’s not awesome. It’s not okay that you were keeping something from me. It’s not okay that I trusted you with everything about my One, and it wasn’t enough.

  Well, everything except meeting with Mr. Hoffman. And letting him test my blood.

  “Mer, what’s up?”

  I shake my head because I don’t know what to say. Two months ago, something vicious would have come flying out of my mouth, words meant to slice into him, but I don’t want to hurt him, not at all. Especially when I know that my secret could hurt him just as badly.

  Suddenly, I want to take him up on his offer to fly because I want the noise and the distraction of it to block out all these thoughts, to help me figure out how to deal with them. I wrap my arms around him, press my cheek into his chest again, and then tilt my head up to kiss his neck.

  I so badly want to fly in this dress. I so badly want to be beautiful, flying with him. Maybe that will fix everything. But he gently nudges me back down.

  “No, you were right,” he says. “No flying.”

  There’s a small eating area inside the arena, with picnic-like tables, a long top with benches attached. He hoists me up to sit on the table part of one of them, my feet resting on the bench. He straddles them, sitting down to face me. Now his face is only a little lower than mine. This is how I love to look at him, and he knows it. He’s humoring me. He cups his hands over my knees and looks into my eyes, and warmth floods me.

  Like he can tell what I’m thinking, he murmurs, “I need you just as much as you need me. Probably more.” He grins. “At least floaters can spy on people.”

  “Then why have you been coming here? And why didn’t you tell me?” I can hear the whine in my voice, and I hate it, but my heart twists so much that it grabs my throat and makes the words come out all funny. Needy. I don’t know why that bothers me, especially with Elias sitting here and looking into my eyes and telling me how much he needs me.

  He shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know. Hoping I’d see my sisters. Still haven’t. Hoping I’d make my dad happy. But the truth is, they’ve been doing testing on me on and off for years. They’re, uh…stubborn.” He laughs a little and smiles at me, but I can’t smile back. I must be staring at him like I don’t understand because he starts talking again.

  “Let me start again. I’ve been going for…tests, I guess. I’ve known the theories about how they could make us better. Make us Supers, I mean. Real ones. I wasn’t going to show you the arena until they found something conclusive. You know, about me. Us.”

  “So it wasn’t really basketball,” I say, staring at the floor. There are a lot of more important things to say, things I want to find out more about. But thinking of him with needles stuck in his arm or hooked up to medical machinery makes my stomach drop. My Elias, a test subject.

  “But, Mer,” he says, his hands running up the outsides of my legs and reaching up to grab my waist, “Mer. They can’t make me fly. I’ve
never flown any way but with you. You make me better. You make me fly. I need you. Not some stupid tests, not the stupid Hub.” His voice sounds kind of angry, and I can’t tell if it’s because of me or something else.

  “How are you okay with that?” And now I can feel it, my real question coming out, because I always assumed Elias was okay with needing me, but of course, it doesn’t make sense, not at all, with how gorgeous and sweet and popular and, apparently, powerful he is. How well-connected. How involved in what they’re doing at the Hub.

  “Okay with what? Needing you?” he asks.

  I nod, looking at the floor next to him.

  “I’m better with you than I was without. I mean, in a couple ways. I guess…even if we weren’t Ones. I’d still tell you any day of the week that I need you. That I…I need you, Mer.”

  I sit opposite him, silent, gazing out at the arena over his shoulder, imagining what it would be like to be a part of it, for real, not just tagged onto a limited guest pass at the Symposium or sneaking into a hallway with Elias. Testing or participating or developing enhancements — I could rock it. I could be here, fit right in here. And if I could work on the research, really get my hands dirty — I know it, know it in my gut — I could fly.

  “Is that why you’re doing this, Merrin? Is that why you want to do the intern thing? Because you’re…you’re not okay with it?”

  I hear the part he didn’t ask. Because you’re not okay with needing me? My words catch in my throat, but I have to say them. “Don’t you ever dream of flying on your own?”

  “No. Not really. Not until you brought it up. That’s always been my dad’s thing.”

  His eyes look sad, so sad they make my heart sink into my stomach. So sad they make his feelings more important, for the moment, than my frustration that he kept something from me. More important than my frustration with myself, that having Elias in my life somehow still doesn’t make me quite happy enough.

  I don’t feel the same way about my Oneness as Elias does about his, but I’m pretty sure I feel the same way about him as he does about me. I don’t want him to hurt. I definitely don’t want to be the one who makes him hurt.