Your One & Only

by Adrianne Finlay

The Althea on the Council cast a sharp look at Althea. She wasn’t supposed to cross the wall, and doing it to see the human boy certainly wouldn’t go over well.

  Inga sighed patiently. “Given the timer, that clearly doesn’t prove he’s innocent of starting the fire.”

  Carson-312’s lip slid into an incredulous smile. “I can’t believe you’re going to defend him over one of your own. He’s nothing, Althea, an animal.”

  Althea moved toward Carson-312 until her face was right next to his. Up close, his heavy breath brushed her skin. She saw the tiny hairs of his left eyebrow and the way his scar made a smooth, white line between them.

  “Don’t say that!” she hissed.

  Carson-312 pushed her aside with unexpected force. She lost her balance and tumbled against the bench, hitting her head on the wooden rail and falling to the floor. A Viktor tried to grab her arm as she fell. Carson-292 reached down as if to help her up, and half the Council members were yelling, trying to regain order.

  Althea saw Jack above the faces crowding her, and in a second knew what would happen next. No, don’t, she thought. It was an accident, I’m not hurt. But it was too late. Jack’s eyes already flashed with a rage he’d suppressed for years.

  Bracing his hand on the railing of the dais, Jack leapt over it and lunged at Carson-312, easily dodging the Viktor closing in on him. Jack shoved Carson against the wall, pinning him there with his forearm.

  “Touch her again, I’ll kill you,” he said.

  “We’re not kids anymore. Why don’t you try?”

  They both swung at each other, with the Viktor struggling to keep them apart. Each landed a blow, but it was Carson-312’s head that snapped back.

  The Viktor was knocked aside as Jack threw Carson to the floor. Holding Carson’s shirt bunched in his fist, Jack hit Carson twice more before he froze and pulled back. As if realizing suddenly that they weren’t, in fact, children anymore, he stared at Carson. Jack was seeing what everyone else in the room already had. Even through his anger, Carson suddenly looked no different than the hurt and bloody fifteen-year-old boy he’d been in the schoolyard after Jack had attacked him. Pinned by Jack once again, facing his blows, Carson was terrified.

  Jack paused and then, as if he couldn’t help himself, gave Carson one last blow, but it was a pulled punch, barely grazing the other boy’s chin. Jack shoved off him. Carson sat up, testing his bruised jaw.

  “Get up,” Jack said. His body radiated a barely contained fury.

  When Jack turned his back, Carson made to lunge at him again, but Samuel-299 pressed a hand to his shoulder. “Be still,” he said tersely, and Carson reluctantly complied, glaring furiously at Jack.

  Three Viktors burst into the room, each holding an electric prod, the kind used to control cattle. They surrounded Jack, aiming the prods at him. Jack swept his hands into the air, surrendering. Even outnumbered and next to all the Viktors, weapons in their hands, he looked strong. Strong enough to kill anyone in the room, if that was what he wanted to do.

  The Council members looked on stonily, the Inga especially. It was over, Althea realized. They were going to find him guilty, no matter what she said. Jack had locked Nyla-313 in the labs and then he’d attacked Carson-312. He’d sealed his fate.

  “No,” Althea said. “He’s innocent. Samuel, tell them!”

  Samuel-299 only turned away, his face creased in grief, as the Viktors put Jack back in the chains. The Council filed out of the room to make their decision, and Samuel-299 followed.

  “Jack,” Althea said as he was hauled away, the chains jangling against the floor.

  He gave her a small smile, as if to say he was sorry for disappointing her.

  It wasn’t fair, though. The Carsons were setting him up; they had to be. The Council was too narrow-minded to see it.

  Althea dropped onto the bench. Perhaps she was the one too blind to understand who Jack really was. She’d witnessed it more than once, the times he’d resorted to violence, as if a well of anger boiled inside him and lashing out was the only thing he knew how to do. And the evidence of the timer had been damning.

  Nyla-313 passed by, close enough to reach out and touch her.

  “I’m sorry, Althea,” she said.

  Althea heard the sadness in her friend’s voice, and knew if she looked up she’d see tears in Nyla’s dark eyes. She didn’t look up.

  “I know,” Althea said, leaning on the bench in front of her, resting her chin on her arms as Nyla-313 walked away.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jack

  Jack once read a story in his mother’s journals about something that happened long ago. She’d uncovered the information while digging through years of research on genetics, humans, and the Slow Plague. It wasn’t a story Jack had ever seen in the textbooks the clones read in school.

  In the early years of Vispera, the clones found evidence that not all humans had died during the Slow Plague, that there were pockets of life scattered here and there around the globe. Most reports turned out to be unfounded, but the clones sent search parties in any case to look for survivors. They collected about 120, mostly from the north, and brought them back. All data and records indicated that these were the only humans who’d survived the Slow Plague, and they were grateful for the prospect of a community, a civilized home. They’d struggled alone for over a decade to live in a dead world. They had seen Vispera, with its protective wall, its thriving population, and orderly rules, and had known, finally, they’d be safe.

  The first thing the clones did was separate the humans, putting the women in a cluster of huts on the edge of town, while the men were to live in a barn in one of the far-off grain fields. The clones put them to work building the structures that would become the clone models’ dorms.

  They didn’t allow the humans to have Pairing Ceremonies, even among their own population. If the humans began breeding, the clones knew where that would lead. They’d slowly populate the earth again, even starting with only 120 specimens. They would spread like ants, and in a short time, they would outnumber the orderly and controlled people of Vispera, whose population never increased beyond the capacity and desires of the community. And then the humans would take over, and once again the world would collapse with disease and disorder. So the humans were separated, monitored, and controlled. And they proved useful.

  Genetics were complicated, and his mother’s journals contained only a quick reckoning of what had happened to the humans, but Jack gathered they had been a convenient resource. When the Viktors needed to work hard to keep up with the others in the scientific breakthroughs being made, the clones borrowed a genetic marker from one of the humans to help future Viktors become quick studies. The Kates seemed to lack self-control, the Meis tended toward irritability, and so on, until these humans had provided the genetic nuances the clones needed. In only a few generations, the clones had what they would need to mold themselves into perfectly balanced specimens, each model complementing the others’ particular traits and strengths. Which was good, because the humans had become problematic.

  In Vispera and the other communities, violence was virtually unknown, and conflict rare. The clone models communed, reaching peaceful resolution to disagreements, short-circuiting possible dissension. The humans, on the other hand, became increasingly difficult to manage and predict. They began fighting the tests and refusing work. Some ran away, only to be brought back again, as it wouldn’t do for a human to go unmonitored. And then there was the difficulty that they kept getting pregnant.

  The women were eliminated first. It was unfortunate, the Council members agreed, but the humans had served their purpose. The men were kept in the barn and put to work tending the fields and cattle. But they became violent and dangerous, and the measures in place to control them weren’t working. In any case, the clones had devised machines to do the jobs of the men. Within a year, they had been eliminated as well, their water poisoned so they drifted off to sleep. The clones saw nothing to be gained in
making them suffer. The only remnants of their existence in Vispera were the vestiges of the women’s huts on the edge of a field, now nothing more than piles of thick grass and mud bricks, and also the barn.

  Once painted a bright chrome yellow, it stood out against the red barns that held cows, mules, and horses. On the inside, instead of animal stalls, the yellow barn held cages with iron bars, and iron rings poked out from the walls to hold the rusted shackles attached to clusters of manacles. The yellow barn hadn’t been used since the last human men had been caged in it over two hundred years ago, and it sloped precariously to the side. The yellow paint was hardly recognizable, the wood rotted, and the roof had caved in, letting in the torrential rains, nesting birds, and ambling rodents.

  When Jack was a child, he liked to explore the planted fields, and he’d naturally come across the yellow barn sitting in a barren isolated plot of its own. He would climb the beams, falling to the ground more than once. One time his mother had found him there, and he’d seen the way a veil fell across her eyes when she saw him playing in the open cages. She’d taken his hand and led him away, telling him that the yellow barn was a bad place.

  “All creatures are precious, Jack,” she’d said. “My people have done terrible things. We need to learn how to do better.”

  That was the same year she ran away from Vispera. The same year she died.

  After the fiasco of the trial, it hadn’t taken Jack long to figure out where the clones were taking him when they led him away from town. He’d been confined to the yellow barn, though none of them, not even Sam, had bothered to tell him what that meant. As each hour passed in the barn, however, he became more and more certain that they’d decided he should die.

  The rusted bars of the cage cast long shadows across the floor at night. Jack couldn’t reach them to see if any were loose. The Viktors had strung shackles through the rings bolted to the far wall of the cell. They were just long enough for Jack to lie down, though even then the cuffs pulled at his wrists and cut into his skin. They’d taken his clothes, and he shivered each night against the wall, hugging his knees. They’d brought him no food, and nothing to drink but a murky bowl of water filled by the rain that streamed through the open roof. He’d been abandoned. He yelled that first day until his voice was hoarse and his throat raw, then he’d given up, exhausted. He felt hollow with hunger, his lips were dry and cracked, and his muscles cramped. If they had decided to kill him, he was beginning to wish they’d just get on with it.

  On the first night, he’d been unable to sleep. He was too cold, too constrained by the shackles, and simply too angry. Sleep came on the second night, though it felt more like drifting into a dark abyss than rest. The next morning, he woke with the first beam of sun trickling through the cracks in the barn walls.

  The rumble of a man clearing his throat caused Jack to shift position, and he cringed at the jagged needles of pain in his limbs. An older Carson, probably one of the 290s, sat before him on a rough chair on the other side of the bars. A Council badge was sewn into his shirt. His legs were crossed, and one hand was folded over his knee. He ate a cut of meat on torn bread and sipped from a bottle of clear water in his other hand. A small parcel lay by his feet.

  Jack eyed the Carson warily, squinting against the bright light from outside. His eyes followed the water to the man’s mouth. It wet his lips, and Jack licked his own with a parched tongue.

  “The Council argued for a long time,” Carson said after swallowing a mouthful of the sandwich. “They decided someone should let you know what we’re doing with you. I volunteered.” His mouth, shining with moisture and grease, twisted in a half smile.

  “Where’s Sam?” Jack asked. His voice, dry and unused, came out rough.

  “We thought it best someone else deliver the news.”

  “You’re going to kill me.”

  At first, the coldness in the man’s eyes told Jack he was right, but then Carson tore off another piece of bread and shook his head.

  Speaking around his mouthful, he said, “That’s what most of us wanted. It’s simple, and would follow the protocol of a failed experiment. But Samuel-299 wouldn’t agree. Certainly it would be much easier at times if one person had clear authority. But that’s not how things are done in Vispera. We communed on the matter, and it became clear that Samuel-299 feels you should live more strongly than others feel you shouldn’t. We reached a compromise.”

  “And?”

  Jack strained to listen to what Carson was saying, but the water bottle was sweating, and a drop slid down, pooling in the crook of Carson’s finger. Unconsciously Jack moved to rub his parched lips with the back of his arm, briefly forgetting about the shackles. He sucked in a breath when the chains sliced into his raw skin. Carson’s eyebrows twitched a fraction.

  “We’ll make use of you in the fields.”

  “That’s dumb. You have the machines for that.”

  “Indeed. I may have said something similar. But it keeps you away from town, and away from the Gen-310s.”

  Jack snorted. Their logic was absurd. “How’d Sam talk you into that plan?”

  “We don’t allow anything to exist with no purpose. As of now, you’re about as useful as a plow horse. We’d hoped for more.” Carson took a long drink, downing half the water. He shrugged. “Although I’ve been against using your genetic code from the beginning. You introduce disease to the community.”

  Jack tried to absorb what Carson was saying, but his mind felt fragile with thirst, hunger, and fatigue. It was like hearing someone through a long tunnel.

  “Disease? You mean asthma?”

  “One of a million diseases that died with the humans. And Samuel thinks you’re worth the risk of bringing it back. I can just imagine where that would lead. Not to mention your emotional instability. I’ve known for a while it was you sabotaging our fields and tanks. Now I have proof.”

  “No, you don’t,” Jack said. “I didn’t do those things.”

  Carson laughed quietly. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a clear, flat slide as wide as his thick fingers. It glittered slightly in the morning sun, a bright sliver of technology in a barn all but reclaimed by dirt and brush. “See this? It’s you, Jack. Your cells, your genetic sequence, whatever you want to call it.” Carson inspected Jack through the transparent square. “Everything you are is contained in this flimsy piece of glass. We have a fair amount of it—​human genetic material. Unpredictable stuff. Our embryos almost always fail, and then every human we do manage has something wrong with it.”

  When Jack reacted to Carson’s words, the man smirked, and Jack realized he’d just been told something he wasn’t supposed to know.

  “Jack,” he said, condescension thickening his voice, “did you honestly think you were the first? The only human we’ve brought back from extinction?” He gave a bland chuckle. “There’ve been a number over the years. See, the Council thinks we need a tenth clone to balance out the community, a fifth male for the five females. It was looking good for you until you started breathing like a fish flopping on a hook. Now you’re just another failed audition, useful for a few gene markers we might find convenient, but otherwise a waste.” Carson leaned toward the cage, elbows on his knees, as if he were passing on a confidence to a friend. “The humans have always been a disaster, you know. Endless war, poverty, genocide, inequality, pollution—​to say nothing of an obsession with sex and reproduction. Your kind would have killed the planet if they’d lived. That’s the human legacy, all just historical memories now. And your grab bag of genetics, too. Curved spines, seizures, limps, terrible eyesight, flat feet, runaway cancers, chemical, psychological, or emotional instability. It’s a wonder your species existed as long as it did.”

  “Maybe the problem wasn’t your test subjects. Maybe the problem was you.”

  Carson paused and looked at Jack as if he really were a specimen under glass. “There’s a reason humans are gone.” He leaned forward and peered into the cage. �
��Honestly, not a single one of you has been any good.” He shook his head. “You certainly are some animal.”

  Jack knew what Carson was seeing. He was filthy, naked, chained to the wall, and staring desperately at the pathetic few inches of water left in Carson’s bottle. He supposed he didn’t make such a great representative of humanity right then.

  Carson stood and slid the glass square into his pocket. He wiped his greasy hands on his shirt and scrutinized the barn with distaste. He lifted the parcel from the ground and threw it into the cell where it landed near Jack, just out of reach. Then he drank again from the water, leaving a small bit splashing at the bottom.

  “Here,” he said, tossing that too between the bars of the cell. It rolled to Jack’s feet, spilling what little was left inside. “Samuel-299 wanted you to have this.”

  Carson turned his back and strolled past the empty cells toward the entrance. Jack watched the spilled water seep into the floor of the barn, leaving a damp outline in the dirt.

  “Right. Some animal,” Jack said, just loud enough for Carson to hear.

  That night, Jack didn’t even have the energy left to shiver. He drifted in and out of sleep. His tongue felt swollen, his mouth dry. The drops of water he’d gotten from Carson’s bottle were gone in seconds, and he was only left wanting more. Streams of blood dried down to his elbow from where the shackles’ metal edge had cut his skin when he’d tried and failed to reach the parcel.

  Jack felt half dead, but he could see the cornfields through the barn door that Carson had left open. They swayed with the gentle wind as if they were breathing. The sound of the breeze mingled with the buzz of insects and croak of frogs. Jack heard the music of it, felt it deep in the earth at the same time as he felt it in the bones and blood of his body.

  The Council wanted a tenth clone. Nine was an odd number, and the clones had never been much for odd numbers. Was that what his mother had meant when she said they needed him? That they needed future generations of Jacks, all polished and perfected like the others, refined for useful traits and cleansed of anything undesirable?