Your One & Only

by Adrianne Finlay

  The night air had cooled. Althea could still smell the smoldering remnants of the boats. Even if Jack was asleep, or if he was still upset about what had happened between them, this was vastly more important.

  She hadn’t walked far when she saw him standing in the shadows on the path to the clinic.

  “Althea,” he said, keeping his distance. He was still mad.

  “I’m sorry about what happened earlier,” she said.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay.” She paused, wishing he’d come out from the shadows. “Listen, we have to go to the Tunnels.”

  “I know,” he said. “We should hurry.”

  Althea narrowed her eyes, peering into the trees. His hair shone silvery in the dark. “Wait,” she said. “The Ark. What should we do with it?”

  “Destroy it. If it’s something Jonah wants, it must be dangerous. We can’t let him get his hands on it.”

  “Shouldn’t we find out what he wants it for?”

  “Why does it matter? All that matters is that he doesn’t get it.”

  “But what if he wants to destroy it? I’ll go find Sam. He can tell us what to do. Jack?”

  Althea watched his silhouette lean casually against a tree. She heard soft breaths exhaled, a quiet, mocking laugh.

  “You’re not quite as dumb as the other Altheas I’ve known,” Jonah said dryly.

  “Really? How nice,” she said. “Where’s Jack?”

  “He’s got some things to work out. I’m helping him, though.”

  “You can’t help him.”

  “Neither can you, Althea. He just hasn’t figured that out yet.”

  Jonah moved toward her and she backed away, but in a single, unexpected motion, he was out of the shadows and behind her. He trapped her in the rigid strength of his arm, her back forced against his chest.

  “Don’t be scared,” he said, taunting her. He nestled his face into her hair. “Maybe it’s a trick. Can you be so sure I’m not Jack?”

  “Jack would never do this,” she said.

  Jonah’s hand, hard and fast, closed over her face. A cloth covered her mouth and nose, suffocating her with a bright, chemical smell.

  “You think so?” he said in her ear. “You don’t really know him like I do.”

  His arms braced her as she struggled and the world reeled away. She knew that smell, felt its familiar sting in the back of her throat. The trees swayed above her, suddenly lit as if from within and erupting into colors she’d never seen before. The leaves dropped, spun, and then took off into an ocean of sky, a swimming rainbow of nodding, flickering fish.

  Somnium, she thought grimly as, against her will, her eyes dropped closed. She clung to the reality of the world around her, what she could feel and hear—​Jonah’s solid arms effortlessly lifting her, the crunch of his boots on gravel, and her ear against his shoulder. His breathing was even. She thought she was saying words, talking quite sensibly. Jack won’t like this, she said to him. I’m sure he’ll be upset with you. She was reasonable and convincing, but then she understood she’d said nothing at all. The brilliant colors of dancing fish continued, impossibly, to swirl behind her eyelids. They shifted and darkened, turning the sky a fiery orange that dwindled finally to dust and ash, and Althea braced herself for the dreams she knew were still to come.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jack

  Jack had looked everywhere for Althea, and he still hadn’t found her. He’d even crept into the dorms, only to find her sisters asleep and Althea’s bed empty.

  He didn’t know what had happened to Jonah either. If the Council found him, they’d kill him, and Jack thought they’d probably do the same to him. Jack had come to understand that what Jonah suffered in Copan was worse, much worse, than the isolation and schoolyard cruelty Jack had experienced in Vispera. Jonah wanted Jack to leave Vispera with him, and Jack was beginning to think he might do just that. But first he had to find Althea.

  Jack sat on his heels. His feet sank into the mud and he covered his eyes with the cage of his fingers. His head hurt. Something was wrong. What if the Samuels had Althea? What if they were conducting more of their treatments, trying to cure her and keep her from fracturing? Another wave of nausea gripped him at the thought.

  He had to keep her safe.

  It didn’t take long to find Sam. He was at the clinic, with the other doctors and those injured from the boat explosions. He was still useful when they needed so many doctors, even though his brothers were keeping their distance. When Jack saw him alone in the medics’ lounge, he was leaning against a wall, his head tilted back, his eyes closed, and Jack was overwhelmed with a sudden surge of anger. At the same time, Sam looked as tired as Jack felt, and thinner than he’d expected. Angry as he was, he ended up yelling across the room so Sam would at least see him coming before Jack shoved him against the wall. Using the plaster of his cast to pin Sam’s chest, Jack faced the man who’d raised him, their noses almost touching.

  “Where is she?”

  “Jack, what are you doing?”

  “Where’s Althea?”

  “How would I know?” Sam said, but he looked away, hiding something.

  “You and the other Samuels, you have her drugged somewhere, tied down.” Jack thrust away from Sam. The man slumped against the wall, his knees buckling at the sudden release. “You know where she is.”

  “Jack!” Sam’s voice was unexpectedly loud and authoritative, given his wasted appearance. “Stop this!”

  “No!” Jack said with equal strength. And then, “Don’t tell me you helped them. That you hooked them up to those . . . wires.” He felt the strain of exhaustion and stress settling on his rib cage like a weight. His chest rose with quick breaths. Sam studied him.

  “Calm down, Jack. You’ll have an attack.”

  “Please, Sam,” he said. “Don’t tell me it was you.”

  “Why not? The Bonding is one of my specialties. I’ve gone through it myself. It’s not that bad, even if it doesn’t always work.”

  Jack stared at Sam, speechless. Sam only shrugged. He motioned for Jack to sit down. Jack shook his head.

  “Fine.” Sam sank into a brown couch against the wall. “You stand. I need to sit.” He rested his elbows on his knees and looked as if he had a headache he was trying to ignore. A clock ticked on the wall above Sam’s head. Jack stared at it, struggling to control the violence of his emotions, waiting for Sam to speak. “I’m sorry you saw that, Jack,” he said at last. “I’m sorry about the Altheas.”

  “What was that, Sam?”

  “I can see why it would be hard for you to understand. But they volunteered; it’s the only way we do it. They wanted to reinforce their bond. It’s a legitimate medical procedure.”

  “It’s cruel.”

  “Our research has suggested—”

  “Everyone around me, I hurt them. Inga, you, Althea. Everyone who comes near me, I seem to hurt.” Jack put his head in his hands. His voice came out muffled. “What’s wrong with me, Sam?”

  Sam stared at his folded fingers dangling between his knees. His fingernails were ragged, the skin along the edges broken. “It’s not you, Jack. It’s us. It’s always been us.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true.”

  Jack shuddered, feeling a wave of dizziness for the second time that night. He blinked away spots that obscured his vision, focused again on the ticking clock.

  “Inga had a theory,” Sam continued. “She thought that we’d changed ourselves so much, we’d left something important behind. She thought you were the answer, that raising you to be more human, more compassionate, would help the rest of us. The Council saw you as a possible tenth clone, but she thought it was your humanity that would save us.”

  “It didn’t work.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I don’t have any compassion, Sam. I’m angry. All the time, at everyone. At you. I’m no better than Jo
nah. I can’t save anyone. I hurt everyone who comes near me, and sometimes I don’t even care.”

  “Maybe we’re not capable of being saved.”

  Jack slowly crossed the room and settled in the chair facing Sam on the couch.

  “What’s the Ark?”

  Sam blinked at the sudden change of topic. “It’s an old term for the Sample Room, in the Tunnels.”

  “That’s where my original genetic material came from. What would happen if the Sample Room was destroyed?”

  Sam sighed. “The Council thinks we can integrate your genes into ours.”

  “Why do they want to do that?”

  “Because we’re dying. Inga-296 wasn’t wrong. We’ve manipulated the codes so much, we’ve copied them so many times. The problems we face now will only get worse. We don’t have the original samples, so the only answer is new variations from freshly cloned humans. Like the variations they think we can get from you.”

  “From me, and from other human samples in the Sample Room.”

  “Yes. If it’s destroyed, we have no ability to strengthen genes that have weakened over centuries of replication.” Sam narrowed his eyes. “Why are you asking me this, Jack?”

  “Jonah’s looking for the Ark, and I think he wants to destroy it. I told him I didn’t care what he did. But now I can’t find Althea, and I’ve looked everywhere. I’m worried. Jonah said he’d show me she was just like the others. What if he has her?”

  Sam looked at Jack and rubbed a hand across his mouth. The only sound between them was the relentless tick of the clock.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Althea

  Althea dreamed.

  She dreamed about red apples on low-hanging trees falling like jewels on silk dresses that swirled in firelight. She dreamed of music, and the strings of Jack’s guitar that plucked notes so rich and warm they drifted like dust into the air before turning all at once into spices, pungent and rosy—​cinnamon, anise, coriander, and pepper.

  She dreamed about mountains falling into oceans, rivers melting into earth, and jungle vines creeping over every living and dead thing until there was nothing left but a continent of twisted, choking green.

  She dreamed about worlds ending.

  The riot of colors resolved slowly. After a time, a row of letters became visible, and she found by focusing on one, she could concentrate on dissolving the fog in her head. The letters gradually cleared. She was in the Sample Room, in the Tunnels. The walls of the room were stone, like the rest of the caverns of the Tunnels, but these walls glittered with intersecting glass slides carrying thousands of genetic samples. Human genetic samples. She was in the Ark. Althea had figured it out back in the dorms, reading the book with the list of names of humans who’d left their genetic material to be stored in the vast caverns of the Tunnels. It hurt her eyes, looking at all the brightness, and then Jack’s imposing body blocked her view, except it wasn’t Jack. It was Jonah. He crouched above her, peering down. Her arms were sore, and she understood that she’d been fighting in her sleep against a slim wire binding her wrists to a post.

  “Here,” Jonah said. “Drink.” He tipped a cup of water to her lips, and she drank. He pulled it away. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Do you care?”

  His mouth turned down. “No. You were screaming.”

  “You gave me Somnium.”

  “I guess you didn’t like it. Some do.” He stood, and Althea saw behind him a table covered in wires, plastic, and metal bits. She also saw the book, Althea Lane’s journal. She wondered if he’d read it. He went to a chair and picked up one of the devices, twisting wires together. “That’s the thing about dreams,” he said. “They can also be nightmares.”

  “Like for the people in Copan?”

  “It’s not hard to scare someone on Somnium, to put thoughts in their heads. But the clones in Copan, they made their own nightmares. There was something rotten in them, worse than here, even. The Somnium just brought it to the surface.”

  “They’re no different from us.”

  His hands continued to fiddle with the wires, but his eyes, veiled by pale lashes, glanced up at her. “You don’t think so?”

  “You think there’s something wrong with us, but you’re the one hurting people.”

  “I’m paying them back for what they did to me.”

  The materials Jonah had on the table were troubling. He was putting together a series of metal boxes linked with wires.

  “Is that what you used to start the fire in North Lab? And to blow up the boats?”

  Jonah’s closed mouth curled. “You have more useful material here than they do in Copan. Is it because this is the first colony, where they grow all the new clones?” He didn’t wait for an answer to his questions. “It’s easy—​I find what I need, I take it. Is Jack good at building things?”

  “Not things like that,” Althea said. “He doesn’t want to kill people.”

  Jonah nodded, ignoring her tone. “I was taught to kill.” He held up his arm scarred by burns. “I wasn’t very good in the beginning. I learned.”

  “Who taught you?” Althea couldn’t imagine who would have taught this boy to be so destructive.

  “Oh, it wasn’t a clone,” Jonah said, seeing her thoughts reflected in her face. “No one built me a cottage on a hill, or brought me books and toys.” He lifted a piece of glass and peered through it, magnifying one eye. “I never had a Sam.”

  “So who?”

  “Has it always just been Jack?” Jonah asked, talking past her again.

  “As far as I know.”

  Jonah moved to sit cross-legged in front of Althea. “There were ten of us in Copan.”

  “Ten Jacks?”

  Jonah laughed. “Ten people. Humans. All different.” His gaze clouded. “I guess that’s why Jack cares what happens to you. The clones are all he’s had. But we didn’t need a Samuel or an Althea. We had each other.”

  Althea’s chest tightened and she twisted against the ties at her wrists. “What happened to them?” she asked, dreading the answer.

  “I’m the only one left.” He sat up on his heels and leaned his face close to hers. His eyes glittered. “I watched them spend their lives hungry, in pain, in a filthy box that barely let in sunlight—​a box that was freezing at night and an oven in the day. I watched them die, one by one. All because you people, you clones, were experimenting.”

  “The . . . clones in Copan killed them?”

  “What do you think? I got away. I went back for them, of course, to get them out. I failed. They were counting on me, and I failed.”

  She searched his face; the tightness around his mouth, the broad forehead screened by colorless hair, the gray eyes bright and vivid. She exhaled slowly when understanding came over her. She watched his face as he became aware, and then he was halfway across the room, as quick as if he’d been bitten by a snake. As suddenly as it appeared, the fire in his eyes reverted to the cool indifference of before, and his face settled into not quite a smile. It was too late, however. In spite of all his cold control, he’d inadvertently shown Althea a part of himself he’d meant to hide. He hadn’t expected her to be able to see beyond what he wanted her to. Perhaps, because she knew Jack so well, she herself had changed. On some level, even without communing, she was able to know more of Jonah as well.

  “You loved someone,” she said finally.

  He stood in the center of the room, a fixed smile on his face. “I loved them all,” he said evenly. “They were my family.”

  “But one of them was special to you, right?”

  “Uh-uh,” he said. “You don’t get to ask me that.”

  He sat back at the table, picking up a screwdriver and the box device. She watched him work for a few moments. The heels of his palms rested on the tabletop as he worked, and still the screws weren’t fitting together.

  “Your hands,” she said.

  He put down his tools and pressed his palms to his eyes. “I’m done talk
ing.”

  “They’re shaking.”

  The chair legs screeched on the floor. He faced the wall of the Sample Room, his back to her. She watched his shoulders rise and fall.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  “Let me go. You don’t need me.”

  His back still turned, he shook his head. “I do, though. I underestimated Jack’s . . . ties here. When this is done, he has to come with me.”

  “Why? You don’t need him.”

  Jonah said nothing, his back still turned.

  “Oh,” Althea said, suddenly understanding. “You don’t need him. You want his company. You want your brother. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Again he said, his voice forced, “I’m not letting you go.”

  “Then untie me at least,” she said. “I can’t stop you or hurt you.”

  He stepped toward the post and crouched at her side. From his belt he pulled a knife and cut away the wire holding her, then stepped back cautiously, arms at his sides.

  Althea still wasn’t sure in what way he meant he needed her. Did he intend for Althea to leave as well, with them, as a way to convince Jack to go? But no, nothing in the way he acted toward her suggested that. He thought it would be easier to convince Jack to leave if she wasn’t around anymore. He wanted her dead.

  “Stay out of my way,” he said flatly.

  Without looking at him, she stood. The effects of the Somnium lingered, making the floor waver like the deck of a boat. She wandered carefully to the table and examined the box he’d made. She picked up a heavy metal tube with a black button in the center.

  “What are you going to blow up this time?”

  “Don’t touch that.” He snatched the tube from her. “It’s dangerous.”

  “What’s it do?”

  “Go ahead, press the button.” He grinned. “See what happens.”

  Althea felt cold. “Where’s the timer?”

  “I used all I had on the boats. Had to come up with something else.”

  “I don’t understand why you want to destroy the Ark. It was built by the humans, people like you.”

  “Althea-310, I thought you were the clever one. Do you know how long I’ve been trying to figure out what the hell the Ark actually is? I knew it was here, in Vispera, but I knew only that it was something the clones needed to keep making humans, and by making humans, make more clones. And I figure, what the hell do we need more clones for? Think about it. Countless cells, like this.” He pulled from his pocket the glass slide and tossed it on the table in front of her. “These bits of glass, they line the whole room like wallpaper. I didn’t know there were so many.” Pressing his finger into the slide, he inched it toward her along the table, his face thoughtful. “How do you think they picked who got stored in the Ark? Two by two, from every city, state, country, continent? Was it a lottery? Maybe they were volunteers, and they hoped it would give them some kind of immortality when their world was dying.” Jonah pinched the slide from the table and gazed at it against the light, his eyes unfocused as he looked through it. “Maybe they imagined it would save them.”