Ultraviolet Catastrophe

by Jamie Grey

  Instead, I ended up hooked to machines and trapped in the Biotech Hub, near death.

  The last place I want to end up is another Hub, but that’s where Merrin and I have decided to go: the Social Welfare Hub on the West Coast. Even though my head tells me it’s the safest place for Ones like us to be, my gut tells me something different.

  I bring my other arm up around her and rest my chin on top of her head, watching white puffs of air blow out of my nose against the frigid air. I really can feel her skin through the now-threadbare shirt she wears. She’s so real, and I never want to lose that feeling. Her and me, together, in real life. A feeling that might seem simple to a lot of people, but to a kid like me who grew up being treated like a test subject, it’s something I was never really sure I’d have.

  “We can’t go supersonic anymore,” I say, burying my lips in her hair.

  She puffs her frustration.

  “These clothes won’t last very much longer, and us walking into a Hub unannounced is going to be weird enough. I’d rather not be half-naked when we do it.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re right.” She hoists herself up and reaches her stick-thin arms down to help me up.

  I smile at the gesture and join her in looking at the horizon. “So, normal speed, due west?”

  She reaches down to intertwine her fingers with mine and turns the both of us so that the sun glows warm on our backs. Our shadows stretch out long in front of us, their edges jagged in the wild grass. We stand in the comfortable silence we’ve developed, our breaths falling into the same rhythm.

  “You’re worried about your sisters.” Merrin’s eyebrows pull together, and her eyes search mine. Her tone reminds me that she knows me so well I can’t deny it.

  My throat feels painfully thick. “I just wish I knew something. Where they are. What they’re doing. If they’re even still together.”

  “We do,” she says, absently stroking the back of my thumb with hers, looking up at me with those deep blue eyes that tear my heart out every time. “We know how kickass their Supers are.”

  I scoff and try to smile while I blink my eyes hard.

  “Stop that now. Seriously. They’re so strong. We saw for ourselves.” She squeezes my hand. The look in her eyes, combined with the conviction in her voice, takes my breath away. She’s as desperate for me to be okay as I was to get out of Superior, Nebraska.

  “Okay,” I say, looking down at her. “You’re right.”

  “They took out all those guards. They killed all those duplicates that Fisk made of himself. Elias, they made the Hub shake when they teleported out. They are powerful.”

  “You’re right,” I repeat. I take the worry working its way into my brain and squeezing its fingers around my heart, and I push it back, knowing that it will destroy me if I let it.

  Besides, the first thing is to find somewhere safe. And the Social Welfare Hub, with its public location and noble mission, will be that.

  The air whooshes lightly in front of me, and Merrin’s face fills my vision, her skin warming mine. I close my eyes when she kisses me, trying desperately to feel nothing but her and this moment. My hand pushes back through her hair, and another goes around her waist, under her shirt. The feel of her back against my forearm is comfort and promise at the same time. Whatever else happens, I know we’ll be together now, and that’s enough to push us up into the air and away from another nondescript plain that holds nothing but grass, wind, and silence.

  TWO

  A couple of hours and some landings to readjust our bearings later, we’ve taken a wide path around Sacramento and overshot it by five miles, just like I’d planned before the Biotech Hub shot me up with gene-changing serums and basically left me to die in their med lab. A sprawling white office complex, framed by palm trees and stone gardens, sits before us.

  “Where do you think we go in?” Merrin asks, alighting next to me and smoothing down her hair. She doesn’t need to — it’s so fine that it never puffs or frizzes, no matter how severe the wind. It’s like her whole body was made for flying.

  It’s exactly the opposite of my lanky, awkward frame. Even when Rosie fed me all my favorites, I could never gain very much muscle.

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I guess I never thought about that too much. But they must have an intake station, right? A front desk?”

  “Feels so weird to walk,” Merrin mumbles as we start toward the Hub, both of us trying to shake our air legs. We’d never flown that long before, and being on solid ground makes the concrete feel unstable under my feet, even though I know it’s my legs doing the shaking.

  We round the corner of the building, and there it is. The entrance. There are two gates, and each has two guys with handheld metal detectors that sweep them over us as we pass, even though I’m sure they could see through our shirts.

  They wave us through the front door, and we’re in. No bioscanners upon bioscanners like at the Hub. No lasers sweeping across our corneas, or tiny needles poised to prick our fingers and scan our blood. I can’t seem to get my feet to move smoothly. My shoulders are tight, and my neck is tense, waiting to snap around to see some oncoming threat. The lobby has a shining black marble floor and a fountain surrounded with greenery at its center. Flowers bloom in planters every few steps, and softly glowing decorative lights dot the walls.

  This doesn’t feel like a Hub at all, and as much as I hated the Biotech Hub’s insane security, the fact that there’s a Hub out there without it is somehow even freakier. The Social Welfare Hub seems to be so trusting, so open. So unafraid. This kind of lax security could spell serious trouble for two kids on the run.

  The water splashing and trickling into the pool below makes my bladder beg for mercy. “Okay, first order of business is to use the bathroom,” I lean down and whisper to Merrin.

  A grin cracks across her face, way too huge to match the humor of what I just said.

  “What?”

  “Just that that’s the first thing you’ve said since we left that’s anywhere near normal.” I raise my eyebrow at her. “I just really, really like normal Elias, that’s all.”

  “Well, that’s too bad,” I say, scanning the room for what feels like the twentieth time in the few minutes we’ve been here. “Nothing about this Hub is normal.”

  “And there’s my freaked-out Elias again.”

  I should smile, hearing her use the words “my” and “Elias” in the same sentence — and I try to. I really do.

  “I’m serious,” I say, frowning. “Have you noticed the lack of security here?”

  “It’s Social Welfare. They’re do-gooders. Who would hurt them?”

  “Someone looking for us.”

  Merrin’s face falls when I say that.

  At the intake desk, a guy who can’t be too many years older than us, wearing a white polo and khakis and with perfectly arranged curls on his head, taps at a glowing desktop in front of him. He looks up from his otherwise flawless desk when we reach it.

  “Can I help you?” His smile hardens as he inspects us. We’re absolutely filthy, and we must look like a wreck. We don’t exactly look like we belong in the gleamingly clean building we’re about to enter.

  I shove my hands into my pockets and shrug, trying to seem nonchalant. “We’d like to…uh… We came from Nebraska so…”

  The guy cocks his head and gives a slight smile. “For a tour? Our tours are usually scheduled at least a week in advance, and I don’t see anything like that on the schedule.”

  Merrin looks up at me, arching one eyebrow in that confused expression of hers that says, “Is everyone but me stupid?” It would be hilarious if I wasn’t about to collapse from exhaustion.

  I close my eyes, push my fingers up under my glasses to rub the bridge of my nose, and try to find the words that will get us where we need to go. “We’re students from the Supers’ Biotech Hub in Nebraska,” I explain. “There’s been…uh… Something’s going on there. We’d like to talk to one of your officials.”
/>
  “I’m sorry. I don’t… Are you reporters or…?”

  “We need help,” Merrin says, floating up a few inches from the floor for better eye contact. Her voice sounds scratchy and rough. Deflated. It reminds me of right before the first time we flew together. I just wanted to make her happier. That time, I did. “We just escaped the Biotech Hub in Nebraska, flew here at supersonic speed, and we really need to talk to whoever is in charge.”

  The guy still stares, like he’s never even considered the idea that something could go wrong at any of the Hubs. I guess until a few weeks ago, I didn’t think that either.

  I lean in, lower my voice. “We’re looking for asylum, okay?” I don’t break eye contact with the guy, and he stutters his agreement as he punches some numbers in his cuff and speaks to it in an undertone. Then he looks up at us, pastes on the same smile he had when we first walked up, and says, “Someone will be right with you.”

  Merrin nods, lowers herself, crosses her arm, and does a full one-eighty look around the lobby like she owns it. “I think this is gonna be okay.”

  The woman who meets us in the lobby carries only a set of keys and a brown leather folio. Looking us over and raising her eyebrows, she says, “Rough trip in, I hear.” She extends her hand, and we take our turns clasping it. “I’m Ana, and I’ll be showing you in for your debriefing.”

  “Yeah, if we could use the bathroom…” I’m seriously going to piss myself if I wait any longer.

  “Of course,” she says, starting down the hall.

  Merrin and I exchange glances of relief when she stops in front of a pair of bathroom doors. I never thought taking a leak would feel so good. Afterward, I stand in front of the mirror, letting the water run, leaning on the edge of the sink with one hand and splashing a handful of water on my face with the other. I push my glasses up to my forehead, run my wet hand up through my hair so that it stands on end, and look at myself in the mirror.

  God, I’m a mess. My eyes are bloodshot, and purple bruises carve into the space underneath them. My face looks dirty with days’ worth of scruff, and my jaw is more angular than I remember it. My collarbones jut out sharply. If it’s possible, I’m skinnier now than when basketball season started.

  Plus, I feel like I got run over by a truck.

  I tug what’s left of my sweatshirt sleeves — thick on the inside, where they were pressed against Merrin, thin almost to the point of translucence on the outside — back over my arms, swipe the water away from my face with my forearm, readjust my frames, and head back out to the hallway.

  Both Ana and Merrin wait for me outside. The halls in this place are wide and minimalist-empty, designed with light colors that reflect the sun from the skylights above and make the whole place look bigger.

  But good lighting isn’t enough to make me trust any Hub. As Merrin trots behind Ana, I stride beside her and instinctively fold her hand into mine.

  Ana leads us into a small room that contains a table and four chairs. She motions for us to take a seat and pulls two thin computer tablets out of the binder, along with two styluses. She places them in front.

  “We don’t have very many visitors, and those we do have are expected. Someone from the Biotech Hub announcing they’re seeking asylum…well… It’s unusual. That’s why we want you to write down the whole story. Exactly what brought you here. Just so we have a record of your arrival, okay?”

  Before either Merrin or I can say anything, she’s left and shut the door. The strong, telltale click a split-second later is the giveaway, but I want to test it anyway, so I get up and push down on the handle. It doesn’t budge.

  “Locked in. Why?” Merrin’s eyes go wide for a brief second, mirroring the panic I’m starting to feel, but she quickly focuses on the tablet.

  For now, the only thing I can do is the same. I settle into another chair, resigned for the moment. The blank tablet stares up at me, as if mocking my cluelessness. Where do I start? A few days ago, when my parents walked me into the Hub for “some routine tests,” and I woke up strapped to a table, being pumped full of serums and formulas that felt like fire and ice ripping through my body?

  When we discovered Merrin’s parents had known about her transference, the rare factor that allows our Ones to combine, since she was born? Before that, when I met Merrin and discovered that, even though I’d only been able to lamely push air away from my body my whole life, when I was with her I felt like I could do anything — even fly? Or a couple weeks later, when I finally touched her and we did fly?

  When I was thirteen and realized I would never be more than a One?

  When I was a little kid, spending weekends at the Hub that I mercifully don’t remember?

  When I was born?

  I glance over at Merrin’s tablet, and her screen is already half-full. Apparently, she’s starting at birth.

  Those are the cold, hard facts. Inescapable and sometimes barbaric. So how can Merrin stand to write them without a second thought? With enthusiasm even?

  Maybe it’ll help if I face the facts, too. Maybe reliving the past will help me let go of it so that we can have a future, somewhere away from pristine Hub offices and intake forms.

  “Are you telling them everything?”

  She shrugs. “Why not? They’ll figure it out anyway. And maybe they can help us. I know it’s not Biotech, but…”

  I can hear it in the way her voice softens, in the way she’s a little breathless between sentences: the hopefulness she always got when she talked about the Hub internship back home. My stomach sinks, but I turn to my tablet and do a quick summary of everything that happened. Just because Merrin’s writing a novel doesn’t mean that I have to.

  I set my stylus down in just a couple minutes, but Merrin’s still scribbling. The room is stark-white and cold, and memories start hammering at me. I take a shaky breath just as she finally drops her stylus and leans forward.

  She looks into my eyes, and hers are wide and watchful. “You okay? You don’t look so good.”

  I shrug, trying to shake off the panic crawling around my shoulders. My thoughts swish around in my head like river rapids, foaming with worry. Are my sisters okay? What happened to the Hub, and what happened to Fisk after he tried to kill us? Do the people at this Hub really know what’s best, and can they even help us at all? What’s going to happen next? What decisions will Merrin and I make from here? Will we make them together?

  I want to scoop Merrin up in my arms — just hold her, be wrapped up in her so that the two of us can make up our own universe and not worry about anything on the outside.

  We had that for a little while when we spent the afternoons barreling through the Nebraska skies. We were carefree kids then. I want that feeling back.

  I almost get it when Merrin reaches up, cups my jaw in her hand, strokes her thumb across my cheek, and stretches her face up to mine. Just one kiss from her puts my whole body on edge, and I touch the back of her elbow to ground myself. Suddenly, I’m insanely, inappropriately focused on the fact that we’re alone in this room together.

  Another click from the door. Merrin jerks away, and I’m jolted back to reality. We were alone, but apparently, someone was watching. I don’t know why I didn’t expect that. I should have learned by now that someone’s always watching at a Hub.

  A woman — just a bit taller than Merrin, with dark hair pulled back off her face and round, smiling cheeks — walks in. I’m not fooled. These days, I’m not really trusting anyone who smiles.

  “Some very interesting information you two provided us. Especially you, Miss Grey.” Her words sound slightly combative, but her smile and the way she holds herself, shoulders relaxed and open, is inviting.

  “You’ve already read it.” Merrin’s voice is resigned.

  The woman chuckles. “Yes, it’s all connected to the mainframe. Real-time data entry.” She steps forward, extending her hand to Merrin, who shakes it. Instinct pulls me to stand to shake hands with her next, and Merrin stands beside me
.

  “I’m President Eisenhardt,” the woman says with another smile.

  “President Eisenhardt? Our statements must have been really interesting.” I can’t keep the suspicion out of my voice, and it pulls plenty of tension into the room with it. President Eisenhardt’s smile falters, and her lips gap, as though nothing she’s ever said has been taken less than kindly.

  “Well, obviously, we’re looking for some help,” Merrin says, breaking the silence.

  “Yes. It’s quite unusual for minors to enter this Hub unattended.” She peers over her glasses, looking up at me, then down at Merrin.

  “It should be obvious from our statements why we did that,” Merrin says. “Besides, I’ll be seventeen this summer, and he’ll be eighteen a few months later. With all we’ve been through, we’re close enough to adulthood to make our own decisions, I think.” She squares her shoulders, puffing up like a cobra, daring Eisenhardt to argue with her.

  The president’s eyebrow flicks up. “It’s obvious you’re in need of help, and of course, we can offer it.” Eisenhardt waves her hand toward the table, splaying her fingers out, and the metal styluses fly up to her hand like it’s a magnet. Merrin sucks in a breath, her pleasure at seeing another’s Super evident on her face. Hell, even I’m impressed.

  “Walk with me?” The president pulls the door open and motions us both out to the hall. Merrin reaches her hand down to grab mine, and I follow. Eisenhardt moves at a fast clip, chattering the whole way. “The Social Welfare Hub was the second Hub founded in the wake of the Uranium Wars, as I’m sure you learned in school.” Merrin’s brow furrows and she shakes her head slightly, and I try to keep a straight face. We didn’t learn much about the other Hubs, only that they existed, that they were something we didn’t need to worry about. They did their job, and we did ours.

  “Uh, no, ma’am,” I say. “But I came from a school for Normals — uh…the general population.”