Your One & Only

by Adrianne Finlay

  She briefly considered whether he’d had something to do with Nyla being in danger, but she’d seen the way he raced away into the building. Jack had saved her, and he’d done it without thinking, ignoring the danger, almost dying himself. He couldn’t have tried to harm Nyla.

  Althea knew she should go back to the dorms and be with her sisters, but she wanted to make sure Nyla was okay. And Jack couldn’t leave. He’d stood earlier as if he wanted to, and Samuel-299 had almost imperceptibly shaken his head, causing Jack to sit back down, resigned.

  “Do they think you started the fire?” Althea asked finally.

  Jack shrugged. “Probably.”

  He acted like he didn’t care, but she could tell he did by the way he sank farther into his seat. A clock on the wall ticked steadily, punctuating the beeps from the monitors. Althea was warm now, but Jack’s shirt clung clammily against his chest. She unwrapped herself from the blanket and offered it to him. He accepted it this time, shrugging it over his shoulders.

  “I don’t know what happened with Nyla, but I was at the cottage with you last night. I’ll tell them.”

  Jack shifted in his seat. “Thanks,” he said.

  “She’s waking up,” a Samuel said, and Althea jumped from her chair.

  Nyla moaned and twisted her head away from Samuel-299’s penlight as he pried her eyelids open.

  “Nyla,” Samuel-299 said. “How are you feeling?”

  She brushed his hand away and squinted her eyes, seeing Samuel-299, Althea, and the other Samuels in the room.

  “Hey,” Althea said. “Are you okay?”

  Nyla smiled at Althea, reached for her hand. “My head hurts.”

  When they touched, Althea felt her friend’s confusion more strongly.

  “There was a fire. Do you know what happened?”

  Nyla’s smile dropped slightly as she sorted through her memory.

  The sound of a chair scraping the floor made Althea turn her head to see Jack making his way to the door. He’d been concerned all morning about Nyla, as anxious as she was to be sure she was okay. Now that Nyla was awake, he didn’t want to be in the room with her.

  Samuel-299 nodded to another Samuel, indicating that he should follow Jack out.

  “Jack?” Althea said. After everything he’d done to save Nyla, she didn’t understand why he wanted to leave now.

  Then Nyla saw Jack, and her clasp tightened on Althea’s hand. Nyla’s fear seeped into Althea like a current. Nyla sat up in the bed and Samuel-299 eased her back down.

  “What’s he doing here?” Nyla said, her voice shaking. “He tried to kill me!”

  Jack’s eyes widened. Althea saw the surprise there, but she couldn’t help from stepping protectively between him and Nyla. Jack saw her shield Nyla from him, and his shoulders tensed.

  Samuel-299 took a quick breath. “What’s she talking about, Jack?”

  Jack backed away, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, he tried to kill you?” Althea asked Nyla.

  “He was so angry,” Nyla said. “He started the fire; he locked me in the lab.”

  Samuel-299 spoke sharply to Jack. “Is that true, Jack?”

  “No.” Disbelief filled Jack’s voice. “When she told me what you did, I was mad, but, Sam, I wouldn’t hurt her!”

  “Jack,” Samuel-299 said, his whole body sagging over the bed.

  “Sam, I didn’t do this. You have to believe me.”

  “He was angry,” Nyla said, her nails digging into Althea’s hand. “Angry at me. There was no one else in the building last night!”

  Nyla shuddered at the sight of Jack. Althea could tell she wasn’t lying, that she believed what she said was true, but it couldn’t be. Jack had saved her.

  “I was with Jack last night,” Althea said, to Nyla and Samuel-299. “He couldn’t have started the fire.”

  Samuel-299 ignored Althea. Three Samuels converged on Jack at the same time four Viktor brothers came in to take him. They’d been just outside the door the whole time.

  His head still bowed, Samuel-299 said softly, “You should have run, Jack. Why didn’t you run?”

  Jack paled as if Samuel-299’s muted words were a blow to his face. The Viktors took his arms, which hung limp at his sides, all the fight drained from them. They led Jack from the room, and Nyla watched him go, still squeezing Althea’s hand.

  The next day the Council convened about the fire, and Althea was there not as official Council Recorder, but as a witness. One of her sisters sat at Althea’s little desk in the corner, taking the minutes.

  They’d rearranged the main room of Remembrance Hall in a way Althea had never seen before. The Council was no longer facing each other around their familiar table, but rather in a straight row facing out. Jack stood on a dais behind a wooden railing. As the members explained to the small crowd sitting in the hall, they had convened to discuss the explosion in the labs. They were calling Jack the defendant, or sometimes the subject. The way the Council members glared at Jack made Althea wonder just how hard they’d investigated. They seemed sure already of his guilt.

  Althea had read about court trials in old records. Vispera had no experience with such things. With only nine known and predictable personalities, breaking the law had become a thing of the past. The words Harmony, Affinity, Kinship were painted in bright oils on the wall of the hall and embroidered on the badges sewn into the Council members’ clothes. Jack stood alone before his accusers.

  He’d been led in by a Viktor and a Kate, his wrists clapped in chains they unlocked once he reached the dais. The metal jangled together in a sound that would have seemed almost cheerful if the image of them weren’t so disturbing. None of the brothers or sisters had ever been held by chains. It was too horrible to think about.

  She tried to make eye contact with Jack as he stood on the dais, but he stared straight ahead with a mask of indifference, as if girding himself against what was to come.

  Althea hadn’t been allowed to speak with Nyla-313 after the clinic, or to Jack. She’d failed to calm Nyla, or convince her that she couldn’t know it was Jack who started the fire. She hadn’t even figured out how Nyla ended up in the labs that night or what had made Jack so angry. All she knew was that she’d heard the explosion and seen the beginnings of the fire while Jack lay sleeping a few feet away from her.

  A Kate opened the meeting by outlining the details of the fire. All fifteen fire alarms in the building had been disabled, and most of the exits had been blocked from the inside. North Lab was in ruins, and all the amniotic tanks had been destroyed. The only person injured had been Nyla-313, although the Kate said three Viktors and a Hassan had been endangered as well. The Viktors had suffered smoke inhalation, and the Hassan had been hit by falling debris.

  Nyla-313 was brought in. She walked slowly, leaning heavily on the Samuel escorting her. He helped her into a chair facing the Council, with Jack to her left. The Council asked her a series of questions to establish the events that led to the fire.

  An Inga took over the questions. “And when was it you arrived at North Lab?”

  “Early in the evening,” Nyla said. “Around six.”

  “And you went straight to the subject’s room?”

  “Yes.”

  Althea sat up, listening for the question she was sure was next.

  “And when did the subject leave the building?” Inga asked.

  “About eight.”

  Althea couldn’t see Nyla’s face while she spoke. She saw the back of Nyla’s head, and the faces of the Council members, and Jack’s hard expression. Why didn’t they ask what happened while Nyla-313 was in the labs? What had led to Jack running away? The Council didn’t usually tolerate secrets. Unless, Althea thought, they already know what Nyla was doing there.

  “When he left, what did the defendant say to you?” Inga asked.

  Nyla paused, ordering the events in her mind. “When we were done with the Pairing, I stayed for a little wh
ile, and then Jack—​the subject, I mean—​he threatened me. He was aggressive and emotional. I was scared of him.”

  “What did he say?” Inga asked. “What did he actually threaten to do to you?”

  “What he said . . .” Nyla paused and closed her eyes, bringing up the scene. “He said he didn’t want to hurt me, which I took to mean that he was thinking of hurting me.”

  Inga stole a glance at the other Council members. “Go on,” she said.

  “Jack—​the subject—​left the room. I was bored stuck in there, and afraid he’d come back. After a while, I guess I fell asleep. When I woke up, the fire had started. I was trapped. I screamed over and over, and then the smoke came under the lab door. I guess after that, I passed out.”

  Althea tried to swallow past the tightness blocking her throat.

  That was what she’d missed. Jack and Nyla had Paired.

  While Nyla gave her testimony, Jack never turned to Althea. His eyes were focused, staring at the floor. He remained outwardly impassive, with only the tension in his jaw betraying his intense concentration.

  Althea’s mind wandered around the question of why she even cared about the Pairing. She gazed almost without seeing at the back of Nyla’s head and, before long, realized her hands were clenching the fabric of her scarf and twisting a thread through her fingers. The hem had frayed badly.

  Dimly, she heard Inga say, “What was he emotional about?”

  “I don’t know,” Nyla said, her voice raised in confusion. “He kept talking about my sister, Nyla-314, and he seemed upset that she hadn’t come to see him. He’d wanted to Pair with her, I guess. There was, I don’t know, something he wanted to say to her. But she was home, working on the hybrids for our apprenticeship.”

  Jack blushed at the mention of Nyla-314.

  So it hadn’t just been Nyla-313. Of course, that made sense. If Nyla-313 Paired with Jack, other Nylas would have as well. It simply made it awkward that there were only one of Jack and ten of them. If he’d had nine brothers, it could have all been accomplished in one evening, quite a bit more simply. Althea tried to relax her hands again. She smoothed the twisted fabric of her scarf. None of it should mean anything to her, after all. Yet even as she had the thought, an unpleasant warmth crept up her neck that reddened her cheeks like prickly wool just under her skin. With a deep breath, she tried to still her hands. She looked up to find Jack looking back at her. For the first time in the whole proceeding, their eyes met.

  He was still so strange, that was the problem. Everyone in the room, all they saw when they looked at Jack were the ways he was unlike them. She stared at his face, examining those things that made him different. The planes of his cheeks, the pale, straight eyebrows, the broad, squared shoulders. The colorless ocean-gray of his eyes.

  His eyes, she realized after considering for a moment, weren’t as strange as she’d first thought. If she looked closely at them, framed as they were by the foreign lines of his face, they now seemed rather familiar. They were bright and lucid, like the sky on an overcast day, or the mottled shadows along the path to the river, the one she and her sisters took to capture fish in woven baskets. She’d thought he was so different, but he wasn’t, not really. She’d never known anyone like him, but with an overwhelming clarity, she found she knew him. She could see inside him, and she knew him.

  “He tried to kill me,” Nyla told the Council, and the Inga nodded as if she sympathized, while Samuel-299 rubbed the skin of his brow.

  On the dais, Jack shook his head in frustration. He opened his mouth, thought better of it, and then raised his hand instead, seeking the Council’s attention.

  Inga turned slowly to him. “What do you want?”

  “I’d like to speak,” Jack said quietly, apparently striving for calm. The Inga silently consulted the other Council members and then nodded. Jack said, “I never tried to kill Nyla. I’d never do that.”

  “Well, did you threaten to kill her?” Inga said.

  “No, never. I just wanted to get out of the room.”

  “Did you threaten to hurt her?”

  Jack hesitated. “No, I didn’t.”

  Inga shuffled some papers on the table and picked one up, read from it. “Did you say to Nyla-313, I don’t want to hurt you?”

  “Yes, but that’s not the same—”

  “And you did seek to lock her in your room?” The question, ringing through the meeting hall, sounded to Althea like a decisive statement.

  Jack struggled to frame an answer and then sighed. “Yes, I did,” he said finally. “I wanted time to get away without the Council knowing. I just wanted to leave, that’s all.”

  After a long moment, the Inga, scowling, turned back to the Council members.

  Well, Althea thought. That made things worse.

  The meeting hall closed in on her, stuffy and hot. Sweat trickled down her back, and she thought about what Samuel-299 had said the Council would do when they changed their minds about tolerating Jack. The room was suffocating. A wordless sound escaped her, causing the Council members to pause and look up. They were all looking at her now, the Council, Samuel-299, Nyla-313, Jack. She clung to the bench in front of her and pulled herself to her feet. The Viktor at the door opened it for her. The floor wavered.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Jack take a step in her direction, as if moving to help, despite the guard.

  “Althea?” Samuel-299 said from the panel.

  She tried to speak, to excuse herself for disrupting their proceedings, but was afraid she’d pass out if she didn’t get through the door.

  She made it to the hallway and stumbled into one of the Samuels. He caught her arms.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  No, she wasn’t. She couldn’t sit in the meeting hall anymore, couldn’t listen to her friend talk about Jack that way. She couldn’t watch the faces of the Council members, who were obviously only biding time until they pronounced Jack guilty and then . . . did what? Killed him? She couldn’t bring herself to look into Jack’s eyes anymore, eyes that seemed to see something in her that made his lips part the slightest bit, as if he was about to say something only she could hear far across the room.

  Althea pushed the Samuel away. She sat on the bench outside the meeting hall doors, catching her breath. She longed for her sisters. They would calm her, ease the panic that overwhelmed her.

  As the shakiness ebbed, Althea leaned her head back on the wall, wishing she hadn’t left the meeting hall. Now she wouldn’t know what was happening.

  The slam of the entrance door from the Commons jangled her nerves. It was Carson-292. She had noticed he wasn’t representing the Carsons in the meeting hall. He led the younger Carson-312 with him, a small device clutched in his hand. It was shiny and silver, with copper wires twisting around it.

  Althea stood, worried at their determined strides.

  “What are you doing here?” she said to Carson-312.

  Carson-292 brushed her aside and strode toward the double doors of the meeting hall. “This doesn’t concern you, Althea.”

  “Wait.” Althea scurried in front of them. “Is it about Jack?”

  “I saw him, Althea,” Carson-312 said. “I saw him start the fire.”

  Althea pointed her finger in Carson-312’s face. “That’s a lie, Carson. He was with me when it started.”

  Carson-292 had walked ahead of them. He turned back to Carson-312 and Althea, his hand resting impatiently on the handle of the door.

  Carson-312 smiled at Althea, an ugly smile, shrewd and calculating. Pointing to the device held by Carson-292, he said, “See that thing? It’s a timer. It was found in the rubble this morning. It was stolen from the tanks in the lab. He was with you when the fire started, because he made sure of it. He’s using you as an alibi.”

  She shook her head. “You’re setting him up. You hate him, you always have.”

  “Carson!” Carson-292 said sharply.

  Althea followed them into the meetin
g hall; the proceeding was disrupted with the entrance of the Carsons. Still standing on the dais, Jack glanced uncertainly at the Carsons, but seemed relieved to see Althea again. She was supposed to be there to get him out of this mess.

  Althea blocked Carson-312 from moving up the aisle of chairs. “You can’t lie to the Council.”

  “Althea.” He placed his hand gently on her shoulder. She batted it away, and his eyes hardened. “He’s dangerous. You know it as well as I do. We’ve put up with enough from him, and it’s time someone stopped him.”

  Althea watched helplessly as Carson-292 approached the Council and placed the device on their table, telling them what it was.

  “You saw him in the labs?” the Inga asked Carson-312.

  “I saw him sneaking toward the labs last night.”

  “Then why wait until now to say so? Why didn’t you tell someone right away?” Althea asked from across the meeting hall.

  “Sit down, Althea,” the Inga said. She turned back to Carson-312. “And you’re sure it was the defendant you saw?”

  “Positive. He’s been stealing from the labs, things like this timer, and he snuck out last night. Everything going wrong, it’s been him the whole time. He ruined our fields, he stole the timers on the tanks, and he destroyed the labs. Who else could it have been? He thinks he can tear down our community, and I’m not going to stand around watching it happen.”

  “He has no proof!” Althea said, yelling this time.

  “Althea, stop,” Jack said, in a voice meant only for her.

  She didn’t stop, though. She pushed past the Viktor and made her way to Carson-312. He stood in front of the Council, smug and arrogant. She wanted to hit him, an urge toward violence she’d never felt before. She stood in front of him to block him from the Council table, making them listen to her. “Jack was with me last night, outside the wall.”