Your One & Only

by Adrianne Finlay

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “Stay away from him, Althea.”

  Whether he meant she should stay away from Jack or Samuel-299 didn’t matter to her. She didn’t want to hear anything Carson-312 had to say. She headed deeper into the trees. He followed her.

  “Samuel-299’s fracturing,” he said from behind her. “This business with the monkey-boy is destroying him.”

  Althea spun on Carson so abruptly he nearly ran into her. “Stop calling Jack a monkey.”

  Carson stepped back. “You do like him.”

  Althea kept walking. The banana trees closed in, darkening the path with their fanlike leaves.

  “I didn’t really believe it, but it’s true.” Carson said. “He doesn’t belong here, Althea. He knows it as well as you do. The Council should have eliminated him when they had the chance. The only reason they didn’t was to try to keep Samuel-299 from fracturing, but you saw him. It’s too late.”

  She hurried along the path, wanting to get away from Carson, yet he continued behind her.

  “You’re going to choose him over your own friends, your own people? How can you defend him? He would have killed Nyla.”

  “Leave Nyla out of it.”

  Carson grabbed her wrist, yanking her around to face him. “You know what they did together, don’t you? What he did to her?”

  “Shut up, Carson, or I swear—”

  “You swear what?” He pinned her hand and held her waist, keeping her from getting away. The leaves above rustled violently. “You wish it had been you, is that it? Are you jealous, thinking of him kissing her, and touching her, like this? I can’t understand you.” His fingers tightened as he glared. Althea felt his confusion; he truly wanted to figure her out. He shook his head, pleading with her. “Why do you have to be different?”

  “I’m not different. Get off me.”

  He shifted her trapped hand so it was between them, as if he was showing it to her. His fingers circled her scar, his thumb pressing the raised skin. “You’re not like your sisters; you never have been. I have a scar too, I know what it’s like to feel different. I’ll show you how to make yourself fit.” He leaned into her. “It’ll be okay. I can make you fit.”

  “Carson—”

  He was falling into her now, and she felt his desperation—​he wanted to possess her in some way. His grip bruised. She was about to call for help when the trees above them shook and a form dropped from the heavy branches, landing in a crouch behind Carson.

  “Jack!” Althea said with a surge of relief. Carson whipped around to face him.

  “Get away from her,” Jack said, his voice gentle, even as a sharp, knowing smile played across his lips.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Carson growled.

  Carson charged, but Jack dodged him with a nimble step. Althea scurried out of the way as Carson snarled and leveled a punch at Jack’s face. This time instead of dodging, Jack seized Carson’s fist as it came at him and at the same time slammed the heel of his palm into Carson’s throat, knocking him down. Carson rolled onto his back and gasped for air. Jack slid an arrow from a sheath on his back that Althea hadn’t noticed before. He nocked it in a bow that had been slung around his shoulder faster than Althea’s eyes could follow. It was pointed at Carson, who was looking up from the ground, the razor-sharp tip inches from his nose.

  “Jack, what are you doing?” she said.

  He paid no attention. With the tip of the arrow, he indicated the scar bisecting Carson’s eyebrow, his mouth twitching up. “Where’d you get this?”

  “You know, you bastard,” Carson wheezed, holding his throat and glaring at Jack. “I should have killed you that day. It’d save the Council the trouble of putting you down now.”

  Jack gave him a grin. “Wouldn’t have helped.”

  “Jack, let him go,” Althea said. “They’ll kill you! Samuel won’t be able to stop them, not if you hurt Carson again.”

  Jack’s narrowed eyes darted to Althea.

  To Carson, Jack said, “I want you to tell the Council something. Think you can handle that, clone?”

  “Screw you,” Carson spat.

  Jack’s smile remained fixed as he flicked the point of the arrow up, cutting across Carson’s unscarred eyebrow. Carson gave a shrill cry, pressing his hand to the sliced skin. Blood oozed between his fingers. Jack cocked his head to the side as if considering his craftsmanship.

  “A matching pair,” he said.

  Althea was frozen in place, trapped in a nightmare. Carson’s blood glazed the stones in the path.

  “You’re so dead,” Carson said, swiping blood from his eyes.

  The laughter left Jack’s face. It had never reached his eyes anyway. He kicked Carson’s nose with the heel of his boot. Carson screamed in pain, and Althea reeled back.

  Jack kicked again, this time hitting Carson’s ribs. “Tell the Council I’m not in a cage anymore,” he said. “I can hurt them as easily as I hurt you. Got that, clone?”

  On his hands and knees, Carson retched onto the dirt path, blood pouring from his nose, and saliva from his mouth.

  “Tell them—” He gasped wetly. “Tell them yourself, freak.”

  Jack lazily shoved him over with his boot so Carson fell sideways, grunting heavily and clutching his side.

  Dismissing Carson as useless, Jack acknowledged Althea for the first time. “What about you? Tell the Council what I said.”

  “Jack, I . . . What are you doing? How could you?” Tears burned her eyes, and she blinked them back. What had they done to him?

  His clothes were wrong. He wore a leather vest and dark, narrow boots. She was used to seeing him in the same clothes as the rest of them, the soft colors and loose cottons. A fierce, unfamiliar light shone in his eyes, wild and brutal.

  “You,” he said, considering her. “An Althea.”

  Althea could only nod. Tears streamed down her face.

  “You’re scaring me, Jack.” Saying the words made her think of Nyla, and she felt a throb of guilt that perhaps her friend had been right about Jack and she hadn’t listened.

  The dangerous smile played again on his lips.

  He came close to her, his movements swift and lithe. He buried his hand in her hair and grasped the back of her neck so she couldn’t move. “The Carson was right. You do like him,” he said.

  “Who?” she asked stupidly, and then he was kissing her. Thinking to push him away, she pressed her palms on his shirt and felt the control beneath, his muscles tense and strong. He wrapped his arm around her waist and crushed her against him, lifted her until her feet grazed the ground. With his other hand, he caressed her face, a feather-light finger trailing down her ear, playful and mocking.

  Althea couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Her own fingers reached up in numb reaction, touching his hand as it slid down the side of her neck. Something wasn’t right. The skin of his hand was gnarled and leathery. It twisted up his arm, unnaturally smooth, scarred as if from a long-ago burn. He smelled of wood ash and skinned animals. She sucked in a breath and pulled away, staring into his ocean-gray eyes, Jack’s eyes, but feral and feverishly bright.

  “Who are you?” she said in a tremulous voice.

  “Don’t you know?” His breath was hot in her ear. “I’m the snake in the garden.”

  He winked, and his hand slipped into the pocket of her dress. The heat of his skin against her thigh burned through the fabric and she closed her eyes, catching her breath at the intimate contact.

  As she struggled to make sense of what was happening, a yell came from behind of Carson attacking again. She felt herself thrust away, shoved to the ground. She heard the whistle of an arrow, a deadened thunk as it hit its mark, and then footsteps racing into the trees. When she looked up, she was alone but for an enraged, screaming Carson, his shoulder pierced by the still-quivering arrow.

  Her fingers trembling, she reached into the folds of her dress, seeking the strange weight in her pocket. Her hand e
merged holding the pear Nyla had given her, bruised and speckled with dirt from when, earlier, it must have fallen from her pocket. White and sticky with juice, the mark of a bite sank into the contours of her own face looking back at her.

  With brittle laughter still ringing in her ears, she dropped it on the ground as if it had teeth.

  Althea had no idea who to tell about the boy who looked like Jack but couldn’t possibly be Jack. None of it made sense. In the end she didn’t have time to work it out, because Carson shouted Jack’s name to anyone who would listen while the Samuels tended to his injured shoulder and broken nose in the clinic.

  She’d half dragged Carson to the clinic while he cradled his arm, crying with rage, pain, and humiliation. As he’d leaned against her, his emotions roared into her, threatening to overwhelm her. It was a relief to hand him off to the Samuels.

  Carson hadn’t been lying then about the night of the fire. He’d seen someone he believed was Jack sneaking into the labs. It was the same boy who’d found them in the banana grove, the same boy who’d kissed her. But that boy wasn’t Jack. They both were quick and strong, but this boy was wild, with a ferocity in him, a cold determination she couldn’t imagine in Jack, no matter how much the Carsons pushed him.

  Now Althea stood before the Council. They waited, patient and strangely unreadable, while she told the story of what had happened in the banana grove and encountering the boy who was clearly Jack’s brother. She ended by saying, “He looked like Jack, but it wasn’t him.”

  The Council members didn’t react. They simply rested their elbows on the table, their hands clasped in front of them.

  “You’re right,” the Inga finally said. “That wasn’t Jack.” Althea waited, frustrated by their lack of response. The whole way to the Council meeting, she’d been mentally rehearsing arguments, calculating how she could persuade them that the boy with the bow and arrow wasn’t Jack. She didn’t need confirmation of what she already knew. She wanted more. The Inga seemed to sense this. “The person you saw, it must have been Jonah.”

  “So you have Jack locked up, and you didn’t once consider it could have been someone else who did what you accused him of? That it could have been this Jonah?”

  Samuel-294, Samuel-299’s replacement on the Council, answered Althea. “Copan said he died over a year ago. We thought he was dead.”

  “How could you not tell him?”

  “Tell who?”

  “Jack, of course. How could you not tell him he has a brother?” Inga’s mouth turned down as if the thought had never occurred to her. And why would it? Jack wasn’t their concern. They’d never cared about him.

  “When we created the embryos from Jack’s genetic sample, it’d been several years since we’d had any success with survivable embryos. We sent some of them to Copan as well,” Inga said. “We had Jack, and they had their own human from the same sample—​another Jack. They didn’t call him that, of course. They didn’t give him a name at all. He named himself Jonah.”

  “But he’s not another Jack,” Althea said. “He’s different. He’s dangerous.”

  Samuel-294 shrugged. “Samuel-299 said Jonah’s violence was because of how Copan treated their human subjects, but he was always violent. That’s why he was terminated. Or at least he was supposed to have been.”

  “There’ve been others? How many times have you people done this? What happened to them all?”

  “Tread carefully, Althea,” the Nyla said. “We don’t need to explain ourselves to you. You’re still just an apprentice; you’ve never served on the Council. Maybe one day you will, and you’ll understand. We act in the best interest of the community.”

  It stung to be rebuked in the voice of her friend, even if she was an older Gen.

  “Jonah wanted me to tell you I’m not in a cage anymore. He was in a cage in Copan?” Althea regarded the Council members. They nodded silently. “And now he’s here.”

  “Now he’s here,” Inga said. “His message shows he’s here to hurt us.”

  “He’s the one who set fire to the labs,” Althea said.

  The Viktor nodded. “The fire destroyed the tanks. We don’t know if we can replace them in time.”

  “And even if we can rebuild the tanks,” the Mei added, “he stole the timers that monitor oxygen for the embryos. The birth of the next generation is at risk.”

  “He ruined our crops,” Hassan said. “We’ll have shortages now, and we have no seed grain for next year.”

  As if speaking to himself, the Samuel said, “We’ve never faced a threat like this.”

  “Jack was innocent the whole time,” Althea said.

  Inga abruptly stacked her notebooks as if she considered the Council meeting at an end. “That’s not your concern, Althea. Your concern should be the fate of Vispera.”

  “But he’s innocent,” Althea said. “You can’t punish him for something he didn’t do.” She looked to Althea-298, the Althea serving on the Council. The woman shook her head. She wouldn’t help, not when it had to do with Jack.

  “We’re all concerned about you,” Althea-298 said. “Your sisters have noticed your preoccupation with the human.”

  Althea-298’s gaze traveled the length of her, pausing at her blouse, torn and smeared with Carson’s blood, then came to rest on her face. This told Althea that she was being assessed, and she tried to steady her expression, settling her mind into calm neutrality. Althea-298 would see that too, of course, and Althea’s effort to hide something from the Council, including one of her own sisters, would be noted.

  “Three of your sisters have come to me about you,” Althea-298 said.

  “Which ones?” Althea asked.

  “Does it matter?” Inga said sharply.

  “They’re worried about you,” Althea-298 continued. “You’ve been quiet. They think you’re avoiding communing. I know you had a bad experience with the human boy, and now this episode with Carson-312. This is a dangerous time for you, which makes it doubly important that you connect with your sisters. You need to share your experiences with them.”

  Althea knew she was supposed to commune with her sisters, so they could understand one another and feel what the others were feeling. An image of the little Ingas and their scraped knees flashed through her mind.

  “I’m not fracturing, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she said.

  Althea-298’s condescending smile told her that it didn’t matter how calm she appeared or what she said. To deny fracturing was to suggest she didn’t care, and to admit it was dangerous. She couldn’t win.

  They would hold a Binding Ceremony for Samuel sometime soon. She used to think Binding Ceremonies were beautiful. The fractured brother or sister would finally be able to rest, at peace with the knowledge that the ritual would protect the community. For the first time, however, Althea imagined what a Binding would mean for her, and she didn’t feel peaceful at all. She pictured her sisters gathered around her, smiling as they took one another’s hands and watched the needle slip under her skin.

  When she looked up, the Council were studying her, their eyes watchful and dark. How much had they understood of her thoughts? From the looks on their faces, too much. Althea shivered, and the Inga’s eyes narrowed even more.

  “You’re to have nothing to do with the human from now on,” Althea-298 said, the warning clear in her voice. “And you’re not to be without the company of at least one of your sisters until we say otherwise. Is that clear?”

  She should simply have said yes and left. Instead, she leaned forward, her palms on the table. “But now you know Jack is innocent, you’ll let him go.”

  “He’s innocent in what sense, Althea?” the Inga Council member asked. “He and Jonah are the same person. What Jonah does, Jack could also do. This is what we know. It’s who we are, and it’s how we live our lives together.”

  “But Jack isn’t one of us.”

  “Exactly,” Inga said. “There’s never been a murder in Vispera, becaus
e no one here is capable of murder. Jonah killed people in Copan. What if Jack is a killer? Jonah is aggressive and violent, which means Jack carries a genetic strain for aggression and violence. We do not.” Inga stopped, her mouth set in a thin line. “Althea,” she said, “you care about the human, but make no mistake. He’s dangerous, just as dangerous as Jonah.”

  “He wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “You may think so, but he can’t care about you the way your sisters do. The way we all do.”

  As if to prove the point, Althea-298 hovered at her elbow. The meeting was over. Althea allowed the woman to take her arm to escort her back to the dorms and into the hands of her sisters. They walked silently through town, but Althea sensed the dim connection of her thoughts being prodded. Althea let it happen as she tried to work through everything the Council had said.

  At fifteen, Althea had gone with her sisters and the Gen-300 Altheas to visit Copan. They’d taken a riverboat, and Althea had shared with her sisters the sun-dried apples that Nyla-313 had made for her. Even dried, the apples were bright red and had petals, like roses. They’d tasted sweet, infused with honey and almonds, and Althea ate them with her sisters under the canopy of the boat listening to the white-headed capuchin monkeys hooting at them.

  The Gen-310 Altheas had never left Vispera before, and the trip to Copan was the first time she’d encountered the differences that existed among the three communities of Homo factus. Every community maintained the same population of nine hundred, the nine models replicated and forming the ten generations. They all held the same ceremonies and celebrations. The Altheas in Copan cut their hair to their shoulders, and their color of yellow was bright and sunny, not the soft butter yellow she and her sisters wore, but otherwise, at first, they seemed very much alike.

  After a few days among the Copan Altheas, however, Althea noticed more differences. A Copan Althea poked an annoying dog with a sewing needle under the table. A Hassan and a Viktor argued in the town square, eventually coming to blows. A physical argument wouldn’t be tolerated in Vispera, and Viktors in Vispera were focused on defusing quarrels, not engaging in them. The Kates in Copan had walked around with dim, unfocused eyes. The Altheas there told them it was because one of the Kates had worn the wrong shoes to a dance, and they were worried about fracturing. This reasoning had seemed extreme. Looking back, perhaps these were the kinds of incidents Samuel meant when he talked about being “broken.”