One (One Universe)

by LeighAnn Kopans

  Almost anything.

  I open my mouth, about to sling another retort his way, and then a strange ripping sound steals through the air.

  Elias gasps and sits upright. “They’re back,” he chokes.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Before I can blink again, a robe-wrapped emaciated figure appears in front of Fisk. Her hands are cuffed behind her, and her head still has red marks where the nodes were attached. She whips around to assess Elias, looks him up and down, and her eyes flash blue. It’s Nora.

  “It’s nice to see you awake, Miss VanDyne. I hope the titanium cuffs aren’t uncomfortable. Security measure, you understand,” Fisk says, smirking.

  In one swift motion, Nora pulls her wrists apart, breaking the chain and shattering the cuffs, and lifts Fisk off the ground by the throat.

  “I think we get stronger the more pissed off we are. But since you hacks didn’t test for that… What do you think, Leelee?” she calls over her shoulder.

  Fisk’s eyes practically bulge out of his head.

  “Holy shit,” Daniel breathes. He looks back at Elias, who stares back at him with wide eyes. I gather that this super strength is new.

  Another ripping sound follows, and one of the guards cries out. Lia has teleported between two of them and busted out of her cuffs as well. She elbows one of them between the legs while wrenching the guns, one at a time, out of the holster of another. She cocks one and tosses the other to Nora.

  Nora fixes her eyes on Fisk, who struggles and gasps. She wedges the gun against the inside of his jaw and takes another hard look back at Elias. “This won’t buy you much time.”

  “But —” Elias sputters.

  Nora shakes her head hard and steps back to brandish her gun at the rest of security as Lia rips through the air again to take down the guard calling for reinforcements at the main door.

  In an instant, the room fills with 30 Fisks, all grinning maniacally, all dangling vials of the serum he knows I want.

  “What the…”

  “He can make duplicates,” gasps Daniel. “With kinetic energy?”

  “Yeah, but they’re not that strong. They can barely think for themselves,” says Lia. “And he forgets that girls who see through matter can tell which of these ugly assholes is the real Fisk. I mean, he’s practically a One himself.”

  “You can tell?” the Fisks all sputter at once, and panic runs wild in their eyes.

  Nora laughs. “Yes. Half-assed duplicated matter looks different than the real thing. Idiot. Couldn’t one of these fancy electrodes show you that?”

  She looks at me as she steps back from of a crowd of 10 Fisks, then trains her gun on one, nodding her head upward once.

  “This one, Merrin,” she says.

  Fisk gives an anguished shout and yells, “Take them all down!”

  His duplicates swarm toward Leni and Daniel, who squeeze hands and send streams of flame in their faces. Mr. Hoffman dashes in, yelling, and grabs for one of the vials of serum a dupe is holding. A strangled sob escapes my throat as the white-hot fire devours his clothing and blackens his skin before my eyes.

  Nora and Lia each pick a crowd of dupes and start firing. I grab Elias around the waist and yank him off his hospital bed with all my strength, ducking for cover. I pull off his sweatshirt that I wore over here and tug it down over his head. He still shivers beneath it.

  As the duplicates’ bodies hit the ground, they dissolve into shimmering nothingness, and Fisk screams and drops to his knees.

  Nora presses her gun to his temple. “Just try to muster up some more kinetic now, you sorry excuse for a human being. I dare you.” She looks at Elias. “We can take care of ourselves,” she says, her voice stronger than I would expect for having been in disuse. “You just take care of the lab.”

  “There’s no way you two can — ” Elias says, just as Lia draws back and delivers a roundhouse kick to one hulking security guard, sending him skidding halfway across the arena and leaving him unconscious on the floor.

  “We. Can take care. Of ourselves.”

  Still holding the gun to Fisk’s temple, Nora inclines her head to read the label on the vial he still clutches in his hand. “Merrin,” she says without looking away. “I think that President Son of a Bitch here was about to hand this over to you.”

  Without even thinking, I drop Elias’s hand and stride over, grab it, and tuck it greedily into my bag, inside the sleeve of the shirt I stuffed in there, then hurry back to him.

  Nora speaks to Fisk again, her voice getting louder and steadier each time. “Now. You’re going to let my baby brother and his friends out of here. And you know how they’re going to leave. So you might as well call all your goddamned security off the roof.”

  Fisk groans.

  “Fisk,” she growls. “don’t make this harder on yourself than it has to be.”

  “Guards,” he croaks. “Call off the missile surveillance.”

  Lia shouts a warning from where she stands, 20 feet away. “You can quit playing these games, you asshole.”

  “I don’t know what you’re — ”

  Nora delivers a swift elbow to the side of his head, knocking him flat on the ground. She digs her heel into his collarbone, edging it against his esophagus, and trains the gun between his eyes.

  “You know damn well what I’m talking about! The lasers! The lasers, too!” Lia shrieks, her eyes growing fiercer by the second. “I’ll be damned if my baby brother’s getting sliced to ribbons after all this!”

  “Lia,” Nora says, much more quietly, shaking her head once.

  “And the lasers,” Fisk moans.

  Nora looks back at us one more time, her eyes darting between Elias and me, who nods curtly, his eyes glistening.

  Elias swings his legs down from the bed. “Get ready, you guys,” he chokes to me, Leni and Daniel. Leni whimpers. The smell of melting plastic and smoldering cloth fills the air. They’ve got to be exhausted after torching half the place.

  Fisk’s voice, weak and wheezing, comes slithering through the air. “You’ll never be anyone, Merrin Grey. Not without us. And you’ll never be able to come back after this. You’ll regret it the moment you leave the arena. You know the life of a One is… Well, it doesn’t have much of a point.”

  No, it doesn’t.

  No, it doesn’t, I want to scream, but life without Elias doesn’t either. And gaining a Super for myself while others pay the price certainly doesn’t.

  Elias cocks his head toward the wall about 10 feet away at one edge of the testing arena, toward the huge red button that will open the ceiling. He looks up at the hatch that unfolds to the sky.

  “Get ready,” he mouths. Leni and Daniel step closer to us.

  Fisk’s left the door to the lab with all our formulas — all the ones except those I’m smuggling out — gaping open. Elias hasn’t missed it. His gaze burns past me right at the door.

  Elias drops his hand from mine, holding his palm out flat. He sends a blast of air against the ground, swooping one of the medical-grade oxygen tanks up from the floor and sending it careening through the air. I have no idea what he’s trying to do — create a distraction? — until it hits the doorjamb and cracks open, hissing.

  Elias says, “Flame on, Len.”

  Leni clamps her eyes shut, reaches out, squeezes Daniel’s hand tight, and stretches her other one out toward the door. A powerful column of flame shoots out and torches the inside of the lab, together with all its vials, in less than 10 seconds.

  Elias sends a stream of air straight at the button. The blades of the ceiling split open, petals of a flower gliding out toward the edges like they’re welcoming the sunlight, which now streams down into the area in ash-filled beams.

  Some of the guards, coming out from cover now, try to tackle Nora and Lia, but Nora rips over to Lia in a flash. They join hands and teleport out so quickly and violently that the whole room trembles.

  Elias wraps his arms around me, and I almost sigh with relief at the sens
ation of takeoff. Together, we zoom across the floor, picking up Leni and Daniel, grunting against their weight.

  Now we really lift off to go back up through the ceiling. I put everything I have into helping Elias push us out of that roof — this is our only chance.

  From 20 feet above the arena, I see my parents roll the boys out a side door to a waiting car hands placed protectively on their bodies. I have to trust Mom and Dad now, with Michael and Max at least. I’ll go crazy if I don’t.

  Fisk limps into the lab, making a strange noise like moaning and screaming combined, and another stray oxygen tank rolls into the room after him. I wonder if Elias did that, too.

  A great boom sounds, and a plume of flame shoots up after us. The fire must have reached the second oxygen tank. We just destroyed the years of research about how to make Ones into Supers, how to transfer powers, and who knows what else?

  We did our job.

  So why is my heart sinking into my stomach even as we climb up into the sky and out of the arena?

  The ceiling closes, probably automatically, before any of the security can jump on a hovercraft or summon a flier to chase after us. I know they won’t die unless they’re stupid enough not to close the door to that lab. One good thing about an underground compound is that it’s very hard to blow up — the lack of renewable oxygen will quench any explosion. The arena will still be there.

  The rest of the Hub’s research won’t suffer — that, at least, is something.

  We thud down, and the frozen grass field crackles beneath our feet. Leni and Daniel gasp and place their hands on their knees to try to catch their breath — they’re not used to the sensation or quick ascent of flying like we are.

  Elias snags my wrist and whips me into him for a tight hug. I can’t tell if he’s gripping my waist this hard on purpose or depending on me to keep him upright. He breathes hard against the biting cold air.

  “Thank you,” he chokes as he presses his face into my hair.

  I squeeze him even tighter. Having him here in my arms after all that is almost too good to be true.

  “Can you run?” I ask him.

  “I think so. Better than I can fly right now, at least.” He lowers his voice. “And we can’t leave them.”

  I turn out from Elias’s grasp, as much as I hate to. “You guys,” I say to Leni and Daniel, “can you handle a sprint?”

  They both nod, still trying to catch their breath.

  “Let’s put a good mile behind us.”

  We run for a very long time, until the sun is well into the sky. Our lungs huff hot air into the cold, pushing clouds out against the perfectly clear white-blue expanse ahead. It’s a new day.

  The tracks of Leni’s tears have left bright, freckled lines through the soot on her face. Daniel stares down at the dirt like there’s a weight on the back of his neck.

  No matter how cool Daniel acts, I know how much he loves his parents, how much he doesn’t want to disappoint them. He gestures toward my messenger bag. “Did you get any of ours out?”

  “Let me…” I look down into my bag. I know for a fact I got one of his and one of Leni’s, at least. I debate for a split second. Do I send them with this stuff, with no knowledge of how to inject it or exactly what will happen if they do?

  All I know is that if I were them, I would kill me for keeping it from them.

  I fish out a couple of their vials, hold them out between my fingers. He glances at me quickly, takes them, murmurs a “thanks.”

  Leni looks at him with tears in her eyes, then squeezes his hand and shifts her stance.

  “We’re going West,” Leni says. Maybe finding work, maybe hiding out. Definitely not going back to school. Just until we know things are settled. Until we know we’re not in danger. We don’t want to lose you.”

  “Okay,” Elias says. “Here’s what you do. When you settle anywhere, put an ad in the local paper’s classifieds. Look for a biochem tutor with eleven years’ experience. And, uh…a personal interest in the topic.”

  Daniel finally smiles. “You going all badass spy on me, man?”

  Elias punches him on the shoulder. There are some things I’ll never understand about boys.

  Then Daniel pulls Elias into a fierce hug. Leni and I grin at each other, and for the first time since we broke into the Hub, I cry. Giant tears roll down my cheeks, and I can’t even move.

  She crosses over to me. “Hey, it’s gonna be okay.”

  “I’m just…” I snot and sniffle into her shoulder. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Her whole body shakes, and I can’t tell if she’s laughing or crying or shivering.

  “For what?” she asks, and I hear the smile in her voice.

  “I don’t know. For dragging you here. For my mom. I don’t know. For everything.”

  “Listen.” She lowers her voice, glances at the guys, who talk in quiet voices. Daniel grips the back of his neck and scuffs the ground with his foot. “I would have ended up at the Hub again anyway, okay? Except maybe…it would have been in some green goop. With no Daniel, and no one to save me. And Fisk wouldn’t have… Well, everyone wouldn’t have heard that. Heard what happened to us. To me.”

  I nod a little. Her eyes flash over to Elias. “Take care of him, okay? We… He’s like my brother, and he can’t see his real sisters for a long time, so…”

  “I know.” I nod again, and a lump rises in my throat.

  “I remember now.” Leni says, looking at nothing in the distance. “I remember… It was right at the beginning. I remember your mom. But she was kind. And then…I remember him. Fisk. He was like this even then. Now maybe he’s a little worse than he was.”

  “Yeah. Guess we don’t know, do we?”

  “No. And we won’t.”

  I don’t tell Leni about the duplicates I glimpsed lining up along the wall on our way out. No point in mentioning the possibility that Fisk, in some form, will be back. Not now.

  I hug her one more time.

  “You guys be careful. We’ll see you again. Maybe take this whole shabby operation over,” she says.

  “How are you traveling?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “There’s a car rental place half a mile south if my GPS is right. Daniel has a debit account and plenty in it to get us overseas if we need to go.”

  “Oh. I didn’t realize…”

  “I don’t think anyone really did. But, yeah. Trust fund kid, and he just turned eighteen, so…” She huffs out one laugh. “Okay. Now let’s laugh a little. So they’ll think we’re alright.”

  I do my best to do that. It feels like an eternity since I last laughed, a memory stuck in my old, beautiful life that I used to think was so ugly. Leni goes off with Daniel, and without another word, they duck into the woods and they’re gone.

  I look over at Elias again, and I see him tremble just before he stumbles and falls to the ground.

  “Hey! Hey.” I run over and wedge my shoulder under his armpit. “What’s up?”

  “Just the medication from my drip, I think. I’m still a little weak. Plus…” He winces. “…I think Nora and Lia gave me something.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He reaches over, grabs the Swiss army knife from the pocket inside my bag where I always keep it, and slices it across the palm of his hand. I gasp, but he heals within seconds.

  “My skin feels like a suit of pain right now,” he says, shrugging and smiling a little. “I figured it was a pretty good guess.”

  “Okay,” I say, my head spinning at the thought that Elias is no longer a One, wondering if it’s permanent and whether he can give it to me, too. But I won’t let myself obsess over that right now. “Okay. Let’s keep walking.”

  We trudge along in the direction of old Route 136. After a few minutes, when Elias seems to regain some of his strength, he says, “They figured it out.”

  “The Hub? I know.”

  “They paired me with another One who goes weightless — a kid. A couple years older than Michael
and Max, maybe. Dragged him in from New York or something. Old enough for his parents to be frustrated he hadn’t changed yet.”

  “What happened?” Panic grips my heart. I wanted to be the only one who could do this to him. I need to be the only one.

  “Strapped our arms together. Gave us some enhancing serum. We scooted around the arena.”

  “Scooted?” My relief comes out in a weak giggle.

  Elias presses the heel of his hand against his eye. “Um. Yeah. I didn’t get it. Still don’t get it. Kid cried the whole time. The serum… It burns. But we didn’t fly. Could never race with cars or anything. Not like you and me.”

  I put my head on his shoulder, turn it to the side, and kiss wherever my lips land. His collarbone, I think. He doesn’t turn into me.

  “No one’s like you and me,” I say.

  I hug Elias as close to me as possible, my skinny arm like a thick rope around his waist, cutting into his sweatshirt, praying my slight frame can support him. I feel his torso’s shakiness — his entire body still trembles. When will this weakness resolve? It has to — soon.

  “How much does your Dad know? About what they were doing with the girls?”

  Elias stiffens. “I don’t know. But if I find out it’s anything other than ‘nothing,’ I’ll kill him.”

  I’m so angry at my own parents, knowing what they hid from me. I can’t imagine what thoughts run through Elias’s head right now. He doesn’t have any answers, and he has no way of knowing when he’ll get some.

  After sitting there, on the side of the freezing, pocked road for 10 minutes, then 20, Elias starts to fidget.

  “Sorry about that,” he says.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I will be.”

  He turns to the side, smells my hair. I hate it when he does that. But when he does, it stops him shaking so much, and that makes me smile. I would do anything to have strong Elias back. I would do anything to have strong Merrin back. Now I’m left hoping with everything I have that we can find a way to be strong together.

  Finally, after many breaths in and out, Elias says, “It’s all our fault, you know. If we hadn’t kept the secrets…if we hadn’t hidden what we can do…”