Your One & Only(18)

When he’d lived in the cottage, he and his mother would go for long walks in the jungle, a canopy of broad leaves above them and paths made by animals much bigger than either of them. Once, halting in the middle of dense vine tangles, she’d pulled down the branch of a thin tree with a crown on top shaped like a candelabra.

“Look,” she said, pointing to a train of ants. “They’re called Azteca ants. They live in the trees, and their whole lifetimes they never touch the ground.”

“The clones made them that way?” Jack asked.

“No. We’ve been around only a few centuries. These ants have existed for a thousand thousand years. They evolved.” She let the branch go, and it snapped back into place. “Everything evolves.”

“Vispera doesn’t,” he said. “The clones don’t.”

His mother laughed. “We like to think we’re perfect, don’t we? But everything changes, Jack. Everything.”

She taught him to watch where he stepped, to be wary of trees with needle-sharp barbs spiking from the bark and snakes coiled near rocks. She taught him to always be aware, that the jungle could easily kill you, and without the walls, there was no protection. But Jack had always felt safer out there with her than he did inside the walls of a town that, for him at least, seemed more menacing than the jaguars roaming the rainforest. Someday he would go back to live in the cottage. The clones almost never left the confines of Vispera except to travel by boat to one of their other walled-in towns. One day Sam would come to visit and find him gone, and he’d be free.

Flipping the pages of The Call of the Wild, Jack froze as noises came from the hallway. There were whispers and shuffling outside the lab door. Lab workers didn’t come by this late.

“I don’t know about this,” someone said in a hush as the door to the lab opened. It was a girl’s voice. “Where did Nyla and Hassan go?”

“I told them to search South Lab. We’ll catch up with them later,” a male voice answered. “Come on, quit acting like such a Gen-320 kid.”

The door to Jack’s room opened onto the lab. At night, he often didn’t close it, and he never locked it. Why should he? Nobody came by except Sam. After more shuffling, the owners of the two voices peered into his room. He heard a gasp from the girl as she saw him. He refused to react or even sit up from the bed. If kids were going to sneak into the lab to gape at him like he was some kind of specimen, he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of acting like he cared.

The girl was an Althea. The guy was a Carson. Of course it was a Carson.

The two approached him, the Carson with his thumbs hooked in his belt, the Althea standing slightly behind, wide-eyed. Resting his arm casually on his knee, Jack gazed back at them.

“What d’you know?” Carson said. “It’s monkey-boy.” Carson rocked back on his heels, pleased with himself.

The Althea glanced from Jack to Carson and back again, a frown suddenly on her face. “You knew he was here. You’ve got Nyla and Hassan off looking for Somnium, when you just wanted to come here.”

“What?” Carson shrugged. “He’s just sitting by himself. Maybe he’d like to have some fun with us.” He winked at Jack. “What do you say?”

Whatever the Carson had planned, fun wouldn’t have much to do with it.

Jack glanced at the Althea’s wrist, but her knit shawl covered it. He couldn’t tell which Althea she was. Not that it mattered, he told himself. They were all the same. There was no sense reading much into a smile two years ago.

Carson strode up to Jack and grabbed the book out of his hand.

“Hey!” Jack said.

“I just want to see what’s so fascinating,” Carson said, flipping through the pages.

Up close, Jack saw the jagged scar above the Carson’s left eye bisecting his eyebrow, which confirmed what Jack already knew. It was Carson-312. It was always Carson-312.

“Carson, stop it,” the Althea said. “You’re being a jerk.”

Carson turned to Althea. “You’re very concerned about the monkey-boy. Isn’t that interesting?”

“What are you talking about?”

Carson made a show of licking his lips. “Nothing. Just wondering why you care.”

“This is stupid. I’m going back to the dorms. I don’t like the way you’re acting.”

She headed toward the door of the lab, but Carson tossed the book to the floor and cut her off. He braced his arm against the wall by her head, blocking her way out. “You’re going home, just like that? Come on, have a little fun. You Altheas, you think you’re too good for us.” He lifted a strand of her dark hair and twirled it around his finger. “What makes you think you’re too good for us?”

She pulled her hair from his fingers and tried shoving him away. “It was just one Pairing, Carson. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

Carson pressed harder against her, not letting her get to the door. “I’m glad to hear it wasn’t a big deal. It’s still a Pairing night, you know. Maybe you’d like to make it up to me now?”

“Stop it.” Althea glanced nervously toward Jack.

Jack had no idea what they were arguing about or why he’d ended up the audience for their little drama, but he didn’t like the way Carson nuzzled his face into the Althea’s neck.