Your One & Only(19)
Jack, unable to stop himself, said, “Let her go.”
Carson didn’t let her go. Instead he tilted his head in Jack’s direction. “Ah, there he is. I knew I could get you to play. So, monkey-boy, I should let her go? What are you going to do about it?”
“Nice scar on your face—maybe I’ll give you a matching set.”
Carson’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t respond to Jack, but put his mouth to Althea’s ear and whispered something.
“Carson!” Althea pushed him away with both hands. “The Pairing’s over. I’m going home.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say,” Carson said. He seized Althea’s arm and led her to the bed where Jack still sat.
Carson was trying to play off his actions like he was joking, but there was something sharp and mean in his eyes. Jack was used to seeing those eyes narrowed on him. Seeing a Carson target an Althea, that was new.
Carson turned Althea so she was forced to face Jack, her back against Carson’s chest and his arm clutching her shoulders. “Maybe you and the monkey could have a good time together,” he said, his lips brushing her ear. “I can tell you feel sorry for him. I feel it when I touch you, so much it makes me sick. You clearly don’t like Carsons very much, and it’s so obvious you didn’t Pair with Hassan tonight. Maybe this thing is more what you’re into.”
Jack hated the Carsons, but this girl feeling sorry for him was somehow worse than the contempt and disgust he got from the others.
The Althea squirmed in Carson’s grasp. Before Jack knew what was happening, Carson shoved her. She screamed as she crashed into Jack. He caught her around the waist to stop her falling from the bed while Carson slipped out the door of the room and locked the latch behind him, trapping Jack inside with the Althea.
She looked up at Jack from his arms and then pushed away, falling against the wall. One hand pressed the bed frame while the other stretched before her as if warding off an attack. The shawl fell from her arm, uncovering the thin white scar circling her wrist. Jack’s eyes jumped to her face.
It was Althea-310. The only girl who had ever looked at him and smiled.
Now her face twisted with fear.
“Carson!” she yelled. “Get back here!”
Carson stood in the hall, his face in the window of the door. He rubbed the uneven scar on his eyebrow, a sly grin barely showing his teeth.
Chapter Five
ALTHEA
Althea was practically in Jack’s lap. She found herself looking into gray eyes that registered as much surprise as she felt, but she didn’t see any of her fear reflected back.
She scrambled away from Jack and yelled at Carson to let her out. What the hell did he think he was doing?
“This isn’t funny, Carson. Unlock the door!”
Carson sneered at her through the window. “If you’d rather Pair with him than me or Hassan, here’s your chance.”
Althea glanced at Jack, who’d backed away from her. Carson was right, she had felt sorry for him, but she’d also seen him dragged away from attacking someone, twice now. He was violent. As if to prove the point, he was suddenly at the door of the lab, pounding it as if he could break it down. When he gave up, he looked out at Carson. “Open the door.”
Carson laughed, and Jack’s face darkened. If he gets out of this room, he’ll kill Carson, she thought. It was in his eyes, like he was holding something in that might explode.
“Just let me out,” Althea said. “I swear, I won’t tell anyone.”
“Have fun, you two,” Carson said, rapping the window as if offering a friendly goodbye.
“Carson!” Althea yelled. “Don’t you dare leave me here!”
But it was too late. They could hear Carson laughing as he walked away down the hall.
Althea put as much distance between herself and Jack as possible in the small room. She crouched warily against the wall and watched him pacing the small space. It was no longer just that he didn’t commune that made him different, or even his strange-colored eyes. When the boys were all fifteen, they and Jack had been basically the same size. Now, only two years later, he was bigger than any of them. He was several inches taller than the Carsons, and at least a head taller than the Hassans.
One time, some little Gen-320s had chased an injured monkey into a tree. It had been hurt badly enough that it wasn’t able to climb down, and they threw sticks at it and jeered. Jack scared them away, practically growled at them until they scattered, and then climbed the tree to get the monkey. The others had laughed, gone back to calling Jack “monkey-boy” anytime they saw him. But that was when Althea had first noticed that Jack was less . . . willowy than the other males. Not quite as delicate as the Viktors, Samuels, Hassans, or Carsons. She hadn’t felt sorry for him then, even as the others taunted him mercilessly while he climbed. She hadn’t been able to stop staring at the way his hands grasped the thick branches, and his arms flexed as he pulled the weight of his body up limb by limb.
Jack stared mutely at the locked door and then turned away.
The humans were so strange. How did they convey feelings to one another if they couldn’t commune? They must have gone through their lives in an unbearable state of uncertainty, trying to guess at people’s feelings all the time, misreading the emotions of even those closest to them. Perhaps that was what made Jack seem so angry all the time. He was isolated, and no one in Vispera could feel what he did. Though, watching him kick the door in frustration, Althea realized it wasn’t all that difficult to discern his emotions, even without communing.