Your One & Only(37)

Althea saw Jack above the faces crowding her, and in a second knew what would happen next. No, don’t, she thought. It was an accident, I’m not hurt. But it was too late. Jack’s eyes already flashed with a rage he’d suppressed for years.

Bracing his hand on the railing of the dais, Jack leapt over it and lunged at Carson-312, easily dodging the Viktor closing in on him. Jack shoved Carson against the wall, pinning him there with his forearm.

“Touch her again, I’ll kill you,” he said.

“We’re not kids anymore. Why don’t you try?”

They both swung at each other, with the Viktor struggling to keep them apart. Each landed a blow, but it was Carson-312’s head that snapped back.

The Viktor was knocked aside as Jack threw Carson to the floor. Holding Carson’s shirt bunched in his fist, Jack hit Carson twice more before he froze and pulled back. As if realizing suddenly that they weren’t, in fact, children anymore, he stared at Carson. Jack was seeing what everyone else in the room already had. Even through his anger, Carson suddenly looked no different than the hurt and bloody fifteen-year-old boy he’d been in the schoolyard after Jack had attacked him. Pinned by Jack once again, facing his blows, Carson was terrified.

Jack paused and then, as if he couldn’t help himself, gave Carson one last blow, but it was a pulled punch, barely grazing the other boy’s chin. Jack shoved off him. Carson sat up, testing his bruised jaw.

“Get up,” Jack said. His body radiated a barely contained fury.

When Jack turned his back, Carson made to lunge at him again, but Samuel-299 pressed a hand to his shoulder. “Be still,” he said tersely, and Carson reluctantly complied, glaring furiously at Jack.

Three Viktors burst into the room, each holding an electric prod, the kind used to control cattle. They surrounded Jack, aiming the prods at him. Jack swept his hands into the air, surrendering. Even outnumbered and next to all the Viktors, weapons in their hands, he looked strong. Strong enough to kill anyone in the room, if that was what he wanted to do.

The Council members looked on stonily, the Inga especially. It was over, Althea realized. They were going to find him guilty, no matter what she said. Jack had locked Nyla-313 in the labs and then he’d attacked Carson-312. He’d sealed his fate.

“No,” Althea said. “He’s innocent. Samuel, tell them!”

Samuel-299 only turned away, his face creased in grief, as the Viktors put Jack back in the chains. The Council filed out of the room to make their decision, and Samuel-299 followed.

“Jack,” Althea said as he was hauled away, the chains jangling against the floor.

He gave her a small smile, as if to say he was sorry for disappointing her.

It wasn’t fair, though. The Carsons were setting him up; they had to be. The Council was too narrow-minded to see it.

Althea dropped onto the bench. Perhaps she was the one too blind to understand who Jack really was. She’d witnessed it more than once, the times he’d resorted to violence, as if a well of anger boiled inside him and lashing out was the only thing he knew how to do. And the evidence of the timer had been damning.

Nyla-313 passed by, close enough to reach out and touch her.

“I’m sorry, Althea,” she said.

Althea heard the sadness in her friend’s voice, and knew if she looked up she’d see tears in Nyla’s dark eyes. She didn’t look up.

“I know,” Althea said, leaning on the bench in front of her, resting her chin on her arms as Nyla-313 walked away.





Chapter Twelve


JACK


Jack once read a story in his mother’s journals about something that happened long ago. She’d uncovered the information while digging through years of research on genetics, humans, and the Slow Plague. It wasn’t a story Jack had ever seen in the textbooks the clones read in school.

In the early years of Vispera, the clones found evidence that not all humans had died during the Slow Plague, that there were pockets of life scattered here and there around the globe. Most reports turned out to be unfounded, but the clones sent search parties in any case to look for survivors. They collected about 120, mostly from the north, and brought them back. All data and records indicated that these were the only humans who’d survived the Slow Plague, and they were grateful for the prospect of a community, a civilized home. They’d struggled alone for over a decade to live in a dead world. They had seen Vispera, with its protective wall, its thriving population, and orderly rules, and had known, finally, they’d be safe.

The first thing the clones did was separate the humans, putting the women in a cluster of huts on the edge of town, while the men were to live in a barn in one of the far-off grain fields. The clones put them to work building the structures that would become the clone models’ dorms.

They didn’t allow the humans to have Pairing Ceremonies, even among their own population. If the humans began breeding, the clones knew where that would lead. They’d slowly populate the earth again, even starting with only 120 specimens. They would spread like ants, and in a short time, they would outnumber the orderly and controlled people of Vispera, whose population never increased beyond the capacity and desires of the community. And then the humans would take over, and once again the world would collapse with disease and disorder. So the humans were separated, monitored, and controlled. And they proved useful.