Your One & Only(45)

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 emerged 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.”