Your One & Only(77)
The fight continued, but the door to the Sample Room swung wide. Plaster and porcelain from broken statues littered the floor. Samuel held the trigger and looked out the glass wall of the Ark. His gaze went to the two boys. Sweat and blood dripped down their faces. Jonah had a wooden spear from a display of art on the wall. He used it as a club, but Jack blocked it with the cast on his arm until he finally grabbed it and snapped it in half. They struggled, rolled, and then came to a stop, each with a jagged spike at the other’s throat. If either of them wanted, the other could be dead in an instant. Their chests heaved, and their faces, pale and precisely boned, tightened with determination. Neither boy moved.
“Don’t,” Jack said.
“Why not?” Jonah said, the words forced through clenched teeth. “You think it matters that a clone cares about you? That means nothing. You know nothing. You’re so weak, so stupid. God, I can’t believe how stupid you are, caring about them, wanting them to care about you. You don’t need her, or the Samuel. I didn’t need them! I didn’t have them, and I was fine!” Jonah shook Jack. He was so angry, but Althea couldn’t tell anymore at who or what. “I was fine!” he said again, his voice breaking.
Althea had had enough. Mindful of the thin wire connecting the explosives to the trigger Samuel held, Althea unbuckled the belt and freed herself. She ran from the Ark, straight for Jack and Jonah, throwing herself between them. Their fists still clutched the makeshift daggers as she pried them apart.
“Stop this!” she cried, feeling the unrelenting press of their bodies as they strained toward each other. The tendons of Jonah’s neck corded against his skin.
It was Jack who relented first, and when she felt him give way, she pushed as hard as she could. His startled eyes broke from Jonah and, as if emerging from a dream, he took in Althea, out of the Ark and no longer holding the trigger.
Jonah followed Jack’s gaze to Sam. He pushed Althea away from him.
“What are you doing?” Jonah said to Samuel.
Echoing Jonah’s confusion, Jack said, “Sam?”
Samuel stood in the open doorway of the Ark. “Get out of here, out of the main cavern if you can.”
Jack stared blankly. “What?”
Samuel offered a bleak smile. “I’ll close the door, but I don’t know if it’ll hold.”
Althea saw the moment realization hit Jack. He looked down sharply, veiling the riot of emotions that distorted his features.
“There’s no time left,” Samuel said. “It’s morning. The brothers and sisters are awake. The Council will know where we are.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Jack said angrily.
“I know the path we’re on,” Sam said. “Jonah wants to destroy the Ark for revenge, but I have my own reasons. I understand now that it’s the only thing that can save us.” He looked at Jonah. “I know what they did to you in Copan. I won’t let that happen again, to anyone.”
Jonah stepped away, blinking in confusion.
“No,” Jack said.
“It shouldn’t have come to this,” Sam said. “I should have done more. But you have to leave Vispera, Jack. Make your own life. Take Althea and go. Promise me, Jack.”
Jack could only shake his head. Samuel came forward and, careful of the explosives, took Jack in a tight embrace.
“No, Sam,” Jack said, his voice muffled. “I won’t let you.”
Samuel looked at Althea from across Jack’s shoulder. It was a brief glance, but in that glance, they communed.
She felt from Samuel a prism of emotion; intricate, difficult, but strong enough to take her breath away. Even with both of them fractured, as they surely were now, it filled every limb of her body like bright multicolored light, as if he’d been holding on to this one last connection they shared, letting it build until he could use it for his own purpose before losing it forever.
Communing with Samuel was stronger than anything she’d felt from communing before, even with her sisters. She didn’t just feel his emotions, she saw the world through his eyes, and she saw into his mind. In the darkness of the cave she saw all three of them, Jonah, Jack, and herself. They looked so young, and she understood that that’s how Samuel saw them, as so terribly young. Then she saw beyond what was in front of Samuel’s eyes, to the brothers and sisters now rushing to the Tunnels, knowing something was wrong, to the community of Vispera with an expanse of cloudless blue sky behind it, and farther than that, she saw three centuries of Homo factus reaching back through time. Samuel saw their history differently than she ever had. He imagined them in a boat drifting with a current, leaving a long, dark chevron behind them in the water, and in front, a still, glassy surface the boat hadn’t yet touched, reflecting like a dark mirror the future ahead.
Althea gasped at what he saw there—not just what he saw, but what he knew. If he didn’t act now, Vispera and everyone in it would die. Perhaps it was too late already. Samuel showed her the dwindling future generations struggling desperately to survive, crawling and clawing their way over countless twisted, suffering bodies. Bodies they’d made from the glass slides in the Ark. It wasn’t just the cruelty to the humans that Samuel feared, it was the damage they did to themselves in enacting such cruelty. The same damage Samuel felt inside himself now.
The image shifted then to Jack. He was an infant smiling in a cradle, and then a child running through tall grass into the Inga’s arms. Jack’s and Inga’s images separated, connected, released and caught like woven fibers of two colors joining into a single vivid picture. Althea felt Samuel’s despair, his love, and his all-embracing need to fulfill a promise he’d made a long time ago.