One (One Universe)

he can tell I’m dying to see my own.
    I wince and take in a sharp breath through my teeth as the lancet bites into the skin of my index finger. It’s not the pain that bugs me. It’s picturing that tiny needle attacking me at the click of a button.
    He pulls out a slide and some solution while I set up the microscope he brought for the purpose. I run my hands over its surface, distracted by the high-tech brilliance, when he says, “You and Elias are together a lot.”
    I nod, slowly. He hasn’t brought up Elias, hasn’t talked to me about anything but chem, since that first day.
    Suddenly, Mr. Hoffman looks up from preparing the slide. “Why do you spend so much time with that boy, Merrin?”
    I sit up straight, removing my hands from the scope. “Well, I…” I clear my throat. “He’s my boyfriend, Mr. Hoffman. I thought you knew that.” It feels weird to refer to Elias that way since we never defined our relationship as “talking” or “going out” or “together.” We’ve always just been “us.”
    “And yet you don’t go to many school activities together.”
    “We’re…uh…we’re both quiet,” I say in a rush. “We like to hang out at home, I guess.” I would tell him what we’ve really been doing in our free time. I would. I want to. Every cell in my body wants to get closer to the Hub, and I know this is the way to do it.
    But the way he looks at me, his eyes burning, prying, desperate — it’s not okay. And I know it’s not okay to tell Mr. Hoffman from the Hub about us, about what we can do. Not here, not like this. Not without Elias next to me. This is the one thing about meeting with Mr. Hoffman I would have to tell him.
    After all, he is half of it. Half of us.
    Mr. Hoffman prepares a second slide with the last of the blood from the tiny vial and slips it in his bag.
    “What’s that for?” I ask. I swear the twisting in my stomach makes my words waver.
    “The last piece of your application.”
    “You need my blood for me to work there?”
    “Well, yes, of course. It’s for security, among other things.”
    I laugh, and my stomach stops twisting so much. They can do twenty different tests for drugs if they want. I slide the stylus back into the side of my tablet and start packing up to go.
    “Do you…love him?” Mr. Hoffman asks.
    My heart seizes in my chest. I don’t know if it’s because of the question or the way he asked it, but I suddenly want to get out of there, more than I’ve wanted to get out of anywhere in my life. Even more than that summer morning in the kitchen with Mom and Dad when they told me about the transfer to Nelson.
    “I…I have to go,” I mumble and start shoving stuff in my bag.
    “I’m glad you’ve applied for the internship, Merrin. Glad you’ve been able to keep this quiet. You could help a lot of people by being at the Hub, Merrin. People like me.”
    I catch my breath. “What? You’re a…”
    He nods, sitting back, a small, sad smile forming on his lips. “I’m a One.”
    I throw my bag over my shoulder and stand up abruptly, making the chair shudder as it tries to slide along the carpet. Some combination of Mr. Hoffman having kept that from me, the secret meetings, and the slide with my blood on it makes even his Oneness irrelevant. He’s gone too far, creeped me out too much, for me to care about even that commonality between us.
    “Thank you,” I say over my shoulder on the way out. Tears burn at my eyes. I’m glad the application is complete now because I don’t think I could bring myself to go back to studying with him.

FIFTEEN
    A bout half an hour’s drive out into the cornfields of Nebraska lies a 100- acre plot of land on which nothing but tall grass grows. It waves unassumingly against the graying November sky. The hawks still circle above, waiting to pounce on any mice that have delayed going into hibernation.
    The Hub is a city underneath it all.
    “It’s completely subterranean for a couple of reasons,” Dad explains as we drive through the endless parking-garage-style ramps to the entrance, mostly to Michael and Max because I’m so obsessed with Hub that I’ve known this for years. “One is for security. Even if Nebraska was struck by a nuclear bomb — highly unlikely in the first place because not many people know exactly where the Hub is — it wouldn’t have much, if any, impact on the structure and lab materials.”
    “Nuclear bombs. Awesome,” Michael mutters from the back seat, and