One (One Universe)

fingers at the hair right above his ear, enjoying my extra height, “but if you even suggest that I’m anything like Lois Lane ever again, I’ll kill you.” Then I lean in, lowering my voice. “Plus, you’ll always need me to fly.”
    There’s something behind the slight smile he gives me in return, but I can’t put my finger on it. It’s not sadness. Maybe resignation.
    “So what did you think of Fisk?” Elias sways with me to the music. I try to focus on the conversation.
    “President Fisk? Um…it was kind of surreal talking to him,” I say.
    Elias nods, his mouth turning down into a bit of a frown. “The way he talked to you bothered me. I don’t like how he knew so much about you. How he just assumed you’d want to work here.”
    “What do you mean? The summer internship, Elias? That’s amazing! That’s…”
    Elias’s face drops. “Everything you dreamed of, I know. But this place… I don’t think it’s what it seems.” His eyebrows bunch up, and his face has that look again, like he’s trying to decide if I can handle something.
    “What do you mean?”
    He shakes his head and looks off into the distance. He thinks I don’t know all his faces, but I do. This is the one he uses when he’s angry but not at me and doesn’t want me to think he’s angry at me, so he just glares at nothing.
    “Okay, seriously, Elias.” I stop really dancing and kind of sway in place. “What are you talking about?”
    His mouth twists down on one side, and he looks down and to the side, at nothing for a second before he says, “You know how Fisk’s son died.”
    “Cancer.”
    “Yes…kind of. But that’s not the whole story. He was a One.”
    My heart lurches. “Okay…?”
    “And they tried to cure him.”
    “Cure him of the cancer?”
    “No. Of the Oneness.”
    I have trouble finding my breath.
    “He was doing really well for awhile. Displaying some signs he was going to go Super, even. He was a kid, then — they figured his genes were still malleable.”
    “Real-time mutations aren’t possible. I mean, you’re either born with a Super or you’re not.”
    Elias nods, once, slowly. “Right. That’s what we’ve always thought. But…it’s epigenetics.”
    “Epigenetics only influence development on organisms with short life spans. Plants, fungi. The things whose survival depends on the short term.”
    “That’s what they thought.”
    “That’s what’s in my grad-level bio book.”
    “You’re taking grad-level bio?”
    I nod. “Med school level. With, uh… It’s a private tutor.”
    Elias looks at me with drawn eyebrows. “You should have… Mer, I had no idea.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, for the last 30 years or so, the Hub has known differently. With us mutants…”
    “Supers,” I say firmly.
    “Okay. Yeah. Or Gifteds. Whatever. Our adaptations happen much more quickly. A layer of code extraneous to DNA.”
    I roll my eyes. “I know about epigenetics, Elias.”
    “So this’ll make sense to you,” he says, sounding exasperated. “For Ones…they think it might be even more accelerated. We were born with only one Super, so…”
    “Our genes are looking to adapt.”
    He just looks at me for a few moments.
    “How do you know?” I ask.
    “My dad… We have a lot of…resources lying around our house. Classified ones.”
    My eyebrows go up.
    “I can’t understand most of the scientific reports about Charlie Fisk, but this much I do understand. Something about attempted Super gene replication, the mutated DNA causing a cell growth explosion. But only the genes displaying the One replicated. Massive tumors invaded his body everywhere within weeks, out of control. The One took over.”
    I gasp. I can only imagine what a nightmare it must have been.
    “Of course, the Hub continued ‘treatment,’ except now it was actually…treatment.”
    “But he died.” I’d read all about the difference between mutations that caused cancer and mutations that cause Supers back in seventh grade. I remember being terrified even then at how similar they were. “Must have been so fast.”
    Elias nods again. “Something like a month. Six weeks, maybe.”
    “Why didn’t they wait? Test it on rats or something?”
    “They did. And they thought they had the human formulas all set. Even tailored it to his specific mutation. And it kind of…exploded. Like his One genes got excited or over-stimulated or something.”
    “And he was a kid.”
    “I know. Sucks,