One (One Universe)

something.” He tugs at my arm and pulls me behind him down the hallway. As he steps, the lights flare up to the blinding levels I’m sure they’re set on during the day.
    “Low lights,” he commands, and they dim to nighttime levels. My eyebrows go up. How does he know to do this? I look at him, and he gets it. He gets the question.
    “Um, my cuff gives me clearance. I’m actually here kind of a lot,” he says quietly, nodding toward his cuff. “The security system senses its presence whenever we walk through a checkpoint. That’s why no holodoors have flown up in our face yet.”
    We come to a solid door, probably the eighth on the right, even though the hallway stretches much farther down.
    “No retina scans?”
    He shrugs. “No, the process to get into the Hub in the first place is intense enough. Once you’re in, the cuff is good enough. And besides, no retina scan at every door frees up funding for…other things. Like this.”
    He opens the door, grinning, and pulls me in behind him. I stare into a black abyss. When Elias asks, “Ready for this?” his voice echoes off the walls, and I know whatever lays waiting in the dark is huge. I nod, and his voice booms, “Lights bright.”
    A white light fills the room, blinding me momentarily once again, and half a second later when I can see, I gasp.
    I stare at the gigantic room before me, the size of four football fields at least. Two tracks circle one end of it, one long and one shorter, running concentric with one another. Simulation stations holding giant gyro-chairs with controls staring at the largest holoscreens I’ve ever seen; huge clear cubes; and two swimming pools, triple Olympic length, stretch out to my right. The vaulted ceiling curves high in the air, at least five stories up, much higher than I’ve ever flown with Elias.
    “The testing arena,” Elias says, chest puffing with pride. “This is where my sisters are training — this is where the gap year does their stuff. I haven’t seen them yet, but I will tomorrow.” He pulls me along. “Come on. It’s like the ultimate Super testing ground.”
    We walk through the arena for a few minutes, him pointing out 10 different kinds of the highest-tech equipment I’ve ever seen, until we come to an empty stretch of floor over which the roof domes slightly. Only the barest light reaches up into it, but when I squint, I see that it’s actually made up of a formation of blades, their wide ends around the circumference, all coming to a point in the middle. Elias, still holding my hand, stretches behind him and hits a huge red button on the wall. The blades slowly retract into the edge of the circle, opening up to a dark purple sky that sparkles with the brightest stars.
    I know my mouth hangs open, and I don’t even care. This room could be my future. This room could be where I learn to fly. On my own.
    He motions up. “The ceiling’s like that…you know…”
    “For the fliers,” I finish.
    He nods. “I knew you’d think this was incredible. Knew it. So. Do you want…you know…the aerial tour?”
    “No.” I shake my head. “No, I want to see all of it close up, from down here. Show me everything.”
    Elias intertwines his fingers with mine, and suddenly, I’m jerked back to reality — the question of how he even knows this exists. My head swims.
    “So,” I say and clear my throat, “You’ve been, uh…coming here.”
    “Yeah,” he says, smiling. “Awesome, huh?” He looks down at me, and my smile fades.
    No, I think, it’s not awesome. It’s not okay that you were keeping something from me. It’s not okay that I trusted you with everything about my One, and it wasn’t enough.
    Well, everything except meeting with Mr. Hoffman. And letting him test my blood.
    “Mer, what’s up?”
    I shake my head because I don’t know what to say. Two months ago, something vicious would have come flying out of my mouth, words meant to slice into him, but I don’t want to hurt him, not at all. Especially when I know that my secret could hurt him just as badly.
    Suddenly, I want to take him up on his offer to fly because I want the noise and the distraction of it to block out all these thoughts, to help me figure out how to deal with them. I wrap my arms around him, press my cheek into his chest again, and then tilt my head up to kiss his neck.
    I so badly want to fly in this dress. I so badly want to be beautiful, flying with him. Maybe that will fix everything. But he