One (One Universe)

cabinets. Worth a look.
    I walk into the room, and the lights flare up. Startled, I say, “Lights low.” They go down again, and I try to blink the shock of the sudden brightness out of my eyes.
    It’s dead quiet in here, except for the faintest hum of electricity. With my palm out, I step up to the door of one of the glass cabinets, and I feel the chill of it from inches away. These are all refrigerated. Now that I’m closer, I can clearly see that behind each door are rows and rows of solution-filled vials.
    The liquid in the vials glows bright pink, orange, green, yellow. Labels clearly identify their type according to color: Generative. Opener. Terminative. Developer. I have no idea what exactly they’re supposed to generate, open, terminate or develop. Some look like they were typed on an old computer program, others with punched labels, others with wax crayon. Some of them have stickers with sloppy handwriting. The only other thing on them is a rectangular sticker showing the formula for whatever’s inside.
    My brain works a mile a minute, piecing each chemical together in my mind. Hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, joining into hexagons, linking together. I’ve seen this pattern before, the one listed on this pink vial. It’s a deaminator. It will break down the guanine in someone’s DNA. It is a mutagen, designed to mutate someone’s DNA on the spot. Reversible, maybe. Barely. If conditions are perfect.
    I read the formulas on the orange tubes in the same way. This combination of chemicals, in theory, would stop someone’s DNA from mutating further. Ever. The Terminative formula. In theory, this is what Charlie Fisk would have needed to stop his One from taking over his body.
    My hands shake, but I wrench open one of the fridge doors and grab the green vial. I have to know. One more time, I stretch my brain, structuring the formula in my head. Just pretend this is an organic chem assignment, Mer.
    I gasp a little at this next one. This one will deaminate cytosine into uracil — hydrolysis. This is a mutagen. Most of the time, your own body would know how to address the breakdown. Most of the time, a chain reaction would start. Enzymes would sense it and repair the damage in the DNA. Make it better.
    This solution would force a mutation. And it depends on the body’s instincts to make it work. But only after it’s fundamentally changed what already exists there.
    If the Hub is giving this to people — to Ones — it would take away even their One. Could the Hub really be trying to kick-start bodies into making their own powers?
    If I hurt my One — if I made it so I could no longer float — would my body know how to correct it? Fill in the gap? Make it better — make me fly? Would my DNA know what to do? Could it be true that all I have to do is inject myself with this green stuff?
    I do know one thing for sure: It could just as likely kill me as give me a Super. Or take everything away completely.
    The yellow one is unlabeled. Somehow, that scares me even more than the others.
    Then I see, on the label, in the tiniest print — names. Each one of these is personalized. My heart sinks. Each one is designed for a specific person. Allen, Baker, Cole, Dunham — a categorized, alphabetical lineup.
    Now, I can’t stop myself. I really can’t. I move from cabinet to cabinet until I reach the Fs. I run my index finger along the vials, squinting at the tiny print. The Fs move to Gs. One, two, three names precede the one I’m looking for. And then I find it, and the world stops around me.
    There are three, maybe four times as many tubes labeled “Grey” as there are most others. I force my lungs to take a breath and grab every vial labeled “Grey” I can find, slide it into one of the test tube racks on a cart nearby.
    I move three doors down, guessing, and breathe out with mixed sadness and relief when I’m right. Two rows full of vials marked “Summers” and, right next to them, a row marked “Suresh.”
    I shove all those in my bag too, pulling a few “Grey”s out to make room for them in the stand. They clink in the bottom of my bag, whispering, What if we’re the ones? in the back of my head.
    There’s only one other door in the room, and I whip around to it, ready to get the hell out of there and finally find Elias. But something tugs me farther down the wall, to the last cabinet. My hands shake even harder, and I take a deep breath, telling myself this is the right thing to do. He