One (One Universe)

would want me to take these.
    There are three times as many vials marked “VanDyne” as there were for the Grey. I take all of them, too. I probably have 40 altogether in my bag now, and some of the “VanDyne” vials won’t fit either. I yank my arms out of Elias’s sweatshirt, shimmy out of my long-sleeved shirt, pull it off, and roll the whole stand up in it so the light clicking of the plastic vials is muffled, tucking the ends of the shirt in around them. I stuff the whole thing into my messenger bag.
    Whoever thought that Fisk’s plan to quit any kind of dangerous experimentation after his son died either didn’t know about this or was hiding something. Even in Supers, whose genes have already taken so much mutation and still left them human, these mutagens could kill.
    Or they could make a One a Super.
    I glance back at all the cabinets. Who are all those people? Are they kids, walking around Nelson, Nebraska, or moved somewhere away from here? Were they all in a Hub study like we were? If they were, did they know? If they knew, did they survive it? If they survived…what happened to them? Where are they? Can they do what we can do? Can they combine to make a Super?
    There is no placard on the only other door to the room. My skin buzzes, drawing me toward it, telling me that I have to go through. I crack it open and, hearing no alarm, swing it open the rest of the way.
    The testing arena spreads out before me, high domed ceiling directly above. And in front of me, there’s a hospital bed. And Elias is on it.

TWENTY-FIVE
    H e lays there, in white cotton pants, chest bare, some kind of sensors strapped all over it. The knot in my stomach starts to loosen when I realize his skin is too pink for him to be dead.
    Unconscious and without his glasses, he looks so young, so peaceful. Worst of all, he looks weak. His whole body jerks once. I look at the machine attached to the electrodes, and it shows a steady heart rate. So what the hell have they done to him to make his body jerk like that?
    Then I lift my eyes and see something even worse.
    Oh, shit. Oh, no. Not them.
    Michael and Max lay just yards away. Immobile on exam tables, turned on their sides, IVs in their arms. A figure in a white coat leans over them, checking their heart rates, first one, then the other. Strange because they’re hooked to monitors. No one should have to check on them. No one cares about how Elias is doing enough to bend over him.
    White drapes leave a square open on each of the boys’ backs, and my stomach turns. They’re prepped for spinal taps. Someone’s going to draw their bone marrow. The sob that started inside me at seeing Elias finally reaches my throat, and I choke it back, trying to stay silent, trying to tamp down the gasping and sniffling I know dances at the edge of my restraint.
    I understand all the pieces of this individually. The testing arena. Elias, hooked up to machines, for experiments. Because they think he can fly. Michael and Max. Bone marrow taps to see why the Wonder Twins are faster when they’re together. But if I try to assemble them all into one coherent picture, none of this makes any sense.
    Just as I take one step closer to Elias, someone grabs my arm, jerking me backward almost off my feet. I gasp, but another hand claps over my mouth. My eyes flare wide as I’m dragged, my protests muffled to near-silence, back into the room where I collected all the vials, then spun around to face my captor.
    Brooding blue eyes as familiar to me as my own stare back at me, wide and terrified.
    It’s Dad.
     
    A memory, fuzzy and distant, hits me out of nowhere. Dad looked at me with those eyes once, in a room like this, so long ago I’ve almost forgotten it ever happened.
    I’m sitting on a table with a thin padded cover and a length of white paper running down it. I stare down at the red sparkling shoes I got for my fifth birthday, swinging above a floor feet below. A shining metal rolling table waits against the wall, and it’s covered in paper, too. It holds some disinfectant wipes, cotton balls, and band-aids.
    A man walks in, but I don’t remember his face. I do remember the bulb of his stethoscope swinging back and forth as he walks and a flash of the suit underneath his white coat. Pinstriped. Dad grasps my hand, and I don’t understand why at first. Then the man in the coat rubs my arm with one of the wipes, and the alcohol leaves a patch of cold there. The chill spreads up my arm and