One (One Universe)

across my shoulders, running down my spine. Dad says some words to the man, words I don’t understand like “enhancement” and “additive capabilities” and “no indication of emergent risk.”
    But his voice is deep and soothing and almost the same as when he reads me a bedtime story, so I know it’s okay, everything will be okay. The man draws his arm back, and I see that the pink liquid is on one end of a syringe and a long, shining needle is on the other. It can’t be meant for my arm that was just swabbed with alcohol. I won’t believe it.
    When the tip of the needle pushes into my skin of my upper arm, it stings, burns, and then a dull, thudding sensation reverberates over my whole body. The needle has bumped my bone, and I cry out, even though I want so badly to be brave.
    Dad brushes his fingers through my brown waves and tells me how brave I am anyway, how proud he is, how soon this will all be over. How, soon, I’ll fly like an airplane.
    Then everything goes black.
     
    “Your mother has been part of this initiative from the beginning. As have you. I gather you’ve discovered that.” Dad glances around the room at the disturbed cabinets. So he knows what’s in them. That same sick feeling punches me in the gut.
    “I’m an initiative ?”
    “Well, an experiment. Part of one. A short one, unfortunately.”
    My voice rises. “I’m an experiment?” I knew this. I knew it an hour ago when I found that box, knew it in my gut longer than that, but the confirmation from him starts the disbelief all over again.
    “Let me start over. You know your mother is Gifted.”
    “Yeah. She’s a Super. So?”
    “You’re old enough to use the proper terminology, Merrin.” Dad narrows his eyes at me, and though part of me wants to shrink a way, a bigger part pushes me to stand taller. He said “old enough.” I’m old enough for him to tell me something. I’m old enough to keep someone else’s secrets.
    Still, I roll my eyes because he has the gall to scold me here and now. Like this. With formulas and chemicals and serums based on my body clinking around in my freaking messenger bag.
    “Yes. Since your mother was a child, she had the spontaneous combustibility, combined with indestructibility. Never very powerful, but…”
    “Right. A fire girl.”
    “When you were five, she received an injection. We knew it had enhancement properties, and we thought it would give her greater heat or range. But it added a new ability instead. We actually don’t know if it might have been latent, but…”
    “But what? What else can she do?”
    Dad takes a long breath and looks at me, giving me that same damn look Elias used to give me when he thought I couldn’t handle hearing something. I challenge him, stand up as tall as my frame can stretch, and growl, “What. Can. She. Do?”
    “She can fly.”
    “Are you kidding me?”
    Dad shakes his head.
    “Are you telling me that Mom is the freaking Human Torch ?”
    “Merrin. Calm down. Let’s be serious now.”
    I look back at him, cross my arms, wait for him to say anything reasonable.
    “The Human Torch is a story. A comic book character. Your mother…your mother…can actually go quite a bit faster than that,” he says meekly. “But yes, it’s a lot like the Human Torch.”
    My mouth hangs open. I don’t know what to say to that. I’m sure I look like I’m about to lose my lunch because he shakes me a little, jolting me back to reality. I fill my lungs and look Dad in the eye.
    “There’s something else,” I say. “Isn’t there?”
    Dad swallows and looks down. “The amazing part about all this — about you and the reason you were involved in the experiment in the first place — is that she couldn’t do that until you were born. The day we brought you home from the hospital, she started floating in her sleep.”
    “Floating in her sleep,” I repeat, my lips feeling numb.
    “Yes, it was incredible, actually. There had been theories about transference of powers, but we never proved… Anyway, she went through intense studies. It was painful — excruciating, actually — but the enhancers turned the floating ability into a flying one, and for the longest time, we thought it was she who had absorbed the power from you. But we realized pretty quickly…” His voice trails off.
    “That I was transferring the power to her,” I say, like he’s simple, forgetting that I’ve been hiding it all from him.
    “Yes. But when we tested you,