One (One Universe)

see…” He moves over and puts his hand on Michael’s head. “…we simply have no choice.”
    That’s when I totally lose it.
    “They are babies!” I scream. Mom’s small hands clamp around my upper arms, and her nails dig into my skin. “They’re just kids . You keep your goddamned hands off of them.”
    He clicks his tongue and shakes his head, and the combination makes me want to hurl myself across the 15 feet between us and claw his eyes out.
    Instead, I move back toward Elias’s bed, hoping getting nearer to him, to the buzz, will steady me. Maybe help me figure out what the hell to do in a room with passive parents, an evil Super mastermind, and an unconscious boyfriend. And my poor baby brothers, who should never have had anything to do with this, prepped for spinal taps.
    Mr. Hoffman chuckles. “You, who wouldn’t be caught dead with a boy your first year at Superior High, suddenly now have a boyfriend? What makes him so important to you that you would risk everything, break into the Hub, just to make sure he’s okay?”
    My stomach twists, churning out resolve to get out of this, and then make Fisk pay.
    Fisk lowers his voice to barely above a whisper. The only ones who can hear him now, I’m sure, are Elias and me. “He makes you feel beautiful, makes you believe in yourself, all that. Yes, yes, fine. But that is boring. So I’ll ask you one more time, Merrin: What can the two of you do?”
    Something inside me snaps at his use of my first name.
    “Without each other, you are useless, pathetic Ones. Without us, you will always be nothing. We can make sure you’re without Elias for a very long time, Merrin, if it’s true that he’s no use to you as he is. We could use his body in…other ways.”
    I stare at him, half to challenge him and half because terror seizes me so strongly that I have nothing else to say.
    He shrugs. “Fine. So Elias VanDyne is…a nothing. In two days of testing, we’re very sure of that. He is powerless — weakly pushing air will never make him a Super. He was nothing but a false alarm. His sisters, on the other hand…”
    Fisk pushes a button on his remote control thing, and I glance at Mom, hoping that she can prepare me for what I’m about to see or hear by how she looks at me. A tear runs down her cheek, and her jaw is clenched. I’ve never seen Mom cry.
    She looks down, her face twisted.
    One of the walls of the arena spins around to reveal the girls, wearing nothing but black swimsuits that cling to their frames — thin and almost skeletal — suspended in a tank of green goop. Breathing tubes snake down their throats, and nodes dot their heads, which are shaved bald. Their eyes are closed, and if I could ignore all the tubes and wires, they would look like they were sleeping. Every once in awhile, one of them twitches, her eyebrows draw together, then after a few seconds, she relaxes again.
    “It’s a sensory deprivation substance,” Fisk explains, his voice measured. I look over at Elias, and I swear he grimaces. The hint of pride I hear in Fisk’s voice — the one that causes the vial of solution to practically dance between his fingers — makes me want to sprint over to Fisk and tear his throat out with my bare hands, just to stop his voice from ever existing again.
    “We’ve been trying to utilize them and what they can do to make Elias more…effective. Now that you’ve confirmed that nothing — and no one — can do that, we’re going to try it the other way around. The stasis will kill him, eventually, but, from what you’re saying, that’s the most good he’ll ever do here at the Hub.”
    Fisk stands there, perfectly calm. “Show us what you can do, Merrin Grey. Show us why you’ve always been obsessed with biochemistry. Show us why you have a premed student’s library of genetics and organic chemistry notes on your tablet. Show us why you’re better than any high school student we’ve ever known at these things. Why do you care?”
    I clench my jaw and stare back at him. I will not cry. I will not scream. I won’t.
    “I can fix you, Merrin. I know you want me to.” He motions toward the small lab behind me, the one whose walls are lined with the neon-liquid-filled vials bearing my name. Or were before I stole them.
    “There are amazing things here. Discoveries that can push you to your full potential. That can make Elias’s sisters’ sacrifice — and your brothers’ — not be in vain. That can make you soar.”