One (One Universe)

biotech advance the Hub has ever seen.”
    I only ever wanted to help formulate an advance that could help kids like me, something that could give us options. Not something that could manipulate us into experiments or weapons.
    I don’t want to be something that the Hub could use against others.
    Behind me, Elias clears his throat, and I notice how hard he’s squeezing my hand. His shoulder steadies.
    “Where are the rest of the vials?” he whispers to me, so light that I swear only I can hear it. I motion toward the lab door with my head.
    Fisk strides over to the door to the lab and flings it open. Inside, behind all the lit glass cases, the vials of creepy neon liquid wink and gleam.
    “All my life’s work, since Charlie died — it’s all in here. The highest security, the deepest part of the Hub. I’ve been keeping it safe, you see, for exactly this moment. And now, with so many of you here…”
    I swear his eyes glisten with tears. I wonder if there is remorse behind the smirk, if there was ever a time he felt guilty when testing or injecting a little kid. I like to think there was. I’d like to think he never meant to use weird green sensory deprivation goop or throat tubes or electric sensors or sedatives or spinal taps. I’d like to think he never meant to put pieces of the poor little transferring five-year-old Ones in vials and collect them, hoping that one day all the pieces together would add up to more than the loss of his son.
    I’d like to believe all that, but looking at him now, I can’t.
    Daniel speaks up. “How come I never knew about this? I would have…” He clears his throat when Leni looks at him, her eyebrows bunched together. “My parents would have brought me in for testing…”
    “Ever since Charlie died… Well, of course we were supposed to stop all this activity. The trustees sanctioned us. But he so badly wanted to be more than a One. And for all the times he came home with a black eye, for all the opportunities he was denied while he was alive, I couldn’t bear to give up on him. Besides, there is always some way, some other channel, to get what you want.” Fisk steps even closer. “I’m sure you can understand that, can’t you, Merrin? Can understand the desire to be something more than a sad, mediocre outcast who will never fit in anywhere? Something more? Something your family always wanted you to be?”
    “I’m fine with being a One,” I say, my voice low and snarling.
    “Then why are you here?”
    “For my brothers. For Elias.”
    And for the first time ever, I mean it. Now that I thought I could lose Elias, lose the boys, I’m fine with being a One. As long as it means we never have to come back here again.
    Fisk pulls a vial out of his pocket again, and a solution sloshes inside of it, so thick it coats the glass. “And for this. The solution based on your blood. It could be the key to making you a Super, Merrin, but only if you let us test it on you.”
    My heart shudders to a stop. He knows that the promise of flying on my own can convince me to do anything.
    Almost anything.
    I open my mouth, about to sling another retort his way, and then a strange ripping sound steals through the air.
    Elias gasps and sits upright. “They’re back,” he chokes.

TWENTY-NINE
    B efore I can blink again, a robe-wrapped emaciated figure appears in front of Fisk. Her hands are cuffed behind her, and her head still has red marks where the nodes were attached. She whips around to assess Elias, looks him up and down, and her eyes flash blue. It’s Nora.
    “It’s nice to see you awake, Miss VanDyne. I hope the titanium cuffs aren’t uncomfortable. Security measure, you understand,” Fisk says, smirking.
    In one swift motion, Nora pulls her wrists apart, breaking the chain and shattering the cuffs, and lifts Fisk off the ground by the throat.
    “I think we get stronger the more pissed off we are. But since you hacks didn’t test for that… What do you think, Leelee?” she calls over her shoulder.
    Fisk’s eyes practically bulge out of his head.
    “Holy shit,” Daniel breathes. He looks back at Elias, who stares back at him with wide eyes. I gather that this super strength is new.
    Another ripping sound follows, and one of the guards cries out. Lia has teleported between two of them and busted out of her cuffs as well. She elbows one of them between the legs while wrenching the guns, one at a time, out of the holster of another. She cocks one and tosses