The One

Christopher’s heart is no longer in his project. He even considers abandoning it altogether. He continues going through the motions mainly because he fears that if he stops before he reaches his goal, then he might come to resent Amy, and he fears what he might do to her if that happens.

Christopher is in the home of his last victim when he feels a shock, losing consciousness. He wakes to find himself tied to a chair with Amy standing over him with a stun gun. She finally figured out that he is the serial killer. He tells her this was to be his last kill and that she is the only person in his life for whom he has ever had feelings. He says that she has made him a better person, and he genuinely loves her.

Amy believes him. She also still loves him desperately, despite everything she knows about him. She observes that her only comfort in the situation is that their relationship isn’t what triggered his murder spree. Christopher admits that it was the opposite: The better he knew her, the less he enjoyed what he was doing. Now, however, Amy realizes that because Christopher did not enjoy the murder, he was no longer acting on compulsion. He made a dispassionate decision to continue his murder spree. Even then, she contemplates releasing him. She recognizes that he is genuinely attached to her, and she may be able to keep him under control.

As she is debating, they both overhear a news break from the television, reporting that Match Your DNA has been compromised and there may be up to 2 million couples falsely Matched. Amy realizes that without the certainty of a true Match, she can never trust Christopher not to harm someone. Moreover, she can’t turn him in without ruining her career; in a police department already unwelcoming toward women, she would forever be known as the female cop who cluelessly dated the very serial killer she’d been investigating for months.

Both she and Christopher know she has no choice. Amy strangles Christopher with his own cheese wire, then uses supplies from his kill kits to clean up the scene. Finally, she burns his body and hides every trace of his identity. She has fulfilled her obligation as a cop, and no one will ever know that her boyfriend of the last several months was the monster who killed almost 30 women.

When Mark learns that Jade is leaving, he finally confesses to Jade that Kevin was never her Match. When Kevin knew he was dying, he wanted to know whether anyone was destined to love him. He and Mark sent their DNA at the same time. When they got the results back, Mark saw that Kevin hadn’t been Matched but Mark had. Wanting to make his brother happy, he switched their results.

Mark saw how happy Jade made his brother, and he couldn’t bear to take that away from Kevin, so he kept quiet and tried to hide his own feelings. Jade feels torn apart. To be with Mark feels like a betrayal of Kevin’s memory, but their desire is overwhelming. Jade’s departure date approaches. Finally, she can no longer resist. In the middle of the night, she goes to Mark’s room. He is waiting as if he was expecting her.

Kevin’s parents find Mark and Jade together. They are at first horrified and hurt. When Mark explains the circumstances, Jane is hurt and angry. She regrets nothing about her relationship with Kevin. He was her best friend, but she is hurt that Mark used and deceived her. Had she known, she still might have done exactly what she did, but Mark never gave her the choice.

Jade is preparing to leave when Kevin’s mother, Susan, finds her and tells her to forgive Mark. Susan says that because Jade and Mark love each other, Jade shouldn’t let anger rob her of her chance to be with him. In the end, Jade and Mark leave together.

Sally goes into labor two weeks early. As Nick holds Sally’s hand, watching her struggle through the birth, he realizes that no matter what else has happened, only Sally and the baby matter to him right now. He decides to sacrifice everything to make this family work.

Twenty hours into labor, Sally experiences a burst aneurysm and is rushed into surgery. Nick is crushed. He lost Alex, and he can’t bear to lose Sally and the baby, too. Sally dies, but the doctors save the baby. Nick, seeing his son, Dylan, for the first time, realizes that Dylan isn’t his: Sally had an affair while they were still together. It changes nothing for him. Dylan is his son, but he feels that Deepak, whom Nick suspects is the child’s biological father, is entitled to know that the baby is his. Though losing the baby would break his heart, Nick gives Deepak the opportunity to have custody.

Deepak confesses the affair with Sally. Sally secretly registered with Match Your DNA months earlier, and she was a Match with Deepak. Sally was a coworker of his wife, Sumaira, and he arranged for Sumaira to set up a double date with Nick and Sally. Eventually, Deepak and Sally started sleeping together. Sally wanted to leave her relationship with Nick without breaking his heart or appearing culpable. She conceived the plan to find Nick’s Match, believing that if he fell in love with someone else, Sally could break their engagement and blame Nick.

However, the affair’s initial excitement was fading. When Sumaira announced her pregnancy, Deepak broke off the affair. Looking back, Deepak thinks he and Sally must have been one of the false Matches generated in the last 18 months. He tells Nick that although he adores his baby twins with Sumaira, he feels nothing for Dylan. Sally’s death finally frees Nick for good. He takes Dylan and flies to New Zealand to be with Alex.

Just to be sure, Ellie goes through security recordings until she finds a video of Tim/Matthew going into Kat’s office for his interview 18 months before her first meeting with him. Just before he enters the interview suite, he looks directly into the security camera and says, “Hello, Ellie.”

Ellie confronts Tim. He admits everything. He used the job interview as an opportunity to hack into the company’s computers. He created a false Match between himself and Ellie and inserted a Trojan horse into the company software to sabotage its accuracy; for the last 18 months, the system has been generating a small percentage of false Matches.

This is revenge for the shortcuts Ellie took when she was building her company database. In addition to samples given voluntarily, she used bribes to get DNA samples from dead people, from criminals, from children, and from her own employees without their knowledge—employees like Tim’s mother. Many of those nonconsensual Matches ruined lives. Tim’s father left him and Samantha in order to be with his Match. Tim’s mother developed an alcohol addiction and died, leaving Tim on his own. Tim has plotted revenge ever since.

Knowing that the false Matches’ exposure will destroy Match Your DNA, Ellie murders Tim in a fit of rage and panic. Unfortunately for her, the whole exchange, including the murder, is videorecorded and livestreamed on the Internet. The story ends with Ellie on trial for murder, returning to the courthouse to hear the verdict. She tells her personal assistant that if the verdict condemns Ellie, the database should be destroyed, thus ending Match Your DNA.

With the revelation of Tim’s sabotage and the false Matches, the reader can only wonder if all the Matches in the story were genuine.