Glimpse (The Tesla Effect Book 1) (16 page)

“This is real life, Tesla, not a movie,” Lydia said dryly.
“Real life is filled with the everyday details of actual living—and without somebody to take care of those details, the desired outcome is far less likely to happen. We are not a group of violent crime fighters. There are a few, very discrete things we can do to help the larger effort, and that’s our focus.” She paused a moment, and looked over the tops of her glasses at Tesla with some amusement. “You can vacuum the downstairs; you only need one hand for that.”

Still in shock, Tesla got up from the table along with everyone else, as Lydia said in parting, “And you’re all on your own for dinner, the Landlady is far too busy with espionage and time travel experiments to cook tonight.”

“Come on,” said Bizzy at Tesla’s side, “I’ll show you where the vacuum cleaner is before I head over to campus.”

At twenty minutes after nine that night, Tesla found herself racing over the lawn of the hospital, across the open quad, and toward the Physics building. She had fallen asleep in the lazy heat of the afternoon, up in her third floor bedroom, though she’d only intended to lie down and rest for fifteen minutes or so. When she’d woken up, the streetlights were on and a lovely, cool breeze blew a light summer rain through her open window. She’d panicked when she checked her phone and saw that it was after nine, thrown on the faded boyfriend jeans that lay crumpled on the floor, grateful that she still wore the sports bra and tie-dyed spandex T-shirt she’d had on all day—it took way too long to change her shirt and re-sling her arm without help, so she’d just left it all as it was, slung her messenger bag across her torso, and run out the door.

She sprinted across the quad, her worn running shoes familiar and effective in the wet grass, her arm pressed in tight to her torso to minimize impact.
Stupid stupid stupid
went the litany in her head as it kept time with her steps.
How could you have slept so long
? She wondered if she was too late and picked up speed as she turned the corner of the physics building. She came up short, however, when she saw that Finn stood in shadows at the door underneath the massive outdoor light fixture that Bizzy had disabled in the hope that no one would see them sneak in. There was just enough moonlight to see Finn’s broad shoulders outlined against the cream-colored building, and to see that he was alone.

Finn looked up and she walked the twenty feet that stood between them.

“Did you just get here, too?” she asked, hands on her hips as she caught her breath from the run.

“Yeah,” he said, “At the last minute I remembered I needed
to go by the Bio-Med department first.” His hand moved unconsciously to gently touch the cargo pocket of his loose-fit khakis. “I guess everybody else was here on time and they’ve gone down to the Bat Cave already. I called Bizzy’s cell, but I doubt there’s any reception down there.”

Tesla didn’t respond—there seemed no need to—and instead watched him in the gloom, as easy in his skin as always.
She was nervous, aware of his nearness, and he seemed completely unfazed, she thought, as if he hadn’t kissed her, then acted like it never even happened, and then plotted behind her back to use the time machine himself. She couldn’t figure him out, couldn’t figure herself out when it came to him. He was beautiful, even in the dark, the shape and breadth of his shoulders, his hands held loosely by his side, his entire demeanor lithe, athletic, prepared. She hated the contrast between her nervous tension and his cool, easy stance.

“You know I didn’t do this to piss you off,” he said, as if
he could read her mind. “It’s about Max.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, though she hated to admit it.
“I forget sometimes how young he is.”

“So you don’t hate me, then.”
He spoke in his usual, mocking tone, but for the first time Tesla wondered who, exactly, was the object of his near-constant derision.

“I don’t hate you, Finn,” she answered.
“I hope you realize, though, that whatever risks there might be in this for me, they’re the same for you.”

“I suppose,” he said, distracted by her hair that fell around her face like the evening, damp from the rain that could not mute its color, warm as embers at dusk.
He caught a fiery strand of it in his hand, moved it off her face and tucked it behind her ear. “But I don’t have a little brother, or anybody who needs me—”

Before he could finish his thought, which he might have
begun to articulate in the vague hope of just such a reaction, Tesla took that last step in, put her right hand behind his neck, and drew herself up on her toes to kiss him, her lips opening, just a little, against his. When his tongue touched hers he felt her indrawn breath, and then she tightened her hold on him and deepened their kiss.

He crushed her against his body, his earlier pledge to stay away from her, to just do his job and not complicate matters, abandoned in an instant.

Neither of them heard the door open, but they broke apart and stepped quickly back from one another at the sound of a deliberate cough only a few feet from where they stood.

“Gross,” Beckett said.
She tried to sound blasé but the attempt was an utter failure. She was furious. “In case you’ve forgotten, we have work to do. Everyone’s downstairs.”

“The door was locked.
What were we supposed to do while we waited?” Finn asked, cool and amused.

Tesla couldn’t read him.
Was he embarrassed to be caught, and caught by Beckett, whom he had kissed just the day before?
God, how could I have forgotten that
, she berated herself,
and now I’ve practically jumped him myself
.

“I suppose more loathsome things than this have been done out of boredom,” Beckett said.
“Let’s go.” She turned and led the way down a flight of steps that began just inside the door, but Tesla got a glimpse of her face as she turned toward the stairs.

No. Effing. Way
. Beckett Isley was jealous.

Finn glanced at Tesla and wondered just how angry she was—he assumed she was angry, in no small part because she was pretty much always angry if he was in the room, but now Beckett had managed to include him in her little insult of Tesla.
He was resigned to her anger as he registered the flush on her cheeks, the tension in her body, and then she flashed him a radiant smile like sun sparking off water. Her eyes crinkled at the corners, dimples cut into her perfect cheeks, and her mouth—her mouth—

He held the door for her to indicate that she should go first, and when she passed him he smelled the rain-wet of her hair and caught the sound of the faintest nervous giggle as she started down the steps after Beckett, as if they’d been caught together ditching history class.

It was all he could do not to grab her and kiss her again, kiss her until the laughter in her eyes had turned into something else, but he dutifully closed the door and followed the girls down flight after flight of stairs to the Bat Cave.

CHAPTER
16

Twenty minutes later Tesla stood behind Bizzy’s chair in what was clearly a control booth of sorts. Several monitors in front of them showed Finn from different angles as he stood in the center of the room that she now knew was actually a time machine. The cameras and monitors were a new addition to the lab, Bizzy explained, since Tesla had wandered into it months earlier. The tiny control booth was clearly not meant to hold six people—it had only two chairs, and Lydia sat in one, right next to Bizzy. No one had volunteered to wait outside and leave more room for the others, so Beckett, Joley, and Max—and now Tesla—filled up what little space remained, and everyone stared at the monitors.

“Okay, Finn, can you hear me?” Bizzy spoke into a small microphone that sat in a stand on the desk immediately in front of her.

“Roger that, ground control” Finn replied, one eyebrow arched and a lopsided grin on his face.

“Okay, relax, Major Tom,”
Bizzy said.

Finn laughed, and Tesla felt her breath catch as she saw that smile, his head thrown back, from half a dozen screens in the room.
Whatever risk this little escapade might pose, you’d never know it from Finn’s demeanor. He was excited, happy—giddy, even. This was so clearly what he wanted to be doing.

“I ran multiple tests today, and the equipment is all good,” Bizzy was saying.
“I’ll count down, and then I’ll activate the lasers; you should close your eyes, the light will be really bright when it hits the mirrors. Okay?”

“Yup,” he said.
“Got it.”

Lydia leaned toward Bizzy’s microphone.
“Finn, are you quite sure you’re ready for this?” she asked.

“Definitely,” Finn said.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” she said dryly. “And Finn—remember: if you don’t find the young janitor, hide yourself until he comes in to clean and give him the same story Tesla did so he can send you back. It’s a dubious coincidence, but that boy’s confusion really can’t be our concern right now. Be careful.”

“You can count on it,” Finn said.
He looked intently at the camera, right at the small knot of people crowded into the control booth. “Things have just started to get interesting.”

“Here we go,” Bizzy said into the microphone as Lydia sat back, tense but satisfied.
“In five, four, three….”

Tesla felt a chill crawl up her spine as she remembered these same words spoken in her father’s voice, only it was Tesla in the time machine then, not Finn, and she had had no idea what it meant.
Finn closed his eyes, his arms hanging loose by his sides, and Bizzy threw a switch on the panel in front of her. A white-hot light filled the room and made it impossible to see Finn, or anything else, in the monitors.

They all leaned in closer as Bizzy watched the digital counter on the panel, her hand poised to flip the switch off again as soon as thirty seconds had passed, just as she said Dr. Abbott did in each of their experiments.
As the digital numbers rolled from twenty-nine to thirty, Bizzy firmly toggled the switch that killed the lasers—the lasers that had sent Finnegan Ford back through time in a wormhole.

Except that Finnegan Ford stood in the center of the room, his image reflected on the monitor screens in front of them.
He blinked and looked around.

“Finn?” Bizzy said into the microphone.
“You okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” he said.
“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” she said.
“It didn’t work.”

“That much I had figured out.”

“Let me run another check, sit tight,” she said. She consulted a notebook and began to check the various readouts that flashed in incomprehensible digits on the panel in front of her.

In ten minutes Bizzy had checked and rechecked all the equipment and found no malfunctions.
It should have worked, she concluded, and so they tried again. And failed. And tried again. By midnight Beckett and Joley no longer even watched the monitors as Bizzy counted down yet again and threw the switch on the lasers, only to find, thirty seconds later, that Finn still stood in the center of the time machine. Frustration mounted, and everyone felt it, except perhaps Max, who had fallen asleep in the corner, curled up on the floor.

“Let’s take a break,” Lydia said.
“Stretch our legs.” They left Max to sleep and walked out of the control booth and down the metal-grated stairs that led into the Bat Cave and the entrance to the time machine.

“I say we call it,” said Beckett without preamble.
“We have other leads to follow. In my opinion, we should have focused our energies on what Jane may have found in Canada. We need a hard trail that will lead to Dr. Abbott, and all of this is guesswork anyway.”

“I agree,” said Joley as he stifled a yawn. “Besides, we all probably have radiation poisoning at this point from all this laser activity.”

Bizzy was incensed. “We do not! Dr. Abbott is scrupulous about exposure. We’re all totally safe.”

“Yes, well, you’ll be singing a different tune I expect when I’m trapped in an isolation booth, making the Vulcan sign against the
glass, telling you I am, and always will be, your friend—oh yes, Elizabeth, you’ll be sorry when I’m gone, mark my words.”

“Children,” Lydia chided, but her heart wasn’t in it. “You may be right, Beckett, but I’m not sure we should give up just yet. Elizabeth, dear, unfortunately you’re the only one who knows enough about all of this to determine what else we might do to make it work.
We can only follow your lead here.”

“Yeah, I know.”
Bizzy chewed on her lower lip as she thought. “There’s so much here that we don’t understand. The one thing we do know, however, is that it worked before, when Tesla jumped. We have to focus on what’s different this time.”

“Bizz,” Finn began, but Lydia put up her hand to stop his protest.
“Let her finish,” she said quietly, but firmly.

“I know you disagree, Finn,” Bizzy said in a rush, “but you’ve got to admit it: Tesla has already jumped.
The technology worked for her. We may not know what that means, but I think we should let her try it again.”

“We’ve already been through this,” Finn said.
He looked at Lydia as he spoke. “There are too many reasons not to send Tesla back. You agreed.”

“True,” said Lydia slowly.
“But that was when we thought it would work with you. I still believe it’s vital we try this; it was less important who went, before, when we assumed that it would work with anyone. If that’s not the case, and Tesla is our only option, I am inclined to agree with Bizzy. Better to send Tesla, even with the risks that entails, than to be unable to send anyone at all.”

All eyes were on Tesla, who could feel her heart thump.
“I agree,” she said. “I’ll go.”

It took just under ten minutes for Bizzy to reset the controls and for Lydia and Beckett, who seemed rather subdued, to join Joley, who was already up in the both with Bizzy.
Finn lingered, the last one in the time machine with Tesla.

“Finn, you know I have to do this.”

“I know, I know,” he assured her. “I won’t argue.”

“Oh.
You won’t?” she asked, unsure how to proceed in a conversation with him that wasn’t based on an argument.

“No.
I just wanted to say be careful. Be alert. Gather details, remember it all. And come back safe.”

“I will,” she said.
“Things have just started to get interesting.”

She laughed, then, in response to the surprised look on his face and she felt, for once, like she had it all under control.

“Finn,” said Lydia from the booth. Her amplified voice echoed in the room where Tesla and Finn stood and their faint, watery reflections peered back at them from the four semi-translucent mirrors stationed at each corner. “Get up here.”

“Right,” Finn said.
He turned to go, and then stopped before he’d taken two steps. “Almost forgot,” he said quietly as he turned back to Tesla and stood so that their bodies blocked the camera sightlines. “Take this with you.” He unzipped the cargo pocket on the leg of his khakis, reached inside, and gently extracted a tiny brown mouse whose nose and whiskers twitched inquisitively, and put it firmly into her hand.

“He’s so tiny,” she whispered, then closed her fingers gently but firmly around the creature.
“But what….”

“I got him from Biology.
They’ve got lots of them in the lab over there,” Finn said quickly. He started to back away toward the door. “It occurred to me we might want to know if someone else can survive the jump besides you—if maybe this little guy might get pulled along with you when you go back in time. When you went before, your clothes and the heart monitor went with you; they were in contact with you, so they travelled with you. But we don’t know if living, organic tissue will go, too. Or if it does, if it will survive.”

“Right,” said Tesla.
She carefully lifted the flap of her messenger bag and gently placed the mouse inside.

“Right,” Finn repeated unnecessarily.
“So I’ll see you when you get back.”

“Yup,” she said, and knew he heard the false bravado in her voice.
“And Finn,” she faltered. “Max….”

“Don’t worry,” he said, and his clear brown eyes held hers steadily.
“I’ve got Max.”

And then he was gone, and she was alone, once again, in the time machine.

Tesla patted the messenger bag at her hip. She felt somehow reassured by the tiny presence in there, and shrugged a little to adjust the green scarf wrapped around her cast and tied behind her neck. She stood in the center of the room while the now-familiar sound of Bizzy’s voice counted down from five in the sterile space, and she closed her eyes just as the light of a thousand suns filled the room.