Run (The Tesla Effect #2)

RUN

THE TESLA EFFECT

BOOK 2

JULIE DREW

Ring of Fire Publishing

ISBN-13: 978-0692345405

ISBN-10: 069234540X

Run (The Tesla Effect, Book 2)

©2014 Julie Drew. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transferred without the express written consent of the author.

Published by

Ring of Fire Publishing

Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. 

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity with real persons or events is purely coincidental. Persons, events, and locations are either the product of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiousl
y
.

Caitlin Wilson, Editor.

Cover images by De Visu.             

Cover design by Julie Drew and Stephen Penner.

Acknowledgements

My job and colleagues at The University of Akron are an important part of my writing life. I am very lucky to be surrounded by creative, productive, talented writers, whose support and enthusiasm keep me at it. And Akron, Ohio is a pretty great place to be a writer these days. It’s in the air.

Thanks are due as well to my publisher, Ring of Fire Books, and to Caitlin Wilson for her skillful editorial work. I am especially grateful to Stephen Penner for his unwavering enthusiasm for
The Tesla Effect
; his patience and good humor as I worry and nag my way through the completion and publication of this trilogy; and his smashing covers for Tesla, which I adore.

Insecurity and doubt are an inevitable part of authorship, but the pride and certainty my loved ones express in my work is humbling and a constant source of joy. So thank you, Bill and Cheryl Drew, Maryann and Bill Lyons, Joyce and Charles Byrd—you are the parents everybody hopes for. Jim and Sue and Katy, Tom and Sarah, Ray and Amanda, Cecilia and Colton, Lori, Charlotte, Victor and Lena—thanks for always making me feel like I can do anything with this army at my back. You guys are the best.

Deep, big, ineffable love and gratitude for my boys and their girls; for your interest, your enthusiasm and excitement, and your substantive help in the creation of these characters, I thank you. The joy, humor, curiosity, intellectualism, and human decency they embody are modeled on you in many ways. Philip and Amber, thank you for reminding me endlessly of what a creative life looks like, and how crucially important it is. Brian and Casey, writers both, thank you for your humor and insight, and for being the best draft-stage readers any writer could want. These books would not exist without you. I love you all to pieces.

And finally, thank you to Bill Lyons, my husband, best friend, partner in crime, confidante, traveling companion; you are lyric-mangler, hoops-driver, dog-whisperer, wave-rider, family-maker. Heart of my heart, you are every thing, every day.

PS: all sentences ending in prepositions are intentional. I like it. Sue me.

Fo
r
Casey,

who leaps and soars and roars, daughter of my dreams.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking

Racing around to come up behind you again.

The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

— Pink Floyd,
Time

PROLOGUE

The watcher paused in the dark, one leather-gloved hand resting momentarily on the rough bark of an ancient oak. Daylight was gone, leaving a barely-discernible contrast between the dark tree trunks crowding the road on both sides and the slightly less-dark night that filled the spaces in between. Bony branches reached upward toward the stars and the last of the leaves, long since dropped, lay in brittle layers underfoot, like brown, unmarked wrapping paper from the most depressing Christmas morning ever.

The watcher smiled, amused by these musings, as the phrase
the gloaming
came to mind from some long-forgotten literature class, but the task at hand—and what was at stake—drove such frivolous thoughts back into hiding.

Someone was going to die tonight.

And despite the meticulous plotting of every possible action and the expanding consequences that might ensue, the watcher was still uncertain who that someone would be. The girl was involved, of course, but this whole thing—the time machine, her parents’ work, the enemies that were crawling out of the woodwork now—was so much bigger than it had been last summer, and the watcher’s job was to shepherd all of these competing and conflicting threads, these multiple actors with very different agendas, into some kind of coherent pattern, a sequence of events that would not end in catastrophe when it was all said and done.

It’s a small task, really
, the watcher thought with a wry twist of the lips, knowing that a decision would have to be made regarding an intervention. Again.

It was a path that, once taken, proved nearly impossible to veer from.

The luxury of further reflection disappeared with the headlights that suddenly swept through the trees. A car was on the road, moving at an impressive clip toward the watcher, who now crouched behind a thick stand of saplings, completely hidden from view by the multiple trunks and dense undergrowth which gave way to a carpet of pine needles that stretched back through the forest.

When the car stopped, just as the watcher knew it would, the vehicle was a mere ten yards away, close enough to see and hear everything. The passenger door of the car opened and a woman emerged, coatless despite the chill of November. The car’s interior light, in the moment before she slammed the door shut and extinguished it, blazed upon the polished mahogany of her auburn hair.

The driver stepped out as well, leaving the car running, and called after the woman as she walked toward the watcher, who remained hidden. The woman neither turned nor answered—until she heard a sound from among the trees on the other side of the road.

She turned, slowly, toward the man by the car, her dread visible to the watcher in the tension of her shoulders, which she held stiff and high. There were now, the watcher noted, five other people present and in play, as expected.

The auburn-haired woman standing in the glare of the headlights, however, was behaving in a decidedly
un
expected manner.

She knows
, thought the watcher, astonished, aware of how seldom that happened in this line of work.
When does this—how—she’s trying to distract him
.

The watcher took a deep breath, blocked out the racing thoughts. In the end, this changed nothing. It was time.

Having trained for this very moment, the watcher deftly lifted the revolver from its holster, then reached into an interior pocket, removed a silencer, and readied the weapon, all the while watching and listening as the drama played out between the two people standing on the road illuminated by the car headlights.

Voices rose in accusation, stung with derision. One, in particular, sharpened in bitterness and hatred. When the man by the car moved forward and began to plead his case, the woman laughed, a sound of unmistakable amusement, and the threat of violence was suddenly palpable. The watcher released the safety and brought the gun up, both hands around the butt, index finger on the trigger, ready.

Then, movement from the woods: two adults, struggling, could barely be made out in the darkness between the trees. One more second—
wait
, thought the watcher, eyes trained on the impenetrable darkness, seeing nothing, but then—
there
! Additional movement, a suddenly lunging shape. Left eye closed, the watcher exhaled slowly, and with the ease and familiarity of expertise, squeezed the trigger.

Now.

CHAPTER 1

The chatter and laughter of four hundred high school students reverberated off the walls of the auditorium, echoed and increased exponentially in volume, until Tesla wanted to cover her ears. She didn’t move, but sat rigidly on the edge of the wooden chair on the stage as she waited with the others for Principal Dietrich to introduce them to the student body.

A math award
, she thought, her mouth drawn down in a tight little frown. An award for a perfect score on the analytical section of the ACT—what could possibly be worse? Any math prize, awarded in public like this, would be a huge embarrassment, but unbeknownst to Mr. Dietrich, she had gotten that perfect score without even trying. How was she supposed to explain that? She’d refused to take the prep course her dad had suggested, and when she sat for the exam she’d read each question once, quickly, picked an answer and moved on, finishing in record time. The proctor had been surprised, asked her if perhaps she had rushed through it unnecessarily, and wouldn’t she like to go over it again, since there was plenty of time? “Nope,” was all she’d said in response, inexplicably pleased by the frowning disapproval it had earned her from the disgruntled woman.

She knew all the material and then some, but Tesla wasn’t exactly a model student. Plus, it seemed wrong to have to sit in a room with dozens of silent, anxious teenagers as they all sweated over a standardized test upon which, they were told, their futures depended. It had pissed her off. But despite her efforts to undermine institutionalized, adult control—not to mention her own future—she now had to accept an award, in front of the whole school, for a test that she
actively tried to screw up
as a means of protest against the test itself.

All Tesla wanted was for this to be over so she could go to Aunt Jane’s, get in a good workout with the others, and forget this ever happened. She wanted to disappear from the world—something everybody wanted from time to time, but that she alone could actually do.

A chubby, middle-aged man with a shiny pink complexion and a comb-over ambled onto the stage, just in front of the five students who sat in an orderly row, and cleared his throat. The smell of cheap aftershave wafted out from his body, and Tesla imagined it as a toxic green cloud wending its way toward her as Mr. Dietrich leaned in toward the microphone. Slowly, carefully, Tesla began to tip her chair back onto two legs, away from the smell.
Nine degrees
, she thought.
Fifteen degrees. Twenty-one, twenty-three
. Her eyes began to water from the fumes as she carefully angled her knee and placed her right foot five inches in front of her, the precise distance needed to maintain perfect stability.

“Settle down, everyone,” Mr. Dietrich said, his voice amplified through the mic so that it carried up even to the cheap seats, but neither the number of people who continued to talk nor the overall volume in the auditorium lessened.

“That’s enough!” he said loudly, and Tesla quickly brought her chair back upright.

The voices subsided as everyone in the audience turned around in their seats to face front, though Tesla couldn’t make anyone out, not even her best friends Keisha and Malcolm, who’d promised to try to sit up close for moral support. All the lights were trained on the stage. The audience was a vague, dark mass that roiled all around her, a shapeless collection of individuals she could not identify, though she could feel their eyes and their expectations as they pressed in on her.

So much for school as my one escape
, she thought. She knew this was yet another of the contradictions that plagued her, that she both hated school because it was boring and rigid, and loved it as something that was completely predictable and hers alone, separate from the rest of her life that seemed so often uncertain and out of her control. Her family troubles had no foothold here, and her love life—if you could even call it that—did not follow her into her classes, since Finn and Sam were both out of high school.

Thankfully
, she noted, as she saw a wadded up piece of notebook paper, flung from somewhere in the audience, bounce onto the stage before it came to a stop right by Mr. Dietrich’s foot.
High school boys are such idiots
.

“That’s enough of that,” the principal growled into the mic. “You will only get detention if you throw things in here—count on it.” He waited a beat, his challenge unanswered, and then began. “You’re all here, rather than in your sixth period classes—”

Tesla tried not to smile at the smatter of applause and whistles that interrupted the principal at that.

“—yes, yes, very funny. You’re here this afternoon so that we can all acknowledge and congratulate some of your classmates who have done exemplary work in their various courses and extracurricular activities. These students illustrate what can be accomplished through effort, determination, and discipline.”

A couple of people near the front, close to the stage, clapped half-heartedly, but Tesla was primarily aware of the low sound of whispers and soft, derisive laughter. Her face flamed with embarrassment, and she knew her cheeks had bloomed dramatically into a deep, bright pink—and next to her fiery orange hair, created her least favorite clash of colors. At least from this distance her strange eyes—one clear, bright green, the other electric blue—weren’t as obvious.

She hoped, anyway.

“Represented on stage here today are examples of student excellence in Athletics, Mathematics, Language Arts, Biology, and Musical Performance. I’ll introduce each of our honorees, and they will, in turn, say a few words about their accomplishments.” Mr. Dietrich turned so that he could see the group on the stage as he indicated them with a sweep of his hand, and Tesla felt her stomach tighten.

This. Is. A nightmare.

“First, Hakim Parker, who broke the school record for high jump, and simultaneously placed second in the state. Hakim?” Mr. Dietrich said as he glanced at the boy who sat next to Tesla.

Hakim stood up and moved gracefully toward the mic, his steps buoyant, confident.

“Hey,” he said into the mic, and the audience laughed—because they liked him. Hakim was popular and attractive. “Yeah, so I had a good day at the meet last spring. I decided to train real hard over winter break, and it paid off.” He paused and glanced at Mr. Dietrich. “Is that good?” he asked.

The principal nodded once, rather curtly, and the audience laughed again and clapped.

“Next up, we have Tesla Abbot, who scored one hundred percent on the quantitative section of the ACT. A
perfect
score,” he said again, with emphasis, and Tesla could feel the mood in the room shift, from the camaraderie that always surrounded Hakim, to a resentful, suspicious consideration of Tesla, who in this instance served only to make the rest of the students look stupid or lazy when it came to their own math scores.

“Tesla?” Mr. Dietrich smiled warmly at her, oblivious of the hostility Tesla could feel like an actual weight that pressed against her body and pinned her to her chair.

Tesla glanced at him in a panic, but his only response was to raise his eyebrows in expectation and step back an inch or two more from the mic stand, a clear indication that she’d better get up and speak to the crowd, pronto. She slowly rose to her feet. The bright lights above the stage blinded her and the audience muttered and shifted in the dark anonymity that always precedes the formation of a mob. She walked the two hundred seventy-two inches from her chair to the mic, stopped, and froze in the glare of the stage lights.

She meant to speak, but she couldn’t seem to separate her tongue from the roof of her mouth. She couldn’t even swallow—she needed water. She stood there like the village idiot in her Keens, low-rise khakis and slouchy black sweater, her hair a riotous orange halo around her head, over her shoulders and down her back. She had a sudden vision of herself as the subject in that freaky painting,
The Scream
, hands at either side of her face, mouth open in a permanent howl of terror, running from the stage.

The silence stretched out, taut and airless.

“Speak up,” someone yelled from the back, up high on her left, and Tesla’s head snapped around toward the sound.

“Hey, math geek!” shouted a deep baritone from the midsection directly in front of her, and her eyes searched the darkness for its source. “Catch!”

At that very instant a hard rubber ball hurtled toward Tesla’s head, accompanied by a vague gasp from Mr. Dietrich standing to her right.

There wasn’t time to think—Tesla’s right hand shot up of its own accord, two and a half inches in front of her nose, and the sound of the ball as it smacked solidly into her palm, like a ninety-mile-an-hour pitch into a well-oiled catcher’s mitt, echoed in the suddenly silent auditorium. But before anyone could react, Tesla’s arm moved down, back, and then arced over her head in one fluid motion, and she whipped the ball like an arrow at a perfectly calculated target in the massive, incomprehensible darkness.

The ball hit its intended target—hard and fast—a boy’s voice cried out in pain, and the whole place went berserk.

Several girls who sat nearby screamed and scrambled up from their seats, pushed and shoved backward along the rows, trying to get to the aisles, and fell over those who sat next to them on either side. There were shouts and cat calls, whistles and laughter from everywhere in the darkness, confused questions, loud exclamations, pandemonium as the volume rose. Some in the audience were clearly impressed by what Tesla had just done, some shocked and frightened that she could do it at all, but most were mindless and mean, interested, however briefly, only in spectacle. What kind of spectacle it was hardly mattered.

“Tesla!” Mr. Dietrich bellowed right next to her, his once mildly rosy face now apoplectic. “What was that?”

“Um, a rubber ball?” She swallowed, relieved to find her voice again.

“My office, tomorrow morning,” he snapped as he leaned toward her, his aftershave pushing its way into her nose, her lungs, clinging to her clothes and hair. “I only hope to God you didn’t actually hurt anybody.” He turned and hurried off the stage as students began pouring out of the auditorium doors.

“I guess we’re dismissed,” Hakim said cheerfully as he passed Tesla and headed for the side door that led to the school parking lot. “Nice arm,” he called over his shoulder before he disappeared in the crowd. The other honorees, robbed of their moment in the sun, left in a tight, resentful knot.

It took just under four minutes for Tesla to be completely alone. She still stood on the stage, the lights bright in her eyes, the darkness now devoid of any hint of menace.

So much for my low profile
, she thought as she picked up her black messenger bag and slung it across her body.
And not calling attention to yourself is rule one when you work part-time after school as a spy.