Run (The Tesla Effect #2) (22 page)

Tesla was stunned. She stood, somewhat dazed, as she listened to her mother talking in a low voice to Max, heard the garage door open, and the sound of the car leaving. And the house settled around her, eerily the same in every way, which only served to highlight that everything that counted was very, very wrong.

CHAPTER 27

Tesla walked out the front door, already at a fast clip the moment she hit the sidewalk. She tried to stay calm as she felt panic encroaching, unable to even imagine what she would find when she got to Jane’s.

“Excuse me, Ms. Abbott!” she heard from behind her.

Startled, Tesla turned around and saw a young man running after her down the sidewalk, followed by another man carrying a huge camera on his shoulder and trying to keep up. Tesla looked past them and saw a news van parked outside of her house, which she had been too preoccupied to notice.

The young man came bustling up, and instead of stopping in front of her, he stepped up beside her as the cameraman caught up, adjusted his camera, and pointed it right at his colleague and Tesla.

“Ms. Abbott, would you care to comment on the story that has just broken on the AP Wire? It’s already been picked up by the
Times
, as well as the
Tribune
, who are both reporting it on their websites.”

“Sorry, what?” asked Tesla, thoroughly confused, glancing nervously at the giant lens of the camera that was a mere thirty-eight inches from her face, its smooth black surface reflecting her startled expression back at her.

“Come on, Ms. Abbott, give me a break,” the man said, flashing a perfect smile and tossing his head a little, which made him look like a pony. “We were literally a block from here and I’m the first reporter to get to you—this is going to be huge!”

Tesla took a step back from him, and then another. The reporter turned to follow her, he and the cameraman advancing on her as she walked backward, her hand held out, palm facing them, as if that would stop them.

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said quickly. “You’ve got the wrong person.”

“Tesla Abbott? Daughter of Tasya Petrova and Greg Abbott, the physicists?”

Tesla nodded—she couldn’t help it, it was the truth.

“Tesla, let us help get your story out. You’re going to be famous, honey—the sky’s the limit!”

Tesla was scared now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—leave me alone!”

She turned and started jogging away, her back to them, knowing she could outrun them if she had to. She glanced once over her shoulder and saw that they had stopped, stood still twelve feet behind her, the camera no longer pointed at her and the reporter staring forlornly after her. Tesla saw another van peel around the corner and come to a screeching halt behind the other one, just in front of her house.

Without hesitation she darted through a neighbor’s yard, cleared the low, decorative fence that lined the back of their yard, and sprinted toward campus and Aunt Jane’s house.

When she arrived at the front door ten minutes later, she let herself in, closed the door behind her, and leaned back against the door, eyes closed.
What the hell was that
?

Jane Doane, walking from the kitchen to her home office, caught sight of Tesla in the entryway. “Tesla? What are you doing here?”

“I’m…just stopping by?” Tesla asked, afraid to make any statements—even something as simple as
I’m going to school
had turned out to be completely false. Did she even work for Jane? Did the others? Was Jane a spy?
Oh my god, does Finn even live here? And Bizzy and the others?
She was very close to hyperventilating, she could already feel the tingling in her hands from lack of oxygen.

“Well, that’s nice,” said Jane with a slight frown. “But don’t you have work at the lab this morning? The others are still sleeping, I think, or have gone off to class. You all have a fencing lesson this afternoon, I believe?”

Tesla heaved a huge sigh of relief, which made Jane raise a smooth, quizzical eyebrow.

“Is everything all right?” she asked, but there was a formality in her tone and manner that was off, and Tesla felt uncomfortable confiding in her.

“Yeah, of course,” Tesla said. “Can I just go up and see if Bizzy’s up yet?”

“Go ahead,” Jane said, following Tesla with a puzzled frown as she bounded up the stairs.

Tesla stopped at the third floor landing and paused to catch her breath. She hesitated as she walked by Finn’s room, remembering the last time she’d been in there, but so much had happened it seemed a lifetime ago. She stopped at Bizzy’s door and knocked softly.

“Yeah?”

Tesla opened the door just wide enough to stick her head inside. “Hey, Biz, it’s me. Can I come in?”

Bizzy was sitting cross-legged on her bed, chewing on the end of a mechanical pencil, open books and papers scattered all around her. She didn’t look up, simply waved her hand to indicate that Tesla should come in.

Tesla sat down on the edge of the bed, afraid to do or say anything as she stared at Bizzy. Her relief was so strong when Bizzy looked up at her, still in her pajamas but with her eyes fully lined in black, that Tesla burst into tears as she sprang forward and hugged the startled girl.

“Uh, okay,” Bizzy said from somewhere near Tesla’s ear. “What’s up?”

Tesla laughed, pulled away, and wiped at her eyes with her fingers. “Nothing, I’m just having a weird morning,” she said quickly. “And I’m glad to see you.”

“Sure,” Bizzy said, frowning in confusion.

“So, will you be at the lab today?” Tesla asked cautiously. “You know, working? With my dad?”

Bizzy looked at her like she was an odd specimen of some kind, performing under her microscope in unexpected ways. “Yeah. Where else would I be?”

Tesla laughed again, and the sound was not pleasant. Was she getting hysterical, she wondered? She tried to choke back another giggle, and didn’t quite succeed.

“Tesla, are you okay?”

They both stopped when the doorbell chimed loudly from below, a speaker on each floor carrying the sound clearly throughout the house. They said nothing, and a moment later it rang again, twice in quick succession, suggesting an impatient caller at the very least.

“What, I’m the only person in the whole house who’s up?” Bizzy muttered, getting off the bed and heading toward the stairs. Tesla followed silently behind as they walked down the stairs to the first floor.

Tesla hung back, an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, as Bizzy opened the front door.

Tesla couldn’t see very much from where she stood, but it seemed from the noise of multiple voices and even the couple of arms that shoved their way in through the opening that there was a crowd gathered on the porch of the old Victorian house.

“Is Tesla Abbott here?”

“We’re looking for Tesla Abbott.”

“I know she’s here, I saw her walk inside—we just want to talk to her!”

The voices clamored over one another, rising in volume, competing to be heard. Tesla started to back away, moving slowly toward the stairs, feeling like a rabbit cornered by a pack of slavering dogs trying to reach her with their sharp teeth. She was just going to run upstairs and hide out until the press went away, and then she’d sneak out.

Her shoulders were suddenly held in a firm grip from behind and she gasped, spinning around to face her assailant.

“Hey, Abbott,” said Finn, his charming smile and warm, gold-brown eyes easing her fears as he stood at the bottom of the stairs. He tucked her hair behind her ear as Joley descended the stairs right behind him.

“There’s—I’m not sure what’s going on, but there are a bunch of reporters outside—there were some at my house, too—can I hide upstairs until the coast is clear? I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t want to talk to them.”

Finn’s head tilted just slightly to the side as he considered her, his eyes narrowed. “Why not?”

“Because—well I don’t know. I don’t know what they want to talk to me about, and I don’t like microphones and cameras shoved in my face. Or people chasing me,” she said, growing increasingly angry as she spoke. “I want to go upstairs until they leave.”

“Tes, if they just want to ask questions, there’s nothing to freak out over,” Finn reasoned with a reassuring smile. “We’ll help you—we’ll stay right with you, won’t we Joley?”

Finn turned and looked at Joley, and Tesla closed her eyes, trying to block out the sight of Finn, unsurprised and unconcerned. She didn’t know what had changed, only that it had. The rest was merely detail. He didn’t understand her, didn’t get that she was scared—or worse, he did—they were entangled, after all—unless they weren’t anymore? Either way, he didn’t seem to care.

She opened her eyes to find them both watching her, and Joley laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “My advice would be to go ahead and take questions,” he said gently. “You’ll have to sooner or later.”

Finn turned back to her expectantly, apparently having nothing to add. She stared at him, incredulous.

“Do you know what this is about?” she snapped. “Either of you?”

“Naturally,” said Joley. “You’re the girl who can time travel—everyone’s going to want to talk to you—it’s bloody exciting, don’t you think?”

“But—how could—I don’t understand, the
press
knows?? How did it get out? My parents are going to freak! Do you have any idea—”

Tesla stopped mid-sentence, something about Finn’s face, right in front of her, silencing her, the questions racing through her mind dying on her lips.

“Finn,” she said in a horrified whisper, taking a step forward and grabbing his hand. “What have you done?”

He smiled, flashed that brilliant smile, his eyes warm and crinkly at the edges, and she thought,
I’m wrong, it’s still him, it has to be him
, and as if he could hear her thoughts he gently withdrew his hand and tucked her hair back behind her ear.

“I made my career, Tes, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve got a book deal. I’ve got access. You and time-travel, Tesla. You’re news, and it’s my story.”

EPILOGUE

The window opposite the fireplace in the living room was open, the edge of a curtain moving slightly in the cool breeze. It was an unusually warm night for early December, warm enough to allow the fresh evening air into the house, and the watcher was grateful for the unexpected opportunity to both see and hear the family that gathered inside, lit warmly in the glow of the room’s lamps. It was supposed to be a bitter winter, and the watcher wondered—hoped—if perhaps the forecasters were wrong, that the days ahead would be easier than foretold.

Hope not being the watcher’s strong suit, however, the thought was gone as quickly as it had arrived. The watcher noted the man who sat apart, reading. He looked tired, and—disengaged. If his face had shown a keen interest in his book, some sense in his body language that he was fully participating in the pages he turned every few minutes, the watcher would have felt reassured, but the book seemed a mere prop, a mask, a device meant to act as a buffer between him and—well, everything.

The woman sat on the sofa, her slim legs curled up under her, the light from the lamp on the table next to her casting a soft sheen over her dark, auburn hair. A young boy with bright orange hair and wire-framed glasses sat next to her, reading slowly and painfully aloud from a large book in his lap. He stopped and looked up at the woman, and the watcher saw for the first time the sullen look on his face.

“This is boring,” he said.

“Max, I don’t want to hear any more. You will do your homework. You will bring up your reading scores. There is no excuse for your grades except laziness, and I won’t tolerate it. Now continue.”

The watcher felt a pang of sympathy for the boy but quickly squelched it. Such feelings would only get in the way, making an already unpleasant job even harder. The family must be observed, their behaviors and interactions analyzed dispassionately, and decisions made.

Finally, the watcher turned to the room’s one remaining occupant: the girl with the fiery hair. She seemed to have grown older, matured, the watcher noted, a maturity that was happening rather too quickly, but unavoidably, given recent events. She was becoming increasingly familiar with pain and uncertainty, and a world that was far more difficult and complex than she could have imagined only a few months ago. The watcher sighed. Everyone had to grow up, eventually.

Some, sooner than others.

The redheaded girl sat on the far end of the sofa, her knees bent and arms hugging her legs to her chest. She, too, sat apart—similar to the man, but rather than his quiet disengagement she exhibited an alertness, and a level of anxiety, that the watcher found alarming.

As her differently-colored eyes darted between the man who sat reading in a chair on the other side of the room, the pages of his open book washed in soft white light, his face in shadow, and the woman and boy who sat closer, on the other end of the sofa, the watcher marked the extraordinary contrast between this tableau and others—earlier scenes that had included the same people, but without the woman, of course. She was the crux of this entire problem, and there simply was no good solution. There was bad, and with any luck at all, less bad.

The watcher checked the time, noted the sound of powerful vehicles approaching from the far end of the street, and moved soundlessly away from the window, across the yard to the sidewalk and toward town. The familiar houses were somewhat of a comfort, even knowing that only two blocks away the Reverend Doyle of One God One Truth and a surprising number of his followers had taken up residence. In less time than expected, the watcher heard the sharp knock on the door of the house where the family lived, confirmation that the government had indeed made its move. There was nothing else to hear as the watcher continued down the sidewalk; these kinds of agents did their work in silence, and no one but the watcher even knew that the girl would be taken, that the lives of the family would change drastically, and nothing would be done to stop it. The trajectory they were on would have to play out, regardless of what it would do to them—and despite the fact that not all of them would survive.

THE END