Glimpse (The Tesla Effect Book 1) (20 page)

“So, you work in Dr. Abbott’s lab?” Finn said, the first to break the awkward silence.

“Well, I did,” said Sam.
“But I haven’t worked for him for six years.”

Tesla still struggled to grasp what had happened, how much
time had passed. “So you must be—what?” she asked Sam. “Twenty-four?”

“Almost,” he said, and she could hear the grin on his face.

“Right,” she said with a laugh. “Twenty-three and three-quarters.”

“Exactly,” he chuckled, as Finn walked silently beside them.

“And what do you do now?” asked Tesla.

“I’m in my second year of med school,” he said.
“Cardio—that’s the plan, anyway.”

“Specializing in arrhythmias?” Finn asked evenly.

Tesla glanced quickly at Finn’s profile but in the dark she saw only polite, casual interest on his face.

“Not exactly,” Sam said.
“My father had a heart attack and died when I was eighteen, and since then I’ve planned to be a heart surgeon.”

“That’s rough,” said Finn evenly, genuine sympathy in his voice.

“It was,” Sam agreed. “Thanks.”

Keisha took over at that point, grilling Sam about med school, while Finn and Tesla walked in silence until they arrived at Lydia’s, where Finn walked up the front steps, opened the door, and stood aside to let the others precede him.

Tesla sat on the sofa next to Keisha and finished off the peanut butter and jelly sandwich Max had brought her almost immediately.

“Thanks,” she said to her brother after she’d washed it down with the last of the milk in her glass.

“Sure.”
Max smiled at her from his place on the floor, where he sat with his legs crossed, obviously at home in Lydia’s house. “I figured you’d be hungry.”

“Yeah, I didn’t realize how much,” she said.

“Those eggs didn’t tide you over?” asked Sam, but Tesla only smiled in return, uncomfortable with this strange collision of worlds, with this Sam who was all grown up, incredibly handsome, even well-dressed. His white button down, with the cuffs open and turned up twice, revealed strong arms, and the open top button created a perfect setting for the column of his tanned neck, his chiseled features, those smoldering black eyes.

“Shall we get down to business?” asked Lydia, and though there was no overt criticism in her words or tone, Tesla sensed that she found this sandwich break—not to mention the pervy once-over Tesla had just given Sam—a waste of valuable time.

“Of course.” She colored slightly and glanced around the room, still shocked to see Keisha, to know that she was fully informed—at least in a general way—about this whole time travel thing and the fact that her dad had been kidnapped. It was a great relief to have her there. Apparently Bizzy had told Lydia that she’d inadvertently told Keisha, and though Lydia was still grumbling about the lax security she was forced to accept with teenagers on the payroll, she seemed to have resigned herself to the growing number of them in her midst.

Beckett and Lydia each occupied a chair, with Bizzy perched on the arm of Lydia’s while Joley and Finn stood in front of the fireplace, like some sort of united-guy front.
Sam sat on the sofa, next to Tesla.

“Tesla, why don’t you begin from the moment you made the jump twenty-four hours ago,” Lydia ordered as she peered at Tesla from over the tops of her half-glasses, her yarn and knitting needles forgotten in her lap.

Tesla tried her best to remember every detail as she spoke, though she deliberately left out the freedom and excitement she’d felt on the motorcycle, her uninjured arm wrapped tightly around Sam’s waist. Irritated, somehow, that she seemed to want to avoid Finn’s eyes as she mentioned the motorcycle, she looked deliberately at him, defiantly.

Finn’s only response was to look amused.

“I trust you wore a helmet,” Joley said.

“Gonna sue someone, counselor?” Keisha teased.

“Of course she did,” said Sam from beside Tesla. “I put mine on her before she even got on the bike.”

Keisha made a small sound of approval that everyone heard, a sound that she somehow managed to pack with sexual innuendo, and Tesla closed her eyes.
Thanks, Keish
.

“Go on, please,” Lydia said.

“Well, then we went to his house—it was like six a.m. by then—got some food—”

“Did anyone see you?” Beckett asked, and Tesla looked at her quickly, amazed that the girl could immediately zero in on the worst possible question to ask.

“No,” said Tesla. “There was no one else there.”

Beckett smiled a very little smile.

“As soon as the library was open we headed back to campus,” Tesla continued. Reluctant to confess she’d lied to Sam, she looked at her cast and picked at a loose edge of plaster with her other hand. “And I went to the physics department instead.”

Tesla turned to Sam.
“Sorry, but I lied to you. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you, but I thought if I told you too much about the future it might, I don’t know, cause problems.”

Sam smiled and covered her hand, briefly, with his own. “Of course.”

“So I went to the physics department and just walked in, went to my dad’s office to see what I could find.”

“How did you get in?” Joley asked.

“She brought a key, I’ll bet,” said Keisha. “You brought your dad’s spare key with you, didn’t you?”

Tesla smiled at her.
They’d once taken that key and gone to her father’s office on a Sunday afternoon, to do who knows what. They’d been twelve at the time, and when her dad caught them and called Keisha’s mom, they’d both been grounded.

“Yeah, I did,” she said.
“I had planned to give it to Finn for his jump, but somehow I forgot, and didn’t even remember it was in my bag until after I made the jump in his place.

“Nice,” said Beckett.
The approval was grudging, but it was there, and Tesla glanced at her in surprise. “What?” the blonde girl said defensively. “Don’t get excited, it’s not really a compliment. It turned out well, but only because you screwed it up and forgot to give Finn the key.”

“True enough,” Tesla admitted with a shrug.

“Did you find anything?” Lydia prodded.

“I did,” said Tesla as she opened the messenger bag that sat on the sofa beside her.
She reached inside and brought out several manila folders and extended them toward Bizzy, who walked over and took the folders out of Tesla’s hand. “These appear to be early work my parents did on the time machine, as well as some evidence that Sebastian Nilsen actually did steal data from my parents’ lab and use it to write the article that got him in trouble.”

“You know Sebastian Nilsen?” Sam asked.

“Do you?” Lydia countered.

“Not well,” he said slowly, “and certainly not in a good way.
I met him once, and saw him one other time, a few years later.”

“Can you be more specific?” Beckett asked.

“Yes, of course,” Sam said quickly. “When I worked the night shift in the Abbott’s lab—I think I was sixteen—a man approached me outside the building one night after I’d clocked out. I asked him what he wanted. He told me I was clearly a ‘go-getter,’ that kind of B.S., and he could help me out. I asked him what he meant, how he knew me, but all he would say was that he was interested in the work that went on in that lab, and that if I would give him access at night, just so he could look around, he would pay me. A lot.”

“And did you do it?” Bizzy asked.

“No, I didn’t,” said Sam, gently but firmly. “I told him I was not interested, and I got on the bike and left.”

“How did you know that was Sebastian Nilsen?” Joley asked.

“I didn’t at the time,” Sam said. “But a few months later I saw him again when I was on campus—I had run into Dr. Abbott on my way back to his office, and he stopped suddenly. A man stood by the side entrance with a young woman, a student I guess, and they were obviously in a heated argument. The man looked angry, and so did the young woman. I said something like, ‘I can’t believe he’s back!’ and your father grabbed my arm and took me—none too gently—into the nearest classroom and demanded that I explain. I felt guilty because I hadn’t told him earlier, I’d thought somehow it might reflect badly on me, but I told him then. The man we saw with that woman was the same guy who had tried to bribe me to let him into the lab a few months earlier.”

“What did my dad say?” Max asked from the floor.

“He said, ‘That’s Sebastian Nilsen, and he is a very dangerous man.’”

Lydia nodded.
“I’m not surprised.”

A faint sound, a movement of air from the front door, and everyone in the room turn
ed to see Jane Doane standing in the doorway, her small black bag at her feet.

“What did I miss?” she asked as she shut the door behind her.

“Not much,” said Lydia before anyone could answer. “I haven’t heard from you,” she said casually. “Any luck across the border?”

Jane smiled at the older woman, but without warmth, and Tesla felt again the inexplicable tension when the two were together.

“Some,” said Jane with a noncommittal shrug. “We’re certain Nilsen was there, but it appears he crossed back over into the States. He and anyone else who was with him. We lost the trail, however, in Buffalo.”

Tesla had become aware of Sam beside her because his body was tense and he was so focused.
She glanced at him, surprised to find him fixated on her Aunt Jane. Jane followed Tesla’s glance and looked appraisingly at Sam as she tucked her short dark hair behind her ear and smiled at him.

“Hello.
And you are?” she asked briskly.

“I’m Sam,” he said, his voice a little tight.
“But we’ve seen each other before—or at least, I’ve seen you.”

“Really?” Jane looked exactly the same as she had before Sam spoke, yet she was clearly, somehow, more alert.

“Yes,” he said. “I saw you once, about seven years ago, on campus. You were with Sebastian Nilsen.”

CHAPTER
21

Every eye in the room turned to Jane then, and Tesla marveled at her aunt’s composure. Jane walked into the room and stood next to Beckett’s chair. She said nothing, but after a moment the badass-ninja-girl got up meekly and went to sit on the floor beside Max.

As Jane settled into the chair Beckett had vacated, the tension in the room grew palpable as everyone waited for her to answer the unspoken question inherent in Sam’s revelation.
They all assumed that Lydia would take the lead, get to the bottom of this, but Lydia remained silent.

Jane smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle in her fitted dress pants, tucked her hair behind her ear again, and looked up, surprised.
“Oh, sorry, was I supposed to respond?”

“I think you’d better,” said Tesla quietly.

“Well, of course I know—knew—Sebastian, he and I and Tasya and Greg all did our undergraduate degrees together. Tasya and I were roommates our freshman year, I met Greg in the first semester, the same time Tasya did, and we were all fast friends before Spring Break rolled around. We all knew him, and he knew us.” Jane was wide-eyed and guileless, happy to prove that this scrutiny was no more than a mild amusement.

Tesla felt the hot flush of guilt wash over her for her suspicions.
Jane Doane was like family, the closest friend her mother ever had, but then Lydia spoke.

“That is, of course, true, Jane,” she said, her voice very serious.
“But that doesn’t explain why you were with Nilsen only seven years ago, long after the friendship had ended and he was completely estranged from the Abbotts. By then he had stolen data from their lab and published his infamous article, and he no longer worked for this university.”

As if they watched a tennis match, all eyes turned from Lydia back to Jane.

Jane smiled. “Yes, you’re quite right,” she said smoothly. “I hadn’t had any contact with Sebastian in years. But he waylaid me on campus that night to persuade me of his innocence. He asked me to intercede on his behalf with Tasya, to convince her that he had not stolen her work. He missed us all, he said, and wanted his good name back.”

Lydia merely waited for more.

“Of course I said no,” Jane said, annoyed for the first time. “And though I was brand new to the job—I’d only just been recruited, and hadn’t officially begun my work with the agency—I made a full report. Feel free to check on that,” she added to Lydia.

“I would, Jane, but of course you know I don’t have access to your internal reports.
I work for a different shop, and we all hold our cards very close to the vest.”

Jane shrugged.
“Oh, well.”

After a moment, Lydia turned to Tesla.
“Perhaps we should continue this later,” she said, as if no one else was in the room.

“After I’ve left?” asked Jane, one eyebrow raised. “Please, Tesla, continue with your story.”

Tesla pulled the cassette tapes from her messenger bag and held them out to the room at large in the palm of her hand. “I also found these, but I haven’t listened to them,” she said.

Joley moved from the fireplace to the sofa where Tesla sat, took the tapes from her, and left the room.

“I’m sorry, I missed some of this,” said Jane. “You found those tapes where?”

“In Dad’s office,” Tesla said.

“Tesla, how did you get in there—that whole side of the building is shut down, your father’s office is nothing more than a crater from the blast. That was a very foolish thing to do—the engineers haven’t begun to assess the structural damage—the floor could have collapsed!”

Confused for a moment, Tesla suddenly realized that Jane didn’t know she’d made the jump back in time.
Her aunt assumed that Tesla had gone to her dad’s office now, in the present.

“No, Aunt Jane,” she said.
“I went back. I used the time machine. I got this stuff from Dad’s office eight years ago—yesterday, but eight years ago.”

Startled out of her calm demeanor at last, Jane sat forward on the edge of her chair and leaned toward Tesla.
“I thought you had all agreed Finn would go,” she said, clearly displeased.

Lydia jumped in to spare Tesla.
“The technology does not appear to work with Finnegan. We’re not sure if it works with anyone except Tesla. She is two for two, you might say.”

Jane turned on Lydia.
“You don’t have the right to make these decisions without me, Lydia. She’s a child. And I’m family.”

“Well, she is a minor, but hardly a child,” Lydia said.
“And you’re not actually family, are you?”

Jane flushed and sat back in her chair, her lips pursed tightly together.
Lydia was correct: she had no rights where Tesla and Max were concerned.

Joley came back into the room then, and they felt his excitement like an electric current that crackled and sliced through the room.

“What is it?” Keisha asked.

“These are audio tapes of a heartbeat.”

“What do you mean?” asked Beckett.

Joley held out the small tape player he held in his hand and pushed Play.
The speaker was small and weak, but they all heard it clearly: the sound of a heart as it pumped blood through a body.

Joley went to hit the off button but Sam put up a hand to stop him.
“Wait,” he instructed. They all listened for another minute and then Joley turned it off and the room was silent once again.

“What is it?” asked Lydia.

“That heartbeat is irregular. And a little fast.” Sam looked at Tesla then, and he took her right hand in his. “Tesla, the heartbeat on that tape has an arrhythmia.”

Tesla could feel her own heart beat in response.
“So, w-what does that mean?” she asked with a slight stammer.

“I think it means that given where you found the tape, the heart we just heard is likely yours.
Your heartbeat, recorded at least eight years ago.”

“But, why?” she said, completely confused.
“I don’t understand.” She pulled her hand away from his.

“Isn’t a heartbeat a kind of biological signature?” Finn asked slowly.
“You know, like a fingerprint, or DNA?”

Sam frowned as he thought about this, his black eyes fathoms deep.
“I suppose it’s possible,” he said slowly. “But a heartbeat wouldn’t be a unique signature, one that you could identify as one person’s, and not anyone else’s.”

“Even if the heartbeat in question was arrhythmic?” Finn
pressed him, and everyone in the room seemed to hold their breaths.

“You’d have to have an enormous amount of data to determine if there was, over a long period of time, any discernible pattern, let alone a singularly unique pattern,” Sam said.
“I mean, it’s called arrhythmic for a reason: there’s no rhythm. No pattern. The beat is random, at least for the duration of the tests we use to monitor hearts.”

“But what if a heart was monitored for a lot longer?” Tesla asked.
“For a much longer period than any medical test would require? Would you find a pattern—an individual biological signature?”

“Is that possible?” asked Beckett.
She turned to Bizzy, as they all did with technology or science questions.

“I don’t know,” Bizzy admitted.
“This certainly isn’t my area.” But before everyone could turn back to Sam, Bizzy added, “What I do know, though, is that Tasya Petrova was heavily involved in chaos theory—randomness and pattern—in her work right before she died.”

“And—” Tesla began, stunned as she saw exactly where Bizzy was headed.

“And her journal, which is focused on the time machine they developed, refers to
the Tesla effect
,” Bizzy finished for her.

The room was deadly silent.
No one moved.

“Someone has to say it,” Beckett said, her voice strained.

And then, much to everyone’s surprise, it was Max who said it. Max, who knew essentially nothing about quantum physics or the human cardiovascular system but could put the disparate threads of dramatic narrative together, unravel the tangle of complex plots with multiple characters and conflicted motivations and see the entire trajectory of the story before anybody else ever did, spoke the words first.

“It’s Tesla.”
His eyes blinked behind his battered, wire-framed glasses. “Tesla’s heartbeat is unique, and our mother figured out its pattern, and it’s that pattern—that heartbeat—that makes the time machine work.”

“
Ho. Lee. Shit
,” Sam said softly, and Tesla noted, as if from very far away, that he still used the same expression, with the exact same inflection, that he had as a kid.

“Indeed,” Lydia added, as they all sat and absorbed this idea. And then, as usual, she took charge.

“Alright everyone, listen up,” she began. “We’ve got work to do. It seems clear that the files Tesla brought back confirm the theft by Nilsen many years ago, and the reason for the destroyed friendship. This is not new information, but it is always good to reaffirm what we already know. It also seems likely, given what was in the first locked drawer, that the second one Tesla did not open might also contain important information, maybe even a direct clue as to where Dr. Abbott is being held.” She turned to Tesla, who sat on the sofa looking a bit shell-shocked. “You’ll have to go back, dear.”

“I know,” Tesla said.
She had already figured that part out. “I’m so pissed at myself. I can’t believe I panicked and raced out of the building like that. I should have waited until I’d checked the other drawer.”

“I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself,” Lydia consoled.
“It’s difficult to imagine how any of us could have done better, set down in the middle of our own lives almost a decade in the past. I’m sure it will be easier this time.”

“Probably,” Tesla agreed.
“Guess I’ll get ready to head back to my little coffin.”

“Wait, I almost forgot,” Sam said.
He put his hand, very briefly, on Tesla’s leg, just above her knee, and didn’t even seem to realize it. Startled by his touch, Tesla turned quickly to face him and wondered if everyone else in the room had seen his intimate gesture. If Finn had seen it.

“Remember that second time you made the jump?” Sam began.

Tesla had to laugh, and Sam was dazzled by the deep dimples, the glitter-green and blue of her eyes. “Yeah, I remember,” she said. “It was, like, yesterday.”

“Right,” Sam grinned sheepishly.
“It’s all so weird, even though I’ve had years to get used to the idea.”

“You said you forgot something?” Finn asked, and Tesla could not mistake the coldness in his voice.

“Yeah,” Sam said immediately as he turned to Finn with an open, friendly face. “Just before Tesla made the jump back—earlier tonight—she made a similar comment about how small and tight the early time machine was. The coffin, I guess you guys call it. So the next night, when I came in for my shift, I made an offhand suggestion to Dr. Petrova about how cool it would be someday when her prototype actually worked and how, from what she had told me, people from the future could come here, to her time machine. It would have to be bigger, though, I told her, because nobody would be able to fit in that little box.”

“Nicely done,” Beckett said with admiration.

“Yes, it was,” Lydia agreed.

“Well, they acted almost immediately on the suggestion I planted.
I had no idea how they got the funding so quickly, but a little less than a week later, the coffin had been replaced by a time machine that was roughly the size of a walk-in closet.”

“So the coffin is no more?” Tesla asked.

“Not for another week,” Bizzy answered. “You know, a week from now, eight years ago.”

“So we have to wait a week?” Tesla asked, the alarm in her voice apparent to everyone.
“What if in the meantime there’s no clue here, in our time, to my dad’s whereabouts? We don’t have—he doesn’t have—that kind of time. I can still go now, the coffin is tight, but it’s obviously doable for me.”

“No, no, it’s not a problem,” Bizzy hastened to assure her.
“I can adjust the calculations and reset the destination equation—to a point.”

“Oh,” Tesla said, taken completely unawares.
“I assumed the two points on the closed time loop were fixed; that our time was connected to exactly eight years ago by the wormhole the machine created. You can change where the connection is?”

“Yeah,” Bizzy said.
“In theory, anyway. I mean, I think I can do it. You know, without losing you somewhere. Somewhen.”

“Then why,” Tesla asked slowly, “haven’t we planned all along to simply go back to the night my dad was taken by Nilsen, the night Finn and I were attacked and my arm got broken, and just prevent all of it in the first place?”

Bizzy dropped her eyes to her lap where she twisted her favorite skull ring that she wore on her index finger. “Because I don’t know how,” she said, so softly the others barely heard her.