Glimpse (The Tesla Effect Book 1) (14 page)

“Or at least that wasn’t the case
at that time,” Beckett corrected him.

Tesla swallowed, hard.
Gagged and tied? What kind of a world did she now live in?

“Third,” Finn said.
“We should assume that every word was deliberate—he said
I should be home soon
. He doesn’t want you and Max to worry about him. And finally, we have what appear to be two coded messages, which we hope you two can decipher.” He paused and looked from Tesla to Max. “He asks you to clean up from a pizza party, and to record a TV show you are all interested in.”

Tesla looked at Max, who shrugged, and she looked back at Finn.
“I’m not sure,” she began, but Lydia interrupted.

“We think his request that you clean up refers to the note we found yesterday at your house, which
seems to be an attempt to make up after the argument you had.” She paused in order to let Tesla weigh in.

Tesla frowned.
“Yeah, I guess so. That’s certainly what I thought when I read it.”

“What about the reference to a TV sh
ow?” Beckett asked without malice or sarcasm. She was a professional, at least for the moment. “Has your family talked about a new show, one you all wanted to watch?”

“No,” said Tesla.
“We really don’t watch the same shows, and actually my Dad hardly watches TV at all. I like science fiction and the occasional reality show, and Max likes stupid stuff.”

“Oh, because
The Bachelor
is an intellectual and artistic tour de force?” Max said.

Finn jumped in.
“So your dad didn’t mean it literally, then. What TV shows right now are highly rated? Maybe the name of a show, or an actor, will be a clue.”

Joley had already googled
highly rated TV shows
on his phone, and he began to read aloud from the screen as he scrolled down. “In May,
Game of Thrones
received the highest Nielssen rating—”

“Nielssen—Nilsen!” Bizzy said excitedly.
“Sebastian Nilsen! You were right, Lydia!”

Everyone began to talk at once, and it took a moment for
Tesla to realize that Aunt Jane had entered the room and set a nondescript overnight bag at her feet.

“That’s right,” Jane said, and everyone quieted down.
“Nilsen has kidnapped Greg Abbott. We just got confirmation, a phone call was made to the local FBI ops office from a burner.”

“A burner?” Tesla asked.

“A prepaid disposable cell phone, untraceable,” Joley answered. “Doesn’t anybody watch
The Wire
?” he asked as he turned to Finn. They both shook their heads in disbelief.

Everyone began to talk again, but Lydia held up her hand and silence dropped on the room like a blanket.
“Hello, Jane. Nice to see you.”

Finn was surprised by the lack of warmth in Lydia’s voice, her stone-cold expression as she spoke to the younger woman.

“Lydia.” Jane nodded at the woman seated behind the tea pot. There was an odd tension in the room, and everybody else looked as confused by it as Finn felt. Everyone but the two women, that is. They looked calmly at each other, and Jane Doane appeared slightly amused.

“What else do we have from the phone call?” Beckett asked.
“Who called, and from where? Is there a ransom demand?”

“No ransom demand yet. We’re triangulating tower signals now to narrow down the call’s point of origin, which appears to be Niagara Falls on the Canadian side. The voice was altered and our voice recognition software came up with nothing. We need someone from an agency that operates internationally on this, so I’m on my way up there now. Hopefully the trail isn’t too cold.”

Lydia nodded. “I’ll carry on here,” she said vaguely.

“Good.
I’ll check in with you after I’ve arrived and catch you up.” Jane took two steps and leaned down to give Max a hug where he sat on the couch, and then she turned to Tesla. “Tesla, try not to worry. If there’s one thing you and Max can trust it’s that I want to get your father back.”

Lydia moved
suddenly, a quick jerk of her hand that seemed unintentional, and Tesla’s cup and saucer, filled with now-cold tea, crashed to the floor and broke into several large, sharp pieces of china as the dark liquid seeped into the thick rug beneath the coffee table.

“Oh, how clumsy of me,” said Lydia.
“I don’t know what I was thinking.” She dabbed at the wet mess at her feet with a linen napkin, her face hidden from sight as she attempted to clean it up.
Jane watched her for a moment, then grabbed her bag and walked out the door.

Lydia set the broken pieces of china on the coffee table and put the tea-soaked napkin beside them.
“We still have a lot to discuss,” she said to the room at large. “Tesla, if you’re up to it, I believe you left your story unfinished. Let’s hear that first.”

All eyes turned to Tesla.
“Should we maybe get Aunt Jane back in here first?” she asked. “She hasn’t heard any of this either, and it might be important.”

“We’ll catch her up later,” Lydia assured her.

CHAPTER 14

Tesla began her story, hesitatingly at first, but with increased confidence as she relived that strange night at the hospital. She went back over what she’d already told Finn about her concussion and exploration of the subfloors under the hospital last fall, about her assumption that what happened had been a head-injury-induced hallucination.

“So, you found yourself in this room, and you heard your dad’s voice do some sort of countdown, then bright lights and you passed out,” Finn summarized.
“Then what?”

“Then I dreamed—I thought I had dreamed—but maybe I woke up.”

“Well what happened?” Bizzy asked, too excited to sit cross-legged on the floor any longer, so far away from Tesla. She had sort of walked on her knees over to where Tesla still sat, in the chair by the sofa, and plopped down right in front of her to sit on her heels. “What happened when you woke up?

“It was kind of awful—I’m not really claustrophobic, but I woke up and I was sort of curled up in a ball on my side, my knees up by my face, and it was completely dark.
For a second I wondered if my eyes were still closed.”

Finn noted the tension in Tesla’s voice, but she didn’t sound sca
red, as she had when she’d started to tell this story to him the first time. She had clearly begun to adapt to the fear and the danger, and it had given her confidence. Time alone would tell if, like Finn, she would find it addictive.

“My eyes were open, but I couldn’t see, it was too dark—and I could hardly move.
I was packed into a space that was barely big enough for me, and something hard and sharp pressed into my back…. It was like those scary stories you tell at camp when you’re a kid, the one where someone wakes up to find they’ve been buried alive in a coffin.”

Tesla paused a moment, and no one said a word.
They knew exactly what she meant.

“So I tried to move, arms and legs, head, and there were literally only a few inches at various points where I wasn’t pressed up against a hard, smooth wall, but I had about six inches above me.
That same hard, smooth material made a solid ceiling on top of me.”

Lydia handed Tesla a new cup of tea, without the saucer this time, and Tesla took it and sipped, gratefully.
The strong brew, with just a hint of tangy citrus, was delicious and gave her a chance to pause and remember.

“That space above me was enough, so I started to push against the ceiling with my legs and my shoulder,” she continued.
“I was afraid I was completely sealed in, but once I started to push it was clear it was movable, latched but not locked. Once I popped the latch with one good shove of my shoulder I could see light, so I moved the top up until it clicked. It was hinged on one side, like a lid or a door. I sat up and looked around.”

“Tell us what you saw—and take your time, don’t leave out any details,” Lydia encouraged her.

“I was in a room, not really dark, there were a couple of dim lights on.” Tesla closed her eyes and tried to visualize it all over again. “I was in a rectangular box, four by three feet, two and half feet deep. Once I sat up I could see that this box—with me in it—sat on a large metal table, right in the middle of what was clearly a lab.” She opened her eyes then, and looked right at Bizzy, who looked like she wanted to ask a question. “I’ve been in and around labs all my life, Bizzy, and there’s no question what this place was.”

“Okay, so you passed out and woke up in a box in a lab,” said Beckett.
“Weird, but okay. Then what?”

“Well, my head was killing me, and I felt a little dizzy, and—you’re right, this is weird—my heart monitor and the wheeled-pole it had been attached to were in the box with me, but the pole was bent, a perfect ninety degree angle, to fit in the box.
The monitor still beeped and my heart sounded and felt normal.” Tesla stopped and looked at Finn, and he felt his own pulse in response. “I told you this would sound crazy.”

“Tes, we’re talking about time travel—I think we can agree that at this point there’s no such thing as crazy,” he said.

“Good point,” she conceded. “So I sat there and looked around at this lab. Most of the lights were off, no one else was there. There were no windows, and just the one door, which was closed. I needed to figure out where I was and what had happened, so I peeled off the various sensors taped to me so I was disconnected from the monitor, climbed out of the box and down from the table. I’d just decided that I would go to the door and look out, see if I could figure out where in the hospital I’d wandered off to—after I checked to make sure I still had my robe on over the hospital gown—” Tesla said as she flashed a quick smile at Finn, her dimples deeply embedded in each cheek—“and then—”

“Wait, what?” Bizzy asked, clearly confused.

“My cousin,” Finn said, relieved to look away from Tesla and ignore the urge to smile back at her. “Not important.”

“But before I could, the door opened,” Tesla continued.
“I saw some guy silhouetted in the light from the hallway, lit from behind so I couldn’t see his face.”

“Disaster,” said Joley.

“Well, I was… I mean, it wasn’t really a well-trained, spy-quality reaction…. I said, ‘Who’s there?’”

Lydia and Bizzy smiled sympathetically, but Beckett, Joley, and Finn laughed out loud.

“What? I assumed I was in the hospital, and had just wandered into some basement lab. I had a concussion!” Tesla reminded them.

“Go on,” Lydia said.

“Well, whoever it was flipped on the light switch, and it was pretty bright, and it took a second for my eyes to adjust. And, it was just some guy. He wore a worker’s uniform, blue pants and shirt, and carried a bucket filled with cleaning supplies.”

“Did you know him—had you seen him before?” Lydia asked.

“No, I didn’t know him,” Tesla said. “He shut the door and asked how I’d gotten in. He walked toward me and said ‘Who are you?’ As he got closer I could see he was young, my age, so I figured I couldn’t be in too much trouble.”

“‘Who are
you
?’ I asked him back.”

“Brilliant,” said Joley.

“Yeah. Well, he pointed to his name tag. ‘I’m Sam,’ he said. ‘I’m the night janitor. You’re not supposed to be in here—how did you get in?’”

Tesla paused and looked down at her lap, at the fingers of her right hand that picked at an imaginary thread on the leg of her
jeans.

“And?” Beckett asked impatiently.
“Do we have to drag this out of you?”

“Beckett,” said Lydia, though her eyes never left Tesla.

Beckett rolled her eyes, but sat back in her chair and waited with everyone else.

“Sorry,” said Tesla.
“It’s just weird to think that this might have really happened, and plus, I’m a little embarrassed by some of it.”

“Don’t worry,” Lydia assured her.
“Go on.”

“Okay.
I said, ‘I’m not sure how I got in here. I think I’m lost.’” Tesla waited for the snickers, but when she heard none she continued. “I told him I had been brought into the hospital earlier, that I had a concussion, and that I thought I’d passed out and wasn’t sure how I’d gotten in here, or where ‘here’ actually was, for that matter, but apparently I’d managed to get in this box and shut myself inside it. I asked him if he could help me find my way back to my room.”

“What was his response?” asked Finn.

“He looked strange, actually,” Tesla admitted. “Like I’d shocked him. He was quiet for a minute, just looked at the box I’d climbed out of on the table, and that made me glance at it, too, and with the lid propped open I noticed for the first time those same sort of mirror things in the corners of the box, you know the mirrors that were in that room, the one inside the big cavern. Only in miniature. I had no idea what that meant and, well, we just sort of stood there.”

“Well he had to have said more than that,” Bizzy said, but Tesla was already shaking her head no.

“I didn’t really give him the chance,” she said again. “I confessed.”

Beckett snorted, and Tesla was tempted to ask her if she’d like a bag of feed or maybe a sugar cube, but ignored her instead to go on with the story.

“I told him exactly what had just happened, and—you might be interested to know—he didn’t laugh. Not once. He looked amazed, impressed even, and then he said—”

“He said what?” Lydia asked.
Even she was impatient now.

“He said I had to go back, before anyone else knew, and that he could help me.”

“And you believed him? Janitor-boy?” Beckett said, incredulous.

“Yes, I did,” Tesla answered.
“He was nice, and he seemed totally honest and sincere.”

“And cute, right?” Bizzy said.
“I’ll bet he was cute.” She grinned, and her nose stud twinkled in the room’s soft lamplight.

Tesla chose to ignore her.
“He helped me back into the box, arranged the monitor and pole around me, and he—well, he shut the lid again,” Tesla finished.

“You let him put you back in that coffin? You’re mad,” Joley muttered.

“Well, I did, and I’m not sure what happened after that, I must have fallen asleep, but it seemed like just a moment later I was curled up in a ball on the floor, with the heart monitor and bent-up pole next to me, but there was no box. I was back in that room with the mirrors. All the lights were off, there was no voice on the intercom, nothing. I was totally alone.”

Tesla shrugged when she realized that everyone still waited.
“That’s it, guys. I left the room and walked back across that giant airplane-hanger cave, found the door and the hallway, made my way back up the stairs and into my room, and as far as I know, no one saw me. I had to carry the monitor because the pole was bent and the wheels didn’t work anymore, and it was kind of heavy, and all those wires and patches I’d taken off just sort of dangled off it. I got back in bed and I was out. The nurse woke me up in the morning and asked me what had happened to my monitor, and I just kind of blanked and said I had no idea. And that’s it. I just thought it was a freaky dream.”

“And now?” Lydia asked intently.
“What do you think now?”

“I think it happened, and I think—” but she stopped herself, bit her lip in worry.
She caught Lydia’s eye, and the woman nodded once in encouragement, so Tesla opened her mouth to say she had travelled back in time, and that if this was a part of the mystery of her father’s kidnapping, of what this guy Nilsen wanted, she probably ought to try to do it again—

She stopped as the roar in her ears drowned out every other sound in the room, the voices that vied for her attention, asked her to finish her sentence, but this new thought had just sliced through it all, and the fuzzy memories, the uncertainty of what had happened to her, were gone.
All of it simply fell away. She looked up at Lydia and said, instead, with a crisp confidence that could not be mistaken, “I need to see that note you found today at my house.”

Everyone looked at her, stunned into silence, until Lydia said softly, “Joley.”
He left the room quickly and came back, a piece of paper encased in a clear plastic bag in his hand. Without a word he handed the bag to Tesla, who reached for it as if it were made of spun glass.

She slowly brought the bag up closer to her face, but before she could actually read it she noted the handwriting, recognized it—
she recognized it
. She read the words written there in rounded script:

Don’t be afraid—keep trying.

Tesla looked hard at the shape of the letters, the familiarity of the cursive style, and knew that the world
had just changed, had always, already been changed.

“My father did not write this note,” she said in a voice of absolute, unquestionable certainty.
“I did travel back in time, and I’m going to do it again.”

Even Lydia was shocked.
Her mouth hung open, eyes wide. “How do you know?” she asked. “How can you be sure?”

“Because I wrote the words on this side of the paper,” Tesla said as she stared at the sealed, pizza-stained note.
“I don’t know how—or when—but I wrote this note so that I would see it now, and use my dad’s time machine again.”