Road Less Traveled (22 page)

“Oh yeah, that's worlds better,” Carter retorted. “Thanks so much.” Zane just grinned at him.

The little electrical bursts had started again, and Carter wriggled and writhed, gritting his teeth to keep them from clattering. “Is that completely necessary?” he managed to grind out finally, his voice as shaky as his limbs.

“Nope,” Zane admitted, his grin getting wider. “I just think it's funny.” He quickly threw his hands up in surrender when both Carter and Allison glared at him. “Kidding, I'm kidding! Yes, it's necessary. We're calibrating the electrodes, fine-tuning the process. We're also introducing the new charge to your body slowly, so it won't be as painful when we hit you with the full surge.”

“Oh, this is
less
painful,” Carter told Allison. “I'm so relieved.” She patted him on the arm.

“Are we ready?” Dr. Russell asked. In the monitor, the other Russell nodded. Nathan Stark was behind her, watching from the observation chairs. His Allison was with him. She wasn't watching Carter, though, he realized. She was staring at Allison instead. And her hand was clasping the locket around her neck again. Carter wasn't thrilled about that, or about her being here, but it wasn't like he was in any position to object. At least Sheriff Fargo wasn't there. Carter had yet to see him, and didn't really want to. That would just be too darned weird.

“You'll be fine,” Allison whispered, then gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Good luck.” She backed away and took a seat herself, unconsciously mirroring the other Allison in location and posture.

“Okay.” Carter took a deep breath. “Let's do this.” At least he'd called Mrs. Murphy already, so if something went wrong here he would leave one less thing for Jo to clean up after him. The thought didn't exactly make him feel better.

Zane nodded and typed something on his notepad, then hit a switch on the main console.

Instantly the lights in the lab dimmed. The equipment all around the room hummed, and little sparks and arcs crackled here and there—but nothing as big as the one that had started all this trouble in the first place, fortunately. Carter could feel the energy building in the air, making the whole space sizzle. The air itself tasted sharp, metallic, and it made his lungs ache. It was like being at the center of a brewing storm.

And he was the lightning rod.

Carter stiffened, his whole body seizing up as the massive current lanced into him. Every electrode poured more energy into his skin, and through that to his nerves and blood and bones, and he could feel himself twitching but had no way to control it. He could barely think straight, and he couldn't hear for the rushing and crackling in his ears, or see for the lightning arcing across every inch of his flesh and blinding him. He could barely breathe, the air so charged it was burning his nose and throat, and he started to gasp. He wasn't sure how much more of this he could take!

Then it ended.

He collapsed on the floor, still writhing, like a fish out of water. His lungs slowly expanded again, and he took a deep, rattling breath, tasting sweet air that didn't hurt other than filling him to bursting. Slowly his muscles stopped twitching, and he just lay there, head against the cool rubber, and enjoyed the fact that he was still alive.

“Are you okay? Carter? Carter!” The voice was right beside him, and it sounded a little frantic. It took another second before Carter realized he'd been hearing it for a few seconds before he'd really registered it. And a little longer before he recognized it as Allison's. When he did, he finally managed to pry his eyelids apart and peer up. Yes, it was her. She was leaning over him. He smiled, the expression turning dopey when he discovered he was unable to fully control his face muscles yet.

“Hey, Allison,” he slurred. “How's my hair?” It felt charred.

She studied him for a second, then glanced at the top of his head. “Standing on end,” she reported, “but otherwise fine.” That was good. He didn't want to have charred hair. It would smell awful. “Are you okay, Carter?”

Some of the effects were wearing off, and he found his thoughts falling into place a little more easily. “I think so.” He tried to sit up, but couldn't do more than arch his back and flop about. “Maybe.” Allison helped him. “Did it work?”

“We don't know yet,” she answered, feeling his forehead and then checking his pulse. “The current fried the electrodes. We'll have to remove them and apply new ones before we can check to see if you're still carrying a charge, and where it originated.” He could see the professional and personal concerns warring on her face. “But first we need to make sure you're okay, and that the shock didn't do any serious damage. Come on.” She looped one of his arms over her shoulder and started to lever him off the floor.

Zane stepped over and helped Carter stand, then wound up supporting him when his legs wobbled and threatened to collapse. “Don't take too long, boss,” Zane warned Allison as she took support of Carter's weight and guided him toward the door. “The charge should stay in his system for at least a few hours, but we want to calibrate it before it has a chance to dissipate. It'll increase the effectiveness of the process.”

“We'll be back down as soon as I've checked him over,” she promised. “But if it did cause any damage, we'll need to deal with that first.” She gave Carter an apologetic look. “Compromising his structural integrity could jeopardize the process as well.”

“Right.” Zane nodded. “Okay, we'll fine-tune things on this end. If it worked, you're now a repellent force instead of an attractive one,” he told Carter cheerfully, slapping him on the back and almost knocking both Carter and Allison to the floor. “But we've got to coordinate releasing bursts of energy from the other side to force that world back into position without tearing it apart.” He turned back to the console and the monitor, where the two Russells waited.

“I'm repellent?” Carter asked Allison softly as she led him away. “Really?”

“Don't worry, Carter,” she assured him just as quietly. “I still think you're attractive.” Her smile was soft and sweet, and he wanted to respond, but the best he could manage was to make his lips twitch.

Somehow, he didn't think that qualified as attractive.

 

“All good,” Allison reported twenty minutes later as
she and Carter returned to Russell's lab. Zane and Russell were still there, and the other Russell was still in her lab in the monitor. Techs moved around them, activating relays and calibrating instruments as ordered. Nathan and his Allison were gone, however. Probably tired of sitting around waiting—or, if Nathan was the same as he'd been here, unwilling to sit still when there was work to be done elsewhere.

“Carter's fine,” she continued. “No significant damage.”

“My hairstylist might disagree,” Carter muttered, reaching up to gingerly pat his charred, singed hair. He still felt a little jittery from the massive electrical jolt he'd received, and his mouth tasted oddly tinny, but otherwise he felt fine.

“Great!” Zane slapped Carter on the back, and it was only after the bad-boy whiz kid removed his hand that Carter realized he'd used the friendly gesture as a cover to plant an electrode on the back of his neck. “Let's get you wired up again, and we'll see if electrifying you did any good or was just plain fun.” Carter knew this was necessary, and he accepted that. He just wished Zane wasn't enjoying it quite so much.

He stood patiently while they affixed fresh electrodes. Allison activated them each in turn, then synced them together, and then they ran a diagnostic on him. Pretty amazing stuff, really. This system was much more accurate than a standard MRI or X-ray, and much safer, and you didn't have to lie down and get shoved inside a room-sized tube to get results. He'd certainly take standing still for a few minutes over one of those any day!

“Looks like we're all set,” Russell announced a few minutes later, checking her screen. “The diagnostic is complete. Sheriff, your body's electrical charge is attuned to our own reality once more.” She smiled at him. “Welcome back.”

“Thanks.” He pretended to ignore but secretly enjoyed the glare Allison was giving both of them. He'd happily flirt with Dr. Russell regardless, but if it made Allison jealous? Even better! “So, what now?”

“Now we turn to our good doctor's equally lovely counterpart,” Zane answered, gesturing at the monitor. The other Russell blushed a little but smiled and waved. “She's reconfigured her own energy arrays to broadcast instead of receive. So now she's going to start pumping out short, controlled bursts of energy. The energy'll get sucked into our arrays and it'll emerge here, where before your charge would have drawn it closer, binding the two worlds together.”

“But now that my charge is reversed,” Carter picked up, “that energy'll hit me and rebound, and when it bounces back it'll push the other reality farther away.”

“Exactly.” Zane gave him a funny look. “Okay, where's the real Carter, the one who never would've understood all that?”

Carter grimaced. “Give me some credit! I don't have the first clue how you get all this stuff to work”—he waved a hand to include the entire lab, and GD in general—“but the plan itself, that I get.”

Zane nodded. “Cool.”

“Do you need me to stand somewhere in particular?” Carter asked next. “Or is it enough if I'm still here in the lab?”

“Actually, you can go to your office, or go home, or wherever else you like,” Russell offered. “As long as you stay within Eureka's city limits.” Carter gaped at her, and she laughed. “The arrays are spread all over town,” she pointed out. “Anywhere in Eureka you go, that energy will find you. And be pushed back from you.” She put on her best “tough movie or TV cop” voice. “Don't even think about skippin' town!”

“Wouldn't dream of it.” Carter rubbed the back of his neck and removed the electrode there while he was at it. He tossed the sticky circle at Zane, who batted the electrode away with his laptop. “But since I'm not stuck here, I want to check in with Jo about the Thunderbird, see if there's anything new. And I should talk to anybody we've got in the conference room, reassure them, that sort of thing.”

Allison nodded. “I've got a stack of budget reports and status reports to go over, too. Let me know once you start seeing results,” she instructed Russell and Zane.

“Aye aye, captain!” Zane saluted.

Russell was still laughing as Allison led Carter back to the door and down the hall. “I think he's a bad influence on Dr. Russell,” Carter said softly as they retraced their steps to the main lobby.

Allison laughed. “Probably, but it's a necessary evil. Zane's one of the only people here capable of deciphering Russell's notes and really understanding both her theorems and her algorithms. She's very, very good at what she does, but she isn't very quick about it.” Allison shook her head. “With Zane in the mix, they're solving the problem considerably faster than either of them could have done alone. Faster, more creatively, and with a built-in editor to make sure nothing went wrong in the math. One false step and we could pull that entire other reality down on our heads all at once.”

“That won't happen,” Carter assured her with more confidence than he felt. But he had to believe that. How many times had they saved Eureka—and the world around it—from utter destruction? Almost too many to count.

He understood her concerns, though—and her apparent stir-craziness. He was used to being in the middle of the solution. Now he was just a lightning rod, and since they'd already had him draw down the lightning, they didn't need him anymore.

He'd been sidelined.

Still, that was worth it—it was all worth it—if the experiment successfully restored the gap between their worlds and saved them all.

 

Zane frowned and ran the numbers again. It didn't make any sense! “We should be seeing some reversal by now,” he muttered. “Or at least a slowing of the juxtaposition. But so far, nothing.” He tapped the screen, as if that would make the numbers change. “If anything, we're speeding up!”

Russell, who was reading the display over his shoulder, nodded. “You're right. The rate of approach should have dropped, only a little but enough for the system to register the change.” She shook her head and sank heavily into one of the chairs. “Why isn't it working?”

Looking up at the main monitor, Russell addressed her double directly. “The energy pulses were fired according to plan, right?”

“Absolutely,” her twin responded. “The intervals we calculated, and we used the amount of energy we all agreed would be optimal.” She checked her own systems, and mirrored readouts onto theirs. “The energy should have hit your input arrays right on target.”

“They did,” Zane confirmed. “We've got a serious spike in the arrays' input levels at precisely those intervals. So that's right. But why isn't it pushing us farther apart?”

“Maybe Carter didn't hold the charge?” Russell suggested. “In which case drawing in more energy would only make matters worse.”

“Maybe, but that'd be awfully fast for the charge to fade.” Zane shook his head. “There's no way he shed it that quickly. Not with the amount of energy we dumped on him, or the strength of those readings right after.” He thought about it. “But maybe proximity really is important. This lab seems to be the axis point—it's where everything comes together, where Carter first started drawing the other world's energy toward us. Maybe he really does have to be here so the array's energy gets dumped on him directly.”