Nikki Tesla and the Fellowship of the Bling

by Jess Keating

  And I hated it.

  Can you separate what someone creates from who they are as a person? What if the parts of me that were like Dad—my love of science and inventing things—somehow came paired with the awful parts of him? I desperately wanted to ask Dad a zillion more questions. But another part of me wanted to never speak to him again, to shut him out for good and pretend he never even existed.

  What do you do when you’re so conflicted?

  Dad snapped the computer shut. “Now hopefully you’ll take me seriously. I know a threat when I see one. I just didn’t realize Nolan would take things as far as he did. I never meant to put any of you in danger …” His lip curled in anger. “As to how I got the footage of your friend, Nolan isn’t one for a change in routine. He’s remained in the same laboratory since the early days. He basically inherited all my equipment after I …”

  “After you died,” I said pointedly, filling in the blank for him.

  “Yes,” he said. “But thankfully, I put appropriate measures in place as soon as I suspected he was sneaking around. Video, tracking, the works. I’ve got the whole laboratory wired.”

  Mo cleared his throat loudly and held up his hand. “I’ve got a question.” His mouth was drawn in a thin line. “How exactly did you test the ring’s functionality? Isn’t it kind of … dangerous? You must have had to use this thing on yourself, right? Or … ?” His glance flicked nervously to Leo.

  Images of the monsters in his folders flashed back in my mind. I hadn’t thought of that.

  A muscle in Dad’s jaw jumped, and his upbeat smile had vanished.

  “I did,” he admitted. “Once I realized that the ring uses human emotions and intentions to work, I needed a human subject. I couldn’t exactly ask someone else to do it for me. That wouldn’t be right, especially without knowing any of the risks. I had a few close calls, but it didn’t take me long to master the transitions.”

  I let out a tiny breath of relief. At least no one else had been subjected to dangerous trials.

  “And how do emotions fit in?” Leo asked, leaning closer.

  “The ring has a type of cellular memory, and heightened emotions seem to hasten its ability to transform its wearer.”

  “Wait, are you saying that ring knows you?” Mo asked, tilting his head in confusion.

  Dad considered this. “In its own way, yes. It’s no different from a personalized app on your phone,” he said. “It remembers our experiences together. The more emotion I put behind it and the clearer my intention, the better the result will be.”

  “Do you think you could control the ring if you weren’t wearing it?” Grace asked.

  “I’ve actually never had a chance to try that out.” Dad looked sheepish. “It’s always been just me with this ring. And there’s no way I would test that on anyone.”

  “Wow.” Even Grace was impressed, while the realization that Dad was some super genius who had chosen to test this ring on himself made my thoughts even murkier. Another mystery surfaced as I listened to him: If he was so smart, how did he manage to accidentally blow up his lab all those years ago? And how come he couldn’t manage to send me and my mom a letter to let us know he was alive? Why wait seven years to reach out?

  The equation didn’t make sense. He had to be keeping something from us.

  From me.

  “So we break in, get Mary, steal Nolan’s prototype, and get out. Is that it?” I sighed deeply, letting the last of my resolve against Dad’s plan drain away. Logically, I knew Grace and the others were right. We couldn’t just leave Nolan’s ring in dangerous hands. But in my heart? Nothing was nearly so clear.

  Dad ran a shaky hand through his messy hair. “I’ve got a plan. We’ll each have a role to play, but I think we can succeed if we all work together. So what do you say? Are you in?”

  I didn’t need to be a genius to see that the others were already on board, nodding in eager agreement. They believed every word he said, which made me realize something I hadn’t wanted to face. Sometimes, no matter how many times you try to tweak the variables, an experiment fails, and you’ve got to deal with the disappointment. My dad might have fooled my friends, but I was only going along with his plan because getting Mary home was my top priority.

  It was official.

  We were going to break into a top-secret laboratory and steal a ring that could turn everyday people into monstrous killing machines. And my potentially dangerous, definitely criminal, genius absentee father was going to help us do it.

  What could go wrong?

  I am a strong, capable person who isn’t afraid of heights.

  I am a strong, capable person who isn’t afraid of heights.

  Has anyone ever told you that using a positive mantra can help boost your self-confidence and ability to get through difficult situations? I bet they have. People love to spout that stuff.

  If you want my opinion, those people are liars. My mantra was giving me zero self-confidence, and so far, thousands of feet in the air, the only thing I’d gained was a serious case of the jitters and acid reflux. Because guess what: The grand plan of my father’s to break into Nolan’s lab? The one that we’d all agreed to, because we are absolutely insane? He’d neglected to mention one very crucial detail: Because of Nolan’s security systems, we would have to parachute in, land on the top of the building in the dead of night, and break in from the roof.

  Yeah, you read that right.

  Parachute.

  As in, fly thousands of feet in the air, jump out of a plane, and hopefully avoid falling to our deaths and splattering into a huge ugly mess.

  Jump. Out of a plane. On purpose.

  Trust me, I’m as thrilled about all of that as I sound. Flying a plane? I could handle that. But leaping out of one?

  Barf.

  What if our parachutes didn’t open? What if Dad was truly and completely bananas and couldn’t be trusted to get us down safely? What if we were struck by lightning and lost consciousness before our chutes deployed?!

  Nobody else seemed to be worried. In fact, they were downright eager to jump. Bunch of maniacs, I say.

  “Whose bright idea was it to have a ton of Mexican food before this mission?” I whined, unable to stop staring out the window into the darkness below. I tried to imagine that I was still planted firmly on the ground, rather than hovering at roughly fifteen thousand feet and about to jump to my doom.

  Grace grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a hard stare. “You’ll be fine, Tesla,” she affirmed. “Know what the hardest thing about skydiving is?”

  I swallowed down my almost-barf and blinked at her, desperate for all the help I could get. “What?”

  She clapped her hand once against my elbow with a grin. “The ground.”

  “Oh, real nice, wise leader!” I wailed, ignoring Charlie’s laughter from the other side of the plane.

  “Don’t worry,” Dad said, giving me a small smile. “You’ll go tandem with me. You won’t even have to pull the cord. I’ll get you there safely.”

  Ugh. Don’t remind me, I thought. Skydiving was one thing, but trusting Dad of all people to get me down safely? How come I was the only genius of the group who didn’t know how to skydive? You know that feeling, when a train is approaching, and you can sense the rumbling begin under your feet?

  That’s what waiting for this mission to begin was to me: a charging train.

  And there was no way to get off the tracks.

  “We’re all set!” Grace walked down our lineup and checked the oxygen. “You know the drill. Deploy your chutes when the guidance system says to. Not before. Not after. We’ll meet on Nolan’s rooftop.”

  Everyone nodded and began to file toward the open door, hanging on to a network of bars above our heads to keep balanced.

  “Right now?” My hands began to shake uncontrollably. “We can’t circle a little longer?” The desperation was thick in my voice. “You guys go ahead.” I urged them forward with my hands. “We’ll meet you there.�
�

  Leo grabbed both of my hands in his. “I’ll see you down there,” he confirmed, giving my palms a squeeze. “It’s all going to be okay.”

  “You’ll take care of Pickles, right?” The back of my throat ached with sadness. Because I’d be jumping with Dad, there was no safe way to secure Pickles to our suits, so Leo was taking on the task of getting her down safely with him. The poor thing had no idea what she was getting into, but I reasoned that it was probably best that way. Could ferrets be afraid of heights?

  Too late to consider that now.

  “Of course.” He patted his upper shoulder, where Pickles was strapped in, complete with her own tiny set of eye goggles for protection.

  I fidgeted with the GeckoDot on the collar of my flight suit, desperate for something to do with my nervous hands. “I’ll see you soon. No dying, okay?”

  I had to bite back a scream at the sight of my friends leaping out of the plane one by one, their arms outstretched like birds in black jumpsuits. They didn’t even hesitate. Meanwhile, I was about ten seconds away from losing my cookies, and I hadn’t even taken the big plunge yet!

  Just before her jump, Grace gave me a thumbs-up, and I had to grip the bar above my head extra tightly to keep from yanking her away from the open door.

  A few seconds after she’d gone, Dad checked the latched metal links connecting us. “Our turn, kiddo.”

  And that, right there—watching his boots shift on the airplane floor—that’s when the dam inside me broke.

  “I can’t,” I blurted out. Staring down at the inky, cloudy abyss below us was too much. My vision tunneled and I came dangerously close to passing out. “I can’t do this. I know I can’t.”

  “Sure you can, Nikki,” Dad said. “You can do anything.”

  I shook my head, and sharp pains began to pound in my skull. “No, I can’t,” I said. “Not like this. Literally strapped to you. The gravity is scary enough, but I don’t trust you, Dad! How am I supposed to jump out of a plane with you?”

  I undid the clasps that connected us and tried to force deep breaths into my lungs. The others were probably opening their parachutes by now. Mary was waiting for us. We hadn’t slipped the ring from Nolan’s dangerous grasp. I needed to get moving or risk everything.

  But fear cemented my feet to the floor of the plane. For a moment, the only sound was the whir of the engines as we shifted in the air, circling back over the drop zone.

  “Nikki, listen,” Dad said. His face became distant, like he was looking past me. “The night I left you and your mother was the worst night of my life.”

  “It wasn’t a great night for us either,” I snapped. Instantly, images from the past bombarded me. “Things got so bad, Dad. Reporters constantly chased us down. We had to move more than a dozen times to get away from the rumors of what you had done. Kids in school bullied me so much that I had to get tutors at home. And even they never lasted long, because everyone was afraid I would turn into you. But you know all this, right? You’ve been spying on me for years instead of actually being my dad.”

  Bitterness poured out of me, red-hot like lava.

  Dad hung his head. “I’m sorry, Nikki. I’ve gone over things in my head a million times, but I can never imagine an outcome that would have left us together.”

  “Because your lab blew up,” I said.

  Dad’s mouth curved into a sad smile. “Nolan wanted my technology for himself. And when he proposed that we work together and sell my ring for a fortune, he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  I listened, curious why Dad was bringing up Nolan again.

  “The night I left you, Nolan had stopped by the house. He had the ring with him.” Beads of sweat began to glisten on Dad’s forehead. “I don’t know how he got it, or why he even let on that he had it. You were playing with the new microscope your mother and I had gotten you earlier. Do you remember the one? With the red plastic slide and blue eyepieces? You loved that thing.”

  My memory flashed back. I couldn’t recall Dr. Nolan’s visit, but I did remember that microscope. Mom had cut up onion membranes super thin so I could examine them. I even yanked out strands of my own hair to see what they looked like under the lens.

  Placing Dad alongside those memories was like trying to force a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit.

  “So I was there when he came to see you?” I asked. Prickles of fear popped up on my arms and the back of my neck, mingling with the frigid high-altitude air.

  “You were.” His face blanched at the memory. “In fact, he was already at the house when I got home from work. You had the ring in your hands when I walked in.”

  “What?” My mouth dropped open. “He gave something that dangerous to a little kid? I could have— That’s horrible!”

  A bitter shard of pain cracked Dad’s expression. “I will never forget the look on your face when I leaped forward to snatch it from your hands. But before I could get my hands on it, Nolan blocked my way.”

  I had to sit down. Leaning my back against the shaking wall of the plane, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. What if I’d changed myself into a mermaid? Or a spider? Kids wanted to be stupid stuff all the time—what if I’d actually done it? I would have never understood how to get back to myself.

  Suddenly, Dad’s invention didn’t feel like a treasure. It felt like a curse. Like something that must be destroyed at all costs.

  “Why would Nolan do such a thing?” I was afraid to know the answer.

  “It was a threat,” he said. “Nolan was convinced that my family kept me from reaching my potential. He watched me taking time away from work to be with you and saw it as a weakness. So he used the only leverage he could think of to get me to go along with his plans. That’s when I knew I had to take drastic measures to protect you and your mother.”

  “So what did he do next?”

  “He knew that I could ruin his attempts to make his billions with the ring. You can’t have competitors who know your secrets. If I wasn’t on his side, I was against him. And to him, that meant I was an enemy he had to destroy. And he almost did.”

  The truth hit me all at once. “Your laboratory,” I gasped.

  “You guessed it. If you can’t beat ’em, blow ’em up. That’s Nolan’s philosophy. He planted a bomb in my laboratory that was set to explode when he knew I would be there.”

  “Why weren’t you?” I stopped myself. That didn’t sound right. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “It was show-and-tell day in your kindergarten class,” he said. “You wanted to show off your latest invention: an automatic mane dryer for your unicorn dolls.”

  “The Mane-o-Matic?” I shouted. “I remember that now! It had a special setting for glitter manes, and one for …” I snapped my fingers, trying to recall the details. “Um, um …”

  “A hoof shiner that made them sparkle like diamonds,” Dad finished for me, grinning.

  Instantly, I remembered not only the invention, but the embarrassing jingle I’d created to go with it. God, I was such a nerd, even back then.

  “You remember all that?” I blinked at him.

  “Of course I do, Nikki,” he said. “You’re my daughter. I remember everything. I sure wasn’t going to miss your first official invention reveal. And that’s where Nolan made his mistake.”

  “He thought you’d be at your lab instead,” I guessed.

  “It didn’t even occur to him that I would miss out on important work to celebrate my kid’s unicorn invention. That was the fatal flaw in his plan. He underestimated how much I love you.”

  “So you didn’t blow up your lab.”

  It wasn’t a question. I had to say it out loud. To see how it felt in my mouth. For as long as I could recall, the only truth I’d ever known was that my dad had blown up his lab. Finding out that it was all a lie shifted my whole world on its axis. Dad was giving me a whole new set of variables for the equation of my life.

  He stuck his hands in the pockets of his fli
ght suit and let his legs loll out in front of him, relaxed. “Please,” he said. “Do I seem like the kind of guy who would accidentally blow up a lab? I’ve made a lot of mistakes, especially with you. But science? That’s something that I can trust.”

  A lump formed in my throat. I knew exactly what he meant. People were hard. Science was always easier to sort out.

  But a small detail surfaced in my mind. One last thing that didn’t add up.

  “What about the television?” I said. “The police found those horrible plans of yours. I’ve got dozens of newspaper articles that reported you were going to use an explosive to hurt innocent people. But if you didn’t blow the lab up, then …” The facts settled into place. “Nolan planted the evidence, didn’t he?”

  “He did,” Dad said. “When he discovered I wasn’t at the lab, he made it look like I was a criminal. It was a pretty effective way to keep me out of the picture.”

  Memories swam in front of me. “The news played out for weeks,” I said. “I can remember every detail, especially Mom’s expression when the reporters called you a terrorist.”

  He winced at the awful word. “That’s when I knew. I had to leave you both to protect you. Nolan would never have left you alone if I hadn’t. I told myself I would never return until I’d made it safe for you again. I made that promise, Nikki, and I don’t mean to break it. And today, I need your help to keep it.”

  He stood up and faced the open door of the plane. The dark gray clouds that surrounded us mirrored his stormy expression. “That’s what I wanted you to know, Nikki,” he said. “For seven years, I’ve wanted to reach out to you and your mother. I’ve missed so much. But with Nolan willing to hurt you if I showed my face again, I couldn’t risk it. I had to stay away for your own protection.”

  “So why come back now?” I gripped the overhead handle to keep my balance.