He turned the tiny dial on the top of the device. It immediately started thumping away. He gaped at it. He’d replaced the power source with batteries, but he hadn’t expected the old mechanism to work. He played with the dial, trying to match the natural resonance of the steel. Eventually, he seemed to get it dialed in, because the bridge started to vibrate against his stomach.
It didn’t feel like much, maybe like a truck driving by. Not even a truck. A car. A little convertible. Not a threat.
Headlights appeared in the distance, and he swore. From the sound of the engine, a semi-trailer truck was approaching. Probably nothing to worry about, but he ought to shut the thumper down just in case. He reached for the device, missed it on his first drunken swipe. Was it his imagination, or was the bridge shaking?
Heat blistered his fingertips when he touched the dial, and it didn’t budge. He couldn’t turn the damn thing off. He could let go and fall in the water, let all this be someone else’s problem, but his hand refused to release the railing. Maybe fear, or maybe a sense of responsibility.
Either way, he had to do something. He pulled the flask out of his pocket and used it to pound on the device. It moved a hair, then another. The truck thundered closer, its driver completely oblivious. Another truck was tucked behind it. A convoy, trucking through the night.
When the truck hit the span George was holding on to, the bridge let out a tremendous crack. The device fell, and he instinctively caught it, his hand slipping off the bridge.
He tumbled toward the river. His feet hit the water first. It felt like he’d landed on concrete, and the force drove him deep underwater. He fought for the surface. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to stand by Tatiana. He wanted to see his child.
By the time his head broke the surface, he’d traveled a hundred yards downstream, still clutching the device. The span he’d been standing on had collapsed. He watched as a semi barreled right over the broken edge of the bridge and landed nose-down on the stony bank where another truck had already fallen. The drivers were likely dead.
Another car piled on, then a screech of brakes.
His head went under. He still held the device. It had burned his palm, but he didn’t let go. He couldn’t let it out of his possession.
He’d killed the men in those trucks, the people in that car. One drunken mistake, and now those people weren’t going home to their families, to their daughters and sons. He could never make that right.
The current dragged him relentlessly onward.
Chapter 1
Present day
Subway tunnels trap New York’s heat. Heat soaks into sticky pavements and tired sidewalks. Hot, humid air blows into the tunnels’ open mouths and lingers in the dark places until fall.
Joe Tesla tried to pretend he enjoyed the heat in the upper tunnels, but it reminded him of the second ring of hell. Summer was meant to be spent outside, basking in the sun, his father had always said. Good times, not the second ring of hell.
Joe walked between steel rails that brought trains from the rest of New York into Grand Central Terminal. His service dog, a golden retriever/yellow Labrador mix named Edison, panted at his side. They were performing what was becoming a daily ritual in which Joe went to the limits of the darkness, just to see if today he could break out into the light. Aversion therapy, psychiatrists called it.
It wasn’t working, but he would not give up. Today, more than ever, he wanted to break free of his self-imposed darkness and go outside into the light and fresh air. He wanted to go outside to say good-bye.
Ahead, a square of daylight beckoned. Gray light filtered in at the end of the rectangular tunnel. He drank in the sight of shining silver tracks, a bird’s shadow on the ground, a tree in the distance. A real, green, living tree. Outside.
He’d long ago memorized the train schedules, and he and Edison had enough time to make it to the light before the next one arrived. Following his training, Edison stayed closed by Joe’s leg and far from the third rail. They were safe, from trains at least.
Joe knelt to cover Edison’s sensitive ears as a scheduled train approached on a nearby track. It posed no threat to him, but he worried that the noise couldn’t be good for the dog. The animal’s brown eyes met his, calm as always. Nothing seemed to faze the yellow dog. If Joe could be like one creature on Earth, he’d pick Edison. Not that he got to pick.
The train passed, and Joe let go of the dog and started forward again. He was still in the shadows where the gray light didn’t reach. Hot outside air stroked his cheeks. It smelled of cinder and smog, but also a little of the sea and green grass, or so he liked to think.
He walked toward the light, and his breathing sped up. He forced himself to slow his breaths, hoping that would calm him down, but knowing it wouldn’t. He fought this knowledge with each shuddering breath. He wiped his wet forehead on his sleeve and kept breathing.
Then full adrenaline kicked in. His heart got into the action, beating at twice its normal rate. It felt as if he’d just sprinted across a football field.
If his heart didn’t stop racing, he was going to die. Panic coursed through his veins. He had to run back into the tunnels. He’d be safe there.
He used every scrap of willpower to keep his trembling legs from bolting down the tunnel of their own accord. He wasn’t going to die. Nobody ever died of a panic attack. He repeated that twice, as if his body might believe the words. It didn’t. But today he had to try harder. For his mother’s sake. And his father’s.
First, he must get his heart under control. He closed his eyes and imagined he was somewhere safe. He was standing in front of his underground house. The house was a yellow Victorian, with red and white trim, bright and sturdy, protected in its cocoon of rock. Its paint gleamed in the orange light shed by round, hand-blown light bulbs strung overhead.
He pictured each detail—the three steps up to the front porch, the white door he dusted until it gleamed, the wrought-iron wall lantern that he always left on, the windows upstairs and down decorated with stained-glass flowers and leaves. Inside that house, he was safe. He took a deep breath. Safe.
Keeping the picture of his house in his head, he took a step forward. He didn’t dare open his eyes. Edison pressed against his leg, and the contact comforted Joe. He wasn’t alone. Edison was always there. He took another step.
Hot air brushed his face, a breeze from outside. He opened his eyes the tiniest crack. A thread of light leaked in. His heart slammed against his ribs so hard it felt as if it might break out of his chest and roll into the tunnels behind him.
His breath came fast and ragged. He tried to control his breaths, slow them down, but his body had taken over. His tense muscles begged to flee. He was so close to the outside. And he couldn’t take another step.
Retching, he leaned forward. Edison fastened his teeth on Joe’s pant leg and pulled. He tottered, terrified he might fall into the light. He caught his balance and let the dog pull him backward, step by step, into the familiar darkness.
His stomach roiled. The first time he’d tried this had been after breakfast, and he’d thrown up on the tracks. He knew better now, and came here only on an empty stomach.
Edison nudged his nose under Joe’s hand and tilted his head back. He urged Joe to pet him, to relax. Joe ran his hand along the dog’s warm back. His legs still shook, but he didn’t feel as if he were about to die anymore. He petted the dog, controlled his breathing, and slowly calmed down. He wasn’t going to die, but he wasn’t going to go outside either. Not today.
He’d turned his back on the light as he fled, but he faced it again now. The entrance was an empty mouth that mocked him. The light and wind and trees might be forever out of his reach. But he had gone nearly a yard farther than yesterday. Not enough, but progress.
A train came through, again on a different track, and he covered the dog’s ears. The simple act of protecting Edison brought him all the way back to himself. After the train passed, he pulled a dog treat out of
his pocket and gave it to Edison. “You earned this, buddy.”
The dog swallowed it in a single gulp.
Joe headed toward the tunnels that led to Grand Central Terminal. Today, his brain had betrayed him—something he’d grown to expect. Once, he’d prized his brain. It understood things that other brains didn’t. His brain had led him out of a difficult childhood into early entrance to Massachusetts Institute of Technology—on a full scholarship—while other boys his age were freshmen in high school. His brain had let him coast through his classes, earn his degrees, found his own company, and retire a multimillionaire before most people bought their first house. It had been a good brain, but now it wouldn’t even let him sit in the sunlight.
But he had to cut his brain some slack—it wasn’t at fault. Someone had poisoned it, and he had blood tests to prove that poison had caused his crippling agoraphobia. Since he’d found that out, he’d spent a great deal of time and money trying to discover who had poisoned him and why. He’d investigated everyone who had access to his food and drink on his last days outside, but all his inquiries had led nowhere.
A large key ring at his belt jangled when he stumbled over a train tie. The keys came with the house—they provided access to all the doors in the tunnel system. With these keys, he, and he alone, could open each door in his subterranean world and see what lay behind it. Too bad his brain wasn’t so straightforward.
Edison bumped Joe’s knee with his nose, as if to remind him he was OK. That his life still had good things. That he was safe.
If only it were that easy.
Chapter 2
Vivian Torres hung on to the rock wall with every bit of strength in her chalk-dusted fingertips. She’d been mixing and matching holds all the way up, always trying to find something more difficult, and now she’d climbed herself into a spot she wouldn’t be able to get out of without falling off the wall. Her fingertips were screaming, but she wasn’t going to give up.
She ought to be safe. Her teenage sister, Lucy, stood below, belaying her. Lucy didn’t like to climb, but had taken and passed a belaying class because Vivian paid her twenty dollars for each visit to Brooklyn Boulders—an indoor climbing gym where she’d had to sign more waivers to touch the walls than she had to enter the military.
Easy money, but Lucy wasn’t earning it. Instead, she fiddled with her phone one-handed. If Vivian fell off the wall, Lucy would let her hit the mat like Humpty Dumpty. So, dropping wasn’t an option.
Vivian had to get out of this on her own. She hadn’t survived two tours in Afghanistan to kill herself falling off a fake climbing wall in New York City. No dignity there.
She blew a strand of black hair off her face and reached for a yellow handhold. She had to let one foot leave the wall, and her shoulders told her they were tired of her shenanigans. Her left hand slipped off the handhold, and the momentum knocked her off the one good foothold she’d been using. Pain shot down her right arm as it took her full weight.
Dangling by one arm, she had a good view of Lucy. The rope was slack in her brown hands, and Lucy studied the graffiti-covered front windows as if trying to read them from the inside.
“Yo!” Vivian shouted.
Lucy didn’t even flinch. White wires trailed out of her ears and down to the phone in her hand. She was wearing earbuds! Vivian had forbidden her to listen to music while belaying her. Back in the service, she had trusted her fellow soldiers with her life. Civilian life wasn’t like that.
She looked down at the wall below her, but she was just over a curve, and she couldn’t see far enough to find a safe place to put her legs or her arm. She blocked out the panic in her stomach and the pain in her hand. That was just her body. She could rise above that. She had scars on her back and a medal in her closet that would testify to it.
If she couldn’t use her eyes, she’d have to use her memory. She closed her eyes and visualized the wall below, replaying each potential handhold and foothold in her memory.
A red foothold scrolled by. She stopped the picture and studied it. If she swung toward it, her foot might reach. If she misjudged the hold’s position, she’d fall. But she’d fall in a couple seconds anyway, when her right hand lost its last bit of desperate strength.
She swung toward a foothold she couldn’t see, caught it with her toe, and pulled herself onto the wall. Her left hand found a new grip. She let go with her right hand and clenched and unclenched it, sending blood to her angry muscles. She hauled in a few deep breaths.
That wasn’t a mistake she could make on a real wall. That’d kill her. Next weekend she was going out to The Gunks with Dirk and a couple of friends, and she’d better get her head in the game by then. Outdoor walls were unforgiving.
But careful climbing wasn’t what the indoor wall was about. On the indoor wall, she didn’t allow herself to plan in advance. She went from one handhold to the hardest one she could see, training herself to react to the unexpected, getting stuck on purpose. Something that was a lot easier when she thought she had Lucy to back her up.
She reached for another handhold and pushed herself up with her legs. She wasn’t going to climb down before she reached the roof. Below her, Lucy started tapping her foot to the music.
Damn little sister. Vivian was taking back those twenty dollars as soon as her feet were on the ground.
Lucy looked up. “Your phone just beeped! It says you have a funeral to go to.”
Vivian touched the roof. “You’re damn lucky that it isn’t mine.”
Chapter 3
Ash gazed out the window of his eighty-fifth floor office. The surrounding skyscrapers faded into pollution-browned clouds. From his perch high in the Empire State Building, he was constantly reminded how humans had sullied even the clouds. Mankind was fast turning this beautiful blue and green ball into a waste dump. A few more generations and the planet would collapse. He could cope with the idea of losing a few billion people here or there, but the mass extinction of the innocent plants and animals troubled him deeply.
He cracked a window, and warm air flowed into the room. Another reason he loved the building—the windows actually opened. He’d spent so much time sealed off from nature at their last location that he’d vowed never to move into another building that didn’t have windows that could open into the world.
A few quick breaths of the outside air—he could taste the metallic tang of pollution in it—and he went back to work. On his sleek bamboo desk sat the current quarterly report for his company, Wright, which played at the boundaries of ecology and commerce—snapping up money right and left by making a cleaner world profitable. On top of the report rested a Forbes article that described Alan Wright as “the man who has singlehandedly done more for the planet than anyone before him.”
Most men would have been content with that, but not Ash. Repairing the planet one tiny piece at a time was pitiful. People had to learn to consume less and reproduce less, and it drove him crazy to see how sleepy and stupid they were, even when their self-interest was concerned. It didn’t matter how often or how clearly the message went out—most people weren’t listening.
So he had created the hacktivist network Spooky. Spooky’s name came from Einstein’s quote about quantum entanglement as “spooky action at a distance.” The world was entangled whether policymakers recognized it or not, and each tiny human was a force with a spooky amount of power that could stretch around the world.
In the beginning, he had secretly played all the parts—creating bots and identities that interacted with each other and pulled off brilliant hacks. Once, Spooky sent pictures of oil-soaked pelicans, open-mouthed dead fish, and fires burning on the surface of the ocean to every employee of the oil company responsible for a giant spill. A few examined their consciences and talked to the media.
Then, he hacked the senior executives’ emails and posted their ass-covering, contemptuous correspondence about the spill on the Internet. In the media firestorm that followed, he’d lunched with some of those very
same executives as a peer, commiserating over the violations to their privacy, as if their privacy were more sacred than the ecosystems they destroyed for profit.
That action launched Spooky. He’d built it, and they finally came—young, eager hackers willing to risk everything to change the world. Powerless kids who suddenly felt as if they might have a chance to expose the powerful, to use their brains to even the odds of survival for the planet had poured into Spooky’s secret chat rooms to plan and execute their own actions.
He’d intended to turn over control of Spooky and let the young ones bear it forward. But he loved the freedom his online anonymity gave him and, in the end, he couldn’t give it up. In real life, Alan Wright was always deferred to for his billions, his brilliance, and his meteoric success.
In Spooky’s world, he was merely Ash—either the wood used to stake a vampire or what remained after a fire. Both meanings were about transformation.
Ash tapped a button to open a secure window on his monitor. He’d finally hacked one of his favorite hacktivists—Geezer. Geezer was the oldest of the fluid consortium of troublemakers that swirled around Spooky. Geezer had helped build the Internet infrastructure they hacked, and he knew secrets that went deeper than the youngsters, but he sometimes missed obvious intrusions into his own space. Ash had finally nailed down his real IP address and accessed Geezer’s camera. He liked to put a face to the name.
A man in front of a computer in an untidy room showed on Ash’s screen. He hadn’t expected Geezer to be bald as an egg. He had expected the long, unkempt beard and the tie-dyed shirt. The man’s bloodshot eyes bulged, like Marty Feldman’s, and he looked too thin to be healthy.
Geezer’s long fingers were typing away, logging into a dark chat room often frequented by members of Spooky. Ash took a long sip of coffee and eavesdropped. This was better than television.
The Tesla Legacy Page 2
