Shadow Boxer: NA Fantasy/Time Travel (Tesla Time Travelers Book 2)

by Jen Greyson

  A new couple presses into my space and I glance over my shoulder. The room is full with patrons ready to enter the dining room. Nowhere here to arc. I could run back up to Nikola’s, or the stairwell, but dinner-goers are flowing through every doorway.

  My cute clerk releases the envelope, and I force myself not to sprint from the building. At the front doors, I risk a glance at the chess table. The chair is empty.

  Outside, I search faces while I stuff the envelope in my waistband. No one looks familiar. I walk as fast as I dare down the sidewalk, searching for a spot I can duck into and arc. Halfway down the block, I spot a small alcove between two buildings and speed up. Just as I get there, two women stop to talk, blocking the opening. I keep going, risking a glance over my shoulder. I don’t see the gray-haired guy.

  I trip and bump into the portly man in front of me. He curses and jerks away. At the end of the block, I decide to stay on this street and cross with the mass of people. They’re everywhere, coming in and out of buildings, chatting up street vendors, gathering in groups to chat. Heat radiates off the sidewalk, and I’m definitely pre-deodorant. Everyone is talking at once, speaking loudly to be heard over the din. Onions and deli meats mingle with a sickeningly sweet perfume of hairspray and overheated male. Chaos rules.

  I need to settle my nerves before I arc.

  On the other side of a hot dog vendor, I find a vacant lot. Following the chain link, I turn down a narrow alley bordering the lot and slip between the gate panels. The ground is uneven, but I move quickly beyond the covered gate to a section of boards. The second I’m out of sight, I flare my lightning and bail. A head of gray hair turns the corner just as blackness impairs my vision.

  I arrive inside my spare room again, and instinct makes me flare a huge ball of lightning that consumes the entire room, snuffing out every particle of my high-tensile booby trap. I’m trembling and yank the door open, fully expecting the gray-haired man to be looming on the other side. I crane my neck, but my house is silent as usual, save the buzzing of Ike’s heat lamp floating up the stairwell. I close my eyes and sag against the doorjamb.

  After my heart slows and my hands stop quaking, I straighten and slide the closet door open. The trunks look undisturbed, so I pop the lid on the closest one and manhandle it upright, while the hinges squeal and rusted edges grind together. Musty smells of ink and paper tumble out of the opening. I slide the envelope inside, unsure why Nikola thinks it’s more important than the rest of what’s overflowing these trunks. I want to read it, but I’ve been lucky Ilif’s left me alone this long. Last thing I want is him finding me while I cave. For now, I stash my curiosity in the trunk, too, even though it’s nearly impossible.

  I let the lid drop and latch the closures, taking advantage of every single second of delay they afford me if someone wants what’s in them. I haven’t replaced simple things like locks, but I have ample green lightning. After I fill the locks, I throw out my red spiderweb again and race out the door, pulling it shut tight behind me.

  I stop at the edge of the landing and listen again, but nothing’s changed in the minute since I last checked. My laptop’s in the kitchen, and I want to see what the Internet has to say about Nikola’s death now. I can’t let him die alone.

  I jog downstairs and turn my computer on. While it starts, I search through my cache of protein bars and rip open a peanut-butter-chocolate one. I ignore the three hundred and twelve e-mails in my inbox and search Tesla. The account of his death is filled with discrepancies, and I wonder if someone’s been in the Wiki, changing it to distort what actually happened when he died. I close the online encyclopedia and launch the Serbian Tesla Museum site, click the “Tesla” page, and scroll to the bottom. The last line gives me my when.

  Tesla spent his last years in the hotel New Yorker in New York, where he died on January 7, 1943.

  I close the laptop and toss my wrapper in the trash. I was there in 1937, if that newspaper I stepped on was accurate. Tears spring to my eyes and I lean on the counter. “Thank you.”

  Half a dozen years. He got six more years after the car accident. That gives me a huge span to hit. I don’t need to see him while he’s working. I want to be with him in his final hours. There has to be more to this alteration. There has to be. I need to see him one last time. I should have spent more time with him during these last trips. I didn’t expect him to matter to me.

  Is that going to happen during every alteration? Am I going to befriend people only to lose them? Or kill them…

  My throat constricts and my chest tightens. I didn’t think about that part of this job.

  I stand and shake off the emotion. If there is another piece to this alteration, I’ve got to be ready for anything. I have the patents… the only thing left to use is my weapon.

  This was so much easier last time with Constantine and his troop beside me.

  Deep breath.

  I drink in the blackness, infuse my innermost pockets with the dark, and push aside my emotion, my weakness.

  As the darkness becomes light, I’m instantly aware of a struggle. Not mine.

  I grab hold of the light and yank myself through. As I land in a hotel room, I’m struck dumb. My muscles freeze in a panic before I process what I’m seeing. A dark-haired man looms over a thin body on the bed. The thin body is writhing weakly, and I finally recognize Nikola’s sickly form.

  “Get off!” I lunge. The man elbows me in the face and I reel backward. Lights blind me, and the pain in my nose has my eyes watering so bad I can’t make out any shapes in the room. Wiping the moisture away, I fling myself on his back again and try to flare lightning without hitting Nikola, but there’s nothing. Not even a sputtering tendril.

  The man lifts off Nikola and slams me in the jaw with his meaty right hook. I duck and fire back with an uppercut. Pain radiates up my arm as I connect with doughy flab and a rocky core. He backhands me and I crash against the dresser. “Nikola!”

  The body on the bed is lifeless.

  My lightning flares bright in my right hand. “About fucking time!”

  I return the backhand, but the man scrambles out the door. I leap to the bedside and shake Nikola. “Nikola! Wake up!”

  There’s a thready pulse. I glance at the door. I’ve got to find out who that is. “I’ll be back. Stay with me!”

  I race out the door and spot the man’s retreating form as he pushes through the stairwell. I pound after him, slapping doors on my way by. “Help! Someone call 911!” Fuck. There probably is no 911 right now.

  Not a single door opens under my pounding. They’ve probably stashed him up here by himself. “Help!”

  I shove through the door and fly down the stairs, glancing over the railing to see where he is. I spot him three flights down. I leap the last five stairs and do it again, landing after landing until I’m only a flight behind him. He skips the main door and heads to the basement. The door bangs open and swings back to catch me in the forearm. I’m going to pulverize this guy when I catch him.

  Through the basement door, the space is crowded to overflowing with overhead pipes, boilers, and tools. I skid to a stop, my breath lost in the clang and clatter of the steamy sauna. On the left-hand side, there’s a narrow walkway, and I can hear retreating bootsteps. I give chase.

  My breath is ragged, but adrenaline and lightning surge through me. There’s a corner up ahead, and I’m worried if I don’t trip him up, we’re going to be racing for a while. He ducks under a low pipe and I take my chance with a low, spinning whip of lightning.

  He tries to leap, but a tendril snags his pant leg and he crashes to the floor. Unfettered, he scrambles upright. I throw another to the left of his head. I need to know who sent him and what he’s after before I kill him.

  His scream reverberates off the space, louder than the clanking machinery and boilers. I throw another one to the right. He freezes, back to me, arms raised.

  “Stand up,” I yell, twin balls of lightning in my palms.

  He
does, arms splayed to the sides. Twenty feet separate us, but I don’t want to get any closer. My cheek is throbbing and I’m pretty sure my nose is broken. Blood drips off my chin and I smear the gushing river on my forearm, my eyes never wavering off his spine.

  “Turn around.” I play my lightning out until twin strands dangle. They’re feeding off and fueling my rage. Writhing and crackling, they feel out the tight space, stopping just short of the steel pipes and vessels. I could light up this entire place.

  The man’s eyes bulge and he’s trembling.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Fuck you, bitch.”

  I snap my lightning downward, and he flinches. “What’s… your… name?”

  He spits and a slimy greenish yellow mass lands at my feet.

  My hand sweeps outward, a transparent bolt of lightning extending from my fingertips. The arc incinerates the insulting wad of spit and slaps him across the face. His head snaps back. When he returns his glare to me, his nose is bloodied. The bolt hasn’t burned him as badly as my big ones do to Constantine, so I can torture him as long as needed.

  “I won’t ask again.” The bolt returns to me and I dial up their opacity a notch, flaring them brighter.

  “Joe. My name’s Joe. But I ain’t nothin’ more’n a hired hand.”

  “I’m sure the cops will be happy to hear that.”

  His face pales and his Adam’s apple bobs.

  “You ain’t got nothin’ on me.”

  I cock an eyebrow. His arms relax at his sides and I turn my palms over, so the lightning dangles short and ready.

  “Then I guess it’s time you told me who you work for.” I turn up the volume on my left hand. The rope is nearly four inches thick. His eyes are glued to it.

  “Morgan,” he blurts with a flinch. “J.P. Morgan.”

  I reel like he backhanded me again. First the news about Hitler and Ilif’s arms dealing business with Penya, now this. My lightning sputters. He dives to the right and I send an overhead arc at his waist. It slams him in the back and knocks his head against a pipe. With a scream, he crumples to the floor, clutching his leg and side.

  I edge closer. He groans and rolls over, arms up and crossed to defend my next attack.

  I pause five feet away. “You’re not so smart, are you? If you’d stop moving, I’d stop hitting you. What else did J.P. want? Just Nikola dead?”

  “Said that guy had important papers. He wouldn’t tell me where, tho,’ so I tried to scare him into talking.”

  “He fucking ancient, you idiot! And sick! Scaring him into talking could kill him.” My lightning crackles and pops. “Could you be any stupider?” He flinches.

  “What kind of papers?” I ask, my voice still loud and echoing off the pipes.

  “Ones you dint’ get. Ones from after yer last visit.”

  I take a physical step back. “What do you mean, my last visit?”

  “Morgan knows all about you. Knows you took papers from Tesla’s lab that night, knows you been comin’ ta’ see him. Knows you been lying to him so’s he’d give you secrets.”

  Any icy dread clamps my spine. He can’t. There’s no way. Unless a certain someone who’s supposed to be mentoring me is visiting with J.P. instead… but why? Why would Ilif do anything to sabotage Nikola? That doesn’t make any sense…

  Now I don’t know if the gray-haired man from last time was Morgan’s or a federal agent. One team saw me get the paper from the safe, but I have no idea which.

  “You’re lying.” I dangle my whip closer to his face.

  He flinches and bends away. “Not about this.”

  “Where are the papers?”

  “Tesla wouldn’t tell. Said he’d rather die than give them to Morgan.”

  “So he knew who you worked for?”

  “I told him Morgan sent me.”

  “And what? You thought he’d gleefully turn them over?” I want to roll my eyes. This guy can’t really be this dense.

  “Worked last time.”

  My lightning sputters, and it takes all my concentration to keep it formed. This guy is terrible under duress. I inhale loudly through my nose. “What last time?”

  “A week after your last visit—after you cleaned out the safe—Morgan sent me to ask Tesla to recreate those pages.”

  My most important. “Not a chance. He wouldn’t.”

  “He did, but it was jest some scribblins, nuttin’ Morgan’s science guys could figure out.”

  “Why didn’t Morgan send you back for answers?”

  He rubs his eye. “He did, but Tesla swore that was ‘zactly what he put on that paper you took.”

  If it doesn’t mean anything to Morgan’s people, why does Nikola think I’ll know what to do with it? “What else?”

  He stares at my lightning, and I flick it toward him. “What… Else?”

  “That’s it. I swear.”

  I seethe. I need to get back to Nikola. Hopefully there’s a team of EMTs up there with him now.

  The lightning in my right hand changes to a transparent, bulbous glob. “This is for my nose, you douchebag.” I swing it and knock him out. Spinning on my heel, I race back through the underbelly of the hotel and burst into the stairwell. Cool air washes over me, and I race up the flights. My shirt is sticking to me from the humid encounter. I press on, taking the stairs two at a time. Nikola’s hallway is empty. Not a single emergency worker. The silence presses on me. I haul ass to his room, pausing for only a second before I burst through the unlatched door.

  Nikola is still on the bed in the main room, dressed in a dark suit, hands folded over his chest. Unconscious?

  I lean against the mattress and his body moves awkwardly. I jerk back. Fisting my hands, I stand there willing his chest to rise. Tears slip down my cheeks because my heart’s already acknowledged what my mind refuses to. I shake my head and lower myself beside him on the bed, hands lifeless in my lap. “Not yet, Nikola,” I whisper. “Not yet. I was coming right back. Why didn’t you wait? I’m so sorry. I thought someone would come for you. I should have stayed.” I fight the overwhelming pressure to scream.

  I rock back and forth, silently aching for this enigmatic genius. One of the world’s greatest minds, alone in death like he was alone in life.

  The winter sun filters lightly through an overcast sky. Shadows creep across my lap, marking the time that I sit and mourn my friend.

  I swipe at the tears. They’ll do him no good now. I need to call a doctor and get him taken care of.

  As I stand, I notice the corner of a folded paper peeking out from his jacket pocket. I twist my hands in indecision and shift from foot to foot. Surely this can’t be the paper Morgan was after.

  With a silent prayer for his forgiveness, I pluck the paper from his pocket and unfold it.

  January 6, 2:00 p.m.

  Misters Gehlen and Skorzeni, Secret Service

  Patrina Diner

  I scramble back to the main door and search for the newspaper. It’s crumpled by the jamb, probably swept aside when Joe barged in. I glance at the note, then the date of the paper. This meeting was today.

  For any other person, this is a meeting reminder. But that doesn’t make any sense. Tesla wouldn’t have written down something so ridiculously simple to remember. He never needed reminders about anything…

  I toss the paper on the small table next to the door and study my friend. Pressed suit, combed hair, the specific placement of the note. He wasn’t getting ready to die, he was getting ready for an important meeting. I rub my arms. With a couple of secret service guys.…

  But why the note? Who didn’t he trust? Too many unanswered questions.

  Did Joe interrupt the meeting, or just Nikola’s preparations? I glance at a clock. It’s almost 4:00 p.m. If Morgan’s been watching Nikola well enough to know my visits, surely he knew about every other meeting Nikola had.

  A thousand things don’t line up. His death date is tomorrow. Not today. Why?

  I wheeze like I j
ust took a fist to the guts. Because I chased a guy instead of staying with him. I collapse.

  Tears blur my eyes again, but this time they’re tears of frustration. I’m never going to get these alterations right. And Nikola’s dead because of me. The tears fade and the fog clears from my mind. The alteration can’t have been about getting the patents… or saving Nikola’s life.

  Because I’m still here.

  Nikola’s death didn’t fling me home.

  There’s a reason the alteration brought me to now. Not yesterday, not last week. Only my foolish naïveté thought I could land when I wanted. If the alteration didn’t end when I picked up the patents, and didn’t end when I got the final paper from the safe, then there’s something left. A final piece I have to alter.

  But not necessarily a single one…

  “So what is it?” I whisper to his corpse.

  I jam the note in my front pocket and wander through the room, lifting random piles of paper and pushing aside stacks of books. I have no idea what I’m looking for, or if there’s even anything left to find. He gave me all his patents.

  I always duplicate everything.

  His voice is clear enough I spin around to make sure he’s not rising from the bed, trickery over. But he’s not. His prone form is still silent.

  “So where’d you put them, Nikola?”

  I stare at the ceiling, but any access would only lead to the room above. I press my temples. Think!

  In the storage room adjoining the bedroom, I open the oversized file cabinet to find stacks of papers and files. These?

  I thumb through them quickly, feeling like someone’s going to come in any moment. There’s a ton of stuff here, but nothing that jumps out at me as the piece I’m here for. I glance over my shoulder at Nikola’s prone form. I guess I could arc the whole cabinet, but it looks like it’s been here forever. If he wanted me to have it, he’d have mentioned it last time. And neither J.P.’s men nor the strange foreigners thought it was important, or they wouldn’t have bought his story about destroying all the weapon patents.