LEX
We’ve never formally been introduced to the students from the Tesla Institute, mostly because every time we meet, things go from zero to face punch too quickly for small talk. I scan the crowd below for any hint that the Tesla kids are around, but all is clear. Hopefully, they show. I have to admit, I enjoy the excitement. And this World’s Fair thing is the dullest mission I’ve ever done.
I look back down at the wrinkled photo of VonWeitter, the designer of the solar panel device Claymore sent us here to steal. Hopefully, we can use it to keep the lights on at the Tower. The constantly flickering gas lamps are a pretty big fire hazard, as it turns out.
Out the corner of my eye, I see Stein lean forward and shift closer to me. She’s so close I can smell her; the scent is like rain and fresh cotton. It’s distracting. Just like her. I smirk, shove the photo in my vest pocket, and retrieve the candy bar I’d gotten for her. She smiles when she sees it, and my heart goes double-time.
“What are you thinking about, Stein?” I ask, breaking off a chunk of chocolate and offering it to her. After bending forward, she takes it with her teeth.
She tips back her black satin top hat, a look in her eye—challenging me. I can almost read her mind. Do I really want to sit here and talk about our feelings? Dude, she is turning me into such a chick. I decide to let it drop.
Stein leans back on her hands. “This is so good. Where did you get it?”
I swing my legs over the rafter. “There’s a clown selling it outside the exhibit hall. I got a five-finger discount.”
She looks pleased, which makes me glad I risked the lift. We don’t get a lot of small indulgences like chocolate back home, so whenever I have the chance to get her something, I take it. I break off a square and take a bite.
I wish we kept some chocolate back at the Hollows, but most of us can’t sit still for three seconds—I can’t imagine how bad it would be if we were hyped up on sugar all the time. I get this image of my best friend, Nobel, in my mind, vibrating across the floor like a belt sander, candy bar in one hand, soda in the other. It makes me snicker, and Stein shoots me a confused look. I just grin and ease to my feet. Handing the rest of the candy over to her, I sit back down.
The metal crossbeams of the ceiling are even less comfortable than they look. Of course, I doubt the designers imagined people would be squatting up in the rafters. I fidget every so often, trying to prevent permanent rivet dents from forming on my butt, and keep my mind off my cramped position and on the mission. Below us, Nobel fights with a huge spool of pink cotton candy. He’s desperately trying to get a bite without the fluff sticking to his face—and he’s failing miserably.
I chuckle, wad up the empty chocolate wrapper, and chuck it, nailing him right in the temple. He looks up. I wave.
He flips me off.
“Did you dip this in gear oil or did you just forget to wash the grease off your fingers first?” Stein asks around the last bite of candy.
“Wash? No. Wipe on pants? Yes.”
Most girls might be grossed out, but she just smirks. I look down at my hands. They are dirty enough that I can make out the dark impressions of my fingerprints. Guess just wiping them off didn’t get them as clean as I thought. Not really my fault, considering Nobel’s device, the one that will lower me to the floor, is leaking oil.
I run my already-messy hands over the machine again. Two pressure gauges are set between three large pistons with a couple of hydraulic hoses crawling out the sides. It looks like it’s made of old car parts. Knowing Nobel, that’s exactly the case. But Stein isn’t great with mechanical things, and I can tell from her expression that she doesn’t quite trust the device.
Stein sighs. She looks half-bored, half-nervous.
I stare at her for a second, struck by how pretty she looks in the dim glow of the lights beneath us. Most of us are scarred and worn. Not Stein, though. She’s always flawless. She smiles at me as if she can read my mind, so I reach over and tug on a loose strand of her dark hair.
Turning away, I sweep a glance over the massive room. Half an hour ago, it was filled with people listening to the lectures and viewing gizmos, but now it’s waned to a handful of people milling about. Most of them are part of my crew.
Where would I be right now if Claymore hadn’t found me? I might have been one of those men down there in a fancy suit. Or maybe I would have been a scientist or an inventor. I’m not a brain like Nobel, but I’m good with my hands, and I’m quick on my feet. Whatever I could have been would never make me as happy as I am right now as a Hollow. I really can’t remember my past—none of us can—so all we have is the present.
And the present doesn’t suck.
The first trip through the time stream is like being born again, or at least that’s the sales pitch. Not sure if I buy it. Gloves says it’s the stream’s way of washing us clean, of transitioning us into our new lives. It feels more like a cost—the price we have to pay for our abilities. I have a scar on my neck and jawbone, probably from some kind of tragedy or abuse in my old life. Sometimes, I’m curious about it. I even asked Gloves a couple of times, but he always brushed it off. Eventually, I gave up asking. I haven’t thought about it in a long time; I’m not sure why I’m thinking about it now except something is stirring in my gut, a feeling that something is about to go very wrong.
Next to me, Stein is frozen and silent, breathing in the noisy air and the rush of people below us. I can’t help wondering if she feels it too, this unease, although I’d never ask and she’d never admit it.
Nobel whistles, and my eyes shoot down. After he tosses the remnants of his cotton candy into the trash, he slides his grimy surgeon’s mask over his nose and mouth. He whistles again, this time a sharp, quick noise. I follow his motions to a man carrying a large roll of papers through the dwindling crowd. VonWeitter.
With a nod to Stein, I lower myself into position and scan the crowd. Sweat drips from my eyebrow into my eye, and I blink. I can see my fellow Hollows close in like the pulling on a purse string.
I get into position, and Stein yanks on the start cord. The machine lets out a quiet belch and dies. She tries again while I stare at her with furrowed eyebrows. This has to work or we’re screwed. She pulls the cord again. The machine finally coughs grey smoke and purrs to life.
Below us, the other Hollows quickly usher the bystanders to the exits. Within minutes, only Nobel and VonWeitter remain in the exhibit hall.
“Ready,” Stein whispers.
I nod. Handing her my ratty old jester’s hat, I hook the end of the cable to my harness. When I lean forward, I descend to the floor like a giant spider going after a meal, the machine slowly unspooling above me. VonWeitter is right below me. I land behind him, knocking him out cold. Nobel darts over and grabs the plans. Slipping out of the harness, I attach it to VonWeitter, and then give Stein a thumbs-up. She puts the machine in reverse. I bear hug the unconscious man, and then we rise to the ceiling.
Stein is ready on the rafters with an ether-soaked rag in her hand as his eyes begin to flutter open. He doesn’t even get out a confused word before she’s on him.
Pressing the rag to his face, Stein smiles. “Do you believe in the Ether Bunny?”
In seconds, he’s out again, lolling like a rag doll and heavy as sin. We tie him to one of the steel crossbeams. Grabbing an ace of spades playing card from my pocket, I tuck it in the pocket of his wool jacket. I have to leave my calling card just in case the Tesla crowd shows up.
Stein winks, tucks her hair into her top hat, and takes off like a squirrel along the beam. I don’t have to ask where she’s going. Her job now is to secure the meeting place so we can rift out unnoticed. We picked a theater in the heart of the Fair as our exit point. It should be emptying out after the last show, and it will be the perfect place to take a head count and then get back to base.
I unclamp Nobel’s machine and scale along the beams until I make it to the edge of the building. N
obel reaches a hand up, helping me down the last few feet. After a quick glance over the plans to make sure we have the right blueprints, Nobel motions to the others to join us. Once we’re all together, he throws an arm around my shoulders. We head for the vestibule in front of the exhibit hall. Posters cover the walls. Flyers and trash litter the ground.
“Not bad, Lex,” Nobel says. “Maybe next time, you could move a little slower.”
I shrug him off. “Whatever, dude. Your machine decided to take a lunch break. I thought Stein was going to have to punch it.”
“Was it my machine?” Nobel asks in a high-pitched voice. “Or were you just distracted by your girlfriend’s assets?”
Now, I just roll my eyes, partly proud and partly irritated that he was mostly right. “I dare you to say that to her face.”
He holds up his hands in surrender. “Let’s blow this joint before VonWeitter wakes up.”
We are halfway to the theater when a familiar sound makes me pause. It’s a sound I recognize from too many sparring sessions with Stein—the sound of a body being hurled through wood.
Without a word, we break into a run. My pulse races as we head for the fight, cutting through the crowd of people.
That sound can only mean one thing.
The Tesla brats are here.
Nobel trips over some kid’s toy and stumbles. The gnawing feeling in my stomach is getting worse. It’s the unsettling mix of nerves and excitement. The cold air rushes over me as we reach the docks just in time to see a redheaded girl throw Stein into a snack shack. I don’t have time to wonder why she’s on the wharf—I just run for her. She’s still on her back as the Tesla girl reaches down and picks up a large chunk of door, hoisting it over one shoulder like a baseball bat.
“Stein!” I yell, ready to lunge, but before the girl can take a swing, Stein rears up and kicks out, catching her in the knee and sending her rolling across the dock.
“The theater is compromised,” Stein gasps, holding her chest as she climbs out of the splintered wall. She’s moving slowly, hurt, but not too badly from the looks of it. I want to rush to her side, but she levels a gaze at me and points toward the theater. People are screaming, and in the distance, the whistle of a fire truck cuts through the frenzy. I turn toward the theater, realizing that the smoke billowing up from the building is our signal the fight has begun.
Stein screams behind me. Before I can turn around, someone has me in a sleeper hold and drags me to the end of the dock. I see Nobel as a Tesla kid pushes him to the ground. Whoever has me flips me over, feet pressing into my ribs. I’ll say this about the Tesla kids—they can fight. Though not as scrappy as we are, they’re obviously trained. But we aren’t above cheating.
I grab his foot as he tries to kick me again, using the force of his weight against him. He slams into the ground. He’s down long enough for me to get up—mistake number one. Me on my feet isn’t something he wants to mess with. I lunge toward him, and he counters, punching me so hard I stumble. Footsteps pound against the wharf, and he looks away—mistake number two. I use the small lapse in his concentration to my advantage. Head-butt to the nose. Judging by the loud crack and the expletive that follows, I must have broken something. While the guy is disorientated, I uppercut him.
When he hits the ground, I run toward the center so I can see all the other Hollows. “Come on, guys. New plan. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em,” I yell. It’s our code for this mission has gone to hell in a handbasket, so break off and rift out as soon as you can from wherever you can. A few of them nod and reach into their pockets to grab the green Contra.
I run toward the shore where the redheaded girl sits on top of Stein, laying down blow after blow, when out of nowhere, a right hook catches me unexpectedly, laying me out flat. Groaning, I roll over, attempting to push myself up, but a boot between my shoulder blades takes me back to the ground.
“When did this become a two-on-one fight?” I ask, looking over my shoulder. A big guy, his ugly face smiling and dripping with blood, is looking down at me. A blond boy comes over and leans down.
“We gotcha,” he whispers as they pull me from the ground.
I kick to no avail. The older guy, the only one I recognize, has grabbed one of my legs.
Blondie has the other and they are pulling me to the end of the dock. I keep kicking and dig my fingernails into the wooden dock, but I’m stuck. There’s no way to stop them. Desperate now, I look for Nobel, but he’s holding his own against another new face.
I flip over on my back. The maneuver makes the older guy drop my leg. It’s just enough to help me, and I squirm free and jump to my feet. My shirt is soaked with my blood, and I start to move, but I see a girl. She’s running toward us, and the closer she gets…
I want to look away, but I’m frozen. The blond boy finds me again, holding me tightly. But I can’t make myself move.
In the back of my head, I hear sounds. A girl laughing. Gunfire. Screaming. Bright speckles explode like grenades in my vision. For a minute, everything is white, but the color fades fast. It’s replaced by a wave of calm emptiness. The blackness creeps slowly into the periphery of my vision and flows like black ink across my pupils. Fighting against the darkness, I blink, shaking my head until I’m dizzy.
Someone’s on the two guys, pounding the one I tripped earlier and pulling the blond one off me. I know it’s my people—know I’m supposed to rift out after everyone else—but my head is swimming. I reach for the Contra in my pocket, feel it in my fingers, but then it slips from my grasp and falls between the slats in the dock.
I look over just before everything goes dark. Stein rolls away from her attacker—the blond boy she pulled off me. She quickly reaches into her pocket and swallows her green Contra. When she vanishes, I feel only relief. I might die here, and it’s good she won’t be here to see it.
I fall to my knees. My mind is going blank. Nobel’s masked face is close to mine. He slaps me. I think he calls my name. His greasy fingers shove the smooth Contra pill far into my throat. My eyes close, and all I have to do is swallow.
Tesla Journal Entry: June 16, 1892
I begin this entry with both humility and lingering disbelief in what I have witnessed with my own eyes this day.
The experiment seemed simple in theory. Matter at rest, if such a thing could exist, would be matter dead. Death of matter! Never has a sentence of deeper philosophical meaning been uttered. This is the way in which Prof. Dewar forcibly expresses it in the description of his admirable experiments, in which liquid oxygen is handled as one handles water, and air at ordinary pressure is made to condense and even to solidify by the intense cold. Experiments, which serve to illustrate, in his language, the last feeble manifestations of life, the last quiverings of matter about to die. But human eyes shall not witness such death. There is no death of matter, for throughout the infinite universe, all has to move, to vibrate, that is, to live.
So to regenerate life in seemingly dead matter should be a small thing—to return it to its natural state of unrest. Electricity, ah, that is the key. I am still assured of it. But today’s results were shocking, so much so that I dare not speak the truth of it but here in my private journal.
My dear assistant Helena, a drab but intelligent woman by any standards, has been by and by contributing to these experiments.
The general plan was to charge condensers, from an alternate-current source of high tension, and to discharge them disruptively while observing well-known conditions necessary to maintain the oscillations of the current as it passed through ‘dead’ matter. In this case, a rat euthanized for this specific trial.
The energy, however, refracted off a coil of copper wire behind the target and was sent directly into Helena, who immediately vanished before my eyes.
Bah, impossible!
Yet, my mind could not ignore what my eyes showed me. I searched the area for some time for some clue as to what had happened only to have Helena reappear in the
exact spot some four hours later, though she says it felt to her as if only moments had passed, unharmed, though with large portions of her memory fragmented.
After several cups of tea, Helena, visibly shaken, was able to recount the experience from her own perspective. She described a sensation of being torn apart by wind, though no damage was visible to herself, her clothing, or her hair. She spoke of being lost, unable to control her movements, like a rudderless ship blown about in this alternate place. Understandably in a state of panic, she lunged to escape and was returned to the lab.
I must admit the idea intrigues me. Where did she travel to? Was it, as some notable scientists have postulated, a dimensional tunnel in space and time? I must think further on these events and decide how to move forward.
Extracted Page 2
