by Jamie Grey
Asher saluted. “To the lab it is.” He got to his feet and slung Amy’s bag over his shoulder before holding out his arm to her.
Amy slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow with a giggle. “Such a gentleman.”
“Not always,” he said with a wink.
I tried not to vomit.
Zella got to her feet, pointedly ignoring me. “You coming, Max?”
He paused to smile at me. “I’ll catch you later, Lexie?”
“Of course. Have fun, guys.” My whole team left the room together, and I sat there like a loser. So much for things starting to look up.
I spent most of the day in the library again. It was quiet, and nobody paid much attention to me. The panic was back, and I had a dozen different windows open on my computer screen as I searched for answers. I was going to show all of them that, despite the drugs, I wasn’t stupid. I could make it at QT.
First up, I needed to figure out what exactly an ultraviolet catastrophe was. I’d read the definition yesterday, but I still had no idea what it meant. I did a few more online searches and found some good descriptions. Probably a good place to start our paper.
I chewed on the end of my pen. Still didn’t know what it meant, but at least I had something. I stared at the graph beside the definition. The catastrophe predicted that, as the wavelength of light got shorter, the intensity would continue to go up, emitting radiation until it reached infinite levels. Okay, it was starting to make sense. I did a little more searching.
Max Planck was the guy who’d come up with the solution to the ultraviolet catastrophe back in 1900. And that solution was the starting point for the whole branch of science called quantum physics. His research had formed the basis for Einstein’s later work with photon theory.
I pulled together a few more pages of research on the ultraviolet catastrophe and its history. It amazed me how small a community of scientists it was back then. The same names kept popping up: Planck, Einstein, Millikan, Rosen.
Rosen. Could he be related to Asher? I scanned the library to make sure no one was watching and did a quick search. Really, I wasn’t being a stalker; I was honestly interested, especially if his grandfather had worked with Albert Einstein. He’d always been a hero of mine. The Einstein action figure I’d had to leave behind in Ohio had been a birthday gift from Mom, meant as a joke, but I’d secretly loved it.
The first link confirmed it. Nathan Rosen, Asher’s grandfather, had been Einstein’s assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey, and there, they’d come up with a mathematical solution for a type of wormhole connecting distant areas in space. The Einstein-Rosen Bridge. There was also a reference to the Manhattan Project.
I skimmed through the rest of the article and noticed the names John A. Wheeler and John von Neumann, who were also physicists. Same last names as Zella and Max. They’d all worked on the Manhattan Project. I was willing to bet that wasn’t a coincidence at all.
I knew Oak Ridge had been created as a secret town where many of the Manhattan Project’s most important scientists had lived and researched. To have all of those descendants together again seemed a little strange.
“What kind of secrets have you uncovered today?” Asher asked, dropping into a chair beside me. He tugged something out of his pocket that looked like a mini remote controller.
I clicked the browser window shut so he wouldn’t see my research. I did not want him get the wrong idea. “Nothing too exciting. A few more days and I should have the UVC stuff pulled together.”
He grabbed my pen and balanced it on the edge of the desk. “Cool. I’m sure Z will be relieved to have it done.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Where’s Amy? Did you guys finish your computer models?”
“We made some pretty good progress. She had a meeting with Avery this afternoon, so I figured I’d come here and get something done for a change. Unless you’d like to distract me?” He gave me his heart-stopping, crooked grin.
I shook my head and tried not to roll my eyes at him. “Somehow I don’t think Amy would approve.”
“Aw, don’t be so serious, Lexicon. I’m just flirting with a pretty girl — there’s no harm in that. Besides, Amy and I are just friends.”
“I don’t think Amy would agree. And what did you just call me?”
“What — Lexicon? You know, a dictionary of terms. It suits you, what with your performance yesterday with Zella.”
Heat flooded my cheeks, both at the fact that he’d called me pretty and that he’d actually witnessed my little display. “What’s your nickname then?”
He fiddled with a button on the remote before smiling slowly. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“I can give you some suggestions if you’re having trouble…”
My mouth opened and shut. His blue eyes blazed into mine, and I swallowed. Hard.
Then he sat back, breaking the tractor beam of his gaze. “How about I give you some time to think about it?”
I shook my head, mortified and yet strangely fascinated by the dimple in his cheek as he grinned at me. Pull it together, Kepler. The guy’s just flirting. You can handle this. “What does Amy call you?”
“Ah, that would be telling.” He winked, pressed a button, and the pen on the edge of the table disappeared.
I blinked. “How did you do that?”
“Oh, this? Just a simple particle destabilizer. It’s a prototype I’ve been working on. It temporarily changes the frequency of an object’s particles, making them vibrate so fast the item becomes invisible. Once I turn the wavelength off, you can see it again.” He had that falsely modest expression I was coming to recognize. He knew he was a freaking genius. Why did he even bother to pretend at this point?
“Now that I’ve impressed you with my toys, want to grab some coffee? There’s an excellent coffee shop in town. We can make it a study date. I’ll even let you play with it.” He gestured at the remote, and I rolled my eyes.
“I think I’ll pass.”
“Not smart, Lexicon. I can help you with your physics equations. You know I won the Best New Physicist Award when I was thirteen. I even designed Joan here.” He nodded toward the robotic librarian standing at the other end of the room.
Okay, now he was really showing off. I could play that game, too.
“Really? Then how did you miss tweaking the titanium socket screws in their ankle joints? They’re cut at the wrong angle. Another few degrees and an install two inches lower and it’d take care of the lurching.”
He blinked, his gaze flicking to Joan and then back to me, and I bit back a smile at his expression.
His voice was almost strangled as he asked, “How did you do that? We worked on that design for weeks and still couldn’t get it quite right.”
I grinned. “May I should help you with your homework.” Part of me wanted nothing more than to say yes to his invitation for coffee. To his sparkling blue eyes and the dimple in his cheek. There couldn’t be any harm in being friends, could there? Except I was pretty sure he had a girlfriend, and I didn’t know how long I’d be able to stay ‘just friends’ with someone who looked at me like that.
Like I was a genius.
I shoved my tablet and notebook into my bag before standing up. “I should be going. My dad promised he’d remember me today. We’re supposed to meet in the lobby.”
Asher got up and walked with me to the library doors. “You know, if he’s too busy, I can always take you home. It’ll be like a carpool. Or taxi service. You can pay me in coffee dates.”
“Thanks, but it’s time my dad took some responsibility for me. At least, for however long I’m here.” I froze, chewed my lip. Where had that come from?
He furrowed his eyebrows. “What do you mean? Where would you be going?”
I laughed, trying to play off my slip-up. “Nowhere in particular. I just mean if I can’t cut it here, maybe they’ll send me back to Ohio.”
> Maybe Mom would come back and we could find somewhere else to live, just the two of us. We could go back to being normal. I could forget about the lies and the drugs and the general mess that was my life.
Asher’s jaw tightened. “You belong here with us, Lexie. No matter what you think.”
I shrugged and pushed through the doors to the hallway. “Honestly, Asher, I appreciate the pep talk, but you barely know me. You don’t know anything about whether I’ll fit or not.”
He put a hand on my arm to stop me, and I turned, held frozen by his suddenly serious expression. And then he looked away, scuffed his shoe against the marble floor. Finally, he said, “I know about the drugs.”
His words sucked the air from my lungs with a whoosh. “What did you say?”
“My dad was the one who helped develop them in the first place. That could have been me, Lexie. If things had been different.”
Horror, shame, anger all surged through me, and I put out a hand to steady myself against the wall. Bad enough I knew my own parents had drugged me to keep me average, but knowing Asher had heard about it, too? I wanted the floor to open and eat me whole. What must he think of them? Of me?
No matter what my dad said, there had to have been another way to protect me from Branston.
He touched my shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. I’d never say anything.”
I shook my head, too devastated to even respond. The hallway went fuzzy, and I forced myself to breathe in and out, despite the icy clench of my lungs. Just the thought of what my new classmates would do to me if it ever got out that I’d been drugged to stay average made my stomach roil. I’d witnessed enough bullying at Columbus to know that it would be social suicide. I could hear the taunts already — Lobotomy Lexie.
I jerked away from his hand and sprinted away toward the stairwell.
“Lexie!” Asher called.
I shook my head and pushed through the emergency doors to clatter down the stairs. My eyes stung with unshed tears. What had been so wrong with me that my parents would do something like this? They’d taken away a part of me, and now, I was lost. I’d hoped QT might be a chance to become who I wanted instead of being always afraid. Now it had become another prison.
The only thing that got me through the rest of the week was being able to hide in the library. I even skipped Avery’s class. I was terrified of seeing Asher. Knowing that he knew about the drugs was bad enough, but having to see the pity in his eyes was something I couldn’t face.
I spent hours plugging away at my ultraviolet catastrophe research. It was my one chance to prove myself to them, and I wasn’t going to screw it up by slacking off, not matter how freaked out I was. I wanted to show them all that, even if they’d drugged me, I was still smart, still belonged here. I was still me.
But I’d never been so glad for the weekend in my life.
When I got up Saturday morning, I found a note from Dad in the kitchen:
Gone to QT for an emergency. Will bring home dinner.
I crumpled it in my fist before tossing it in the garbage. Great. Another day alone.
The only sound in the empty house was the hum of the refrigerator and the tick-tock of Dad’s grandfather clock. I couldn’t handle it. I’d spent Friday night locked in my bedroom — I wasn’t doing that again.
Maybe it was time to explore Oak Ridge.
I locked the door behind me and wandered toward downtown. The September air was still sticky with the summer heat, and a bunch of kids played baseball in their front yards. I watched a boy with spiky hair pull back and pitch a softball to a girl across the street. She swung, the bat connecting to the ball with a loud crack. It soared back toward him, and I cringed as it headed toward an upstairs window. But instead of crashing through the glass, it slowed down until it hung frozen in mid-air. One of the outfielders pressed a button on his baseball glove, and the ball dropped into his hand.
I shook my head. If I wasn’t so freaked out by everything, I might like this place. Until I remembered, I wasn’t here for fun. I was here because Branston had been searching for me since I was three. And my parents had drugged me to keep me safe from them. Goosebumps shivered on my skin, and I pushed on.
It was only four blocks, but I was sweating by the time I reached downtown. The security robots I’d seen on my first day stood sentinel on corners or wandered up and down the street, the sun glinting off their arms and legs. Their heads were made of a single sheet of metal, polished to a high gloss and shaped into an oblong, with slits for their eye sensors. I clenched my trembling fingers and moved past them. Hadn’t the scientists at QT read any science fiction? One of these days, the robots were going to try to take over.
A trickle of sweat dripped down my neck, and I wanted nothing more than a huge iced coffee and a seat in the air conditioning. Coco’s Coffee sat at the end of the block, and from what I could tell, it was the local hang out — for scientists and students alike. I recognized a few of my classmates sitting outside, despite the heat. Even worse, I spotted Asher and Amy, heads bent together over a bowl of ice cream.
I ducked behind a potted cedar. Amy probably knew all about the drugs by now. If she and Asher were dating, I was positive he’d told her. And if Asher knowing about it wasn’t bad enough, perfect, popular Amy knowing about it was a thousand times worse.
Sneaking around the plant, I pushed open the door to the coffee shop and winced as a bell jangled at the entrance. Inside was airy and casual, with a bank of booths on the far side and tables scattered throughout the room. Cheerful daisies sat in squat vases on each table, and photography and artwork dotted the walls. It seemed like any other coffee shop.
Except for the barista behind the bar.
In a town full of scientific geniuses, this girl stuck out like a supernova. Her hair was died purple and stuck out in spikes from her head. She had ear gauges in both earlobes and a stud in her nose. But when she smiled at me, a dimple flashed in her cheek, and she had the sweetest, softest Southern drawl I’d ever heard.
“What can I get for you, darlin’?” she asked.
I studied the tattoo on her neck of an atom before snapping my gaze to her dark brown eyes. “Um, the biggest iced coffee you can make, please.”
“It’s a scorcher out there, isn’t it?” She furrowed her eyebrows as she pulled a recycled paper cup from the stack. “Wait a minute — you’re Dr. Kepler’s daughter, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “Lexie. How did you know?”
“You look like him. And Will is a regular.” Her dimple flashed again. Exactly how many women in Oak Ridge knew my dad? “I’m Coco. How are you settling in?”
I shrugged. “It’s only my first week. I’m assuming it’ll get better.”
Coco nodded. “QT is tough. I left after I graduated and never looked back. Mom still works there, but I wanted nothing to do with it. I went to the CIA instead.”
I eyed her ripped shirt and chain-link bracelets dubiously. “CIA? Like the feds?”
She laughed. “No, the Culinary Institute of America. In New York. I’m a chef. And a damn good one if I do say so myself. Though, of course, all my best dishes are top secret,” she added with a grin.
“A top secret café in the middle of town? This place is crazy,” I said, shaking my head.
“Did you notice the bots standing around Main Street? Oak Ridge has the best security in the world. They’re tied into the QT system and can take you out at a hundred yards. Don’t even try to talk about my meals outside of Oak Ridge.” She winked and handed over a tall, iced coffee, but her words made my skin crawl. “Here you go. Enjoy. And it was nice to meet you, darlin’. I hope we’ll see you often.”
“Thanks.” I took my coffee and wandered over to an empty booth along the wall.
The bell jangled, and Asher slipped inside with an empty bowl and two glasses. He turned to order something from Coco and spotted me in the corner. Our eyes met across the room, and he took a hesitant step toward me, the corner of his lip twitching up.
I sat up straighter and shoved my hair behind my ears. Keep it cool, Kepler.
But before I could find out what he was going to do, a man wearing khakis and a button-down shirt entered. He scanned the coffee shop, his gaze resting on me briefly, before he moved toward the counter.
Asher glanced at the guy with a frown, then turned away and finished his order.
I stared into the swirling depths of my coffee and pushed away my disappointment. Asher was here with Amy. I shouldn’t expect anything from him now. I’d blown it with him by freaking out the other day.
“Excuse me, are you Alexa Kepler?” The man stood beside the table and smiled at me, wrinkles framing his eyes. Dad had the same ones from staring into a microscope most of his life.
I nodded. “Yes, sir. Can I help you?”
He glanced over at Coco and Asher, who were still chatting, and then back to me. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
I tilted my head at him. His salt-and-pepper hair was buzzed short, and his posture was rigid, like he had iron in his spine. Each movement was brisk and efficient. Military, even. “Have a seat.”
He slid into the booth across from me and cupped his mug between long fingers. “Alexa, my name is Timothy Grant. Major Timothy Grant. I trust you received my email the other day?”
I jumped to my feet, blood roaring in my ears. Across the room, Asher stared at me. He frowned and pulled out his phone before slipping out of the coffee shop.
Grant put a hand on mine, his voice soothing and even, drawing my attention back to him. “Lexie, please. I mean you no harm. I simply want to talk. You can walk away if you ever feel threatened.”
I felt my knees tremble as I sank back into the booth. “How did you find me?” I whispered.
His expression was grim. “Your mother’s led us on quite the chase, but eventually, we figured out where you were. I wish we’d found you before you started at QT. It would make all of this so much easier.”
I clutched the edge of the table. I hadn’t heard from Mom since Monday. “Where is she? What did you do to her?”
