The Tesla Legacy (21 page)

“Is Edison all right?”

Her expression thawed by half a degree. Nobody could resist a man who cared about dogs. “The dog is fine. And I’ll inform Mr. Tesla of your visit when he wakes up.”

So, Joe hadn’t regained consciousness yet. A good sign.

He tried to imagine Joe Tesla without the use of his magnificent brain and felt no pity. He’d had his chance, and he’d squandered it. He could have done great things.

Maybe he still could, but given the worry on Ms. Torres’s face, that was no longer a certainty.

Chapter 34

Vivian looked through the glass at Tesla in his bed. He’d been tested, admitted, and brought to this private room hours before. His mother sat in the room’s only chair. Hollingberry had pulled it up next to the bed and fussed over her for a while, but had recently left to get everyone coffee. Mrs. Tesla held Joe’s hand, her eyes never leaving his face.

He looked terrible. He was always pale, but now his skin looked as translucent as a vampire’s. Even his lips were pale. A bandage on the back of his head covered where they’d stitched up his scalp. After running him through a CT scan, they’d announced that he had no skull fracture, but he did have traumatic brain injury. He would recover, but it would take time and rest.

He’d woken up a few times, asking about Edison and talking about Nikola Tesla. Vivian had looked the name up on her phone and found out that the guy had been dead since before the end of World War II. That couldn’t be a good sign.

She wondered how he’d react to being out of his familiar surroundings when he woke up all the way. She’d seen him have a panic attack before, in the middle of the day in a familiar situation. In a place he’d never been and with a head injury, well, she didn’t like to think about what might happen.

Tesla’s eyes opened again, and his mother spoke to him. He answered, and she pressed the button behind his head to summon a nurse.

“I’m going in,” Vivian told Dirk. She handed him the piece of paper that listed the doctors and nurses who were authorized to go into Tesla’s room. “He’s awake again. Maybe this time he’ll be conscious enough to tell us who hit him.”

“It’s not so bad,” Dirk said. “You can stop kicking your own ass, Viv.”

She hadn’t said a single word to indicate how guilty she felt, but Dirk knew her well. Tesla had been injured on her watch.

“I might just kick
his
ass,” she said. “For getting himself into trouble.”

Dirk gave her a smile, flashing his trademark dimple, and she had to smile back before going into the hospital room.

Mrs. Tesla looked at Vivian. “He wants to know about Edison again.”

“Edison is with Andres Peterson, and he’s completely fine, Mr. Tesla. Not a mark on him.” She’d told him that three times already.

Tesla looked toward the curtained window. Vivian had drawn the curtains as soon as the doctors had left, not wanting him to see the sky outside when he woke up and panic. He had enough to worry about without that.

His gaze drifted around as he took in the room. “Where am I?”

“Hospital.” His mother patted his arm. “You’re safe.”

Tesla’s eyes met Vivian’s. “How can I get home?”

Before she could say anything, a quick rap on the door announced a visitor. She tensed.

“I cleared him,” called Dirk from the door.

That meant that his name was on the list, and he’d been patted down for weapons, but she didn’t relax.

“Dr. Nigel Winterbottom.” A pudgy white guy in a lab coat stepped into the room. “I’ve been assigned Mr. Tesla’s case.”

“What’s your specialty?” Vivian had memorized the names and specialties of all of Tesla’s doctors and nurses.

Winterbottom glared at her in the condescending way of every doctor she’d met. “Neurologist. I’m here to examine my patient.”

She stepped away from him. She knew Winterbottom was the neurologist’s name, and he was definitely behaving like a doctor.

The doctor strode across the room toward the bed, but at the last second he pivoted and pulled open the curtains.

Tesla leaped out of the bed as if the light scalded him. He listed to the side and fell to his knees behind the bed. He yanked out his IV. Blood spattered across the back of his hand.

He lunged toward the door. His blue eyes were huge and panicked—nobody home. The smartest man she’d ever met, and there was no trace of intelligence in those eyes. Just terror.

Chapter 35

Quantum studied the elevated train tracks. He was at Tenth Avenue and Thirtieth Street. The tracks above him hadn’t been used for years, and they were due to be opened as another part of the elevated High Line park next year, but for now they were empty.

Behind him trains rattled along the tracks at the West Side Yard, and in front of him the traffic on Thirtieth Street roared by. He’d picked this busy location because nobody would notice him standing around with his hand in his pocket. He’d scouted the area, and he’d seen no surveillance cameras that spied on this particular spot. He was invisible, a rare thing in the city these days.

He’d sell the device to Ash soon, but first he wanted to know what price to set. If the device worked, and he could prove it, then the $100K on offer was too low. If it didn’t, he could collect his Bitcoins and leave Ash holding a hundred-year-old hoax. He smiled. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy than Ash.

For a test subject, he wanted something that was big and dramatic enough to show to Ash later, but not something that would cause a huge loss of life. That would attract too much attention. This unopened part of the High Line park was a perfect testing ground.

Steel support columns soared up from ground level to the tracks above. They’d been built in the 1930s and abandoned in the 1980s. After their closure, people had tried to get the tracks torn down. That hadn’t worked. A grassroots movement had worked to have the elevated tracks converted into a park. A lot of money had been spent, the park was named High Line, and now people wandered around up there enjoying nature. This particular set of tracks hadn’t been opened to the public yet. Nobody was up there. They were waiting for the grass to grow or something.

He patted the riveted steel affectionately. It had stood for a long time, and the time had come to see if he could bring it down. From his backpack he took wooden clamps and attached the base of the device to the steel beam. He’d chosen wood since it would resonate at a different frequency than the steel.

Before he turned the device on, he paused. If the statements that Tesla gave when he was an old man were true, then when the Oscillator hit the right frequency for long enough the steel column would shatter like a wine glass next to an opera singer. Others had tried to build the device from the description in Tesla’s early patent, but it had never worked. Maybe he’d sabotaged the patent on purpose, and this device would work.

With a shrug, he turned the device on and started to tune it. He’d looked up the resonant frequency of steel, and he dialed it in now. A few minutes later, the steel shivered the tiniest bit, as if cold.

A quick glance around assured him that no one cared what he was up to. He loved the self-absorption of New Yorkers, and he was going to miss them when he left. Maybe he could come back in a couple of years.

He sat with his back against the beam and went online. He’d bought a new burner phone after he’d ditched the last one. He logged into the darknet and cycled through the chat rooms Spooky used. Geezer, who usually visited often, hadn’t been around since yesterday. Did he suspect that Ash or Quantum might have recovered the device? It seemed to mean a lot to him, although Quantum wasn’t sure why. Geezer wasn’t the type to knock things down—he liked to lecture people on the error of their ways like some fusty professor.

Geezer hadn’t been around, but Ash had. He’d left coded messages for Quantum. He wanted him to turn over the device as per their agreement. He didn’t seem upset by Joe’s injuries. The guy hadn’t died, yet, although he was “in serious condition” according to various online news sources. Quantum hoped he pulled through. There’d be less fuss.

A train pulled into the train yard next door, but he didn’t pay it any mind. Best way to remain invisible in New York was to mind your own business, especially by staring at the screen of a phone. Everyone was a phone zombie these days.

The steel behind him quivered. He pressed his back harder against it. He felt a quick pulse through his T-shirt. The steel had come alive.

This was as far as
MythBusters
had gotten. When they built their own Oscillator and hooked it up to a bridge, the steel vibrated, but nothing else happened. Or at least that’s what they said on the show. If it had started to affect the bridge’s structure, he bet they would have covered that up. Not a good idea to broadcast how to knock down bridges.

He had to figure out a way to get the Bitcoins before he dropped off the device. He didn’t trust Ash. He’d wanted to believe in him as a crusader for the environment and freedom, but after Ash had threatened to expose his identity, he had no choice but to view him as a crook on a power trip. Or maybe a powerful guy on a power trip. Dangerous either way.

The steel behind him shivered more violently now. That hadn’t happened on
MythBusters
.

He stood and stared up at the structure above. The tracks themselves seemed to shiver, as if they, too, were affected by the oscillation in this one beam. He touched the device, trying to decide whether to turn it off, and it burned his fingers.

He sucked on his fingers, trying to decide what to do. If he turned it off now, all he’d know was that the device caused low-level vibrations in steel. That wasn’t particularly valuable or interesting.

An ominous crack sounded from above. He jerked his head up. Rust and dirt rained down on him. The column creaked.

His jaw dropped open. He hadn’t really expected the device to work. Another crack sounded from the elevated tracks, and the pieces of rust and dirt were larger than before.

Good enough. He tried to turn the device off. The damn dial wouldn’t turn. Hard to believe that the famous Nikola Tesla had built something with such an obvious flaw. He unscrewed the clamps and caught the Oscillator in his shirt before it hit the pavement. The creaking slowed as he dumped the hot device in his bag.

A siren sounded down the street, heading right toward him. He cut across the street and walked until he found a good working-class bar that smelled of beer and wood.

He ordered a shot of whiskey and drank it in one gulp. The bartender, a slight man wearing a denim shirt straight out of the seventies, held up the bottle to ask if he wanted another. He nodded, but let the second shot sit on the bar.

Sirens converged on the elevated tracks. It sounded as if they were going to exactly the spot where he had attached the device.

He swallowed the second shot of whiskey. The device in his bag was the most powerful thing he’d ever held. Nikola Tesla had been right. It could bring down the Empire State Building, or anything else.

Did he really want to give someone like Ash that power?

Chapter 36

Joe had to get away from the window. Light reached across the carpet with flaming claws. They would rip him open and kill him.

Blinding pain flashed down from his head. It didn’t matter. He would feel it later. Now he had to escape. He had to escape, or he would die.

He lurched across the carpet away from the light, but something caught him. A heavy bar rested against his throat. His legs collapsed under him as he fought to get away. The bar pressed in relentlessly, choking off his air. He grabbed at it. The bar felt warm under his fingers, like skin. He tore at it, but it did not move.

Darkness replaced the pain in his head. He liked darkness better than light, but he fought it anyway. He had to get away.

A screech behind him. The sunlight’s claws withdrew. Safer, but not safe.

A man pinioned his arms to his sides. He tried to lunge toward him, but the bar against his neck wouldn’t let him move.

He recognized a face now. The man. He’d seen him before.

“It’s OK, Mr. Tesla,” said a voice in his ear. “It’s OK.”

The voice was familiar. Even the words were familiar. A woman. He knew her.

“I don’t want to choke you out, but I will.” She sounded so calm and matter-of-fact.

Vivian. Vivian Torres.

“Joseph Tesla, you calm down this instant.” His mother spoke behind him.

Vivian swung him around to face the voice.

His mother stood against a wall. She held the edge of a closed curtain in her hand. She looked pale and frightened, which was odd because his mother never looked frightened.

“It’s Vivian Torres, Mr. Tesla,” said the woman holding his throat. “I’ve got you, and everything is gonna be OK.”

Joe relaxed. The light was gone. He trusted her.

She had him in a choke hold, but she loosened it a notch when he relaxed. He could breathe again. The black around the edges of his vision went away.

His head pounded, red and insistent, and he felt sick and faint. He’d been hurt. He was in a hospital room. It was dark now, but it hadn’t been a moment ago.

A man in a white coat stood next to his mother. His mouth hung open, and his eyes were wide with surprise.

Something warm and sticky dripped down Joe’s neck. Blood. He’d hurt his head, and he’d been brought to a hospital, and he was bleeding.

He tensed again. Outside. He must have gone outside to reach this place.

“Home.” He tried to face the woman who was holding on to his neck, but she didn’t let go. They both almost fell, but the man next to her pushed them against the wall.

“Soon,” Vivian said. “I promise.”

She let go of his neck and moved her hands to his shoulders as if she expected him to fall. He might. His heart galloped in panic. He had to slow it down. He had to breathe and count.

But he couldn’t. His head hurt too much, and he was afraid of the window. He looked toward the window at the closed curtain.