Run (The Tesla Effect #2) (15 page)

Finn shook his head to clear it. “Sorry, what?” he asked, though he barely heard his own words over the roaring in his ears as blood flowed, and his heart beat, and the sound of life simply
going on
threatened to obliterate everything else but that singular fact.

“Maybe you should sit down,” said his aunt kindly, calling to his attention that he was on his feet, though he couldn’t remember standing up from the sofa. “He wants to talk to you—I’ll just go get him and be right back.”

By the time the tall, rather thin man walked into the living room, accompanied by Aunt Monica, Finn was sitting calmly in the chair his aunt had occupied just a few minutes before, across from the plastic-covered sofa. Monica pulled the double doors closed, leaving Finn and the man alone. The moment the doors clicked shut hot confusion washed over Finn, the shocking ache of his vulnerable, younger self rolling over him like a tsunami so profoundly overwhelming that he felt he was back there, all those years ago, wondering what he’d done to cause his own father not to give a shit about him, an emptiness he had filled with anger as he grew older. That white-hot rage had enabled him, finally, to transform his loneliness to hate, and he was grateful because it was easier to bear and made him feel strong. Untouchable. That was how he’d survived adolescence, globe-trotting with his mother, rarely speaking the language until he’d finally landed in London, and holding himself separate—untouchable—from everyone at the boarding school where he stayed, even during most holidays while his mother saved other people’s children and his father simply did not exist. The guilt, the loneliness, the self-doubt—it was on him like a train, crushing him between track and wheels, the pressurized steam let loose in a shrill, ear-splitting scream, brakes applied but unable to stop…

Despite the tempest that brewed beneath the surface, Finn looked anything but shaken. His arms rested easily on the spring-green fabric of the chair’s upholstered arms, one leg crossed over the other at the knee. He was cool, unperturbed, as the tall man with thick, sandy-blonde hair and blue eyes approached cautiously, his unwavering gaze on Finn.

“May I join you then?” the man asked with some hesitancy.

The lilt of his baritone—the heavy, Irish brogue—almost broke Finn’s fragile pose of not giving a shit right back but not in the way that Finn had expected. How could this man be his father? How could someone who looked like this, who
sounded
like this, have anything to do with him? There was absolutely no spark or connection, no sense that this man should be or ever could be important to him, and Finn felt the relief of it immediately, the death of a long-held fear that even in the face of his father’s absolute indifference, Finn himself would be unable to stop himself from caring if they should ever meet, because somehow at the core of his being he would recognize that this man was his
father
.

But that didn’t happen. The tall man was merely a stranger from Ireland.

“Suit yourself,” Finn said, his tiny, effortless shrug a thing of beauty.

“Finnegan,” the man began, and the word off his tongue was an outrage pronounced perfectly, said as it was meant to be said, exactly the way Finn would have wished it said from his birth, if he had ever allowed himself such a dangerous wish.

“Finn,” Finn corrected him.

“Finn,” the man repeated. His blue eyes were boring into Finn’s tawny-brown ones, searching for—what? Some likeness? Some similarity between them? He would find none, of that Finn was certain.

“This must be a shock and all,” the man went on. “Believe me, I understand that.”

“You understand nothing,” Finn said, his contempt spilling from his mouth and filling every corner of the room, every fold of the drapes, until it pushed its way, at last, into the man’s face.

“Finn, I’ve only just found out m’self,” the man said hurriedly. “I’ve only just seen your mother—after all these years, and never a word—I was on a story and the NGO she’s with was dead center of it all, and—”

“Look, I’m not really interested in any of this,” said Finn. “So, Mr… What is your name, exactly?” It was meant to be cruel, and it was. The man stopped, and the rosy-red blush creeping up his cheeks on his fair, lightly freckled complexion created a startling contrast to the cornflower blue of his eyes, and Finn was reminded of Tesla’s imminent arrival.
Tesla
. The relief, to have something else to think about, and do, and be, left him weak.

“My name is Daniel—Dan. Dan Finnegan. But you already knew that, didn’t you?” the man said softly, and still he did not look away, refusing Finn the triumph of seeing the tall man wince and look away in shame.

Finn glared at him silently, unaware that his fists were clenched tightly in plain sight, resting on the arms of his chair, a telling contrast to his carefully constructed slouch. He looked—and thankfully he did not know this—very, very young.

“Whether you believe me or not, Finn, I’d like to know you. And you t’know me. You’ve got family—cousins, uncles, a grandmother. It’s a shock, but it’s a happy one, don’t you see? I’ve just found out I have a son, for Christ’s sake—I wish I’d known from the beginning, but I didn’t. And there’s nothing either of us can do to change that part.”

“I don’t believe you,” Finn said quietly, standing to bring this farce to an end at last.

The utter surprise on Dan Finnegan’s face told Finn he was wrong, but he stubbornly held onto the thing that had hurt him his whole life, refusing to let its familiar presence go. He was unable to contemplate rethinking who and what he was, how and why he was, so he clung to the blame and the hatred, the loneliness he had endured as if it were the most precious thing he had ever known.

“Finn, I swear t’you! Your mother will certainly confirm that I knew nothing about you until three days ago. You’ve got to believe me, son.”

The tall man had stood, too, as he spoke, and with that final plea he put his hand on Finn’s shoulder, the weight of it cracking something open in Finn that he hadn’t known was there, tightly sealed and hidden away, a willingness, if pushed too far, to do violence without thinking, to lash out and hurt, as he had been hurt.

Finn pushed the man, hard, in the chest, and he staggered back a step, his hand falling from Finn’s shoulder, shock and hurt on his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but Finn couldn’t hear it, wouldn’t hear it, the certainties he’d long ago come to terms with suddenly fragile things that, once gone, might destroy him completely, and all he knew was that he could not hear a single word of it.

As if he were outside his own body, Finn watched himself draw back his right arm, his white-knuckled fist clenched tightly and sent hurtling at the tall man’s mouth with the weight of a lifetime of pain and humiliation behind it, until it exploded against the man’s jaw and sent him reeling back off his feet to land awkwardly on the couch behind him.

Finn stood breathing hard, the echo of the man’s grunt of pain still reverberating in the air. “I’m not your son,” he said in a voice he did not recognize as his own, and walked out of the room, past his aunt and cousin who stood, horrified, in the hall as he vented the last of his anger by punching the wall beside the door twice in quick succession. His knuckles were battered and torn but he didn’t feel them yet. He didn’t feel anything, except a rush of calm and dread in equal measure that was quickly replacing the adrenaline that had coursed through his body only a moment ago. His aunt said something behind him, but he didn’t turn around. He walked out the door and into the world that seemed miraculously unchanged, despite the last few minutes.

CHAPTER 18

Sam saw Finn making his way across the quad, his shadowy form nearly disappearing every time he left the circles of illumination thrown out by the lampposts situated along the walkways on campus and then reappearing in the next circle of light.

Sam was nervous. He hated not knowing what was coming, never had really liked surprises—except, of course, every time Tesla had appeared from the future and turned his teenaged life upside down. She was the single most exciting, provocative, and frustrating thing he’d ever encountered, and he knew without a doubt that the young man walking purposefully toward him stood a more than even chance of taking her away from him. He’d worked too long, too hard, and too single-mindedly to let that happen.

He’d had the upper hand until now: as soon as Tesla came back to the present—in twenty minutes, he noted, looking at his watch—his prior knowledge of events would be over. Tesla had, quite simply, never come back. He had had no idea at the time, of course, that he would have to wait eight years to see her again. He had hurriedly manned the controls at the lab that night they’d danced and drunk at the bar, worried because she was so agitated and unable to say anything more than that it was about Finn. If he had known, if he’d had even a hint that she wouldn’t come back and that he’d be stuck back there waiting for years, until he grew up and the time she said he’d met her outside the lab finally arrived and he could be with her again and still keep his promise about not changing the future...well, if he had known, he might have done things differently, his promise be damned. But he’d let those years simply slip away, preparing himself, and thinking
anytime now. She could be back at any time
.

“Sam,” Finn said tersely as he walked up, nodding his head once, a sharp little movement that seemed odd from Finn, who was always unhurried, smooth and laconic.

Maybe he was nervous, too, Sam reasoned. Or maybe there was more to it. His eyes narrowed and he looked more closely, caught the rather shell-shocked look on Finn’s face, his wild curls forming a halo of gold around him in the light that shone over the door into the physics building. Finn fairly vibrated with tension, and despite Sam’s suspicions of how Finn really felt about Tesla, it was hard to believe that those feelings would produce this kind of reaction—or, if they did, that Finn would allow Sam to see him like this. But perhaps this
entanglement
meant that none of it was in Finn’s control anymore.

“Ford,” Sam returned the monosyllabic greeting, his voice softer, more cautious than Finn’s had been. “You ready?”

“Yup.”

Sam waited, feeling awkward as he waited for Finn to step up and open the locked door. When he didn’t move, but stood and simply stared at the door’s plain black surface, Sam cleared his throat and spoke up.

“Um, Finn? We need the code to open the door.”

“Right. Sorry,” Finn said, and stepped forward to enter the day’s code into the pad at the side of the door. The handle of the door clicked audibly, and as Finn reached for it, the light overhead shining brightly on the door, the handle, and his battered hand reaching out to open it, Sam drew in a sharp little breath of surprise.

“Ho-lee shit, Finn. What happened? Your knuckles look like raw meat.”

Finn opened the door and flung it wide enough for Sam to easily catch it, and they both stepped inside. Without turning around, Finn said, “You should see the other guy.”

He obviously didn’t want to talk about it, so Sam followed Finn in silence, their steps echoing loudly in the concrete stairwell. They descended down, and further down, until they came to the Bat Cave itself, which Finn had not been in since last summer.

It looked exactly as it had then, and Finn’s already agitated state was further complicated by a rush of images from last summer: grabbing Tesla’s hand at the last second in the time machine, risking everything to jump back with her. He heard again the sound of Tesla’s voice calling his name when he’d confronted Nilsen in the control booth, and his fear that Nilsen would kill her or keep her trapped in the past.

He remembered kissing her in the stairwell, the quiet happiness so foreign to him beginning to fill the hole he’d always carried around inside. Finn had actually thought they were beginning something together last summer, until mere moments later, when they’d walked out of the physics building into the dark night to find a grown-up Sam waiting to meet the girl he’d been in love with for years, and it was more than Finn could possibly believe that she would want him, after having accepted so long ago that he was destined to be alone.

After that, he had kept his distance—or tried to, anyway. Left her and Sam alone, to let that play out, whatever the cost. And it had gone pretty well, actually, his whole let’s-be-friends act believable, even to him at times, until the effects of their entanglement had become insurmountable and it became increasingly difficult to keep up the charade.

Sam felt the awkward silence between them as they entered the control room and each took a chair, the monitors reflecting the emptiness of the time machine from multiple angles. Sam ran his hands through his short hair, while Finn trained every bit of his considerable self-control on placing both Tesla and his fa—and Daniel Finnegan—in boxes in his mind, some cordoned-off space that would contain them and allow him to gain control, once more, of his life.

Sam looked down at his watch just as the brilliant flash of lasers exploded on every monitor, and when he looked up he saw Tesla on the screen, a little disheveled in his old clothes, her eyes squeezed shut, dark hair tumbling over her shoulders. He was out of his chair in an instant, but Finn was already racing through the door ahead of him. With effort Sam caught up, just as Finn threw the door to the time travel chamber open and they rushed inside together.

“Finn!” Tesla cried, flinging herself into his arms, her own arms wrapping tightly around his neck, her trembling visible even to Sam, from several feet away. “What’s happened, what’s wrong?” she cried breathlessly, shaking as he held her tight, her mouth by his ear.

“I’m fine, nothing—I’m okay,” he whispered fiercely, eyes closed, holding her pressed up against his body, inhaling the scent of her, the warmth, his tension loosening, that too-tight feeling in his chest unwinding like a sigh.

Tesla pulled back, just enough so that they could see each other, and words poured out of her mouth in a jumble. “I thought you were hurt—I
knew
you were hurt, I felt it! What’s happened, you have to tell me—”

“Tesla, what have you done?” Finn asked, stunned by the dark hair, the deep brown eyes that reflected the light back at him, revealing nothing, turning her momentarily into the stranger she appeared to be.

Tesla’s hands dropped down to her sides and she took one step back. “Nothing—what do you mean?” Then her hand moved upward on its own, touching her hair. “Oh—it’s a disguise. But Finn, you’re really okay? I don’t understand…”

“I know you don’t,” he said, reaching up and grabbing her hand, pulling it down and keeping it in his own. “We need to talk. There are things I need to tell you.”

Tesla looked over and saw Sam for the first time. “Hi, Sam,” she said, flushing pink as she remembered being in his arms less than an hour ago—they had danced, pressed up against each other’s bodies, kissed. She had flirted outrageously, suggestively, dared him to do something dangerous with her. She told herself it was different for him, he had been a kid, it had been eight years ago, but one startled look into his eyes told her he remembered every bit of it as clearly as if he, too, had just been there.

“Hi,” Sam said. The last thing he wanted was to leave Finn alone with Tesla, but he knew he had to—he couldn’t prevent it, so they might as well get it over with and he’d just see where things stood afterward.

“Why don’t we get out of here,” he said, resigned. “You two want to talk, and I need to get home. I’ve somehow managed to forget I have finals coming up.” It was forced and awkward—and unlikely that anybody believed it—but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.

They made their silent way up the stairs with all that remained unsaid weighting every step. Once they were outside, the darkness afforded them each some privacy, and Sam said good night and turned to go. Before he’d gone more than a few steps, however, he turned back and saw that neither Finn nor Tesla had moved. They stood close to each other without touching, and Tesla shivered in Sam’s flannel shirt.

It was the last part that gave Sam pause. He remembered the feel of her lips on his, the way she’d teased him about how many times they’d kissed, though he hadn’t understood it at the time, the feel of her body underneath the soft flannel shirt. His shirt, he thought as he watched the wind lift and tangle her long dark hair.
His
.

“Tesla, thanks for the dance tonight. It was memorable,” he said softly, all three of them instantly aware that he had in some way taken off the gloves, and that one of them—maybe all of them—stood to get hurt.

“I’d take some ibuprofen, if I were you. And drink a lot of water or you’ll be hungover.”

“
Entangled
?” Tesla asked, her dark brows drawn together in a frown. “I don’t understand.” She sat on the edge of Bizzy’s perfectly made bed, Bizzy and Finn standing between her and the door, as if she might bolt.

“I know, it’s weird,” said Bizzy, and Finn snorted softly at the understatement.

“Well, it is,” she said, flicking her eyes briefly in his direction.

“Yeah, Biz, no shit. It’s weird, it’s almost impossible to believe, and even you can’t really explain it. That’s why I brought her here. Let’s not try to imagine me handing her this story on my own and expecting it to go well.”

“Hmm. Good point,” Bizzy said, tugging unconsciously on her lip ring. “I suppose I do have more intellectual credibility.” She did not stop to consider the juxtaposition of her statement and the Sponge Bob Square Pants pajamas she wore, but then neither did Finn or Tesla.

“Yeah, but do you have enough?” Finn pressed. “She doesn’t get it.”

“Hello. Sitting right here,” Tesla said, feeling oddly out of step with everything around her. But she had felt this way with Sam tonight, too, before she’d been hit by—Finn’s feelings, apparently, in some tangled-up, shared emotional and physical state that he and Bizzy were trying to tell her was the new normal. Did this entanglement explain all of that? Could it explain why she didn’t feel like herself, why she felt inundated with anger, and defiance, and—let’s face it, an at-times overwhelming desire to act badly, to get into some kind of trouble, to do exactly what she
wanted
, everybody else and the consequences be damned?

Danger Girl, indeed
, she thought, without much humor.

When Sam had walked away, leaving her standing in the dark, shivering in his clothes, she’d felt a kind of shock settling over her, a weakness in her limbs, a buzzing in her mind, as if there was a much greater distance between her and everyone else—including Finn, who stood right beside her—than the reality around her suggested. She had been shaken to her core back at the bar with Sam, standing out in the parking lot trying to grapple with the overwhelming sense of grief and rage and loneliness that washed over her, feelings that she somehow knew were about Finn—were, in some way,
part
of Finn, and she could think of nothing, do nothing, until Sam brought her back to the lab and sent her back to the present to find him.

Now that she was here, with Finn, who seemed wired and restless but otherwise fine, she felt the tension seep from her body as the tightness in her chest finally eased, leaving exhaustion and disassociation in its wake.

“Yeah, sorry Tes,” Finn said. Bizzy came over and sat on the bed beside her, Finn crouched down in front of her. “You understand that we are…connected, though, right? In some way that we weren’t before. In a way that other people aren’t.”

“I-I guess,” Tesla said. “I don’t really know what that means, though.”

“We don’t either,” Bizzy assured her. “This is all brand new. Brand new and totally awesome.”

“Bizzy,” Finn warned.

“Oh come on, Finn. Seriously.” Bizzy was back up on her feet, a far cry from the fumbling, blinking, still-half-asleep person they’d woken up just a little while ago. She paced around the room, using her hands for emphasis as she spoke, fast and excited. “Time travel—it’s happening. You’ve done it, you’re
doing
it! And already it’s having effects, it’s changing things—you guys are hard evidence of some pretty abstract, theoretical stuff, and it’s
mind-boggling
. Nobody knows what’s going to happen next—it could be anything!”

“Yes. We could mutate into something truly unheard of, become even more of a freak show than we already are,” Tesla said dryly. “How awesome would that be?”

“Maybe we’ll
really
become entangled and I’ll wake up in the morning with, like, your arm sprouting out of my side,” Finn said, looking at Tesla with a raised eyebrow, as if the possibility had potential.