Extracted, p.19
Extracted, page 19
Lex shakes his head. “What plans?”
“The plans you stole from VonWeitter?”
I look back to Lex. Ethan’s calm seems to be rubbing off on him. He pops his neck and waves us over to the back side of the building. We look over the edge to see three Hollows in the backyard assembling something.
“We used them. We needed to build a solar collector that could function inside the time bubble to supplement the coal. It’s getting harder and harder to bring enough into the Tower to keep all the rooms warm.”
Scooting closer to me, he adds, “Plus, this device was never supposed to be invented.”
Now I’m confused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, this device never existed. However VonWeitter came up with the plans, it wasn’t ever supposed to happen. We didn’t change anything. Not this time.”
“He lied to us,” Ethan says softly. He looks at me, his mouth set in a line. “You see, don’t you, Ember? It’s been a lie. All of it. Tesla’s noble mission, our training. All of it was a lie.”
His face is so sad, so full of regret and disappointment that I want to close my eyes so I don’t have to see it. Shaking my head, I look back to Lex. “And how do you know what’s true? How do you know Gloves isn’t the one lying?”
“I trust him,” he says hesitantly.
“Well, I trust Tesla,” I say just as hesitantly.
With a frustrated groan, he leaps onto the ledge and chucks the caps into the air.
Ethan steps back from the wall. “Maybe the truth is somewhere in between. I say we get to the bottom of it once and for all.”
“After we get Stein.” Lex nods.
“After we go get Stein,” I agree.
* * *
“This is a really bad idea,” Ethan says, sitting on the edge of the half-pipe beside me with our legs dangling over. Lex has gone off to gather the last bits of what we are going to need for the rift. His friend Nobel stripped Ethan of his Tether and Babel Stone ring earlier, and now we are alone.
I swallow and lean back on my palms. He’s right. It’s stupid. A suicide mission. The repercussions will be…well, let’s say not pretty. Best-case scenario, Lex pulls it off, saves Stein, and we end up with what? Two Lexs? What if he alters everything that happens after her death, including finding me, and it’s all erased or, worst case, potentially punches a hole in the fabric of time. All valid points that I’ve made, only to have him dismiss my warnings with one word.
Dox.
I don’t realize I’m chewing my bottom lip until Ethan reaches up and pulls it free with his thumb.
“I know” is all I can say, because he’s absolutely right. And if there were any way to stop him, I’d do it. But there’s not. There’s no card I can play that he won’t trump. “We just have to hope the Dox works.”
Ethan doesn’t say anything, but I can feel the tension radiating off him. I want to be angry at Lex for the choice he’s made, but I can’t. Not really. If it were me, if Ethan were the one dead, I’d burn the world to the ground to get him back. It’s neither the right choice nor the rational choice. But that’s love for you. Leaning over, I rest my head on his shoulder. He wraps an arm around me.
“We could stop him. Steal the Dox,” he offers. But I know it’s no use.
“He’d find some other way. Or he’d just go. He was never very good with restraint,” I say with a faint smile. Alexei had been told no his whole life. No, he couldn’t play swords with the other children. No, he couldn’t ride the horses. Somehow, though, that never seemed to stop him. It just made him more determined to do it anyway.
“It’s just so monumentally stupid.”
I let out a deep breath. “It’s what I would do.”
Ethan snorts. “No. You’d do what’s right. You always do.”
“No, if it were me, and if it were you, I’d do it just the same.”
He tips my chin up so I’m looking into his eyes. Instantly, I’m melting. The room is hot and my stomach is tight. My breath catches as he gazes down at me. Something about the way his eyes droop, the way his cheeks flush with color, makes my heart race. I’m shaking all over. All I want is for him to lower his lips to mine, but it’s as if he’s frozen. I don’t know how long we stay that way, locked in that moment, before I can’t take it anymore.
Closing the distance between us is as natural as breathing. His arms are around me, and my fingers are clasped behind his neck. He tastes salty and sweet. At first, he just lets me kiss him, but suddenly his calm breaks like a dam and he’s kissing me back. Desperately, deeply. His hands are everywhere—in my hair, on my face. I can’t breathe. I’m drowning in him. Slowly the urgency wanes, leaving us in a soft embrace. I pull back first, only to gasp for air.
His lips are swollen and he’s looking at me from under his lashes.
“I just had to do that. In case I don’t get another chance,” I mumble, half-apologetically.
He grins wildly. “Oh, you’ll get another chance. I’ll make sure of that.”
He leans forward again but, before our lips touch, a train whistle blares, driving us apart.
“Anastasia?”
It’s Gloves in his weird wheelchair.
“It’s Ember. And yes?”
“If you have a moment, I’d like to talk to you. In private.” He eyes Ethan, who shrugs.
Ethan presses a quick kiss to my forehead. “I’ll go find your brother.”
Once the room is clear, I slide down the ramp. Gloves motions to the ratty couch.
“I wanted to talk to you, too,” I begin, folding my legs under me as I sit, leaning against the arm of the sofa. His chair blows a column of steam and clicks to a stop as the engine dies. “My brother. Why did you bring him here? Why target us?”
He takes a deep breath, folding his gloved hands in his lap. Oh, I get it. Gloves.
“You and Lex are special. Hmm, perhaps we should go to my office so that I might begin at the beginning.”
I wave my hand in a “go on” gesture, then follow him into a smoke-filled room. He motions for me to take a seat on an old bench.
“I would appreciate your discretion with the information I’m about to give you.”
I hesitate. The idea of keeping secrets doesn’t sit well with me. “I can’t promise. But I’ll do my best. I do need you to tell me the truth about Tesla and why you broke off from the Institute.” The party line has never sat well with me. They told us it was because they were selfish and wanted to pillage history, but the more I begin to understand Tesla and what he’s capable of, the less sure I am about his motives. About any of their motives.
He nods, as if that’s good enough. “Tesla had an assistant. The first Rifter. He discovered her abilities after a freak lab accident. Once he realized what she could do, he was like a man obsessed. Long story short, he found us. The originals. There were five. He mapped our family trees, using our genealogy to discover the source of our abilities. And he found a common thread.”
He pauses as footsteps pass by, and then he goes on. “A royal thread, as it happened. He began experimenting. Trying to gather as much sample DNA from the line as possible. He also identified people with high potential for the gene. Your family was on the short list.”
I shift, bringing my legs up to my chest. “So why Lex? Why not Mother or Father?”
“Tesla convinced a like-minded man to help him. A man from your time. A man with access to you and your family. A man of science.”
“Rasputin.” The name slithers past my lips like a ghostly snake, sending shivers up my skin. He was my friend. Confidant. The only person I trusted other than my own family. Violent memories crash to the front of my mind. Him taking blood from Lex and me. Trying to cure Lex’s hemophilia. The transfusions. Him brushing my hair. Singing folk songs. Bile rises in my throat like acid.
Him walking out the door for the last time. Mother telling us away with tears in her eyes, about his murder.
“Yes. He was working for Tesla.”
I don’t know what to say, so I settle for biting down on my lip.
“Of your siblings, Tesla felt only you and your brother showed enough potential to warrant training. By this time I and some of the others—disgusted by his growing obsession—had gone our separate ways. But we had a spy. She told us about his plans for you and your brother. She died getting us that information.”
I sit back and let the sofa engulf me. There are too many words and, at the same time, no words at all that can help any of this make sense to me.
“Ember, we tried to get you both. It was our intent but…”
“But what?” I croak out.
“But you stopped me.”
I shake my head, racking my brain for some memory of seeing him that day. “I don’t remember that.”
He waves his hand, dismissing my claim. “Yet you did. You brought your brother to me. Told me to take him. You called me by name.”
He lets those last words hang between us until I can fully absorb them. “Wait. That means I knew you. Me. Not the past me, but right now me. I was there.”
He stares at me, as if silently challenging me to put the pieces together. It’s like with the first key. At some point I go back to that day, and I make sure Lex is taken by the Hollows. Why would I do that? It doesn’t make any sense.
“But it’s a Fixed Point. Flynn told me. I can’t go back and change what happened.”
With the flick of a switch, his train engine growls back to life. He tosses a handful of coal into a chamber under his seat and it bellows steam from the pipes in the back. “Which can only mean one thing. You aren’t changing anything. You will go back again because you always have. Your actions are part of the Fixed Point, so maybe it’s not naturally occurring. Maybe, just maybe, you create it.”
“But then I can change it. I can make things different this time,” I blurt out without really thinking. I would never choose to separate myself from Lex. Not if I could help it. But if I don’t, what if he dies? What if Tesla gets us both? Then, none of this—right now—ever happens. A sharp pain explodes behind my eyes as my brain struggles to process everything. All the possibilities and repercussions. A paradox.
“But, what I wanted to say to you is this. I know you don’t trust us, and that you probably have every intention of leaving here as soon as possible. But, you are welcome to stay for as long as you like.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“And as for changing your past, well, I suppose you can try,” Gloves says as he spins and chugs away, quite literally turning his back on me.
The migraine in my head is pounding like a jackhammer and I feel pure rage bubbling up inside me. In five long strides, I cross the room and slam the door behind me as I leave. Then, not quite ready to let go of my rant, I stomp off to find my brother.
TWENTY-ONE
LEX
Nobel’s lab is a mixture of wonder and mess. One time he got wound around the axle when a group of girls organized his lab for Valentine’s Day. His idea of perfect organization is piles. So, from then on, his lab became “by invitation only,” like a black tie event at a prestigious science museum.
I like coming to the lab. It’s quiet here and always smells of sulfur and brass. Watching Nobel work on his twisted metal devices helps clear my mind.
“Here, check this out,” Nobel says. “The Dox wasn’t the only thing taken from the Institute. I also pinched a small bottle of rare herbs and metals. Its healing potential is out of this world. Lex, this is how I’m going to regrow your leg.”
Nobel hands me the bottle. I hold it up to a Bunsen burner that is boiling some red liquid in a glass beaker. The brown glass bottle looks like it holds fine sand.
“How is this going to regrow my leg?” I ask.
Nobel points to the glass on the lab table.
“See that petri dish?”
I scan the glassware and find the petri dishes. Most of them have pink gelatin in the bottom. Some have pink gelatin with dark brown carpets of mold growing on it.
“I think I found it, yeah.”
“Great. Now take one with the spores on it to the dissecting microscope and look at it.”
I take the petri dish and go to the end of the table to where the microscope sits. “Now what?”
Nobel explains how to use the microscope while he tightens the rivets on one of his brass contraptions. I eventually get it focused.
“Describe to me what you see,” Nobel says without taking his eyes off his screwdriver.
“Well, I see a field of plant-looking things.”
“Okay, good. Follow one stalk all the way up and tell me what’s blossomed at the top.”
“It looks like a brown daisy or something. There are tons of them.”
“What do the petals look like?” Nobel asks.
I adjust the scope to a higher power and focus the knobs again. What I see takes my breath away. It’s amazing. “The petals are tiny gears.”
“Great! Hand me that one.”
I hold the petri dish in my hands like I just captured a dragonfly and pass it to Nobel; he puts down the screwdriver and takes the dish from me. Taking two fingers, he scrapes the spores into the gel dish.
“Pull up your pant leg,” Nobel says.
I lift my pant leg and reveal the brass mechanical prosthetic. Nobel flings the gel spore mixture from his finger onto my fake leg as if he has something nasty on his hand. Immediately, he wipes his hands on his already soiled lab coat. He takes another scoop of the gel to clean out the petri dish and flings it again. I watch where the pink slime lands. He replaces the surgical mask that has been hanging down around his neck and sits on the edge of the lab bench.
The two spots of pink and brown goop start to transform.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“Just watch,” Nobel says as he folds his arms.
Slowly the two spots start to bubble, then harden into a skin-like substance.
“It worked,” Nobel whispers to himself.
I now see what it is. This is the new leg. This is what Nobel was talking about. I now have two pieces of skin fused to the metal of my brass leg.
“The only thing I need to do is take the pressure gauge off and cover it with this stuff. The skin pieces will filter moisture from your blood and create steam to be pushed through the pistons so your leg can work. With it contained as a closed system, you won’t need to have the gauge anymore. It will be as close to a new appendage as I can get,” Nobel says. And I can see an apology in his eyes. “You still might not have any sensations in the leg. There’s no way to know.”
“I guess it’s a good thing I’m hot-blooded,” I say. “Thank you, bro.”
“I have to synthesize more before we can cover your whole leg,” Nobel says as if he’s embarrassed that he hasn’t done it already.
I scratch the new patches of skin as if I have hives, but they don’t come off. It’s truly like skin, down to the tiniest nerve connections. While I’m poking and prodding the skin pieces, I don’t see the other Tesla kid come into the lab.
“Hey, guys,” Ethan says.
“You weren’t invited down here.” I don’t even look up. He’s like a lost puppy. Not one of those cute puppies, though. He’s one of those mangy street puppies that follow you home.
“Lex,” Nobel says. “It’s okay.”
“And if you want me to tolerate you—not like, I said tolerate—then you need to leave.”
Ethan steps close—too close—and gets in my face. “What is your problem, man?”
I pick up a screwdriver from the workbench, twirl it in my fingers, and poke him in the chest with the handle. “My problem is you. You and your little Tesla buddies kidnapped my sister and kept her from me all this time. So call me crazy, but I don’t buy for one second that you are here because you care about her.” I toss the screwdriver aside and mutter, “You’re probably a Tesla spy.”
I feel his hand on my shoulder, and it takes everything I have not to punch him in the face as he pushes me slightly.
“Hey, I’m the one who broke her out. And don’t you dare give me any crap about keeping her from you. I’ve been keeping her safe. What have you been doing? Screwing around here and getting tattoos? You couldn’t be bothered to come after her, could you?”
His words sting and anger boils under my skin. He turns his back to me and continues, “She’s not here ten minutes and you have her running all over hell and back trying to defy the laws of nature. Oh, and that’s after she risked her life to find you. Some brother you turned out to be.”
I lunge for him, but Nobel steps between us.
“You don’t know anything, you freaking weasel. Ember is my sister and I’ll take care of her. She’d be better off without you,” I growl over Nobel’s shoulder. “Where is she, by the way?”
Ethan waves his hand, gesturing to the room around us. “Your buddy wanted to have a private chat with her.”
“Play nice,” a voice in Russian says from behind us.
“Hey, beautiful,” Ethan says. He looks my way and plants a big loud kiss on my sister’s lips. Then he wraps his lanky arms around her like he’s just won a giant teddy bear at a carnival.
“Your boyfriend is about to get the living crap beat out of him,” Nobel warns her, though his voice is more amused than I’d like.
Ethan releases Ember and glares at me. “Oh, I’d love to see him try.”
That sounds like a pretty good idea to me. “Let’s go, then.”
“That’s enough, boys. I’m going to drown in all the testosterone,” Ember says, pinching the bridge of her nose like she has a headache. Instantly the desire to pummel Ethan fades and I’m left wondering what Gloves said to her that has made her look so pale.
“You okay, sis?”
She sets her jaw and glares at me. It’s a face I know all too well. One that says don’t poke the bear or it’ll rip your arms off. It was a face our mother made sometimes. It used to scare the crap out of me. Still kinda does, actually.
I pull my jester’s hat down a little more.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
