Free Glimpse (The Tesla Effect Book 1) by Julie Drew

right next to the hospital is a huge green space, the university’s quad, which is empty. There are no structures there. And then, across the quad, a good two hundred yards away, is the physics building—I’ve been there a thousand times. My dad’s classroom lab is there, his office, too, and I could navigate it, the hospital, the library, and student union with my eyes closed. I grew up here,” she answered with absolute certainty.
    “You’re the one who said it couldn’t have happened, not me,” Finn pointed out.
    Tesla cocked her head slightly to the side, considering this, and then nodded. “My concussion must have been worse than the doctors let on. It’s the only explanation.”
    The darkness hid Finn’s face from her, but she sensed his excitement, the breath he kept in check. She viewed her story as similar to the stories of dreams you have that, while perhaps exciting for you because you experienced it, not so much for the listener, who knows from the start that it was all a figment of your imagination. She was surprised that Finn was so caught up in it.
    “What did you do?” he asked.
    “I looked at that long, empty hallway that could not possibly be there,” Tesla continued. “I knew I should go back to my room. I didn’t know where I was. My head hurt. I was clearly in some kind of restricted area.”
    “So you went back to your room?”
    “No. I began to walk down the hall.”
    “I see what you mean about not following directions,’” Finn said dryly.
    Tesla ignored him. “It was a while before I realized that the sounds of the hospital were gone; there were no vibrations, no sense at all of the pervasive energy field I’d imagined myself a part of. There was only the sound of my heartbeat from the monitor, which glided along silently on the concrete floor. I passed no doors, no signage of any kind. The gash in my forehead throbbed, and then I came to the end of the hallway. On my left was a single, unmarked door with a simple lever-handle. I pushed it down, the door clicked, and swung inward without a sound. I walked through, wheeled my machine with me, and the door closed behind us.”
    “And?” Finn encouraged when she paused.
    “And I stood there, shocked. I was in a huge, airplane-hanger size room, with scaffolding and lights above that were mostly off. Just like the hospital it seemed to be shut down for the night, though there was a small glow that came from the far right corner of the enormous space.”
    Tesla stopped then, unsure how to continue with the story, or even if she should. She remembered how she had walked toward the light and realized only when she was very close that it came from another structure within the massive cave, a low ceilinged room within the larger, cavernous space. The light came from a doorway, and she hadn’t hesitated at all, but had walked right through it. Her way had been blocked by a huge piece of glass, semi-transparent, and turned at an angle. She walked around it, and when she did she saw herself reflected in the weak, see-through mirror. She stood for a moment and looked at that girl. Her face was alarmingly pale where it wasn’t bruised and swollen, and there was a huge bandage on her forehead. Her hair was a tangled mass of flame that curled and moved around her head and shoulders with a life of its own. She lifted her hand automatically to smooth it down, but when she saw how badly that girl’s hand shook she snatched it back.
    She had turned away from herself and looked at the empty room, a square space about the size of her bedroom at home, but with huge, reflective mirrors angled toward the center at each corner. She walked into the middle, slowly turned around and took in the bare, smooth walls, the low ceiling, the inexplicable, but somehow purposeful mirrors while her heart beeped quietly by her side.
    And then, from nowhere and everywhere she had heard the amplified sound of her father’s voice as it echoed in the strange