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

chamber.
    “In five. Four. Three. Two. One.”
    The light of a thousand, thousand suns hit her face and blazed through her head and she was blinded in a pure white nova, the monitor’s dutiful amplification of her accelerating heartbeat the only sense of her physical self that remained to her, until the pain in her chest hit her like a truck and she fell, once again, into darkness.
     
    “So, what was in the smaller room?” Finn asked, and Tesla was pulled back into the present.
    “Nothing, really,” she said quickly, suddenly wary. She dreamed of that night sometimes, and always woke in a clammy sweat. Whatever had happened—or whatever she imagined had happened—continued to make her afraid, all these months later.
    “You can’t just stop there, Tesla,” he said casually, but his voice was too intense, he was too interested in what was supposedly a chance conversation and she knew he had manipulated her into telling her story, this story, though for what purpose she could not imagine.
    “Look, I need to get home, it must be late—” she said as she reached into the side pocket of her messenger bag for her cell and realized that it wasn’t there. “Great. I left my cell at Angelo’s. I gotta go.” She was already on her feet and had begun to jog back the way they’d come.
    At Angelo’s she pushed the glass door of the pizzeria open and made her way toward the table she’d occupied with Malcolm, though she held out little hope her phone would still be there. The crowd was a lot worse at this hour, and the noise of conversations and the TV that blared from its mount on the wall were hardly conducive to ambient dining. She gently pushed between two people to get a clear view of the table and saw, to her astonishment, her cell phone right in the middle of the table, between and among the plates and glasses and red pepper shakers that cluttered its surface.
    “Hey, I left my phone here,” she said loudly to the four students who sat there eating, and one of the guys indicated without a word that she should take it. “Thanks,” she said, grabbed it and turned to go.
    “Tesla,” Finn said, suddenly by her side in the crowd, but before he could say more there was a shout.
    “Turn it up—shut up everybody, check it out!”
    The girl at the register had picked up the remote and turned up the volume on the TV, and every head in the place turned to face the screen. The ticker tape feed at the bottom read, “Breaking News: explosion on university campus,” and the live video showed smoke and fire billowing out of a large, cream-colored building, a dozen fire trucks and ambulances parked nearby. Red lights flashed, reporters stood with mics in the glare of studio lights positioned by their crews, and dozens of people watched from behind yellow tape barricades.
    “Tesla,” Finn said again, his voice loud and his hand on her arm. “We need to talk.”
    “I can’t!” she said, and the panic in her voice was unmistakable as she shook his hand off her.
    He tried to follow, overcome by frustration, as she pushed her way through the bodies. Tesla was desperate, panicked. “Move!” she shouted repeatedly as she slipped further away from him and burst out of the door of Angelo’s.
    Finn shoved someone into a chair by the door in order to catch her before she got away. “Tesla, stop! What the hell?” He was outside, finally, and he grabbed her arm again, tried to fix her to this moment, to him.
    She pushed him away from her, harder than he would have thought she was capable, and he staggered back a step. “That explosion—it was the physics building,” she yelled. “I need to make sure my dad’s at home!”
    Tesla turned before he could say a word and sprinted toward her house as fast as she had ever, in her seventeen years, moved.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 7
     
     
     
    Tesla rounded the corner by the tall hedge of the next-door neighbor’s house and was suddenly yanked back on her heels by