Sherry Ficklin - Extracted

Unlocking the door takes longer than I expect. Leave it to Tesla to be the only person in 1898 to have a triple deadbolt. Luckily, we don’t draw any attention to ourselves and the door finally gives way.

Nothing decorates the tiny room except for some holes in the crumbling plaster walls. No mailboxes or elevator doors exist in this part of the building. There’s another door leading to the stairwell, and this one is more easily manipulated.

An old iron and wood staircase is our welcome mat to the mad scientist’s lair.

Climbing as fast as we can and fueled by curiosity, we burst into a reception area. No one is here, of course. There’s no electricity to speak of, no lights or generators, nothing to make working at this hour possible. We should be alone.

“All right, let’s make this quick. We just have to find one Dox and we are out of here,” Stein says.

I’ve already entered the only hallway and found the office. We grab oil lamps and light them. The room glows faintly around us.

“It has to be in here.” I push on the solid wood door and it swings open. The office is a mess. Piles of books and papers everywhere. I wonder if it’s messy from the move, or if this is Tesla’s insane idea of a filing system.

“Piles. A man’s method of organization,” I mutter from the threshold of the office door.

“Either try to find the Dox, or clues to where it might be stored,” Stein says.

We slowly start to rummage through the papers and textbooks to see if we can find clues to where the Dox would be, or maybe even directions on how to use the stupid thing. After a few moments of slow reading and searching, Stein loses her patience and begins to ransack the room like she’s robbing the place. I stare at her for a second, trying to decide whether to protest.

“What? He’ll just assume the place got robbed. Happens all the time in New York City.”

It seems like a solid point so I pick up the pace, hastily rummaging through the office and throwing papers to the ground. Trashing the place turns up nothing. I stand back to get a good look at the working over we gave Tesla’s office. “We totally rock-starred that room,” Stein says as we leave.

I have to kick a couple of books back into the room so I can close the heavy door.

We search the door at the end of the hallway; to no avail, it’s just a glorified broom closet. The door in between the office and the closet is the last one to check.

“Let’s see what’s behind door number three,” I say, motioning for her to work her larceny. She grins widely and kicks it in.

The door hangs askew on one hinge, welcoming us into the room with the smell of ozone and the crackle of static electricity.

“It sounds like someone’s frying a big pan of bacon down there,” Stein mumbles. I grunt in agreement, wishing we had more than lamps to use to maneuver in the darkness.

Beneath the grated walkway, we can see sparks. I look over the railing and gasp in astonishment at the size of Tesla’s actual lab. It isn’t just the top floor as I’d thought. It’s the entire building, the fourth floor being the catwalk. Looking from our vantage point, I see three dull grey cylinders in the left corner. Electricity shoots out in all directions from the top of them. This is where all the sound is coming from. No one’s home, but someone left the stove on.

Between a control room and a sitting area, there is a conveyor belt with a large robotic arm at the end. It’s cocked at the elbow like a cobra ready to strike, but nothing is active.

Under the arm is a trunk full of small cylinders. Sitting on the stalled belt are some small glass cylinders that look like the exterior of the Dox. For the first time I’m excited. It must be here. We must be close.

A large vat full of milky green liquid is next to the bottom of the stairs. Lights from the bottom of the vat illuminate the liquid, giving it an eerie, otherworldly glow.

“That thing has to be two stories tall,” Stein says, pointing to the vat.

“Any idea what that is?”

She shakes her head.

To the far right there is a carpeted area with a chair. A hefty wooden bookshelf crowns the plush sitting area.

We scan the room one more time to see if there’s any activity aside from the loud hissing vases in the far corner. Slowly, we descend the grated stairway to the floor of the lab.

I stare at the enormous vat. The tank wears a bracelet of windows, smudged with slime, at its base. I press my face up against one.

Something slithers through the liquid.

“Whoa!” I yell, jumping back from the window and pointing at it. “There’s something swimming around in there.”

“Lemme see,” Stein says, pushing past me. She cups her hands around her eyes and leans up against the window. “I don’t see—holy cow!” She jumps back, pointing to the tank. “It’s like a huge electric eel. Is that his sick idea of a pet?”

I shrug. We exchange an eww face before walking over to the sitting area in the far right corner. The ornate Oriental rug is the only thing separating this space from the rest of the lab. The lounge area has two leather chairs and a small table holding a large gas lamp between them. The chairs are so well-worn I can see the butt imprint in the seat cushion. Carefully, I light the lamp so we have a better view of the books on the shelves. Some are so old the names have worn off the spines, and others are leather-bound notebooks stuffed haphazardly with papers.

I start on one end, and Stein starts on the other. Carefully we pull each book out, open it, and stuff it back in place.

“All these are boring lab notes,” Stein says after a few minutes. “I can’t understand even a tenth of what is written in these things.”

“Lucky you.” I hold the journal up in my hands. “I think I stumbled on the insane ramblings section.”

“Nice.”

I sigh and shove it back on the shelf, then grab the next book. It pulls the book next to it as well and they both fall to the floor, pages flying everywhere. Stein puts her book back and comes over to help me.

The larger of the two books is a handwritten journal. And it’s fallen open to a page with a rough sketch of something that looks a lot like the Dox.

“Wait, this might be it,” I say, folding myself into a sitting position as Stein continues cleaning up the mess.

I flip a few more pages. Not what I was hoping for. “This might be the early notes, but the actual Dox designs aren’t in here. This looks like something from before, an early draft, maybe.”

I look over. Stein is shoving the fallen notebook into the pocket of her leather coat.

“Stein,” I say. I’m all set to warn her about stealing from this library, to remind her about the consequences of altering the past, but the look on her face stops me short. She looks paler than usual, and a slight sheen of sweat has broken out across her forehead.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She shakes her head and stands up, squaring her shoulders. “Nothing a nice frontal lobotomy won’t cure. Come on, let’s get this finished.”

Above us, a door slams. “Hello?” a man calls out in a thick British accent.

LEX

Inside the stream, something is churning. Normally, the time stream only moves in one direction—forward—and we are either swimming with it or against it. This is different. I’m rolling helplessly end over end, as if I’m being beaten against the rocks in a churning sea. I can’t get my bearings. There is no backward or forward, just the relentless rolling. My stomach pitches, threatening to lose its contents. It’s all I can do to keep them down. I feel something damp rolling down my neck. Reaching up, I touch it, then bring my hand to my ear, and open my eyes just long enough to see that the tips of my fingers are covered in blood. I’m bleeding from my ear.