But Ash wasn’t Joe’s biggest problem right now. Joe took his phone out of his pocket, and checked his email. More surveillance reports. The NSA wasn’t decreasing the volume of their requests. In fact, they had greatly increased it, probably in response to the attack on the Empire State Building.
But all their data collection hadn’t stopped the attack. All the innocent people who were being spied on as they went about their ordinary lives were no safer. But Joe had stepped over enough lines himself that he wasn’t sure he could condemn the NSA outright for their actions.
He wasn’t sure what to do. He pulled out his laptop and logged into the hotel wireless, then skipped through a couple of accounts to hide his IP address, then accessed Pellucid’s network. His fingers danced across the keys as he called up the final change that he needed to implement to take their power away. His pinky hung over the Enter key. If he pressed that key, he would commit the final changes to the Pellucid code line. He would distort and disable the product that he had built. He could face criminal charges. Bad guys might go free.
But so would good guys. Government agencies would no longer be able to put a name to every face. They wouldn’t be able to use Joe’s creation to track the movements of millions of citizens who had done nothing wrong and would do nothing wrong.
Other software would spring up to fill the gap. It would take other developers a few years longer, but they would eventually achieve Pellucid’s accuracy. His action would only buy all those innocents, none of whom had complained, most of whom wouldn’t complain even if they knew, a few more years of privacy and freedom.
On the edge of his screen he’d put up his father’s last words to him: I was responsible for this. May God forgive me. Show the wisdom I did not and have the courage to destroy it.
He did not want to have to write something like that someday. He didn’t want to spend his life regretting what he was responsible for. He took a deep breath, summoning up all his courage.
Then, he pressed the key.
The phone rang, and he jumped. Celeste’s picture flashed on his screen.
“Hey,” she said quietly. “Are you home?”
“Nope.” He felt proud saying it. “I’m in the room where Nikola Tesla died.”
“Morbid.”
He couldn’t deny that. “How’s your day?”
“Five,” she said.
“Brown,” he answered automatically.
“How’s your head?”
“Better. I’m clear for thinking now. And computers. And government interrogations.”
“The news says that Michael Pham was part of a terrorist ring that knocked down the High Line park tracks, and almost brought down the Empire State Building.”
“They might be right.” Edison decided that the small double beds didn’t count as human beds and jumped up next to Joe. He fondled the dog’s ears.
“They don’t mention the Oscillator.”
“Guess that’s going to stay out of the papers then. I’ve told plenty of alphabet-soup government agencies about it.”
“The truth?” she asked.
“That it was invented by Nikola Tesla, stolen from the basement of this very hotel, and that I had to destroy it to take it off the Empire State Building.” So, not the whole truth, but close.
“Ah, that truth,” she said.
“Nobody died,” Joe answered. “So I can still sleep at night.”
“I heard a rumor about the Empire State Building,” she said. “I think you can see it from your room.”
“Curtains are closed.”
“Open them.”
He hesitated, then, heart beating too fast, he leaned over and opened the curtains. The night sky of New York spread out in front of him. But the Empire State Building dominated the view. It still wasn’t open, as all the steel needed to be checked and certified as safe, but the lights were still working. The building was lit up in red and white, and the spire on top was blue.
“It’s July Fourth,” she said. “In a minute there will be fireworks, and I thought we could watch them together.”
It had been months since he’d looked out a window this long. Edison crowded over onto his lap and put his head on Joe’s shoulder, his furry face against Joe’s cheek. Joe hugged him with one arm and held his phone in the other hand. He was safe here. He could do this.
A giant golden firework went off above the building’s tall spire. That spire had almost crashed down to Earth. But it hadn’t.
“It’s beautiful,” said Celeste. “Isn’t it?”
Joe watched the glittering strands of light fall down from the sky before he answered. “It is.”
Acknowledgments
Thank you to everyone who helped Joe Tesla and Edison find their feet in this story. They received literary aid from Kathryn Wadsworth, David Deardorff, Karen Hollinger, Ben Haggard, Judy Heath, and Joshua Corin; psychological advice on agoraphobia from Peter Plantec; and marvelous tea to fuel my writing from my niece Lanessa and my sister Sari. Thanks to my wonderful cover designer, Kit Foster; copy editor, Joyce Lamb; and literary agents, Mary Alice Kier and Anna Cottle. I owe the most to my husband and son — you guys are the best writing family a person could ever have.
Plus a giant thank you to all my readers — you are what make Joe and Edison’s adventures possible.
About the Author
Thank you for reading The Tesla Legacy. I hope that you enjoyed the story!
I’m REBECCA CANTRELL, the award-winning and New York Times bestselling thriller author of this book. My novels include the Joe Tesla series, starting with The World Beneath; the Order of the Sanguines series, starting with The Blood Gospel; and the Hannah Vogel mystery series, starting with A Trace of Smoke.
If you’d like to find out more about my novels, visit my website at http://www.rebeccacantrell.com. I have them all listed there, in order, plus some extra content about researching them and the worlds in which they take place. To purchase them for your Kindle, please go to the next page.
If you’d like to receive advance notice of my upcoming books, please sign up for my newsletter at http://rebeccacantrell.com/newsletter-for-rebecca-cantrell. I put it out a few times a year, and I promise never to sell or trade your name.
Or, if you want to see what I’m up to day to day, you can find me on Facebook and Twitter. My husband, son, and I left Hawaii’s sunny shores a few years ago for the adventures of Berlin, Germany.
Author’s Notes
Joe Tesla’s underground world is full of secrets. Some I made up, but others are true. Before you start reading the rest of these notes, take a second to decide which is the most unrealistic claim I make in the fictional world beneath. Now, let’s go through these notes together to see if it’s fact or fiction.
First off, Nikola Tesla did indeed invent a device called the Oscillator or “Tesla’s Earthquake Machine.” On his seventy-ninth birthday, he told reporters that he had used this device to generate an earthquake near his laboratory. When asked what would be required to destroy the Empire State Building, he replied, “Five pounds of air pressure. If I attached the proper oscillating machine on a girder, that is all the force I would need, five pounds. Vibration will do anything. It would only be necessary to step up the vibrations of the machine to fit the natural vibration of the building and the building would come crashing down.” Here is the quote in the New York World-Telegram dated July 11, 1935. I’ve also come across the quote in Tesla biographies. MythBusters tried, and failed, to create an oscillator that would knock down a bridge.