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.

She crosses the room, puts her arms around my neck, and hugs me tightly. “I need you to be nice,” she whispers, her voice exhausted.

“I know. But I don’t trust him.”

She sighs and pulls back. “I know. But I need you to trust me.”

I look over her shoulder. Nobel is tinkering with something on the desk, trying to hide a smirk, and Ethan is standing there looking confused. “Can I hit him, just once?” I whisper.

She grins.

I take that as a maybe.

I head back to my room, grabbing my gear and a spare shirt for Ethan. It’s a black T-shirt, nothing as nice as what he has on, but it’ll have to do. I’m not sure exactly why he gets under my skin so badly. I ball up the shirt and stuff it under my arm. It might have something to do with the monumental butt-kicking he laid on me the last time we met. Or it might be the way he looks at my sister. It’s arrogant and possessive. Like she’s his. I sigh. It might also be the fact that she looks at him the same way. If she has to choose between us, I can’t help but wonder which of us would win out.

Ugh. Now I’m just being stupid. I grab my cane, wishing Nobel could have perfected the gear spores sooner so that we could grow my leg back before the mission. This fake leg will slow me down, and with only half a team, I can’t afford anything going wrong. I have to leave some of my best people here in case more unexpected visitors show up.

I argue with myself on the way down to the common room. Should I just leave Ember and Ethan here? Ethan was right about one thing. She came for me. She risked her life and the lives of her friends in order to get here. And as for Ethan, well, he could at least be counted on to protect Ember. I suppose he was right about that, too. It’s really just my selfishness that took her up on her offer to help. I can’t stand the idea of not having her close.

* * *

When I am done getting my stuff, I head to the common area to meet Ethan and Ember. Most of the Hollows are still asleep. Nobel and Journey are on the half-pipe, saying good-bye, it looks like. Ink Spot is doing some rifting stripes for Chernobyl, who rifted back twenty minutes ago. He looks like he got into some gnarly stuff.

“Hey, Chernobyl,” I say, walking over to them. “What happened out there?”

“Aw man, it was like a storm out there. It was the first time that anyone had rifted into the American Civil War. We weren’t taking anything this time. Gloves wanted us to follow the train that was carrying the Union’s payroll, all in gold, of course. The thing was, when we got there, most of the soldiers were gone and in their place were these little dome-headed geared creatures that tried to take us out.” I look down at my leg.

“Those are Gear Heads. One of them sawed off my leg.”

“Those guys did that?” Chern asks. “I had no idea, sorry.”

Ink Spot slaps him on the neck to indicate that he’s done. Chern flinches.

“Well, I got to go,” he says. “Gotta return this stuff to the lab. I’ll catch you later.”

“Okay,” I mumble, staring at my geared prosthetic.

I walk to where Nobel, Ember, and Ethan are sitting. They are congregated in the same spot we were in earlier.

“Hey, something is going on. Chernobyl said that he ran into a bunch of Gear Heads during a mission.”

“Not a surprise. The Peacekeepers can track Contra. That’s how they find you guys in the stream,” Ethan says.

“Yeah, but we’d never rifted there before. They predicted where we would be and got there before us. That team walked right into a trap.”

Ember puts her hand on my shoulder. “Lex, I don’t mean to sound harsh, but has it occurred to you that your friends are stealing? The Peacekeepers were trying to prevent them from taking something that didn’t belong to them.”

I shrug her hand off. I’m about to say something nasty when Ethan cuts me off.

“I’m worried more about the how than the why right now. This means they’ve somehow figured out how to use Tesla’s predictive algorithms to predict where the Hollows will strike. This will make it very hard for you and your friends to smash and grab. They could have these things waiting for you anywhere at any time. Always one step ahead.”

“True,” Nobel agrees. “So our immediate problem is finding a way to disable several Gear Heads at a time. Like some sort of electromagnetic pulse?”

“Like the one I used in The Institute?”

Ethan nods. “That might work. You could try to isolate the correct harmonic resonance to shatter their glass domes—”

“It doesn’t matter right now,” I cut them off. “We’re wasting time. We are going to save Stein.”

“All right,” Nobel interrupts. “Let’s go. Here, take these.”

Nobel hands each of us two small green pills.

“You got the Dox?” Ember asks, rolling the Contra between her fingers.

“Sure thing,” I answer, tapping my pack.

“What are these?” Ethan asks, holding the green pill up to the light like some rare jewel.

“This is how we rift,” I answer. “No fancy tech and no practice missions. Take this baby and you’ll be hooked on rifting for life.”

Ethan looks to Ember, who shrugs. They both remove their Tethers and toss them on the table.

“Okay.” She pops the capsule in her mouth. “Let’s do this. We just rift from right here?”

“Yep. Part of the deal we had with Gloves was that he would have Claymore set the date and time of the mission in these capsules so we would show up at the right time, just before Stein falls. So just pop the pill and hold on tight.”

I adjust my jester’s hat, put the capsule on the back of my tongue, and swallow.

* * *

Rifting is second nature to me now. I can feel the Contra pumping in my veins, making me lighter than air but also more solid than I could ever be in real life. Colors swirl, and as we approach the spot where Stein dies I can feel the stream thinning. It’s like pressing against tissue paper. I push forward and the stream shreds around me. I’m spit out onto the sandy ground.

We have come out just behind an outcropping of rocks. I peek over them as the others orient themselves. Ember and Ethan look a little pale, but otherwise fine. I see the blimp overhead, cut ropes flailing in the wind. To the right I see two Gear Heads, the red liquid sloshing around in their domed heads as they scramble up the loose rocks in our direction.

“We’ve got to move,” I order.

Everyone follows me as I manage my way down through the boulders where the blimp is still tied. Two Gear Heads have taken position near the other me. I see Stein trying to distract them. For a second the urge to run to her is overwhelming. I am barely able to keep my feet planted.

Then I see myself.

Stein screams. The Gear Heads have nearly pushed her over the edge of the cliff.

My alternate self runs to the cliff. Tripping on the tether, he falls, fighting off Gear Heads while grabbing for Stein. Another crazy little geared-ninja rolls agilely to the side and takes its position on my calf. I wave my hand, giving the others the signal to intervene.

Like a horde of barbarians, we rush the cliff. Ethan and Nobel busy themselves by smashing whatever Gear Heads they can get hold of. There are more of them than I remember.

“Stein, look at me,” the other Lex orders. He screams and I remember why. I can almost feel the muscles tearing under his skin. As if by reflex, I bring my hand to my own shoulder and squeeze to make sure it isn’t happening to me.

“Lex, please don’t let go,” Stein pleads.

Breaking into a sprint, I run as fast as my leg will allow, but neither has seen me, seen us. Ember and Nobel rush past me. Ember lunges for the cliff, grabbing Stein with two hands. Ethan is only half a second behind her, clutching Stein by the back of her shirt. Nobel attacks the Gear Head preoccupied with greedily cutting off my leg. He shoves a screwdriver into the base of its clear dome skull. Sparks fly and it hisses like a ticked-off snake. Nobel pries the pincers from the other Lex’s calf muscle and throws it to the side. It lands in a heap against some rocks, like a broken toy.

Nobel is pulling the other Lex away from the cliff as he flails, confused by what is happening. I dive in beside him, grabbing the hand that just let go of Stein. Ember, Ethan, and I pull Stein up the rocky cliff face to safety. Stein lies there, breathing heavily, looking to me, then to the other me, and back again. Ember and Ethan stand up. Stepping back, she clutches herself to him. He wraps his arms around her, kissing the top of her head. Nobel makes a quick tourniquet for the other Lex’s leg. I lie by Stein, wishing I could hold her like Ethan is holding Ember. But I don’t reach out to her. She’s looking confused and a little scared, her attention rapt on where the other me is being patched up.

“Stein,” I say gently. “Look at me.”

Stein slowly turns her head in my direction. Our eyes connect and she throws her arms around my neck. I breathe in the smell of her and close my eyes.

I take her hand and we stand. Nobel crouches by the side of the other Lex, putting pressure on the leg wound while that Lex goes in and out of consciousness.

“What’s going on?” Stein finally asks. She can do the math. Two strangers, one Nobel, one Stein—and two Lexs.

“We came to save you, Stein,” I say, brushing her cheek with my fingertips. “I stole some tech from Tesla so I could come back for you.”

Stein looks down at my leg, then back up at me like I’m some kind of freak. She drops my hand and backs away, going to Nobel’s side. The shock is fast and hard. It feels like I’ve just been sucker punched, and it’s hard to breathe. I tense, squaring my shoulders and trying to keep my expression neutral.

She bends over the other Lex. “Nobel, would you be so kind as to fill in the blanks for me? I feel like I may have missed some minor details.”

“Lex and I came back to save you, just like he said.”

Stein frowns, pointing at me. “I’m gonna need more than that.”

I walk over to them. My leg hisses at Stein as if it doesn’t approve of her.

“You died. You fell off the cliff, and I got my leg sawed off by a Gear Head. But I didn’t want to lose you. I couldn’t lose you. So I—we—came back to save you.”

“Nobel, help me up,” the other Lex demands.

Nobel and Stein each hold out a hand and pull him to his feet.

He limps forward, looking me over.

“Oh yeah. This can’t be good,” he says with a laugh.

It’s strange. It’s like looking in a mirror, only…not. I agree with him. This can’t be good. “Yeah, well, you think that’s weird. I never thought I’d see myself with a leg again, albeit a mangled one.”

I also never would have thought in a million years that I’d have to compete with myself for my own girlfriend. I shake my head. “I have got to think these things through better.”

The alternate Lex turns around to look at the strangers in his periphery.

“Anya?” he asks, stumbling toward her.

“Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. So, our sister is alive, too,” I say with a shrug, still staring at my alternate self. Maybe I can toss him off the cliff.

As if reading my mind, Stein looks at me and glares.

Ember steps between us, blocking me from view.

“But, how are you here? I thought you were dead.” The other Lex turns to me. “The tech you used to save Stein, did you use it to save our family as well?”

The hope in his eyes is like a knife in my chest. I shake my head.

Just as the hope dies, Ember reaches him and throws her arms around him, hugging him tightly. But behind his back her eyes are locked on mine in a silent question.

What now?

“How did you escape the fire?” he asks Ember.

“I was with Tesla Institute,” she tells him.

“Look, we should probably get out of here,” the other Lex says, looking at me. “I’m getting a little light-headed from the blood loss.”

“That might be easier said than done,” Ember says, pointing beyond the cliff, where the sky is moving like ripples in a pond.

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