Vienna Institute of technology, Austria, April 1965

"If this speech is getting any longer, I'd better get a refill. Even some of my undergraduates are less boring." Nikola sighed, downing the last of his champagne.
His companion did not react, which caught his attention and prompted him to turn his head to check what was happening.

Nikola liked Otto. He reminded him of Nigel sometimes. He was an outstanding professor, a remarkable scientist in the lab, but he also knew how to have a good time. Long story short, he was exactly the right kind of company to attend a boring inauguration speech with. A boring inauguration speech Nikola would not have attended were his next funding not on the line.

"Are you actually focused?" He whispered, leaning into Otto's personal space.

The man raised his chin towards what had caught his eye.

"On the best pair of legs in the assembly." He answered conspiratorially.

Nikola raised and eyebrow and his eyes followed Otto's line of sight to fall on a brown-haired woman standing on the other side of the room. He could only see her profile, but his heart caught in his throat. Something in the line of her jaw and the bridge of her nose was familiar to say the least. She had swapped her red bob and fringe from the forties for less flamboyant brown curls and a bouffant hairdo that was all the rage these days, but he would have recognized her anywhere – or anywhen.

As if sensing his burning gaze on her, the woman turned her head and their gazes collided in silence. There was no sign of recognition on her part, no surprise at seeing her long-lost friend. A disturbed shadow clouded her features, only to be gone in a heartbeat.

"Helen…"

His voice was very low, but Otto turned to him.

"You know her?" He asked.

He looked at his friend and grinned.

"Best pair of legs I've ever seen, indeed."

He turned his head back to Helen, only to find her spot empty. His gaze roved over the assembly, but she was nowhere in sight. Out of the corner of his sight, he noticed the door closing after a flash of baby blue fabric.

He pushed Otto aside, handing him his glass. There was no way Helen had not recognized him, and he was ready to bet he had missed her sign to follow her outside.

"Excuse me." He said, making his way through the crowd to reach the door.

His hasty exit drew some annoyed looks. Not that he cared.
He could only think of Helen Magnus. He could already hear her lecture about assuming tenure in electromagnetic studies barely twenty years after his faked death. It was probably not the hiding plan she would have devised for him, coming back to Vienna in the midst of a cold war, but he didn't care. Nikola Tesla was to be found where the science was. And right then, the science was in Austria, which invested massively in its universities and labs. He was taking all the funds he could get in the name of the advancement of science. And he was ready to bet that Helen, had the roles been reversed, would have done the same thing. What was he to do? Spend the rest of his eternity in Nepal in a monk's cell,meditating?

He found her in the hallway, studying a map of the building on the opposite wall with her back to him.

"Believe in the unbelievable." He exclaimed in English, opening his arms wide as she turned around, expecting her to greet him as she would an old friend she had not seen in more than two decades.

She was even more beautiful than he remembered.

"Brown looks good on you." He added, gesturing to her hair.

She didn't react exactly as he had expected, though, and that caught him off-guard.

"I'm sorry, have we met?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.

Her English was tainted with a very strong German accent, making him take a step back.

"In a former life, it seems…" He answered, suddenly feeling awkward.

Helen didn't speak German. And she surely didn't fake accents while speaking English either. It made no sense. Actually, he had always been amazed at how bad she was at picking up on languages. She had spent her summers with the Pasteur family in France for years and her French was barely convincing enough combined with her pretty eyes to fool less than diligent German soldiers during the occupation of France. On the other hand, two years in Paris had been enough for him to refine his pronunciation and pass as a French gentleman with astounding taste in wine.
If that was a joke, it was a good one. Although he was not sure why she would feel the need to play with him in the first place.

There was the faint possibility that she was undercover, he realized. But surely there was no need to play pretend in the middle of an empty hallway, with only her old best friend as a company.

Fine. If she wanted to keep on treating him like a stranger, two could play that to check her German, he thought.

"I'm sorry," he went on, switching to German. "I've mistaken you for someone else."

A faint smile graced her lips as he extended his hand for her to shake.

"Ha, Svenja! Here you are!" A voice interrupted before Helen could open her mouth to answer as a man appeared next to them.

The man's gaze passed from Helen to Nikola as he stopped next to her, a hand disappearing in her back, protectively.

"I see you've met Mr. Hausner." The man continued.

Nikola recognized him as Paul Scheider-Esleben, a German architect who had arrived earlier that year as a visiting professor.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Hausner." Helen's twin said with a smile, shaking his hand.

He remembered that hand. It was the one he had held tight while injecting Helen with the serum back in Oxford decades before. The memory was burnt in the back of his mind along with his admiration for her sacrifice as the first to get injected with the source blood.

However, her German was spot on. He could even hear a faint Bavarian accent that she seemed to try to soften and conceal How intriguing…

"Same, Miss…" Nikola tried, burying his gaze in hers, trying to gauge whether she was seriously going to make him swallow such a pile of bullshit.

Her blue eyes revealed nothing but cold politeness, and he felt defeated.

"Schädler." The architect answered for her. "She's my first female student, and, I must admit, the brightest. She flew in yesterday from Berlin." He explained.

Helen? Studying architecture?That's an uncommon dream, Nikola thought. It had to be a dream at that point. It was all preposterous. But then, in his dreams, when Helen made an appearance, they were not surrounded by obnoxious guests, and she was way less dressed too.

Svenja Schädler, then… It was going to drive him insane.

"Welcome to the city of dreams, miss Schädler. Will you be staying long?" He wondered. "I'd be glad to be your guide. Vienna is delightful this time of the year." He offered.

She smiled the first true smile of their encounter.

"Oh I'm flying back at the end of the week." She began.

"See, Nikola, she's defending her thesis in a few weeks, and it's not exactly ready yet, is it Svenja?" Paul interrupted again.

Had the woman been Helen, she would have broken his arm by now. But the woman did not bulge, making Nikola very uneasy. He would have broken his jaw himself, but something told him not to.

"It will be." She offered with a pointed gaze at her mentor who grinned.

"Anyway. Sorry to steal you from such a remarkable company," Paul said, his tone dripping with irony, "I was hoping you could type a letter for me. It's rather urgent."

Nikola could not fathom why Helen Magnus would type any letter for such a patronizing man, but she nodded enthusiastically.

"Goodbye, Mr. Hausner. I can only hope our paths cross again."

She was polite, but not overly warm.

"I'm sure they will." He answered, pinning her with his gaze.

She smiled shyly and left, following her mentor down the hallway towards the staircase, leaving Nikola to wonder what exactly had just happened.