The Magic Factory

Oliver closed his eyes, focusing his mind in the way he needed to, to summon his powers. But a sudden a noise beside him broke his concentration.

He turned sharply to see a silhouette emerging from the shadows. The first thing that struck Oliver was the unearthly shade of blue eyes. The eyes of a cobalt Seer. Of his enemy.

The shadowy figure moved further into the moonlight. Oliver gasped. It was Lucas.

Lucas was a Seer! But he was a rogue one, an evil one with unmistakable flashing blue eyes.

“What have you done?” Oliver cried to the boy.

Lucas just smirked. “He told me everything. The man from the future. About you and how you become Armando’s favorite. How you take my place. He said all I had to do to win back Armando’s favor was deliver this crate.”

All the pieces fell into place in Oliver’s mind. Lucas from the future had gotten young Lucas to do his bidding, to sell his bomb to the Nazis, the only people crazy enough to actually set it off.

“He tricked you!” Oliver cried. “Can’t you see? These men are German soldiers! That’s a bomb inside!”

Lucas frowned. “Don’t be stupid. The Germans are the enemies.”

“That man from the future,” Oliver stammered. “He’s YOU. He’s tricked you into handing a bomb over to Hitler!”

But Lucas wasn’t going to be convinced. There was no time to explain it either. Oliver had to stop the bomb from reaching its destination.

Thinking nothing of his own safety, he ran. But Lucas lunged for him. Oliver dodged, leaping left, and felt Lucas’s fingertips brush his overalls.

“Stop!” the boy screamed. “You’re ruining everything!”

Recovering, Oliver darted forward, his feet pounding the asphalt. His legs ached from the effort of sprinting. But Lucas was right behind him. So close.

The engine of the truck was already running. Fumes came from the exhaust. Oliver pounced through the acrid cloud, using all his strength to leap through the air.

He landed with a hard thump onto the back of the truck, his feet balancing precariously on a small ledge. He tried to open the door but it was locked. He felt the engine rumbling beneath him as the truck accelerated. Oliver held on tightly as the truck began to pull out of the lot. Pebbles crunched beneath the tires, just a foot below him.

Oliver clutched on with all his might, still trying to prize open the lock. Lucas was bearing down on him. But the truck was picking up speed. The distance between them grew.

Suddenly, the lock yielded. Oliver heaved the door of the truck open and swung his body inside. Wind whipped through his hair as he looked out the back of the open truck at Lucas’s figure shrinking into the distance.

Oliver had no time to feel relieved. Lucas was a mere inconvenience, a small hurdle to overcome. The real challenge was the crate and the bomb it contained. He slammed the door shut behind him and turned to face it.

The truck picked up speed, surging forward and flinging Oliver backward. His back thudded against the closed doors. He sunk to his knees, winded. The truck jerked him roughly side to side, making his stomach flip. But he gritted his teeth and forced the unpleasant sensations away. He’d been on the back of an ostreagle, after all. This sensation was nothing in comparison to that. Switchit practice had been good training, he realized.

Drawing himself to unsteady knees, Oliver staggered through the truck toward the crate that contained the weapon. He had to get inside somehow. He was certain that if he could get his hands on the machine, he’d work out a way to dismantle it.

Oliver took hold of one of the planks of wood in his hands. He heaved as hard as he could. But no success. The planks were fixed in place with nails. He’d need a wrench to get inside.

He looked around the truck frantically, searching for a tool that could help him in his endeavor. But the truck was moving too quickly. He kept getting tossed from side to side. Try as he might, he couldn’t get to his feet long enough to fully search the inside of the truck for anything he may be able to use.

Suddenly, Oliver felt the sensation of moving upward. The truck was being driven up a ramp.

He ran to the back and looked out the small, blacked out window in the door. To his shock he saw that they had driven right up inside the back of a big military cargo plane!

With complete terror, Oliver realized what was happening. The truck containing the weapon was on its way to Nazi-controlled Germany. And he was going with it.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Oliver’s heart hammered with terror. It was very noisy in the back of the plane with the engines roaring. It was also very dark. So dark, Oliver could hardly see his hands in front of his face.

He tried to collect this thoughts. But there was no time because Oliver suddenly felt the horrible swooshing sensation of the plane gaining speed along the runway. All around him, everything began to shake. There was nothing to hold on to, no seat to clip himself into. He was going to take to the sky in the back of a truck! Panic overcame him.

From beneath he felt the angle change. The plane was beginning to lift from the runway. Oliver started to slide backward and felt the strange heavy sensation of lift as the plane’s wings countered the effects of gravity. He groped forward, searching for some kind of handhold. But there was nothing. He rolled, colliding with the back doors of the truck. There was nothing to do but close his eyes, grit his teeth, and wait for the plane’s rapid ascension to be complete.

It seemed to last forever. The plane kept climbing and climbing, turning as it went in a sort of rollercoaster-like fashion. Unlike the passenger planes Oliver was used to, this military cargo plane had no need to make passengers comfortable, and the pilot was clearly pushing it to the very edge of its physical capabilities. Its steep angle remained, pushing Oliver into an uncomfortable, sprawled position against the locked back doors of the truck. It must be ascending to a very high altitude, he realized, far, far above the clouds in order to avoid detection from the enemies below.

But finally, he felt it even out. At last, Oliver was able to collect himself.

He peeled himself from the uncomfortable position he’d been forced into against the back of the truck doors and heaved himself up on to unsteady legs. The plane was actually much smoother than it had been bumping around in the back of the truck.

Once more, he stood face to face with the crate. Inside was its dangerous cargo. The bomb. He had to get inside and destroy the bomb.

He searched around in the back of the truck, through the gloom, looking for some kind of tool to help him. Wedged amongst the other wooden boxes in the truck, he found a crowbar. He grabbed it, relieved.

Oliver hurried to the crate and squinted to find the nails. It was hard in the darkness to find the small glint of metal, but finally he did, and he worked quickly, prizing out the nails and discarding the planks to the side. He worked feverishly, the darkness making his task even harder. But one by one he managed to tear off the planks. Until, finally, he stepped back.

He was staring at the bomb.

Seeing it in reality was more bone-chilling than he’d ever expected. This wasn’t just a plan or design anymore. This was the real thing. The real bomb. A complex machine of burnished metal. Six feet tall. Egg-shaped. Covered in wires. Filled with deathly power.

Oliver shuddered at the thought of the twisted mind that had created it—Lucas. Oliver’s determination to destroy the bomb before it could destroy anyone grew even stronger.

Quickly, he reached into his overalls pocket and pulled out all the plans he’d stolen from Lucas’s secret room. It was so dark he had to hold them very close to his face. He studied them, comparing what was on the page to what he was looking at, trying to figure out how it had been designed and in turn, how it could be dismantled.

To his distress he found that it had been extremely well designed. Impeccably. Clearly, Lucas had poached ideas from Armando and twisted them for his dark means. The bomb was born not from the mind of a brilliant human, but from the disturbed mind of a terrifyingly evil Seer. It was filled with tricks—extra wires and switches—that made it near impossible to decipher, as well as shields like Esther’s and the invisible wall around the school. One wrong move and the whole thing would blow right here, right now.

Oliver would need days to decipher it. But it would only be hours before the plane reached Germany. He felt overwhelmed and suddenly desperately alone. If only he had the support of his friends, the wisdom of Armando, and the experience of Professor Amethyst and the other teachers at the School for Seers.

But no sooner had he thought it, than Oliver realized that he did. All those people had given something to him over the time he’d known them; their encouragement, their knowledge, their experience. This was a quest designed for him. In him, all that information converged. Other than Lucas, he was the only Seer who’d been trained by Armando Illstrom. The person most able to dismantle this bomb was Oliver himself. That was why the universe had called to him in the first place.

Buoyed by the revelation, Oliver got to work, focusing on the task at hand. He may not have days at his disposal, but there was still a chance he’d be able to do enough with the hours ahead of him to stop the bomb from working. He became engrossed, just as he had done when making the periscope, when creating the invisibility coat. He drew on every scrap of knowledge he had about inventions, losing himself in theory and physics, focusing his entire mind on dismantling the weapon.

He lost track of everything around him, his mind homing in on this one thing.

*

Suddenly, Oliver felt the engines change beneath him. They were losing speed. He knew what that meant. The plane was preparing to begin its descent.

He blinked with surprise and checked his timetable. Indeed, several hours had passed. In fact, his timetable was flashing red now fully, warning him he was out of bounds and off course. That meant Esther’s opening would now be closed and his chance of ever returning to the school completely vanquished. He’d been so engrossed with the bomb that he’d lost track not just of time but of his own personal sacrifice; the school. He’d become so focused that every other distraction had quit his mind. And yet the bomb was still very much intact, still ready to enact its destruction on the world. Panic took hold of him.

Oliver felt the plane’s angle change. He grasped out for any kind of handhold, but failed to find anything. He slid, this time toward the front of the truck, to the part behind the driver’s cabby. He hit the wall hard and curled up, gritting his teeth, his stomach in knots. The pressure changed rapidly, making his ears pop painfully. The descent was terrifyingly fast, the pilot pushing the plane into a descent just as rapid as its ascension had been.

Then there was a horrible jolting sensation as the plane touched its wheels to the ground.