The Magic Factory

Reality began to sink in. Oliver had really done it. He’d stopped Lucas’s evil plan from coming to fruition. He felt his heart soar.

But the danger was not over yet. Oliver may have saved the world, but now he had to save himself. He was a sitting duck here. It would only be a matter of moments before he was found. He had to get away.

Hitler’s soldiers were talking in hurried German to one another. They seemed very panicked and very confused as they watched their furious leader growing more incensed. He looked like a man on the brink of insanity, spittle flying from his lips as he screamed commands at them.

There was one word Oliver could understand.

“Sabotage!”

The soldiers ran in all directions, searching their locale, seeking out hiding spots. Then someone pointed at the truck in which Oliver was hiding.

Panicking, Oliver cowered back, a lump forming in his throat. He had to do something.

He quickly retreated into his mind, attempting to summon his powers. But all he felt was a fizz. He couldn’t access them at all. They’d run dry.

Without his powers, there was only other option. He had to run.

He leapt up from his hiding space and barreled forward. But it was useless. His legs could barely hold him upright. He fell, sprawling against the hard asphalt.

The soldiers spotted him immediately. Within seconds he was surrounded. Terrifying faces looked down at him, glaring their hatred. Amongst them was the face Oliver feared the most. Hitler.

He looked down on Oliver with an expression of contempt like none he had ever felt before. Not from Edmund. Or Chris. Not even from Lucas. They were nothing compared to the look of pure hatred in Hitler’s eyes. It was as if Hitler knew he was to blame.

Then Hitler muttered a word that confirmed Oliver’s suspicions.

“Seer.”

Hitler knew. And, Oliver realized with a shudder, he’d had worked out that he was the one who’d foiled him.

Hitler barked something in German at Oliver. Oliver didn’t understand his words but the coldness in his tone was unmistakable. Hitler had just ordered his death.

This was it for him, Oliver knew. He would be killed. His life was over. His only solace was that he’d saved the world. His sacrifice was worth that. Now he would die a noble death. He braced himself for the inevitable, for the blow that would extinguish his life.

It did not come.

Suddenly, from above, the roaring sound of an airplane’s engine ripped across the sky. Hitler tore his eyes from Oliver and looked up, just as the soldiers around him were doing. His expression was wild, deranged.

Oliver scanned the darkened sky, searching for the source of the enormous noise. He was expecting to see German planes approaching but instead he saw something else entirely.

Cutting through the gray sky was a very small plane unlike anything Oliver had ever seen before. It moved faster than any plane he knew of, gliding effortlessly through the sky. It was a strange metallic white color, and the translucent window at the front looked like it was made from a film of plastic, like it was some kind of high-tech shield. The technology of the plane could only come from the future, Oliver suddenly realized.

Oliver’s first dreadful thought was of Lucas. Had the old man designed some kind of aircraft and come back to this point to rewrite the history Oliver had already changed? To put everything back to how he wanted it to be?

But no, Oliver realized. The plane did not belong to a foe, but a friend. Because there, on the tail, was a design that Oliver was very familiar with: a hoop with three evenly spaced eyes. The symbol of the School for Seers. Seeing it here, in 1940s Germany, amongst the swastikas, seemed incredibly incongruous. It was almost as if he’d conjured it with his mind.

Then Oliver saw something that shocked him to the core. As he looked through the strange cockpit window he discovered that the plane was being flown by none other than Professor Amethyst!

Hitler screamed something in German. Instantly, Oliver heard the sound of soldiers’ boots. He turned his gaze from the sky to the commotion ahead of him, watching on with terror as the soldiers ran for their weapons. They got into a huddled formation, pointing their guns at the sky, and began to fire at the plane.

“NO!” Oliver screamed.

The noise was like nothing else. A thousand cracks, each one like a splinter through his eardrums. The gunfire was so loud he could feel it in his bones. There was nothing Oliver could do but cower and pray he wasn’t hit in the crossfire. Pray that Professor Amethyst’s plane withstood the bullets. Pray that he would make it out of this alive.

“OLIVER!” he suddenly heard a voice cry.

He looked sharply over his shoulder. His brain could not accept what he was seeing. It was too incongruous. It must be a mirage. But no, she was real. There, standing in the shadows, was Esther.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

Everything happened at once. Oliver watched as Walter, Hazel, Simon, and Ralph emerged out of the shadows. They stood in an arrow formation behind Esther.

Oliver had no time to consider how they here or how had they had found him. The only thing his brain could comprehend was that he was still alive when a second earlier his death had seemed like a certainty.

Still sprawled on the floor, his body useless and his powers absent, Oliver felt a surge of gratitude and relief as his friends advanced on the soldiers. He had saved the world, now they would save him.

While the soldiers were all distracted by Professor Amethyst’s plane, Ralph summoned his powers, directing them upward, and pulled thick, dark clouds across the sky. They rolled in like black waves, suffocating the light. A blinding darkness descended. The sound of gunfire immediately ceased. Without a clear visual on their target, the soldiers had nothing to aim for.

Simon, meanwhile, pulled raindrops from Ralph’s clouds. They thundered down in a torrent, instantly soaking Oliver and the rest of the soldiers to the bone.

The group of soldiers around him began to disperse. Oliver caught sight of Hitler running away, abandoning his army just like the coward the history books would reveal him to be. He must have figured out what was happening, that his plans were being thwarted by Seers, the power of which no mortal was a match. But his soldiers didn’t know. He’d abandoned them, leaving them to mop up the mess he’d made.

Finally, Oliver had a chance to escape. Still shocked that he was alive, he pulled himself to his knees. He tried to push to standing but his legs felt almost useless beneath him. He was completely drained of any strength.

Suddenly, someone was beside him. In the gloom of Ralph’s cloud, he could just make out the twinkle of emerald green eyes.

“Esther,” he stammered.

She looped her arm around him, heaving him to standing. Supporting the whole weight of him, Esther dragged Oliver across the courtyard, pulling him back to the shelter of a porchway. He collapsed against the step.

Esther went to turn back into the fray. But Oliver grasped out for her, getting hold of her hand and clasping it tightly.

“How are you here?” he asked.

“No time to explain,” Esther told him. “Just stay safe and wait for instructions.”

“Hitler…” Oliver stammered. “He got away.”

“There’s no time,” Esther told him.

Her hand slid from his and she swirled off into the darkness.

Quickly, Esther projected a shield around them all, just as she’d done to keep them safe from the bats. Sheltering in the doorway, Oliver watched on as Hazel took her turn to push her powers into the sky. Her specialism was chemical, and Oliver realized she was altering the composition of the water in the clouds, turning them a hazy, burned orange color. Fresh raindrops fell from the sky. As they hit the soldiers, the men began to yell in pain. Whatever Hazel had contaminated the clouds with, it stung their skin. Esther’s shield kept them safe from harm.

Between Ralph, Hazel, Simon, and Esther, they’d completely handicapped their enemies.

But the bomb still needed to be destroyed. They needed to buy some time, with one last distraction to keep the enemies at bay long enough for Oliver to do his part.

Walter hurried forward and summoned his magnetic powers. Suddenly, all the vehicles in the lot became attracted to one another. The sound of creaking metal surrounded them as their wheels tried to turn, to succumb to the forces Walter’s power was imposing upon them.