by Morgan Rice
“We’ll have to sneak past them,” Esther said.
They got into the elevator and rode it to the top floor. Then they stepped out onto the walkway and scurried across it until they reached the bouncy netting and the slide that led up from it.
Oliver peered up. The slide was so long he couldn’t see the top. The sides were completely smooth, with not a single ridge to use as a foothold. Climbing it would be impossible.
“Now what?” Esther whispered.
It was their only way out of the school. Oliver realized that he’d have to use his powers.
“I have an idea,” he told her.
Oliver closed his eyes to help calm his mind. He summoned his powers then visualized his hands turning into suckers. As he unfocused his grip on reality, he forced the new image out in its place. When he looked down, his hands had indeed transformed.
Esther blinked with shock. “What are those?”
“Suckers,” Oliver said, waving them. “For climbing.”
“Are you expecting me to hold on?” Esther asked, an eyebrow raised.
“Got any better ideas?” Oliver countered.
Esther sighed with reluctant acceptance. She jumped up on Oliver’s back, clinging tightly to him. Oliver began to climb up the inside of the slide.
It was hard going, both physically on his limbs and mentally holding onto the reality of his suckered hands. It was made even harder going by the extra weight of Esther. She was gripping on so tightly around his neck that it was making it difficult for him to breathe.
“Esther,” he croaked. “You’re strangling me.”
“Sorry,” she said, barely loosening her hold.
Oliver climbed on.
A moment later, Esther whispered in his ear. “I hope you know this doesn’t count as our second date.”
Oliver felt his lips twitch at the side. “No. We’ll go on a real one when I get back.”
They both fell into tense silence. There was no guarantee Oliver would ever make it back.
At last they reached the top of the slide. They clambered out, emerging into the narrow corridor. Oliver remembered following Ralph along it on his arrival at the school and felt a pang of grief for his absent friend. At least he had Esther by his side. For now, anyway.
They headed along on hands and knees until the ceiling was high enough for them to stand. Then they hurried along the corridors, following the winding paths to the main door.
They halted. This was where Professor Amethyst’s invisible wall was.
Oliver reached out and touched its surface. It felt like a bubble, like elastic resisting him. He pushed and felt it push back. Just as he suspected, it was impenetrable. He looked over at Esther.
She was gazing at the empty space. She reached forward with her fingertips and caressed the air.
“It feels just like one of mine,” she said.
“Do you think it’s made the same way?” he asked. “Through waves?”
Esther nodded. “I do.”
“How will I get through?” Oliver lamented.
“I think I might be able to make an opening,” Esther said. “Using my own specialism to counter it.”
Oliver’s eyes widened. “And you thought sonar was the worst?”
Esther smiled coyly.
Oliver watched as she shifted her mind into the place needed to summon her powers.
“Whoa,” she stammered, beads of sweat appearing instantly on her brow. “This is not going to be easy.”
She reached out with her hands. It looked like she was trying to pry apart two magnets, or rip fabric in half with her bare hands.
“I’m not strong enough to open this on my own,” she told him.
“Let me help,” Oliver said.
He summoned his own powers, this time transforming one of his hands into a crowbar. He reached forward, finding the gap Esther had managed to rip through the shield, and wrenched it further open. The resistance was powerful, but they kept at it, working together until they’d made a space big enough for Oliver to squeeze through.
“There,” Esther said, stepping back.
But the moment she let go, the gap instantly sealed up.
Esther looked over at Oliver, realization dawning on her face, turning her skin pallid.
“The shield is so strong it can heal itself,” she said. “It won’t stay open.”
Oliver let out a heavy exhalation. “Once I’m through, I’ll be trapped the other side.”
Esther shook her head vigorously as if the idea of Oliver being trapped the other side was inconceivable to her. “I’m just going to have to hold it open until you get back.”
“You can’t,” Oliver said. “It will drain you.”
“I’m strong,” Esther countered. “You said so yourself.”
Oliver shook his head. “It’s too huge an undertaking. I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You’re not asking,” she argued. “I’m offering.”
Oliver took her by the shoulders. “Then I don’t accept your help.”
Esther remained fiercely stubborn. “I’m going to do it anyway, with your permission or without it.”
Oliver sighed with frustration. “I don’t want you to risk your health for me.”
“And I don’t want you to have no chance of getting back. I can do it.” She gave him a decisive nod. “I am doing it.”
Oliver realized there was no arguing. Esther was not backing down.
“Okay,” he relented. “But only while the timetables are off. Once they’re back online tomorrow you’ll be out of bounds. You could make the dimension unstable.”
Esther looked distraught as she grappled with the reality of their situation. “Professor Amethyst said they’d come back on after forty-eight hours. That gives you less than eight hours.”
Oliver nodded gravely. He understood the stakes.
They turned back to the wall, both silent as they worked together to create a new opening. Esther ripped a seam through which Oliver used his crowbar hand to wrench it apart. Then Esther adjusted her position so that she’d be able to keep the sides of the opening apart. Oliver could see the strain on her already.
“Esther,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes I do,” she replied. Then she looked over briefly, her beautiful emerald eyes glittering with tears. “GO.”
Oliver didn’t waste any time. He squeezed through the opening, feeling a strange coldness pass through his whole body. Once on the other side, he looked back, searching for Esther. But, of course, she was now concealed by the invisible wall.
“Goodbye,” he whispered, his voice cracking.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Suddenly, Oliver heard a honk. He turned sharply. A taxi was careening toward him.
His heart pounded as he jumped back, landing on a sidewalk. He was just in time. The car whizzed past him.
But as Oliver watched it go, he noticed it wasn’t a taxi at all. It was a police car, with a little sign on top and the word sheriff emblazoned across its side. It had a strange rounded black body and large shiny fenders. It was an old-fashioned wartime police car.
Oliver knew then, without a doubt, that he was back in the past. He was back in 1944.
Oliver looked about him. The streets of 1944 New Jersey were exactly as he’d left them when he’d followed Ralph into the School for Seers. He’d come out at the exact same point he’d gone in. He even recognized the same children playing hoop and ball in the playground, the same smartly dressed men driving shiny black cars. It was as if time itself had been paused while he’d been inside the school, as if a second out here had been a day in there.
It was an unsettling thought but Oliver didn’t find it all that surprising, considering the fact the school existed outside of time. But it meant the amount of time he had to stop Lucas before Esther lost hold of the tear in the wall could be even less than the eight hours he’d anticipated.
Oliver hurrie
d onward, heading in the direction of Illstrom’s Inventions. Without Ralph to guide him, he had to navigate the streets himself, a task that amplified how very alone he felt without his friends. They’d become his companions now and he desperately wished they could be by his side. He wondered what would happen if they all awoke before he returned, and what Esther would tell them about helping him escape. And more importantly, what Professor Amethyst would do when he discovered Oliver had left. Would he expel him? Even if Oliver survived this ordeal and made it back to the school alive, would he even be allowed back in?
He ran on, passing the housing estates and munitions factories, the workers and civilians going about their lives under the shadow of war. He could sense it in the air, that tense feeling of disaster waiting around every corner. Living during a time when the world was at war must have been terrifying, and Oliver felt supremely grateful for the safe and peaceful days he’d spent at the School for Seers. He’d needed them; his next task would test him to his limits.
At last the factory loomed into view. Oliver felt a chill run through his spine. Even with its shiny new 1940s appearance, the factory looked like home to him. To think of it in mortal peril made Oliver feel sick to the stomach.
He headed toward it, struck once again by how vibrant it was, with a steady stream of workers filing in and out of the big main doors, wearing the same blue overalls as Oliver.
The same overalls! Oliver thought, realizing that he would blend right in.
He rushed for a group of workers heading from the bus stop to the factory, and muscled his way into the middle of them. As though he were a chameleon, none of them seemed to notice his intrusion. And so he was swept along with the group, right up the steps and in through the double doors of Illstrom’s Inventions.
Now inside the factory, Oliver was struck once more by how alive the place was in 1944, with so many workers and machines, so much noise and commotion. He gasped in awe at how shiny the machines looked, as if they were made from gold instead of brass. And the floor was so open without Armando’s fake walls or labyrinth of corridors concealing secret rooms. In this era, he’d not yet lost funding for the factory, the result of which was his construction of fake walls and secret passageways to keep invaders out. This was the factory’s heyday, fully funded, when Armando had been on the cusp of inventing incredible things. There’d been so much promise back then, so much excitement. It seemed to permeate the air.
Just then, the crowd of workers who had been concealing Oliver began to disperse. They started heading out in different directions to their various projects, leaving Oliver floundering in the middle of the open-plan floor. He had to find Armando before the guards noticed him and kicked him out.
He gazed around, searching for Armando. The inventor had been at his workbench when Oliver had last been here, but had since moved on. Oliver deduced that the amount of time that had passed out here while he’d been in the School for Seers was only around a few minutes. A few minutes to several days. But if that were true, his timetable should have come back online by now. Could it be that time had switched when he stepped outside of the school, with it now running more slowly there than here? He clung to that slim possibility. Perhaps there was still a chance he could stop Lucas before Esther’s strength failed.
As he scanned the factory floor, Oliver suddenly became aware of the feeling of eyes on him. He turned sharply. The young Lucas was watching him like a hawk from the other side of the factory. Knowing what he now did about the man he’d become, Oliver felt more uneasy under his penetrating glare than ever before. Even in his youthful form, Lucas had a nasty expression on his face, like he’d sucked a sour lemon. He wondered what made him so bitter.
Oliver knew that Lucas would call the guards on him again, just like he had done the last time he’d intruded on the factory. He turned and hurried off, trying to work out where the back rooms of the factory could be reached from. He weaved his way into groups of workmen, trying to get lost within the hubbub.
But suddenly he smacked into someone. Lucas. The evil-looking boy glared into Oliver’s eyes.
“Back so soon?” Lucas growled. “I thought our guards made it clear that you’re not welcome here. You must be wanting your ears boxed to come straight back!”
Oliver didn’t have time to deal with the young incarnation of Lucas, not when his elderly counterpart was going to destroy the school. But even as a boy, Lucas was testy and stubborn. He folded his arms and blocked Oliver’s attempts to pass, looking just as hate-filled as the elderly man he would become. There seemed to be something dark within him, evident even at this young age.
Oliver tried to shove past Lucas. But the boy grabbed him roughly, pushing him backward.
“GUARDS!” Lucas yelled. “He came back! Seize him!”
From the other side of the factory, Oliver saw the two burly men spot him and leap into action. They looked furious as they barreled through the workers toward him.
He pushed Lucas’s hands off of him and darted off the other direction. He whizzed across the factory floor, peering around large machines, rushing between workmen, ducking beneath their legs.
He leapt under a table, sliding across the ground on his knees before popping out the other side. Then he was on his feet again, racing to the next group of workmen, making his way across the factory floor in a strange zigzag dance. The corridor with the backrooms was just in sight. He was almost there. Just a few more feet to go.
Oliver burst out of the group and slammed straight into the chests of the two burly guards. They got hold of him and began to drag him roughly to the exit.
“No, stop!” Oliver pleaded.
“We told you to get lost,” one barked gruffly.
“You don’t understand,” Oliver begged.
They ignored him, hauling him across the room. His view of the corridors grew more distant as he was pulled backward.
They reached the exit and one of the guards yanked the door open.
“Get out!” he shouted.
“And stay out!” the other yelled.
They threw him up and out of the door. Oliver flew through the air and landed hard on his behind. He groaned in pain. The doors slammed behind him.
Suddenly, Oliver felt a vibration coming from deep within his pocket. He grabbed his timetable and gasped. It was starting to come back online. Slowly, a single, weak light was beginning to blink to life.
Oliver realized he’d been right. The speed of time within the school and outside it had switched when he’d stepped over the threshold. More time passed here than there. But soon, more lights would switch on, and once the timetable was fully back online he’d be locked out of the School for Seers forever. He had to leave now if he stood any chance of returning to the school before his absence was noticed.
But he couldn’t, not while Lucas was at large.
Oliver clutched his timetable. The only thing he could be certain of was that he had to stay, even if that meant sacrificing his school, his new life, and his friends. He had to find the bomb.
With a heavy weight pressing in his chest, Oliver slid his timetable back into his overalls pocket.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
There was no time to waste. Immediately, Oliver was back up on his feet. He skirted around the perimeter of the building, glad that the nettles and brambles he’d had to contend with in his own era had not yet grown. Another difference; in his era, the windows were boarded up, but not so here.
Oliver made his way around the back of the building and cautiously peered in through the first window. It seemed to be some kind of store cupboard, with mops and brooms inside. He headed on.
The next window showed a break room. Oliver ducked quickly when he saw there were workmen sitting around a table eating sandwiches.
He hurried on in his crouched position to the next window. This time he rose up very, very slowly. He peered inside. And there, sitting at his desk, blinking through the window at Oliver with bemusement, was Armando.<
br />
Oliver felt a flutter of relief to see him alive and well. But Armando, on the other hand, did not seem pleased to see Oliver. He strode over to the window and heaved it open.
“What are you doing?” he barked. “You’re trampling on private property.”
“It’s Lucas,” Oliver blurted out.
“My apprentice?” Armando asked, raising an eyebrow. “What about him?”
“He’s building a bomb,” Oliver told him hurriedly.
“He’s just a boy!”
There was no time to explain that he meant a version of Lucas from the future, because Armando slammed the window shut and turned his back on Oliver.
Oliver felt the glass bump against his nose. He felt crushed. Armando didn’t believe him.
But he wasn’t giving up. He’d have to take some drastic action to prove to Armando he was someone worth listening to.
As the inventor went back to his schematics, Oliver took a steadying breath and shifted his mind into the place he needed in order to access his powers.
At once, he discovered it was remarkably harder to do so here than it had been at the School for Seers. He wondered if there’d been some kind of magical force field around the school that made it easier for the students to access their powers, extra training wheels just like Doctor Ziblatt’s goggles and Coach Finkle’s helmet.
But after a few more seconds, he felt his mind shift into place. A small ripple of relief went through him. It was harder to access his powers, yes, but not impossible. It took more effort than usual to conjure the image in his mind, and even more effort to push it outward into reality, but slowly and surely Oliver felt it begin to work. Sweat trickled down his forehead as he focused his attention on the items on Armando’s desk, pushing out a new reality from his mind.
A ruler, pencil, compass, and protractor on the desk Armando was working at began to rise into the air. The inventor flinched back in his seat, leaping up to standing as the items hovered in the air before him.
Oliver kept his hold on the items, on their atoms, and started to pull them apart. Armando watched the scene unfold before his disbelieving eyes.