Wood Sprites(64)

Her hands shook as she opened up Tesla’s onboard storage compartment and took out the fake generator. She set it down on the nearest table. As she took her hands away, she was filled with the certainty that she put it in the wrong place. She snatched it up and then started to put it down, farther from the table’s edge so it couldn’t fall. It felt even more dangerous, but now that she was paying attention, there hadn’t been any chance it could have fallen from the first place she put it. She slid it forward. When the fake generator teetered on the very edge, the uneasiness disappeared.

She frowned at the precariously balanced fake. That didn’t make sense.

The hallway door was flung open and Mr. Kessler stormed in, flipping on lights. “Stupid freaking steps.” He was panting as if he had just run up all twelve flights. “If I wanted a Stairmaster workout, I’d get a gym membership.”

He hurried to his desk, logged onto his desktop and quickly pulled up several windows, muttering, “Come on, come on.”

What should she do? It was obvious he didn’t realize she was in the room. She hadn’t gotten the real magic generator out of the printer. The fake was sitting out in plain sight. She was going to get caught! Should she try and hide the fake, or hope that Mr. Kessler didn’t notice that there was something still in the printer?

In the art room, Jillian did something that made Miss Gray raise her voice.

Kessler looked up, saw the open door and hissed in surprise and anger. He jerked around to stare at her, the hiss becoming an explosive, “Shit! What are doing in here?”

“Me?” She squeaked as she slid sideways, blocking the view of the printer since she couldn’t shove the fake back into Tesla without being caught. “I was just getting our job out of the printer.”

“You’re not supposed to be here alone. You shouldn’t even be here with that big ape of a teacher. And what the hell is that thing you have in there?”

“You took it out?” Even as she said it, Louise remembered that the status light was still on, which it wouldn’t be if he’d taken the generator out of the printer.

“I checked your code with the teacher access option.” He kept coming like a freight train without brakes. “The school board has made it clear that it will be my head on the chopping block if a kid used the printer to make bombs, drugs or porn. Drugs or porn? What a complete joke.”

Louise backed up until she was pressed against the printer, stunned and dismayed. What did she say? The magic generator was just the tip of the iceberg. Alone, it would probably seem harmless. The danger to their plans was anyone digging deeper into their activities. The scope of their plans would probably stay unfathomable even with the generator’s discovery, but it would mean that they were watched closer and every action questioned.

“I took it out already.” She pointed a trembling finger at the fake.

“I don’t know what the hell you were trying to make, but this isn’t a holographic projector like…” He started to reach for decoy generator.

There was a sudden loud roar and the world shuddered. The fake toppled from the table. Louise squeaked in surprise, reaching out to catch it and then jerking her hands back as she realized that she wanted it to fall, wanted it to break. Her heart leapt and jerked as Mr. Kessler nearly caught it. It tumbled in his fingertips and crashed to the floor, smashing into dozens of pieces.

“Oh no!” Louise cried as she was filled with the sense that something horrible had just happened. “What was that?”

All the lights flickered and then went out, leaving them in the dim morning light. Outside, a dozen car alarms wailed, and smoke billowed up from somewhere below. Mr. Kessler froze in place, staring at all the broken plastic littering the floor.

She hurried to the window and looked out.

An explosion had happened on the sidewalk two doors down from their school. The twisted wreckage of a large box truck sat burning in the street. Twelve stories down, people littered on the ground like a collection of dolls ravaged by the neighbor’s dog. The blast had gutted the building, revealing an interior twisted beyond recognition as the façade tore away. Paper drifted out like autumn leaves to swirl in the raising black oily smoke.

Mr. Kessler joined her at the window, mouth working but nothing coming out. Finally he managed to force out. “No. No. This is wrong. What could have happened?”

“Warning,” Tesla said in his little Welsh schoolboy voice. “A bomb has detonated within the city block where I’m currently located. Warning: a ten-alarm fire has been reported within the city block where I’m currently located. Warning: a 911 call reporting multiple injuries have been made from the building where I’m currently located. Initiating emergency response.”