"I knew it." Aksel exclaimed, as the two youngest Laurisdens walked out of the police station, "I told you I knew it!"
Verity rolled her eyes. "Great." They continued out of the police station and walked towards the port.
"But don't you get it? This concretes the whole thing!" He cried.
"It also means that Septimus is in real danger."
They continued in silence, a miserable silence, the silence that children, of a generation much further on than the Laurisdens', will suffer from, as the ice cream van drives away. The boat man, who stood with another man, saw them, as the slowed to a mere tiptoe, and waved.
Aksel waved back, then turned to Verity and pleaded. "Please will you cheer up. For the sake of the boatman, at least."
Verity nodded and faked her smile, instantly feeling ever so slightly better. The boatmen welcomed them over and, shaking his head about something the other man said, waved him off and welcomed the children's over. "Hello, Laurisden's. I hope you've brought my payment, as we've been warned off from taking people there. I guess you don't care though."
Aksel grinned. "No, we don't"
"May I ask, what payment am I getting?"
"If I'm right, where we're going is a factory with twenty nine thousand sovereigns worth of drugs in, drugs that have been used all over Europe. Drugs that you can sell to anyone."
"I'm not a drug dealer, kid."
"No, but these drugs are currency. And you need currency."
The boatman weighed it up slightly. "Alright. Get in the boat and hide under the large blanket. Don't want any coppers seeing you."
The two Laurisden children crawled beneath the old musty blanket, that felt like old carpet, and waited, as the boat started to move away. It rocked up and down, making the Laurisden's feel sick. The acids in their stomachs were bubbling and they felt sick, but the boat slowed as if it could sense their suffering and soon the boatman was ordering them to remove the carpet. They climbed up and Aksel threw out his hand suddenly. "Stop Verity!" He shouted as she prepared to wade through the water. "If the fish are dead, don't you think we'd be?"
She climbed down from the side of the boat and nodded. "I guess you're right. How do we get in then?"
Aksel turned to the boatman. "Can we pull back a bit further?"
The boatman nodded. "Yeah, we can. But not by far."
The boat went a bit further up the stream they were on and stopped the nearest it could get to the massive factory building. The stream led into the factory, probably to power large machinery, and there was a barrel stuck of the water. The boatman took a large plank of wood up and slid it across to the barrel, using it to balance the plank. Having thanked him greatly, the Laurisden children left the boatman and climbed across the damp board, onto the barrel. There was a rock jutting out of the water, so they clambered onto that and then hopped onto platform to the right of the stream that led out of the factory. There didn't seem to be anybody about, so they clambered on and ran away, but stopped, as they observed the machinery the water powered. It had a large conveyor belt that led lumps of iron structures into a machine that showered it with hydrochloric acid, until the iron chloride went through drains into the stream.
They continued, and looked for cells, but couldn't find any. And then suddenly, they saw two guards on their rounds. Luckily, the guards didn't see them, as they'd managed to hide in time, and so they continued down to where the guards were, once they'd gone away, that is.
It was obvious what they were guarding. Septimus. It was a single cage, that you could see completely around, and Septimus was inside it, bruised.
He ran to the bars when he saw them, and grinned, as Verity worked some magic on the lock. The door swung open and the older brother climbed out grinning. "Thanks for getting me. Now let's get out of here." He said.
Aksel shook his head. "We need to add one final touch."
"No Aksel, these people are too dangerous."
"But I worked it all out. Just trust me on this!"
They ran up onto the balconies at the top of the factory and started to run along, towards where Septimus said the resurrected cadaver lived. It was an old office, with glass windows and a table that the cadaver sat at. He looked honestly surprised when the three Laurisden children burst through, Septimus brandishing the speech that Aksel had written. "Hello, Frank Clarkson." Septimus read. "Don't try to call the guards, or we'll hill you?"
"Kill you." Aksel whispered.
"Ah! Or we'll kill you."
"I'm the Lazarus, you can't kill me!"
Septimus turned to Aksel. "How did you know he was going to say that?"
Aksel shrugged. "Good old fashioned luck, I guess."
Septimus nodded. "Now, Mr Clarkson, I know you aren't Lazarus. Because you never really died."
"What?"
"The rivers of some areas of Russia are exceptionally cold, and many scientific investigations have discovered that you can often preserve food in them."
"So?" The cadaver asked.
"And that process has been recreated in coffins. A body is put in the coffin and flozen?"
"Frozen!" Aksel exclaimed.
"And frozen, and once it's taken out, it seems dead."
The cadaver paused.
"And funnily enough, that plocess?"
"Process." Aksel replied.
"That process had been used to create the illusion of resurrection for a very long time!"
The cadaver clapped. "Well done, kid. I guess you're right."
"I'm not finished." He said, deviating from the script. "You see, Madam Bazarains show has toured all over Eastern Europe, including Russia, and in every single place that it stopped, there have been reports of a new drug, that they call the God Powder. The same drugs as those supplied by your company."
"Rubbish. We couldn't travel around with drugs, they'd be found!" The cadaver cried.
"Literally, how do you guess this?" Septimus asked Aksel.
"I've got a knack for guessing revelations."
"I can see that." Septimus replied. "Now, how you disguise the drugs is very clever. You take a bag of drugs and then put it in a mould, pouring iron all over it. Once the iron has set, you end up with a iron shape with a bag of drugs inside. When you get to wherever you need, you dissolve the iron in hydrochlolic?"
"Hydrochloric."
"Hydrochloric acid, creating iron chloride and leaving the bag of drugs intact."
The man nodded. "I guess you're right kid. We got told you'd be able to beat us, by the obscured man. But we didn't believe him. I guess we were wrong. But if we go down, so can you." He lit a flame and took it over to the corner. "Goodbye to us all!" He lit a fuse.
Verity stared. "That's for a bomb, isn't it?"
"The barrel in the stream outside," Aksel announced. "it must have been filled with explosives!"
They ran out of the door, past some random guards and then out of the factory, just as it exploded. They looked back at the burning remnants and watched as all the drugs formed a cloud that made many people feel really good.
Aksel grimaced. "I guess we'll never know who the obscured man is."
Septimus shook his head. "We need to find him."
"Why?" Verity demanded. "He's gone. He can't cause trouble for us?"
"Because he's got Sebastian."
"What?" The younger siblings exclaimed.
"He's got Sebastian and the voice machine, and he said it was the key to his brilliance."
"What brilliance?"
"I don't know, but it was deeply malevolent."
To be continued......
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