Ultimately, I decided to wait at the train station for the alchemy lab’s reagents to show up. My ability to actually help with unloading them properly was limited and I certainly didn’t know how to use them. But it would be interesting to watch, and I had nothing better to do with my time at the moment.
The locomotive whirred along the tracks towards the school’s platform, hauling the usual load of two box cars and a passenger coach. After a few moments the train came to a stop, and Rou remarked
“The pallets full of reagents should be in the second box car. I’ll get those out.”
Indeed they were, and I watched with interest as Rou wheeled the first shipping pallet off the platform. Then something occurred to me.
“Rou, how are you going to get that pallet of materials up to the second floor, where the alchemy labs are? The elevator isn’t exactly big enough for it.”
Rou paused for a moment.
“Usually I ask for one of the custodians to haul it up the stairs with telekinesis. There’s a bunch of materials that would react badly to that sort of handling, but those aren’t the ones I work with in my teaching lab. They’re just too dangerous to be useful for education.”
“If you like, I could do it?”
Rou shrugged.
“Sure, I guess?”
I nodded, used the Modern Synthesis handsigns for telekinesis, and started walking up the stairs with a floating pallet of reagents in tow.
Rou nodded to me.
“Thank you Adrian, you saved me a few minutes of waiting there.”
As she started wheeling the reagents off, something odd caught my eye.
“Rou, are those bottles of reagents supposed to be glowing faintly orange like that?”
Rou looked down at the various jugs and bottles and jars. A second passed as she processed what she was seeing.
“FUCK!”
Immediately she started dashing for the laboratory with her pallet of reagents, shouting, “Adrian, get the hazmag team to alchemy lab one! There’s something wrong with the reagents!”
I immediately got out my radio. “Hazardous magic team, there is an alchemical incident in progress. Get to alchemy lab one. I repeat, there is an alchemical incident in progress. Get to alchemy lab one.”
Then I dashed after Rou. There wasn’t much I could do on the alchemical front directly, but I was the Headmaster. I had a duty to be present during this sort of incident and mitigate it to the best of my ability.
I got to the alchemy lab at roughly the same time as the hazardous magic team. Rou had already separated out the few different glowing bottles, and was already thinking out loud.
“Glowing orange after telekinetic handling and not immediately exploding narrows things down to three possible materials: Necrophosphate, Gampson’s Elixir, and dissolved Auburnite. Those three materials react very badly to each other in a distinctly immediate fashion, so it’s only one in any given bottle and they have very different requirements to neutralize them. I’d estimate we’ve got about two hours before the first explosion if it’s Necrophosphate, longer if it’s either of the others.”
One of the hazardous magic women asked, “If we’ve got that long, then why don’t we just move them out into the woods and let them go off really far away from the school? Sounds like we’d save ourselves a lot of trouble that way.”
“Glad you asked. Now that they’ve been activated all three materials are extremely shock sensitive, and getting moreso by the minute. We can take small samples for testing via pipette, but trying to move it in any significant quantity is asking for a premature detonation.”
Rou took a moment to catch her breath. “Right, first priority is identifying whether or not each bottle contains Necrophosphate. Fortunately it’s the only candidate material that contains Phosphorus, so that’s quite simple to test.”
She pointed at a random hazmag person, “You, fill a twenty milliliter beaker with Hydrogen Peroxide. Beakers are over there, Hydrogen Peroxide is in that cabinet.”
“You, get the Nitric Acid and Ammonium Molybdate from the second shipping pallet; it’s still on the train platform.”
“You get test tubes and a holding rack for them.”
The hazmag people got to it, and Rou very carefully took a pipette’s worth of material from each of the four glowing containers. The Hydrogen Peroxide was soon provided, and Rou separated it out into four test tubes. From there she added the pipette of glowing material to each test tube, then a bit of nitric acid and Ammonium Molybdate.
Tubes one and three immediately turned bright yellow.
Rou stood up straight. “Right, these two jugs are Necrophosphate. Fortunately there is a very easy way to eliminate the threat it poses, though it does ruin the material for later use.”
Without saying a word, Rou walked over to the cabinet and pulled out a box of baking soda. A few moments later a scoop of the powder was in each jug and the glow had vanished, though they were now fizzing quite significantly.
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“That means jugs two and four contain either Gampson’s Elixir or dissolved Auburnite. Unfortunately, distinguishing between the two of them is rather tricky; they have very similar molecular structures. Fortunately we have a good four hours to do it. We’re going to need them, given what materials we have available.”
As it turned out, Rou was entirely correct about needing four hours to test the contents of the remaining jugs. Two of those hours were spent very carefully synthesizing a peculiar color-changing dye with a name I hadn’t the slightest hope of pronouncing. From there a bit of that dye was mixed with a tiny amount of the material from each jug.
What I did understand was Rou telling me, “Right, I need you to freeze each of these flasks. As cold as you can get them, please. If they’re anywhere near room temperature when I add the acid we’re all going to die, assuming either one is Auburnite.”
I nodded solemnly, and did as she requested. Modern Synthesis handsigns for ice, a bit of power and crystallization rapidly shot through the contents of each flask.
Rou nodded.
“Thank you.”
Then she added a drop of concentrated hydrochloric acid to each flask. The ice fizzled and sputtered and glowed at the point of contact in each flask, but there was a difference between the two of them. In the flask on the left the glow was deep blue, while in the flask on the right it was violently magenta.
Rou stood up straight. “Very glad I thought to label the flasks and bottles. Blue’s Auburnite in jug two, magenta is Gampson’s Elixir in jug four. The Auburnite’s by far the bigger problem, so that’s what we need to deal with first.”
I couldn’t help but ask, “So… what makes Auburnite so problematic to dispose of?”
Rou’s expression had no humor whatsoever as she answered.
“It’s easier to list what doesn’t. Anyway, the absolute first thing we’re going to need is iron shavings; once the iron’s dissolved we can move on to the next thing. And it can’t be steel shavings, the carbon would burn up and splatter the Auburnite solution all over the room. Wouldn’t explode, but it would start producing massive amounts of toxic fumes.”
As it turned out, getting the iron shavings proved to be rather troublesome. Ultimately it took a call to the NMCU for them to teleport the needed materials here at considerable expense. As it turned out, while I was busy arranging for the iron filings to be delivered Rou had been busily neutralizing the Gampson’s Elixir.
Looking at the apparatus she’d lugged over to the jug, it seemed like Rou had opted to just suck the energy out of the elixir and vent it through the fume hood.
Snapping out of it, I handed Rou the bag of iron filings, “Iron filings! For the dissolved Auburnite!”
“Thank you, Adrian.”
Iron filings acquired, Rou added them to the second flask. The glow color rapidly shifted to the same blue from the test, and the iron filings had apparently dissolved in their entirety.
Rou noted, “If I’d done that with the Gampson’s Elixir or necrophosphate it would have exploded immediately. Right, next step is to salt it out of solution. One of you run down to the cafeteria and get their big industrial-size tub of table salt.”
It took two agonizing minutes of waiting before one of the hazmag personnel showed up with a massive cardboard canister of salt.
“Thank you.”
With that, Rou put a funnel in the top of the jug and dumped in the entire container of salt. A dark reddish material started accumulating in the bottom of the jug even as the glow subsided, and Rou breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Right, that’s safe enough to move now. Enough Auburnite has precipitated out of solution for it to not be so shock-sensitive. That said, we’re not quite done yet; the salt only bought us couple hours. We need to boil off the solvent, and doing that on the desk is a no-go on account of the fumes. So haul that jug into fume hood number three!”
The hazardous magic team was all too willing to accommodate Rou’s request, and moments later the jug was on one of the heavy duty laboratory hot plates, bubbling away.
As I watched the solvent level in the jug slowly decrease, I couldn’t help think out loud.
“I’m really glad you knew exactly what to do; that said I’m rather surprised you know so much about dangerous alchemical reagents. Feels like there’s a story there.”
Rou shrugged.
“Not much of a story really; I study alchemical research documents in my spare time with a particular focus on dangerous materials. It’s interesting reading, and I figured it would be useful knowledge if one of my students ever brewed up something nasty.”
Looking at the jug of boiling Auburnite solution, I couldn’t help but wonder if it would all boil off soon enough to be safe.
“Yeah it’ll be fine. Look at the rate the level’s going down; should be done in about forty minutes.”
Apparently I’d said that out loud.
After a couple minutes of waiting around for something to happen, I asked, “So… crisis over? I can go?”
Rou nodded.
“Yes. We’ll have to get some people in for hazardous materials removal soon, but you can go.”
So I turned and went, changing my radio to the security channel as I did so. I’d just left the lab when my radio crackled to life, the security team’s chatter evidently being quite active.
“The intruders are in the second floor corridor!”
What. Then it clicked; the tainted reagents had been a distraction. And they had worked.
I was already sprinting by the time I heard another security officer ask, “Why hasn’t that fancy new security system caught them already!?”
“The readout’s giving some really strange results! Someone go check the crystal downstairs!”
I’d barely reached the latest reported location of the intruders when I heard Jethro’s voice over the radio. “The security system was sabotaged! Someone put this weird blanket thing over the crystal! Taking it off now!”
So as I rounded the corner to see the intruders... I also got to see them suddenly snap to a halt as the immobilization fields flashed into action.
There was a team of three men, dressed in what seemed to be budget tactical gear and with Mancia scrawled into their foreheads. Thralls.
The school’s security staff was already gathered around the intruders, along with the referred officers from the NMCU.
I recognized Amelia among the security officers as she asked, “Well, what now?”
Figuring that taking command at the moment was appropriate, I answered.
“There are several questions we need answered. What were these thralls sent to do? Who sent them? Can the damage to their minds be repaired? And most importantly… Who sabotaged the security system?”
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