Two of the main characters in The Mysterious Island were Harding and Pencroft, men with the same surnames as the founders of our school. At the time I’d thought, Okay, that’s a little weird. Later in the book, when the crazy sci-fi submarine commander Captain Nemo revealed that his real name was Prince Dakkar, I admit I got a shiver down my back. But the books were just fiction. Seeing as the most important building at HP was Verne Hall, I supposed the school’s founders must have been hardcore Jules Verne fanboys. Maybe they recruited my family generations ago as an elaborate inside joke, because they liked our surname.
Beyond that, I had two main takeaways from Jules Verne. First, the title 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea didn’t mean what I thought it did. Old Captain Nemo hadn’t dived to a depth of 20,000 leagues. That’s 60,000 nautical miles, which would have plunged his sub through the earth and a quarter of the way to the moon. Instead, the book title meant he’d travelled a distance of 60,000 nautical miles underwater, which was still crazy by nineteenth-century standards. It meant he circled the world seven and a half times in that old rusty can, the Nautilus.
The other thing I’d taken away from the book: Verne had come up with some cool ideas that would never work. One of those was Leyden guns. I think the name came from some electrical research Dutch scientists did in the city of Leyden in the 1700s. I’m also pretty sure I got that question wrong on Dr Hewett’s midterm.
‘It can’t be real.’ Tia Romero picks up another gun and removes the magazine.
‘Careful, Prefect,’ Hewett warns her.
I’m losing my patience.
Our school has been destroyed for I-don’t-know-what-reason. My brother may be dead. We’re on the run from Land Institute, going I-don’t-know-where. Now it turns out our big gold-level secret is that Dr Hewett enjoys live-action role playing.
He’s brought along boxes of handcrafted Jules Verne ray guns so we can run around the boat all weekend pretending to shoot one another while yelling Pew-pew! I’m starting to doubt his sanity. And I’m starting to doubt my sanity for following his orders.
‘Sir.’ I struggle to keep the anger out of my voice. ‘Maybe you can tell us what’s going on. Then we can play with your toys later?’
I expect him to yell at me. I’m prepared for that. I really don’t care any more. Instead, he studies me with a sad, heavy expression – the kind I got from HP faculty whenever they mentioned my parents.
‘Prefect Twain, may I?’ Hewett holds out his hand.
Reluctantly, Gem surrenders the Leyden gun.
Dr Hewett looks it over, maybe checking the settings. He gives Gem a weary smile. ‘I hope you’ll forgive me, Prefect. This will be faster than explaining.’
‘Sir?’ Gem asks.
Hewett shoots him. The only sound is a high-pressure hiss. For a millisecond, Gem is wrapped in flickering white tendrils of electricity.
Then his eyes cross, and he collapses in a heap.
‘You killed him!’ Franklin rushes to Gem’s side.
Hewett turns a dial on the stock of his weapon and nonchalantly says, ‘Did I?’
Tia looks at me with alarm, silently asking what we should do.
I’m paralysed between the desire to help Gem and the urge to tackle our teacher.
Franklin presses two fingers against Gem’s neck. ‘N-no. He’s got a strong pulse.’ He scowls at Dr Hewett. ‘You can’t just go around electrocuting people!’
‘There will be no permanent damage,’ Hewett assures us.
‘That’s kind of not the point,’ I say, at the risk of getting shot.
Having heard that Gem won’t die, Tia turns her attention to her own Leyden gun. Like any good Cephalopod, she sets it down and starts to disassemble it. Her mass of bronze corkscrew hair sways and bounces around her face like the coils of a complicated machine. She extracts a projectile from the top of the magazine and holds it up for inspection. It’s a shiny white lozenge about the size and shape of … Well, honestly, the first thing it reminds me of is a tampon.
‘Some kind of glass?’ Tia asks.
‘Not exactly,’ says Hewett. ‘Each projectile is based on a Leyden jar. It stores an electrical charge that is released upon impact. But the casing is constructed from a special type of secreted calcium carbonate.’
‘Like abalone shell,’ I say.
Hewett looks pleased. ‘Precisely, Prefect Dakkar.’
I try not to feel gratified about giving him a correct response. We’re not in class any more. Also, he just shot my bodyguard.