“So, what’s the plan?” Serina asked, and I thought I heard Elliot snort, but I ignored it and pulled the schematics page for Salzburg’s prototypes from my pocket. All too aware of the time we were currently wasting, I jumped into a condensed version of what had happened so far, from the mountain getting attacked, to our initial jump back to the Academy, my deduction about the cameras, and borrowing my mom’s key.

“And this guy, Salzburg or whatever,” said Blake when I was done. “You really think he’s the one responsible for all this? I mean, he’s an officer, right?”

“Ten to one says he’s a Mayhem member,” Corban said. “They are the only ones big enough and awful enough to plan something like this.” His eyes went wide as he turned to us. “Whoa, what if there are lots of professors acting as secret double agents? Professor Treebaun was a real jerk back at the Academy, I could totally see him as a double agent. Couldn’t you, Blake?”

“Treebaun?” Blake said. “Dream on. That guy’s never broken a rule in his entire life. Besides, I’m not convinced this Salzburg guy has anything to do with Mayhem. I mean, isn’t it totally possible that he was just stupid and manufactured bombs on accident?”

“He’s not stupid,” I said, feeling my jaw clench as I remembered his oh so timely transfer to the mountain.

“He might be,” Elliot said, and we all turned to look at him.

“Why?” I asked.

“Well, he transferred himself right out of the frying pan and into a fire, didn’t he? Why go to the mountain if he was just going to attack it next? It makes no sense.”

“Maybe it was an unrelated attack,” said Serina.

“One attack at a time,” I said. “We fix this one, and then we figure out how to deal with the mess at the mountain.”

“So just to clarify, we have less than an hour to find twenty-five bombs,” Sam said.

“Twenty-four,” Elliot said, removing the small black explosive from his pocket.

“Gah!” I yelped, jumping backward, my hand to my heart. “I forgot about that one.”

“I didn’t,” he said, turning it over in his hands.

“So that’s a bomb?” Tess said, leaning in to get a better look at it.

Sam took it out of Elliot’s hand and peered at it for a few seconds like it was a bug under a microscope before handing it back to him.

“It’s a bomb,” he said.

“We can’t disarm it?” Eliana asked.

Elliot shook his head. “It would take too long, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.”