The Dictator

Chapter Twenty

Alina stood with Flynn, in the lab. On the bench next to them was the tangle of wires and metal that Alina knew was the nuclear bomb. She looked at Flynn. He just stood there, a defeated expression on his face. In his hand, he held the glass box of uranium.
"Well." he said, in a tired voice. "I guess this is it. We are going to have to do it. I doubt I could break the box, and if I did, the radiation poisoning would probably kill us. Plus, Miles knows we have it, so we would have to explain it to him. And we probably wouldn't survive it..."

Alina frowned as he tailed off.
"If you can't break it, then how can we put it in?" Flynn smiled grimly at her.
"The box goes in with it. You see these electrodes on the side?" he said, tapping lightly on the side of the crystal square. "They connect up to the wires of whatever machine they are used in. In this case..." he paused and gestured at the bomb. "An instrument of destruction."

He turned slowly and lifted the box into a dark cavity in the heart of the bomb. After sliding it in, he grabbed a rusty spanner off the bench and thrust it with nervous speed into the inner workings.. He looked up at Alina with a defeated smile. "This could go wrong. If so, we'll be dead so fast we won't even notice. It'll probably kill Miles as well if that happens. Watch that dial over there. If it turns red, then we're sunk." Biting his lip, he went back to bending over the bomb.

Alina turned round and saw the dial he had pointed to. It was set into the centre of the desk. The needle was trembling between green and red, as if it was scared of what could be about to happen. Suddenly there was a twanging sound from the bomb, and a spring shoot out of the bomb. Flynn swore loudly, the first time Alina had heard him use foul language. The spring rolled out of sight under the desk. He leaped to the ground and started scrambling under the desk, desperately trying to lay hands on it.

"If we don't find that spring, the bomb will go off!" he told Alina in a panicked voice. She immediately got down, and started reaching under the desk. Unseen by both of them, the needle swang into orange.