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Inese looked perfectly comfortable in her slick, blue-black wetsuit. She waved as we approached. “About time! Enjoy lunch?” Everyone nodded enthusiastically except me.
“When do we dive?” Val asked.
“As soon as we get you trained. Come on, I want you to meet your instructor.” Inese led us up the dock. Considering how small the rusty boat looked from the beach, I was surprised at its actual size. It was a bit larger than a fishing boat, with three decks. A few passengers headed for the upper deck to sightsee and visit private rooms.
Tim twisted his light bulb charm between his fingers. “Is this safe?”
Val clapped him on the back. “Don’t be a scaredy cat; of course it’s safe! Just pay attention to the lesson.”
Considering my experience with the tides earlier, I didn’t blame Tim for being nervous. But I wanted to dive. According to my biology book, there were all kinds of unusual plant life underwater, and this time I’d have a rebreather.
The boat lurched as it disembarked, leaving the wooden dock behind. We followed Inese to Toru, a small man with unkempt black hair who spent the next two hours teaching us basic signs and breathing tips. I listened as he showed us how to secure our wetsuits and full-face masks so we could breathe safely. After the course, he had us try on the suits, which were uncomfortably warm in the hot sun.
“They’ll feel better underwater, where it’s colder,” he assured us.
“Ready?” Inese asked through the mask’s radio.
She dropped into the water, disappearing and then bobbing up again a couple meters away. Val followed, laughing mercilessly as she grabbed Tim’s arm and pulled him in with her. He shrieked and crashed into the water. So not safe.
Lance and I did our best to follow Inese’s example. Water burst around me in a muted whumph. Toru waved, and the five of us swam downward and deeper, practicing our new diving skills before we reached the ruins. Schools of fish darted around, a tiny rainbow of colors. Aquatic plant life grew on the side of rocks and in the sand below. Barnacles sat aimlessly on their rocky clutches and I drifted downward, where the colorful seaweed trailed in the deep ocean currents. The seaweed felt different than the plant life above water and took longer to mentally touch.
Too bad Mom and Dad couldn’t see this. They’d love the view.
Since Inese had the watch, I wasn’t sure how much time passed before I realized Tim and Val were nowhere in sight. I checked again, but there were only three of us now.
“Inese? Where are Tim and Val?”
A school of fish zipped by, but otherwise, we were alone.
“I don’t see them,” Lance said, drifting. “Inese?”
She must’ve called them privately, because after a moment she answered. “They should be all right. They went back to the boat.”
She turned to face me and I saw my reflection in her mask. Her voice garbled. My heart pounded in my ears.
Green bubbles. My reflection, wide-eyed and helpless—
I gasped for breath as my mind tried to latch onto something, anything that would keep me out of Lady Winters’ horrible imagination.
A lone fish swam by, and that fish turned into a beastie, forcing me into a tube, the little bubbles pricking my skin—
Lance passed into my vision, motioning to a crop of dull brown seaweed. “Do you like it? There’s a lot of cool wildlife here.” The stability of plant life seeped between the craggy rocks and into my powers, eliminating the terrible images.
“Yeah—yeah, I do.” I gave him the okay sign and mentally thanked him for pulling me out of the nightmare.
“Thought you might. But why didn’t they tell me they were heading back? These currents are rougher than I expected. And I can’t move easily.”
“Landlubber,” Inese snorted.
But I was on Lance’s side. My legs still hurt from the beastie plant mission, and my suit rubbed mercilessly against the blistered wound of my shoulder.
“Hey guys—come check this out!” Lance called a minute later.
As I neared his location, the murky water cleared. The silhouette of a large, rectangular structure rose from the ocean floor. We still had sunlight, but the colors had faded, lending shadows across the geometric rock.
The whole thing was massive. Steps descended along the perimeter, all perfectly angled. Each was vaguely reminiscent of the ruins we’d seen in Guatemala. As we floated closer, the rock rose on either side of us like a giant stone hall.
Inese paused to brush the mossy growth from the carvings along its face, and small fish darted from the seaweed and disappeared into the distant haze. She chuckled. “Looks like we get to go exploring.”
“Is this all stone, or is there any way to get inside?” I asked.
“I could portal in.” Sunlight rippled across the formation as Lance swam overhead. “We wouldn’t be able to see where we were going, though.” He held out his hands and a purple-pink oval swirled into existence in front of him, several meters out—
And closing.
Water surged through the swirling portal, dragging us along. Lance struggled against the current and I grabbed his hand as the ocean pushed us forward. But the short burst of momentum I got from my speed lasted only seconds. I heard my name shouted over the radio, and then water flushed us into darkness.
The portal shut down and we skidded to a slick stop against a stone block.
I gasped for air. “Where are we?”
All those things Toru told us would happen if our suits were damaged... My heart skipped a beat. If my suit was damaged, there was no way I could hold off another panic attack.
“I can’t see anything.” Lance’s voice sounded ragged over the radio, but he was right. I couldn’t even see my hands. It was like taking the pill, only this time I felt the plants high above the stone vault.
I took a deep breath—
What if I was using what little oxygen I had left? My chest constricted.
One breath at a time. I had to take one steady breath at a time; force myself not to hyperventilate...
A dive light lit Lance’s feet and slowly passed over us.
“Turn on your lights. Let’s see where we are,” Inese said.
Lance pressed the button on his wrist’s dive light, adding a second light. I did the same. Each beam crossed over the interior of the temple. The floor was covered in large, ancient stone blocks with pillars that rose to a high ceiling. The pillars were covered with Asian inscriptions and drawings, and the room was bigger than I’d expected. This place was huge.
“Well, there’s why it’s not filled with water. Not sure where it drains, though.” Inese sounded nervous as she turned her light to a gilded grate that partially covered a large, square hole in the center of the floor. Water trickled into the cracks and disappeared into the hole as if it were a black oblivion.
I shuddered. “Don’t step there,” I noted. “Got it.”
“Right,” Lance said. “Is there air here?”
Inese unstrapped her mask and tugged it off, letting her hair fall free. She sniffed the air and made a face, her lips moving but making no sound. Both Lance and I removed our masks.
“It’s a bit stale,” she said. “Kind of smells like a fish tank—but yeah. There’s air.”
The room stank, dank and forgotten, tempting me to put my mask back on. Conserving oxygen was more important, though, so I left it off. I took a deep breath. The air was thin here—my head quickly became woozy... I grabbed Lance’s shoulder to keep steady, but he cringed and slipped on the slick stone.
Once we had righted ourselves, Inese motioned us to the corner of the vast chamber. Our flippers slapped the uneven rock. An echo rebounded from the walls. A large, Asian dragon had been carved from stone to hunch over a pedestal. Its jade eyes reflected our yellow lights. Each green eye glowed translucent under the light, whereas the gray rock was dull in comparison. It’s long, snaking tail curled around the pedestal. The dragon had huge, clawed hands entrapping a bullet-shaped object underneath and, like the first time stone, this one had four gold bands defining it. Instead of Maya design, though, this one appeared entirely Asian in origin. Which particular mythology, I couldn’t say. Washed-out paintings covered the interior of the temple, with little jade lion-dog guard statues resting at the feet of the paintings and colorful goldwork tapestries, and tiered rafters half-collapsed above us.
The dragon statue towered over everything, its face frozen in a fierce gaze. I held my breath. Outside, the ocean water murmured around us, currents rippling and sending tremors through the cavernous place.
Inese picked up the stone, then flipped it on its side. “Normally the Coalition doesn’t go for tomb raiding, but I don’t think anyone’s going to miss it.” She placed the stone in her bag. “All right, let’s—”
The ground rumbled and knocked me against the wet floor. The statue trembled. Chunks and fragments of rock pattered at my feet.
“Of course, I could be wrong.” Inese picked herself up and glanced at the crumbling ceiling.
Lance grabbed my hand. A crack snaked along the wall behind the statue. Rushing water spurted first, then poured inside. The ceiling groaned and cracked. I took a hesitant step back as pebbles clattered to the floor.
“Lance, get us out of here!” Inese fumbled with her mask and I did the same. She turned her light toward the dark grate. Water gushed in over the dragon statue, rushing through the grate, same as the rest of the temple. Lance opened a portal in front of us and a torrent of water flung us head over heels, waves trapping us against the wall. We’d be trapped here when the ceiling came crashing down. Lost forever—
The portal reappeared, halfway submerged under the rising water. “Go underneath!” Lance grabbed for my hand and missed. The radio garbled. The muffled din of water disappeared as I ducked under the surface, kicking my legs faster, using my speed until I made it through the portal’s lower half. Lance grabbed my wrist, holding it tight, and we worked together to stay on the other side of the portal, clear of the shells and the sand and the unlucky schools of fish being sucked inside.
I choked, unable to breathe.
Stinging bubbles and cries for help...
The water moved too fast, too close to be one of the tanks.
Then suddenly, the flow of the water subsided. My legs felt like jelly, and I stopped struggling against the tide, instead hovering in the ocean and catching my breath.
“That was close.” Lance turned his whole body to face his work. The portal was underwater now, just a wisp of purple matter before it disappeared. I pumped my hand in Lance’s, thankful for his help.
“Good job,” Inese said through the radio. “We’ve got the stone.”
A strange reflection formed over her goggles—a pale, flickering glow.
“Guys—” Lance pointed to a bright form above the temple. It flickered, shimmered, then finally shifted so that it resembled the dragon statue. Translucent, bright blue light outlined its gaping, angry mouth and twitching whiskers.
The ghost-like creature was huge, even larger than its stone counterpart. I inhaled air; more than I should have. My head spun.
Community—what had we made angry?
