CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

The first one comes as the biggest shock. A boy's waterlogged body washes up through the opening in the floodgate. We know he's a Candidate, because he is wearing the grey uniform, and there's a red armband on his sleeve. He's floating face down in the current.

"Oh my G-g-god! There's someone d-d-dead in there!" a girl cries through chattering teeth, seeing him first as he tumbles out of the gate opening.

And those of us who are up in the front, crowd in closer to see.

"Anyone want to check if he's dead, for sure?" says a boy from Blue, straddling his hoverboard.

"How can he not be dead?" Derek says meanly. "Come on, he's been in a water-filled tunnel for the last half hour at least, probably longer. You wanna touch him? On the other hand, move over, hey, maybe he's got something useful on him." And Derek actually gets off his board, wades through the incoming water and kicks the body with his foot, then bends over and goes through the dead boy's backpack.

While Derek's looting, the rest of us get on our hoverboards and plunge into the tunnel. The nightmarish mood of despair has just gone darker by at least another degree.

"Did you see that?" Laronda whispers. "What happened to him?"

"Probably fell asleep, fell off," the guy behind us says. I believe his name is Jack, and he's got a blue armband. "I didn't see any blood in the water, or on the body. So probably just fell off, maybe got knocked unconscious."

"Everyone, stay alert, people!" a girl directly in front of us says. I've been staring at the deeply grooved hot pink rubber soles of her running shoes for the last three hours at least, as she's lying on her board in front of me.

And then, as we watch the water, more bodies float by. A girl with long pale hair, which fans in the current around her, passes right underneath my hoverboard. She is young, looks a bit like Gracie, which sends a stab of pain through my gut. And then she floats away.

Pretty soon, there's a body every ten minutes, it seems. . . .

And then the tunnel we're in widens suddenly, and we find that we are in a huge natural cavern. The cavern is even taller than the one we entered in the beginning of Finals. And there are several smaller chambers stretching in multiple directions, and the current is flowing haphazardly here. Hard to tell where it's coming from.

"Okay, this might explain the bodies," Jack says behind us. "This place is huge, and people got lost and could not find the next floodgate in time! Crap!"

"You're right," Emilio says up ahead, as we break formation and sort of sit there, levitating, staring around us. "I have no idea which cavern or tunnel is the right one. Where do we go?"

"Usually, the direction from where the water is flowing should tell us," I say. "But it kind of does not seem to be flowing from anywhere at this point, it's standing like a lake. Or at least, hard to tell."

"Whoa, look up, guys!" A girl says, lifting her face toward the ceiling, and directing her board to rise a few feet. "Check out the amazing stalactites! Those are the biggest I've ever seen!"

"You just keep checking out junk on the ceiling, and you'll end up floating face down in the water too," Claudia says from a few feet away.

I glance at her with a frown. For a moment our gazes lock, and ugh, Claudia has a fierce expression on her face. . . .

"I think we need to break up into small groups or pairs and go check out each of these sub-caverns," Jack says.

Meanwhile I am staring at the very still water below us, and the three or four additional bodies floating in it. There's no current, no movement.

Think, Gwen, think! What is going on here?

And then it hits me.

"Wait!" I exclaim. "Don't go off anywhere! I think that's what killed these people! They wasted time looking around, wandered too far into the sub-tunnels and by the time they got back to the actual gate it was too late!"

"Ooh, Gwen-baby! So why the hell are you in charge, puta?" Claudia snarls at me, turning her hoverboard around aggressively.

I flinch at the ugly word, but before I can open my mouth, Laronda exclaims, "Because she's the smarty-pants! Don't you know, she's Shoelace Girl? In case anyone missed it, if it hadn't been for girlfriend here, most of you in L.A. wouldn't have passed the Semi-Finals! So if you know what's good for you, you listen to her!"

"Oh yeah? You're Shoelace Girl?" Emilio says with a small grin. "Okay, you got my attention."

"Here's the thing," I say tiredly, ignoring the annoying fact that I've just been outed as that minor NQC celebrity I am trying very hard to forget. "The water is not moving because I think this is a permanent lake here—it's not going to drain, ever. So if we judge by the water level here it might seem like we have plenty of time to explore, but in fact, this is as drained as this chamber is going to get. Which means, the new gate is about to open any moment."

"Okay, so what do we do?"

I bite my lip. "We listen. We need to be very quiet, stay exactly where we are, and just shut the hell up completely, and listen for a sound of rushing water. That would be the new gate opening."

"Okay, I think that works for me," Jack mutters.

Laronda meanwhile glances around at the cavern with all the Candidates in our team flying around everywhere, tired voices raised in echo-raising chatter, and then she yells, "Everyone, over here! Right now! And be quiet! As in, effing shut up!"

Some people turn briefly in our direction. And then, most of them decide it's worth checking out whatever's happening here in our group.

"Listen to Shoelace Girl!" Laronda keeps repeating, as more and more Candidates converge.

And then I have to repeat what I just said. I do, and everyone, surprisingly enough, listens to me.

The cavern chamber is suddenly very quiet, except for the soft drip of water coming from the ceiling.

"So how long do we listen?" a girl whispers.

"S-s-s-sh," I say.

Because, in that moment, I can hear it. A sudden remote sound of a waterfall, barely audible in the distance, and coming from one of the larger sub caverns off to the right.

"Over there!" I exclaim. "Quickly! That's the new gate!"

"Go! Go! Go!"

And we fly in the direction of the sound.

* * *

We reach the six beacons about five minutes later, when the top half of the floodgate has lifted up all the way, which means it's far ahead in its cycle.

"Faster, go faster!" Everyone cries, as we fly past the gate, and see our tokens being auto-scanned, and then we continue through the normal-sized tunnel from that point on.

"Phew, that was a close call," Laronda yells out to me as we're flying in our usual formation. "Okay, my turn to use the flashlight."

"How much time do we have?" someone asks.

"Just keep moving!"

And so we keep going for about fifteen minutes at high speed, until we see the next floodgate. And yeah, it's already open too, so we missed the most optimal entry time, which means that we have to make up time again, and go really fast to reach the next gate before it opens. . . .

Things kind of blur at that point. I grit my teeth and hold on to the hoverboard with numb hands, and I know I am going way too fast, just like everyone else around me is.

Unsafe fast.

Because yeah, a few minutes later someone runs into a tunnel wall.

There's a yell, and the boy falls off, hitting his leg against a rock, so it's bleeding. His hoverboard spins out and slams into two more people, who also collide with another three right behind them. Because, again, we're all going very fast.

Seconds later, it's a team disaster.

"Stop! Stop! Everyone halt! Stop!"

Those of us who can, sing the stop commands to bring our hoverboards to a levitating pause. We breathe fast, waiting for people who have fallen on the floor to get back up on their boards.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. . . ."

"What about you?"

Candidates are checking each other, and two guys help a girl get back on her hoverboard because she sprained her ankle badly. A couple of minutes later everyone—including the original teen who capsized and caused our train wreck—is back on the boards, and we are off again.

But we've just lost about ten minutes.

Crap . . . crap . . . crap.

* * *

We approach the next gate with a significant delay again. Which means we have to fly just as fast through the next chamber. We've entered a horrible cycle that we must break out of, or we will not be able to maintain the level of pace for much longer.

"Go, go, go!" Voices sound from all directions.

"But carefully! Watch the walls! Watch the tunnel curve, watch for any obstacles!"

And so we stare with dilated eyes at the way before us, watching for any changes in the tunnel.

The terrifying thing is, the floor of the tunnel now barely has a trickle of water left. Which means that this chamber segment is almost empty and the next gate will open and begin pumping water here and transferring air out, long before we can reach it.

"Go! Just go really fast! No time!" Everyone's screaming, and we lean into our boards, flying so fast that the walls of the tunnel become a twilight blur.

Our ugly suspicions are justified. Water begins rising again as the next chamber is emptying here into ours.

"Go! Go!"

But—there it is. The six rainbow beacons glow in the distance of about a hundred feet, water lapping over them. And the water level on our side of the chamber is very high up now, so we have to fly closer to the tunnel ceiling, flattened as much as possible.

"Oh God, it's closing up! The gate is closing up!" someone screams up ahead.

We hurtle forward, reaching the beacons just when there's a clearance of only three feet remaining between the top and bottom of the lift-gate—and it's narrowing with every second. Candidates start throwing themselves through the slit opening. By the time Laronda and I are at the gate, we have to glide through carefully, keeping our hoverboards perfectly horizontal, and I even feel the top of the gate scrape against my backpack.

The people right behind us barely make it. And the last person literally crawls through the closing slit, while his backpack gets snagged. So he pauses, pulling hard until the bag is un-jammed, and then barely misses his hoverboard getting crushed in between the closing "jaws" of the gate.

"Damn! That was the closest damn thing ever—" the boy cries, breathing fast, and then we continue onward, picking up speed again.

Because there is simply no time. We have to compensate with high speed to break out of this doomed cycle.

* * *

We are approximately on our twenty-sixth hour. Where we are exactly, no one knows—Derek's GPS has stopped functioning pretty much after the first hour, which is ages ago, so we can only guess that we are now well in the middle of the Atlantic, deeper than anyone really wants to imagine, and more than two thirds to our destination.

I honestly don't know how we've even made it this far. I think it's the grueling physical endurance training over these past two months that is saving us. Without it, I've no doubt most of us would be long dead, due to a gazillion factors—shock, extreme tension, impossible exertion, oxygen hunger, too much carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide, calcium carbonate or limestone and other freaky chemicals in the limited "air pocket" we're traveling in, extreme cold, and ultimately, hypothermia.

Hypothermia is a constant danger. Everywhere, I can hear teeth chattering. . . . Even now, I suspect our bodies may be too far "gone"—messed up, damaged by the environmental stresses and the cramped position we maintain—so that we can not recover enough for the final sprint to the end, once we arrive at the central hub mega-cavern underneath ancient Atlantis . . . blah, blah, blah. . . .

The flashlights are mostly off now. We fly by the light of a single one that the person in front holds like a headlight to illuminate our way. Surprisingly, it is enough for our dark-acclimated eyes.

One thing is different though. The tunnels here appear to be of a more roughly hewn nature, less streamlined. Many of them contain weird "cutouts" or pockets in the walls, on all sides, like ancient lava bubbles or cavities, pock-marking the tunnel interior with holes like Swiss cheese, ranging from small to huge. The presence of these bubble pockets creates an additional difficulty for us as we try to navigate as cleanly as possible in a straight line and avoid the tunnel walls.

I shudder to imagine the antiquity and the amazing natural consequences that might have caused the formation of these tunnels—because yeah, I have an odd gut feeling these are no longer artificial but natural veins and arteries running deep through the crust of the Earth. And the ancient Atlanteans—and now we, crazy kids—are just using them after the fact, fully formed and minimally retrofitted for our wacky human purposes.

Incidentally, does the air we're breathing even have enough oxygen anymore? What is this musty, stinky miasma?

Okay, can you tell I am delirious and rambling?

Yeah, Gwen, the uber-nerd, only you would be thinking about ancient rock formations and atmospheric chemical compounds at a time like this. Focus, Gwen, focus!

"Does anyone know how many hours we have left?" a Candidate yells at some point as we arrive at the next floodgate, having somehow managed to regain our good timing.

"Hey, man I lost track. Maybe seven or eight hours left?" Emilio says in a voice that cracks with exhaustion.

"If this were a bus ride," Laronda mutters, "we'd be singing songs to pass the time. Too bad if we try that kind of thing here, we'd screw up our hoverboards programming. No singing!"

"Yeah, yeah, no singing!" a girl Candidate says and starts to giggle drunkenly.

It occurs to me, we really are experiencing oxygen deprivation, and who knows what other poisoning by breathing this crap air for so long. Now, I am assuming the Atlanteans have a minimally functioning air filtration system of some sort here, or we'd be long dead by now. . . .

"Hey, guys," Jack says behind me. "Wanna hear something scary?"

"Hell, no." The moan comes from Laronda. "This is all scary enough, no thank you."

"No, I mean, just think—what if the whole tunnel gate system collapses? Like, it breaks down and stops working all of a sudden? I mean, how ancient is this place? Must be thousands of years old! All that time, and the effing gates still work? Wow! Just wow!"

"Okay, you're right," I say. "That is the scariest thing you can say right about now. So just shut up, okay? Seriously!"

The guy goes silent, thank goodness.

And minutes later we reach the next gate.

As we pause and hover, waiting for it to open, a few of us take our drinking water bottles to take small precious sips, and eat a bite or two of something. In the shadows a couple of people use the deep bubble pockets in the tunnel walls to answer the call of nature.

And then the familiar grinding sound begins as the floodgate starts opening. The usual black fountain of water gushes in through the growing slit from the next chamber.

We wait, ready to plunge forward.

But the top of the gate rises about a foot over the opening and then it just stops.

It sits there, making an awful deep grinding noise, as the wall of water flows and flows into our chamber, with no way to squeeze through because of the force of current and water pressure. . . .

The damn thing is stuck.

We watch the stalled lift-gate. As the reality of our situation sinks in, I feel a stabbing cold pang of absolute despair in my gut.

"Oh no, oh, sweet, dear lord, no!" Laronda mutters, clutching her hoverboard with trembling ice-cold fingers.

"Oh crap, oh crap!"

People begin to cuss. And then someone says to Jack, "Well, f— you, man, just f— you! You jinxed it! If you hadn't said anything about these tunnels breaking down, you stupid ass—"

"Oh, we're so dead! We're dead!" Claudia exclaims not too far behind me. Her voice, it sounds terribly high, on the verge of crying. It's the sound of a terrified lonely little girl, and I have never ever heard Claudia like that. . . .

Me? I am numb. The cold fear spreads like a paralyzing agent in a drifting cloud to make me barely able to breathe.

"Oh lord! Oh, mama, please, oh, please, help us! Sweet Jesus, help us!" Laronda is crying. She is not the only one.

People cry and people cuss.

A few throw stuff at the walls, watching it bob away in the current. Because, who cares now?  Water bottles and gear and dead flashlights are no good now; nothing matters anymore.

We watch the water fill our chamber and slowly equalize with the stuck lift-gate between this and the next chamber.

"Is there anything? Anything we can do?"

"Un-jam the gate?" I say in a dead voice. "I don't think so. We could try to squeeze through that slit, but it's tricky with all that water current. I don't think it's possible."

Laronda turns her face to me suddenly with a crazy light of hope in her eyes. They glitter black and wild in the twilight. "Gwen! You have to come up with something! You're Shoelace Girl!"

"I—I don't know—"

"Bt you have to!"

"I said, I don't know, okay?" I yell back at her in a sudden burst of fury that is caused by numb despair. "I don't have an answer! I just don't!"

But Laronda, and a few of the others have all turned to me. I see their eyes like blinking jewels in the near-darkness.

I think, then. Feverishly think. . . .

"Okay," I say. "Maybe if we wait it out, and try to squeeze through when the current is at its slowest?"

"Can't we un-jam it somehow? We can try pushing up? All of us, together?"

And in the next few seconds, we all get off our hoverboards, and wade through the icy horrible water toward the gate and try to raise it all together.

We give it our all.

It does not even budge. Not with a dozen or more of us pushing and lifting.

"Okay, so much for that exercise in stupidity. Anyone else want to try squeezing through?" Derek says, after straining his thick muscled neck in an attempt to lift, and then trying to stick his feet through the slit.

A skinny tiny girl wades forward, her teeth chattering, and tries to go through the opening. Her body makes it halfway, and then she is stuck. So we end up pulling her back out with some difficulty.

"Damn it, the space is just too small," Emilio mutters. "Jus a few more inches could've done it—"

We get back on our hoverboards and out of the cold water. And yeah, we are out of options. The water continues to flow into our chamber and now it is higher than the beacons and a foot over the slit between the top and bottom gate halves.

In about ten minutes this chamber will be flooded completely.

And then we will drown.

* * *