Out of the corner of my eye, I see a couple other students racing for it, so I lay on the speed. “Come on!” I shout to Fifi and Arjun, who are lagging a little behind. “This is our last chance to be in the same group.”
They groan but pick up the pace, and we hit the door just as the other group of students does.
Normally, I’d be nice and wait for them to go first. But this is a serious competition. And while I don’t know the rewards for winning—or the consequences for losing—I know which side I want to be on.
So I bump the other student—a guy—out of the way and yank the door open. As I do, I make sure to block as much of the doorway as I can so that Fifi and Arjun can sneak past me.
“Hey, let us through!” an annoyed female voice says from behind me. A voice that sounds an awful lot like Rhea.
Fantastic.
“Who’s stopping you?” I answer right before I dive through the door…and plunge straight into the dark.
31.Teamwork Makes the Scream Work
A SCREAM WEDGES IN MYthroat as I fall through some kind of tunnel for at least thirty seconds. Wind slaps against my face the whole way down, and in the background is an eerie moaning sound that has every hair on my body sticking straight up.
“Hello?” I call, trying to figure out if Fifi or Arjun is hurt. Maybe one of them is making the super scary noise.
Except the moment I speak, the moaning stops. It’s instantly replaced by what sounds like a million whispers. They’re coming from all different directions, and they’re all closing in on me at once. I try to figure out what they’re saying, but the whispers are coming so fast the words are getting tangled together. I can’t tell the words—or even the sounds—apart enough to even make a guess at what they’re trying to tell me.
“I can’t understand you!” I call into the darkness, hoping some of them will settle down so I can try to figure out what’s going on. But my words only make them more desperate, the whispers turning into a mishmash of pleas and wordless screams.
Terror slams through me at the sound, and I try to cover my ears, try to drown out what sounds like thousands and thousands of people in the most terrible pain. But the wind is so strong, I can’t move my arms or my body. So strong that I can’t do anything but drop.
Until, suddenly, the ground rushes up to meet me and I fall flat on my face in a field that looks an awful lot like the one I just left. Except with less trees and tons more fog.
“Where are we?” I ask Fifi, who’s pushing herself into a sitting position beside me.
She makes a face as she spits out a mouthful of dirt. “No clue. But that was—”
She breaks off as a loud, panicked scream sounds above us.
I roll over just in time to see Sullivan, Paris, and Rhea falling from the sky straight at us.
Fifi lets out a squeak and dives to the right while I roll to the left just in time to avoid ending up in another dogpile. Arjun, unfortunately, isn’t so lucky.
“Help!” he cries out, arms flailing. “Help me—”
Sullivan and Paris scramble off him just as Rhea lands, not in the dirt, but on her feet.
Big surprise.
I do my best not to roll my eyes, but come on. Surely all Athena girls aren’tthisannoying.
Her eyes are filled with disdain when she looks at us. “Are y’all just planning on sitting around all day or are we actually going to try to do something here?”
A hot flush climbs up my neck to my cheeks as I scramble to my feet. “I think we need to find the chest first.”
She lifts a brow. “You mean the chest right in front of us?”
I whirl around and, sure enough, there’s an old-fashioned wooden chest directly behind me.
“What are we? Pirates?” Fifi asks.
“It looks a little like that, doesn’t it?” Sullivan answers as he moves forward and tries to flip the lock in the center of the chest. It unlocks surprisingly easily.
He glances back at the rest of us. “I think we should just go for it.” And then he squats down and starts to lift the lid.
