When I’m several yards away, I look back at them. “Looks like you were right, O. The path is clear.”
In the shaded oranges and blues of my goggles, I see Orion sling an arm around Dani’s shoulders.
“You can’t see it right now, Morales,” he tells her cheerfully, “but my expression is very smug.”
Dani hip-checks him off her. “And mine is very murderous. Lead the way, ghoulie, we’ve still got a ways to go.”
We slog our way north in the dark, our boots quickly getting heavy and waterlogged as we walk against the current. I wouldn’t think water this shallow would be a big issue, but it’s tiring working against it, and the coldness of it and the air in the aqueduct quickly shifts from refreshing to numbing. An hour into it, I can barely feel my feet except to know that they’re still moving, and there’s a bone-shaking chill spreading all over my body. I clutch my arms around my stomach, but I’m still shivering.
“Hey, Skywayman,” Dani says, her teeth chattering, “what do you say you break out your handy tools and get us out of here?”
Orion cups his hands to his mouth, exhaling warm breath across his fingers. “It’s too dangerous. We don’t know what might be waiting for us on the other side. We should follow it all the way to the end, just to be safe.”
Dani shifts from one foot to another, alternating which boot is in the water. “And then what? You don’t think these aqueducts are just going to dump us out in the official Heavenly Room Full of Secrets, do you?”
“Hey, I get that it’s not an ideal plan, but it’s not like there are public records for this place or anything.” Orion actually sounds disgruntled, which… trust Dani to get a rise even out of him. “I’m having to play it a little more by instinct. And my instinct is telling me that it’s better to get as close as possible without being seen.”
“Your instinct also doesn’t have feet that are literally freezing off their body right now.”
“Maybe if you walked faster and talked less—”
“Talking is the only thing keeping my lungs warm—”
“That’s not how that works—”
“Shut up.” My voice cuts across their argument, and they both go silent, stopping short as they realize I’ve come to a halt half a step ahead of them. I stare down the dark cylinder of the aqueduct, tilting my head to one side and then the other.
“What is it?” Dani asks, her voice barely audible.
“I thought I heard…” There. A rushing noise, like a heavy, violent wind. The kind that heralds an oncoming magnastorm. A moment later, the view from my goggles fills with orange kinetic movement.
A wall of water, filling the aqueduct from top to bottom. Surging toward us.
“Val…” Orion’s voice is filled with dread.
Dani’s hand wraps around my arm, gripping me hard. “What do we do?”
We only have seconds. My first thought is to phase, but what about Orion and Dani? My goggles aren’t picking up anything beyond the walls of the aqueduct anyway, and phasing backward would just delay the inevitable.
Whirling around, I grab Orion’s rucksack, yanking it down so I can reach inside and fish around until I find his strange little saw. Gripping it in both hands, I jam it deep into the wall of the aqueduct, as high up as I can reach, an anchor to hold me in place once that water hits.
Reaching out, I pull Dani and then Orion into me. “Hang on to me tight,” I tell them, and immediately feel them intertwine their arms around me, the three of our bodies tangled like threads in a rope, fingers twisted into one another’s clothes and belts. Orion ducks his head down against mine, and Dani tucks her face into the crook of my neck.
I stare down the torrent of water speeding toward us, and in the moment before it hits, I yell, “Hold your breath!”
And then the waves slam into us like an explosion, nearly ripping my hands from the saw with that very first impact.
All my life, water has been a privilege, a gift, but this isn’t anything like what I’ve known. This water is icy and vicious, tearing at us with greedy fingers. It envelops our bodies entirely, cutting off air, filling our ears, pressing against our tightly closed eyelids. I feel squeezed into nothing, my lungs aching for release, every inch of my body battered by the pressure.
For one, hopeful moment, the water level drops, and we have a pocket of air to breathe, to cough and sputter and gasp in precious oxygen.
And then a fresh wave floods over us again, even fiercer than before. The goggles on my head are torn free by the current, and I can’t reach for them. I can’t do anything without risking all three of us. They’re just gone, ripped away into the darkness of the aqueduct.
And still it keeps coming. My fingers are starting to numb and weaken. I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.
Dani’s grip suddenly goes slack, and I hear Orion’s shout of alarm even with the water rushing all around us. He frees a hand and grabs her before she slips away, but now his hold on me is weak, too. I can feel the tremble in his arm around my waist.
Our time is up. We won’t make it.
