Fishing For Love

Chapter 8- It's Dark

When Grace opens up the giant hatch, a gust of cold water fills the tank, sand and small pebbles fly up and around us, the fish swim frantically around at the sudden temperature change, it's hard to see what's at the end of the hatch; only darkness is visible. Axel swims up to me and tangles his arm around mine, he's viciously shivering with anticipation; so am I. If this was a normal situation, I would tell him to get off but right now... I'm terrified. We all look in suspended horror for a few moments at the dark flooded passageway, but Grace takes it upon herself to go first, she swims into the tunnel on the other side of the hatch, the pipe looks approximately 8 feet tall. She grabs something from her supply belt and cracks it; it's a heavy duty glow stick. When it's fully cracked the tunnel lights up with a luminescent green tinge, it's not insanely bright but at least we can see the perimeters of the dark, metallic tunnels.
"The first puzzle is a few meters further down the pipe, Dr. Arisdale showed me the blueprints to the exit when it was first built."
"What do we have to do for the first puzzle?" I ask fearfully
"It's a giant fan,"
"Hold on, come again, is your mask's microphone working correctly? I'm pretty sure you said 'a giant fan' just now," I say in confused anger
"All the traps weren't designed to inflict damage to Axel, Peter loved him, this labyrinth he built was meant to discourage him from leaving; the giant fan pushes water through a current making it nearly impossible to swim forward"
I sigh loudly into my microphone "Let's go already, floating here isn't accomplishing anything."
With that being said, we all slowly enter the porthole, it is surprisingly warm for such a dark place, almost like there's something heating the water in the tube separately from the tank. Axel is still gripping my arm intently with no foreseeable plans of letting it go, which makes it incredibly difficult to swim. Putting one flipper in front of the other struggling not to sink to the bottom of the tube, I start frantically shaking my arm in hopes he would get the clue; it appears he has had less social training than previously thought.
"Let go Axel, you're making it harder to swim." I say straining my voice through the pain of keeping us afloat.
"Sorry Friend, I was very scared," he looks down as he surrenders my arm, making it easier to swim straight.
He floats in the middle of the pipe for a few seconds while Grace and I swim forward, letting his hair cover his eyes and his body drift weightlessly before he stretches and begins swimming in hopes of catching up to us.
A million bubbles float to the top of the tube while the three of us glide through the warm weightless water, the uncertainty of what would befall us was almost unbearable.

We will soon know what lies at the end