The Jade City

Chapter 19: Return to the Surface

There was something there. A small bump in the metal. Wondering how I hadn't noticed it before, I squeezed my finger under my chin and was not disappointed. The rest of the ring was smooth. This bump couldn't have been there by accident. Now all it took was a leap of faith and I'd be free.

As I expected, there was some sort of line running around that part of the ring, meaning that it was a break in the metal. With one of my hands pulling myself up so that I could crack open the ring without my chin in the way, the other sliding down the ring to the bump, I pushed it. And the metal ring cracked open. I got myself off the wall and looked back. A smirk spread across my face as I started to propel myself towards the surface. I hesitated.

That was too easy. Much too easy.

And suddenly I couldn't breathe. I choked for air, despite knowing there wasn't any. My eyes screamed in agony; my lungs were on fire. I felt like I was falling; the world around me was spinning. Then all went black.

Lloyd's POV

I tilted my head towards the sky, only to see about a hundred and fifty feet of water. In my hand I held a ball of fire, since the deeper we got, the darker it would get. I couldn't believe we'd traveled so fast. Morro noted the absence of sharks and other dangerous creatures. He said that that meant there was a dark presence in the water. We knew, of course, that the Shadow Knight was behind this. He had ordered the people in the water (if they even were people) to kidnap Rumi and kill (?) her.

I suddenly felt a surge of anger, or guilt, eating away my insides. She was in mortal danger while we strolled the ocean floor. And then there was Morro, acting like nothing had happened. Even if he didn't care about her, which I doubted, she was still my girlfriend, and he would care on my behalf, right? Right?

I glanced, or more like glared at his expressionless face. Lately I wasn't even sure what I felt about my cousin, whom I had known for years. It was somewhat like a roller coaster, where I was at first so incredibly grateful for his existence, then suddenly angry at him for so many reasons. As I tried to sort out my feelings, his eyes just stared straight ahead, and then he noticed me.

"I know you're extremely frustrated with the rate at which we're doing things," he said, with a tone that sounded as if he was suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. Or maybe it was merely my imagination. "I want to find her as much as you do. She's alive. You have to trust me on this one."

He'd said to trust him countless times, and I knew I should.

Then I registered what he'd first said. I want to find her as much as you do. And there was something in his voice... or was it just my imagination? I brushed it off. It probably was. Reminding myself to stop being so possessive, I stared back at the waters.

Not much happened, except that occasionally one of us would step on something sharp or slippery. There was a time Nya almost tripped, but Jay and Cole caught hold of her just in time so that the water wouldn't collapse on us. Once or twice, Zane would announce that we were slowly running out of oxygen, so Jay would shoot some electricity through freshwater that Nya formed with her spare hand, producing some more. I wondered if we were defying the laws of buoyancy by keeping an air bubble underwater, but I brushed that thought out of my head because if we were, we were, and if we weren't, we weren't.

And then Nya collapsed. The bubble popped. We all gasped and gulped in as much air as we could, but what was the point? She struggled to push the incoming waves but they were too strong. I flailed, arms waving and legs kicking. The saltwater made my eyes and nostrils sting. My lungs were on fire. Oxygen... I needed oxygen...

I didn't get any and blacked out.

...

And then I was lying on a bed, breathing. I sat up straight, gulping big breaths of air. Someone must've rescued us! I was alive! Hallelujah! I almost sang aloud. Until I took in my surroundings and realized I was still underwater. The room was made of stone, and there were holes in place of windows. The water made ripples in the "air". I saw coral, algae, and seaweed everywhere. After crawling out of bed, I swam out to the larger opening which could only be a door. My legs didn't help much.