The Arena - The Moon Trilogy - Book #2

Chapter thirty-nine:

Sam stared hard at nothing, his mind too filled with everything else to bother trying to incorporate seeing.

Since Clarity had fallen unconscious the second time, the water had risen at an alarming rate. It was now about two inches off the floor. They'd had to move Clarity and Scarlett so that they weren't laying in the water. They'd obviously closed the door, the action only slowing down the flow of water a tiny bit.

If they couldn't get Clarity or Scarlett to wake up soon, they would be doomed. They might run out of air before they drowned, but either way... They needed to find an alternative, just in case neither of them could pull it together in time.

He scanned the room for ideas. There was no way that a facility of this size would be able to function on submarine travel alone. There had to be at least one teleporter, but where?

It was possible that they had hand-held teleporters, only given to a few privileged people, but even one of them would cost a fortune. The only way that that would be possible: Eric Lance was more powerful than anyone had first assumed. But that didn't exactly click. Surely he'd only managed to scrounge up enough funding for a single huge prison building, which was now nothing but a pile of ash somewhere in Russia.

There had to be some other way; Sam just had to find it.

He racked his brain, but he couldn't think of anything that he hadn't already thought of a thousand times. His thoughts played forward, only to screech to a halt, and he was back where he started. Just like a broken record.

The only plan that actually had any chance of working was still pretty bad: Trying to find the submarine. No one knew how to pilot it. No one knew where it was. No one knew if it was even still there. Someone might be guarding it. They might get into even more trouble while searching.

Less than a twelve percent chance of success was a generous assumption.

He closed his eyes and sighed. Everyone knew as well as he did that they might very well meet their ends in the underwater prison, but thankfully, they were all rather calm. Only Benjamin was fidgeting nervously, one foot tapping against the floor in the rapid rhythm of fear.

Johnathan didn't exactly seem nervous or fearful, but Sam could tell just by looking at him that there was something on his mind. Something, strangely enough, that he wasn't sharing with the rest of them.

Sam continued to run through the list of destined-to-fail escape plans, idly watching the unpleasantly fast current of the water that pushed its way beneath the door.

After a long while and several more inches of rising water, Xenia woke up. She seemed unaffected by six of her limbs being chopped clean off, but then again, he knew nothing about her except the fact that she looked like a big spider had a child with Gumby. She communicated with Johnathan in that strange clicking language for a minute or so, and then there was silence again.

No one seemed to want to address their present situation. Maybe they were thinking, like Sam. Or maybe they were accepting their fate like cowards; he didn't know. He wasn't August, he couldn't read their minds. He just knew that he hated the silence, it infuriated him for no reason and every reason. So he decided to break it.

"We should think of a plan. Just in case neither of them wake up." he voiced the same broken record scratch of a thought that had been cycling through his head for the past half-hour. Everyone but Johnathan and Xenia looked up at the source of the interruption of the silence.

"Do you have any ideas? Johnathan?" Sam asked, hoping to flush out whatever it was that the guy seemed to be hiding.

"I do." he glances up briefly at Sam with a strange, unreadable look in his eyes. And of course, he didn't say anything more.

"Do you think you could share it?" Sam asked, pushing back the tide of annoyance. It wouldn't help to lose his temper over something like this, even if it was a life or death situation,

Johnathan seemed to contemplate for a moment. "It might get us all killed." He said finally, still not explaining anything whatsoever.

"If we don't have a plan then we're going to die anyway." Sam sighed, getting frustrated despite his attempts not to. Didn't he understand their circumstances? At all?

"It's not exactly something I can explain." He said, somehow managing to dodge the question again.

Sam was becoming increasingly irritated. Why didn't he just say what he needed to say, instead of beating around the bush? It was bad enough that he had to be secretive about everything.

He knew that not everyone in the group trusted him completely because of his past as a mercenary, but he wasn't the one they should distrust. Johnathan seemed much more suspicious; shrouded in the darkness of mystery. He could be hiding anything.

"Well, you can at least try." He rolled his eyes in his direction, willing his annoyance to defuse. Staring fights and pointing fingers wasn't ever gonna help. And this time, Sam was sure that Johnathan didn't have any more escape routes.

But he wasn't even paying attention anymore.

Sam opened his mouth to put a stop to it right away, only to realize that there was a purpose to the way he stared. It wasn't just zoning out into space-land. He was staring at Clarity.

Johnathan didn't move his gaze at all. He was still as a statue. A drip of blood trailed from his nose, leaking past his tight-closed lips and onto his neck without even garnering a twitch as a response. Whatever he was doing seemed to take up a great deal of his concentration.

"Johnathan?" he asked carefully, leaning closer.

Johnathan made no signs that he'd even heard.

Just as Sam was about to step forward to shake Johnathan out of his stupor, Clarity gasped loudly.

Sam's attention was instantly grabbed by the noise, and he all but forgot about Johnathan when he saw that Clarity was conscious again. A faint color had returned to her ghostly face, and even the blood from her wound was trickling a bit slower.

Just seconds after Clarity woke, Johnathan took her place in the number of unconscious people in the room. His face finally slackened from the tight expression of concentration as he slowly tilted forward.

Alex was just in time to snag the very edge of his shirt collar to keep his face from smacking into the floor.

Sam sighed inwardly. Nothing made sense anymore, least of all Johnathan.