Delta

Chapter Nineteen: The Checkpoint

The floor slid away from underneath us and the next thing I knew, I had fallen into water. I forced myself to resist the urge of swallowing down any water and looked around. 

The entire area was filled with water. A wall stretched up in front of us and I rather slowly remembered that we were supposed to be going through a maze. I glanced over to Adrian, who looked worried and surprised. He gestured for me to follow him.

We swam through an opening in the large wall in front of us. Sure enough, it was a maze. We swam around a corner and I noticed a gap in the ceiling where the water didn't seem to fully fill up. Adrian noticed it too and we both kicked up through the water to reach the area. I burst through the water, sucking down lungfuls of air.

"Here's the plan," Adrian gasped as he coughed out water. "It's a maze, obviously. It's dangerous because as you can tell, it's filled with water. It's important for us to stick together. It would be bad if we got lost. Hopefully there are more places like this where we can breath."

"Alright. Let's get going then." I said, sucking in a last gulp of air before diving back underwater. I waited for Adrian to join me before swimming down a long corridor. 

The maze was hard. There seemed to be hundreds of small corners and dead ends and twists and turns, and it was ten times harder because the entire thing was filled with water. At one point, I wondered if Amy and Lee were waterproof. I hoped so. They hadn't been communicating with us at all since we'd been in the maze. Luckily, there were more gaps in the ceiling where we could pause and take a few breaths, but there weren't many. I quickly learned that breathing underwater for a long period of time was very hard, and I wasn't as good as holding my breath as I would have liked.

 We had just dived back down when I caught a movement from the corner of my eye. I spun around just in time to see the flick of a tail disappear around a wall. I grabbed Adrian's arm to keep him from swimming away and pulled him back up into the air pocket.

"Did you see that?" I asked as we broke the surface. Adrian was looking at me in confusion since we had just taken a breath.

"See what?" He asked. "I didn't see anything." 

"There's something down here with us." I said rather dramatically.

Adrian looked disturbed.

"Did you see it?"

"I didn't get a good look. Just saw a tail."

"Um, alright. We should really get out of here then. As fast as possible."

"Yeah. Just make sure to keep an eye out." 

With that, we inhaled a last breath and ducked back down under. I followed Adrian around dozens of corners and down a series of passages. I was on guard, looking everywhere for any sign of the creature I had seen. We turned around another corner and swam into another long hallway. This time however, I could see a large metal door at the end of the hall. The exit. Adrian saw it too, and he spun around in the water to make sure that I was seeing it. We took off, swimming as fast as we could. I was running out of breath, and I wanted to get out of the maze as fast as possible. 

In a flash, something shot out of one of the adjoining passageways and slammed into Adrian, slamming him up against the wall. I almost screamed in surprise, but luckily was able to stop myself short. Adrian was not so lucky. A stream of bubbles floated up from his mouth and his face went white. he must have swallowed some water. 

He was pinned up against the wall by a long blue creature. Four tentacles protruded from either side of its body and it was using one of them to grasp Adrian around the throat. I couldn't see it's face, so I didn't know what it looked like up front. Adrian looked about ready to faint. Recovering  from my shock, I grabbed the dagger out from where I had stuffed it in the sheath along with my rod. I swam up behind the creature and lifted the blade before plunging it down into the creatures back. Immediately, a long string of blood drifted up from the wound.