Page 147 of Kingmakers, Year One

Right as I’m turning, a glint of gold catches my eye.

There . . . there at the bottom, where I suspected it would be . . .

I dive down to the sandy cavern floor, closing my hand around a hunk of metal the size of my fist. It’s smooth on one curved side, uneven on the others. It looks like it might be a sphere when it’s all put together.

I tuck the piece in my pocket, then turn around to swim out of the caverns again.

I’m running low on air now, but I probably have ten or twenty minutes left, depending how hard I’m kicking. Plenty of time to get out of here.

I only saw one puzzle piece, which means that either Mikhail already found his, or the two pieces were hidden in separate caverns.

Pondering on this, I accidentally take a wrong turn at a branch point and run into a dead end.

“Fuck,” I mutter into my regulator. I can’t make mistakes like that. Every second counts.

As I’m about to turn around, something seizes me from behind. My regulator is wrenched out of my mouth, blinding me with a spray of silvery bubbles.

I whip around, thinking that Mikhail has run into me, or for some inexplicable reason has decided to attack me. Deep down in my brain the less rational part of me is conjuring up images of sea monsters.

Instead I see something much worse: a boy in a wetsuit and goggles, with a shock of white-blond hair floating above him like pale seaweed, and a knife clutched in his hand.

Dean Yenin.

I expect him to attack me. To stab me with the knife.

Instead he slashes my air hose with his knife. He slices off the regulator in one swift cut, then kicks hard with his fins, swimming away.

I chase after him, knowing that he’s holding the one and only thing that can keep me alive: his air tank.

He’s swimming with all his might, trying to get away from me, and I’m doing the same, stroking with my arms and kicking hard with my fins even though my lungs are already burning.

I seize him by the leg. He kicks me in the face, his heel connecting with my nose. Doggedly, I grab hold of him again. We’re tussling, fighting, the twin circles of light from our headlamps sweeping wildly around.

Our underwater punches are dull and dreamlike, and Dean’s violet-colored eyes are crazed behind the glass lenses of his scuba mask. His bared teeth grip the mouthpiece of his regulator.

I expect him to try to stab me with the knife, but strangely he shoves it in his belt instead, so he can pummel and throttle me with both hands. I realize with a sick and chilling certainty that it’s because he doesn’t want any stab wounds on my body. He wants this to look like an accident when they find me drowned.

My lungs are screaming, convulsing as they try to force me to draw a breath that will only flood them with seawater.

I manage to rip Dean’s regulator out of his mouth, but before I can take a breath he hits me again, breaking free from my grip and swimming away with the only working air tank.

I could try to grab him one last time, but I know I only have a few seconds left. So instead I turn and swim as fast and hard as I can for the one thing that might save me.

No time for wrong turns now. Black spots are already flashing in front of my eyes, and the insistent gulps of my lungs won’t be denied much longer.

I’ve got five seconds at most.

Four . . .

Three . . .

My head shoots up, hitting the top of the cavern. I press my face against the stone, gasping for air.

I’ve found the two inches of space at the top of the cavern. I can breathe, but only by staying right here with my face tilted up into the tiny bit of space between the limestone and the water.

I’m trapped.

I could try to take a deep breath and hold it while I swim to the next cave, but I already know it’s too far. I can’t go forward or back.

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