Page 132 of Kingmakers, Year Four

Right from the start, the tubes are narrow and congested. Claustrophobia kicks in hard as I realize it’s impossible to turn around. We can only keep moving forward, or painstakingly back up, bit by bit. And if someone were to become wedged behind me, like a cork in a bottle, there would be no going back at all. I’m glad only Freya is behind me, and not someone bigger like Leo or Adrik.

We have to shove ourselves through some of the narrowest junctions, the rough stone chutes catching and yanking at our tanks, as well as the waterproof bags in which we’ve stowed our guns and ammunition.

I’m mentally counting the turns.

Around the third junction, our train stops as Adrik hesitates at the head. I wait, stuck between Nix and Freya, unable to see what’s happening. When I come to the turning point myself, I realize the problem: instead of three branches to choose from, there’s four. The map we took from the archives is inaccurate.

Adrik presses ahead anyway, choosing the second branch. But I know it’s only a guess—we could be about to lose ourselves in the maze with only one tank of air each.

By the time we come to the eighth junction, which again doesn’t match the map, my heart is starting to race. We’re more than halfway through our air. We need to surface soon, one way or another.

Adrik is trying to swim faster, though that’s impossible with the tightness of the tubes. For all our sweating and struggling, we crawl through the waterways at a snail’s pace.

In the pitch black, there’s no way to know if we’re ascending or descending, doubling back or moving in a steady direction.

We’ve taken more than the fourteen turns we expected. As far as I can tell, Adrik has taken us in approximately the right direction each time—assuming these waterways roughly correspond to those on the map. But we should have reached the center of the mine by now.

At last, with less than a quarter tank left, the tunnel widens out ahead. We’ve come to an underwater chamber with a flat grate overhead. Adrik takes out his saw and begins to work on the hinges of the grate.

It’s impossible for us to tell how much noise we’re making—I’m hoping the water is muffling the worst of it. We don’t know what’s directly overhead.

Adrik saws away at the rusted hinges.

Our air dips lower and lower.

I can see that Leo is already in the red, though he’s keeping quiet about it. Anna notices too, passing him her regulator so he can take a full breath.

I check Nix’s gage. Calm and steady, she’s got plenty of air still in the tank—much more than me. I bet her heartrate is barely over 80. I smile beneath my mask.

Adrik finally cuts through the hinges. Slowly, carefully, he pushes up the grate. His head breaks the surface of the water for the first time in over an hour. He peers around, then motions for us to follow him up.

We haul ourselves out of the water into an empty stone chamber, black as the heart of a whale.

My body feels heavy and clumsy, exhausted from the swim in tight quarters. Still, it’s incredibly luxurious to be able to stretch and move in any direction. We strip off our suits and fins, trying to remain as silent as possible. Our every movement echoes in the stone chamber.

I can’t hear a thing from outside this room—not the sound of soldiers or gunfire or even the crackle of a radio.

My mother had a longer drive to the entry point of the tunnels, but I’m guessing she’s well on her way inside. She’s got heavy firepower with her. I only hope it’s enough to match whatever defenses Marko’s men have in place.

“Do you think the others made it in?” Kade asks, shaking water out of his hair.

Right at that moment, an echoing boom shakes the chamber. Bits of rock and dust rain down on our heads.

“Yeah,” Adrik says. “I’m gonna guess that’s Sloane.”

Leo unzips his bag, pulling out his rifle.

“Let’s get going,” he says. “Before we miss all the fun.”

Sabrina retrieves her own rifle.

“You know how to shoot that?” Adrik says.

Sabrina swiftly slaps a magazine into the stock, then pulls back the slide to chamber a round.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m good.”

Nix is the only one of us without a gun.

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