Page 28 of A Sea of Secrets
Guess I’d never know how his ass fared. “Fine,” I huffed, pouting.
Ace lifted his head from Noah’s shoulder, his cheeks flushed faintly. “My head is killing me.”
Noah roused as well, looking at our surroundings and our current predicament. His eyes fell on me. “How is it that you seem perfectly fine?” he asked, rubbing his temple. “You were rolling in the water, taking in more than any of us before you passed out. You should be feeling worse than the rest of us.”
I tilted my head to one side. “Worse?”
“I feel like I’ve had a night on the drink, but without the piss,” Ace groaned.
I shrugged, climbing easily enough out of the sand, and stood slowly to dust myself off. “Haven’t you ever heard the term ‘drinks like a fish’?”
“Sure, but what does that have to do with anything?” Noah asked, shielding his eyes from the sand spray.
Whoops, my bad.“Well—”
“Shut up, bro,” Kayden barked with a jerk. The sand around him shifted violently, making me wobble on my feet. The noise woke the rest of the Potentials who had been snoozing in their own sandy beds. “I want my headache gone, not to get worse.”
“You guys are seriously weird,” said a Potential, poking her head out from one of the shelves. The petite woman was lying on her back above us, watching as she played with her long brown plait.
“Says you, hiding on a shelf,” Kayden snapped.
She shrugged. “At least I’m not buried in sand.”
“Don’t mind the grumpy catfish.” I waved a dismissive hand at the big guy, who still looked half asleep. “Kitty Kayden is just jealous he’s not perched up there like you.”
“I’m not jealous.”
I winked at him. “Sure, you’re not.”
“What’s the plan?” Ace asked, getting to his feet with Noah doing the same. “We can't stay here, waiting to be buried alive.”
“Well, we’ve got the sand part of the riddle,” Noah replied as he gazed at the sign. “I’m not sure what to make of the leap of faith. Maybe we should just search for an exit, though I’m guessing the door we came through is locked. Not that we want to go back that way.”
Ace tried the handle, shaking it vigorously until the metal knob broke right off from the door. He swore violently.
“As expected,” Noah said. He rubbed his chin like some old-timey detective. “Let’s start by looking for another door and eliminating the most obvious clues. Keep an eye out for anything that stands out of the ordinary or for any patterns, symbols, numbers—anything that could be a clue.”
Ace nodded as he rifled through the clothes closest to him. I did the same, checking for any objects that seemed out of place, or any hidden handles or levers. The sand continued its attempts to swallow me, wrapping around my feet and legs every time Imoved. It made my efforts to find a door annoyingly longer and harder. Tricksy little granules.
We’d tested nearly all the shelves and the walls behind the hanging clothes when a grinding sound filled the room. A second later, sand poured like a waterfall from the ceiling, and I quickly shut my eyes, waiting for it to stop.
“Fucking hell,” Kayden growled.
I opened my eyes, to look at the big guy. The sand was now up to my hips, but I dragged my legs through it to where Kayden had been sitting. The silly sea cucumber hadn’t thought to get up and was now being buried deeper beneath the sand. But he didn’t have to be scared, Zane was on the case! Kayden was the heaviest of us, so his attempts to get out were slower, and the sand quickly covered his shoulders and head.
“Marlin on a motorboat!” I shouted, digging fearlessly. “I’m right behind you! I’m coming!”
I felt his hair, then his ear. I dug and yanked on him, leveraging him out as best I could.
“Fuck,” Kayden howled, bursting to the surface and knocking me on my ass. “I never want to hear you say those words in that order to me ever again.”
“Marlin on a motorboat?” I asked, tilting my head to the side. “I think it would be silly to say motorboat on a marlin.”
“We need to focus,” Noah stated as he folded his arms. “You two are getting side-tracked. There has to be a clue around here somewhere.”
“Maybe we aren’t looking for a way out but a way to survive this shit show, like the last room,” Ace suggested as he, too, folded his arms over his chest.
I looked around at the other Potentials. “Feel free to make suggestions. This isn’t the time to be a seagull and wait for our scraps.”
