Gen
I pace the shoreline, the zeloth or tentacle monster or whatever preoccupied with Kanuz’s ill-advised swimming lesson. Tentacles smash across the surface, and I don’t bother dodging. I’m drenched. In fact, the displaced water laps at my ankles.
My eyes widen, and I look down.
Oh, fuck me. My heartbeat speeds up, and I can feel the adrenaline kicking into overdrive, sending tingles down my fingertips.
It’s not displaced water.
The water is fucking rising. As I watch, open-mouthed, it surges past the tops of my boots.
“Fuck me.”
A hoarse swear interrupts my reverie at this new shit-stain of a situation, and when I look up, the goddamn monster’s holding Kanuz up by an ankle, blood leaking into the frothy water.
“The water’s rising,” I yell at him.
“Go for its underbelly,” Kanuz shouts back, his eyes wild.
“Oh, so now you want to include me in your death-defying behavior?” I mutter, looking around for something, anything, I can use as a weapon. It better be death-defying. I don’t want anything to happen to Kanuz. I don’t want to do this alone.
I need him to be okay.
“Hang in there,” I yell, ransacking my mind for a solution. The water continues to rise, way too fast. Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.
“What else would I do?” Kanuz responds, growling as he slashes at the tentacle holding him aloft. For a moment, I stand stock-still, unable to do anything but watch as he severs the tentacle. When he crashes into the water, my body unlocks, and I splash around like a chicken with its head cut off before settling on a sharp-edged rock.
Better than nothing.
My boots slosh as I move, the water nearly to my knees. They’re going to weigh me down. Fuck. I put the rock down, unlacing my waterlogged boots as fast as I can. They float where I abandon them, and I work at the wet button to my pants, losing those too. I need to move as quickly as I can if I have a snowball’s chance in hell of finding the tentacle monster’s underbelly.
I didn’t even know tentacle monsters had bellies, but here I am, in alien hell, learning all kinds of new, fucked-up shit!
Clad in my underwear, I shiver as the water hits my thighs, grabbing the sharp rock from where I’ve left it. The current of the rushing water tugs at my legs, pulling me backward, but I grit my teeth and push through to where Kanuz disappeared into the dark depths.
“Fuck the Federation,” I grit out, furious and pumped up with adrenaline. “Fuck them for doing this to us.” The alien monster makes a strange wet-sounding scream, and I glare at it. “And fuck you, too!”
I take another step forward, and my bare foot lands on nothing.
I’m in too deep now. I snort, then fill my lungs with air, and plunge into the abyss.
Cold water rushes all around me, and I open my eyes, trying to get my bearings. It’s pitch black at first. But as I swim deeper, narrowly avoiding the tentacles, which seem occupied with Kanuz, definitely the bigger threat of the two of us, something blinks brightly deep, deep down.
A tentacle lashes at me, and bubbles burst from my mouth as it tears at my leg. I don’t bother looking back, pushing deeper and away from the pain, away from the thrashing water above. The little lights below beckon, and I swim faster, my ears popping and lungs starting to burn.
Fish. It’s little white fish, all glowing, as they flit around a circular object… bubbles stream from my mouth, and I try to make out the sculpture carved underground.
A serpent, slithering up a tree. No, not a tree. I swim as close as I dare, my brain yelling at me to breathe, as I try to get a better look.
It’s a fucking handle. It’s a water release valve.
It’s a sluice gate.
Holy shit. Hope wells in me, and I kick my legs as hard as I can, dots dancing before my eyes with the need for air. It takes much too long to reach the surface, and I cough as I suck as much air in as I can.
“Gen, get its underbelly!” Kanuz shouts at me, still battling the thing.
“There’s a door under there,” I scream. “I’m going to open it.”
“Good, yes, my brilliant flower, do that.”
“Don’t die!” I shout at him, noting in a rising panic that he’s bleeding from several deep lacerations.
“I will not die before I have claimed you,” he says dramatically.
“My hero,” I tell him, and I’m not even sure if I’m being sarcastic. I’m pretty impressed with him, to be honest. I start hyperventilating, trying to flood my blood stream with oxygen. Hopefully the Suevan goddess didn’t fucking rust the damn valve, or her little pet tentacle monster is going to have a nice dinner.
Okay. I can’t put it off any longer. I take one last gulp of sweet cave air, and I swim as fast as I fucking can, heading for the sluice gate. The glowing fish dart around me, unbothered, and my ears pop as I yank at the gate. Nothing happens. Shit. That’s not working.
I blow out a controlled stream of air, my face twisting as I strain at the door. Nothing.
“Fuck,” I mutter, losing more air as the water swallows the word. Stupid.
I twist the handle this time, bracing my feet against the stone floor. A muffled clicking noise interrupts the rushing of water.
The sluice gate gives.
I twist more, relief and need to be out of this goddamn pool overriding every cell in my body screaming for more air. My thighs burn, the metal tearing my palms where I grip the bar, and heave, throwing my weight against it.
Might be easier if I were Suevan, but I’m a human, and I’m still gonna fucking do this thing.
When it swings open, I am unprepared for the shift in the current.
Stupid, stupid, idiot sandwich.
The gate grinds all the way open, and I’m immediately sucked into the opening, my chest burning with the need to breathe, my brain yelling at me to keep my fucking mouth and nose shut.
Water rushes around me so fast that I squeeze my eyes shut, crossing my arms over my chest and holding on to myself for dear life. Guilt tugs at me just as hard. Kanuz. I want to sob, but I’m too afraid to drown, so I simply hug myself.
My head breaks through the surface.
I gasp in a lungful of delicious oxygen, and this time, I let myself sob. Relief and fear both pound through me, and I can’t stop crying. I’m alive. Kanuz is… not here.
I look back, trying to figure out how to get back to him, taking stock of where I am.
Stone walls rise up around me, barely visible through a dense crush of verdant foliage. The water continues to spill around me, up to my waist, but I’m sitting in it, mud thick around where I press my palms into it. Birds call to each other from the treetops, and in the distance, I can hear a fucking dinosaur.
Some kind of courtyard?
I stand slowly, still dizzy, exhausted from the rush of adrenaline leaving my body. I’m still crying, though the intensity of it has faded, leaving me whimpering as I trudge back through the muddy bank, searching for wherever it was the torrent of water carried me from.
“Kanuz, please be okay,” I say, crying openly, rubbing my palms against my arm. Mud cakes my feet and ankles, and still I walk, to where water flows freely through a huge pipe. It’s still coming so fast. There’s no way I can swim through it to get to him.
Numb, I stand and watch it flow, waiting for a flash of green in the frothy blue, some hint of his skin.
But only water keeps rushing through, and another sob wracks me as I watch it flow.