Arcade Catastrophe
Page 60

“The guidestone is pulling me,” Risa said. “I think the attraction is increasing as we get closer.”
“Can you feel those sharks?” Chris asked.
“Yeah,” Nate said. Several prowled the water near the edge of his perception, the largest around six or seven feet long. “They don’t seem interested in us.”
“If they come this way, I’m out of here,” Risa said emphatically. “I won’t mess with sharks. Not for any reason. I’ll fly home and go to bed. I’m serious.”
“Where do we dig?” Chris asked as they neared the exposed portion of the tower.
“This side,” Lindy said, pointing. “It’ll get us to an opening fastest.”
Nate plunged his hands into the silt and began scooping it away. The others worked alongside him, sending up clouds of fine particles. At first their progress was hard to measure, but as they kept working, a definite hole began to form. As they burrowed deeper, a large quantity of sand collapsed inward through a gaping window.
“I guess we loosened it up,” Nate said.
“Whoa,” Chris said. “I can feel it now. The inside of the tower.”
Nate instantly recognized that Chris was right. Now that the barrier of sand had been removed, Nate could sense the water extending down to the base of the tower. He could feel the stone stairs winding down the enormous tube.
“It’s solid stone,” Nate realized.
“Yeah,” Chris agreed. “I don’t feel blocks. No bricks or anything. No mortar. It’s one big hollow rock.”
“I don’t want the guidestone anymore,” Risa said. “It’s tugging too hard. I don’t trust it.”
“I’ll take it,” Nate offered.
Risa handed it over. He noticed the pull immediately. Until this moment, Nate had never felt anything unusual while holding the stone. Now the tug was unmistakable.
“After you,” Chris said.
Nate drifted into the lighthouse. “I don’t sense anything alive,” Nate said. “There’s nothing moving,”
Chris agreed. “Stay ready for traps.”
“Can you feel how the tower widens out down at the bottom?” Lindy asked. “Like it finally reaches a really large room.”
“I feel it,” Risa confirmed. “Really big. Lots of space.”
“But no giant squids,” Nate said. “No sea serpents.”
“I don’t feel anything like that,” Lindy said.
Nate started gliding down the stairs at a gentle pace. They had a long way to go, but he didn’t want to hurry too much and blunder into a trap.
“This is perfect darkness,” Chris said. “It makes no difference whether my eyes are open or shut. I’ve never seen anything to match it.”
“I almost can’t appreciate it,” Nate said. “I can tell that my eyes see only blackness, but I sense everything even better than when I have full sight. That sense almost becomes sight in my head, even though I see nothing.”
“Not for me,” Chris said. “I can feel everything, but it’s way different from sight. It’s more like touch. It’s like my nerves extend into the water. I feel whatever the water feels.”
“I can feel and see,” Lindy remarked.
“No surprise there,” Risa said. “You see better than Superman. Should we speed it up? The Tanks will be after us.”
“We don’t want to hit traps,” Chris cautioned.
“What traps are we going to hit?” Risa argued. “We’re not touching the floor or the walls. We’d feel tripwires coming long before we reached them.”
“She has a point,” Nate conceded. “I’ll hurry more.”
As they wound deeper into the lighthouse, the guidestone pulled harder than ever, not with overpowering force, but certainly insistent. Nate suspected that if he let it go, the stone would zoom directly to the Protector.
“Finding the Protector should be easy,” Nate commented. “The stone will haul us straight there.”
“I hope so,” Chris said. “I don’t want to stay here long. This would be a lonely place to die.”
“Shut up, Chris,” Risa said.
“Our bodies would be lost forever,” he said.
“I’ll leave,” Risa warned. “Don’t mess with me like that.”
“The one who freaks out and leaves is usually the first to get taken,” Chris assured her.
“Don’t let him scare you,” Nate said. “This is more cool than scary. Think how ancient this lighthouse must be. We’re probably the first people to come here in thousands of years.”
“It’ll be cooler once it’s a memory,” Lindy said quietly.
They continued deeper. When the space widened out, it did so dramatically. The lighthouse must have had a huge building at the base. Nate could feel multiple large rooms. Trying to find the Protector would have felt really daunting had the guidestone not kept tugging him in an obvious direction. Soon it was dragging him along with enough force that he questioned whether he could bring himself to a standstill.
“You keep going faster,” Chris noted.
“It’s the guidestone,” Nate explained.
“I think I feel the chest,” Risa said. “Farther ahead on the path we’re on.”
“You’re right,” Nate realized. “We’re almost there.”
“I see it,” Lindy said. “It’s pretty. I can’t see inside of it.”
Nate felt the chest coming closer. It rested alone on a platform. As the stone pulled harder, Nate began to worry that his hand would get crushed if he kept hold of it. Just before he reached the chest, Nate let go of the stone. The guidestone thumped softly against the chest.
“It changed shape,” Lindy said.
Nate could sense the transformation. He reached out and grabbed the new incarnation of the guidestone. It no longer seemed drawn to the chest. It had grown somewhat. “It turned into a tiny replica of the chest,” Nate said.
“The chest is pretty big,” Chris observed.
“What’s it made of?” Lindy asked.
“Wood, maybe?” Nate said. “Worn really smooth? With jewels in it?”
“Is it clay?” Chris wondered. “Some type of ceramic?”
“It’s definitely smooth,” Risa said. “I don’t feel any cracks. It’s shaped like a chest, but I can’t tell where it opens.”