Inside Straight

DB dropped the gate in front of him. It landed with a thud. Chunks of concrete still adhered to the hinges.

“Like you said. No problem,” he said hoarsely, rolling his primary shoulders into place, brushing off the effort.

Curveball didn’t even look at him as she stalked past, stepping carefully in between the bars of the gate. The others filed after her. Ana waited until last, trying to think of something to say. Something that wouldn’t sound trite, or wouldn’t inspire him to take a swing at her. Not that she thought he’d really hit her, but right now he looked like nothing so much as a primordial creature from a forgotten jungle, hunched over, hands clenched into fists, hooded gaze staring after the blond princess he could never have. It might be best to simply creep away silently, and hope he didn’t notice.

“Thanks,” she said. A simple gracias always helped smooth things over.

He growled and marched after the others.

The tunnel opened into a space that looked like an arena: a bowl-shaped park with grassy sides sloping down to a pond some fifty yards in diameter. The surface was dark, opaque. No telling how deep it went.

A flag fluttered from a buoy bobbing in the center of the pond—bright red, X marks the spot. The prize lay somewhere under the surface of the water.

“Well, shit!” Hardhat said. Ana could already hear the bleeps on the final cut.

“Diver on Clubs’ll have this all tied up!” Diver, the woman with gills, could breathe underwater.

Despite the maze, the obstacle course they’d succeeded in traversing, despite making it this far with the sort of flair the judges had to appreciate, the game did seem fixed at this point.

“Maybe it’s not that deep,” DB said. “Maybe I can wade in.”

“Dude, can you even swim?” Wild Fox asked.

“Dude, does it matter?” the drummer shot back.

The water lapped almost imperceptibly along a sandy stretch that led out from the tunnel. DB went straight into the pond, shoes, clothes and all, until the water was up to his ankles, then up to his knees. He continued, dragging against the water, all his arms out for balance.

Then, abruptly, he disappeared. Sank straight down and out of sight. Kate gasped, hand over her mouth.

A second later he came back up, sputtering, shedding water everywhere.

“It drops off,” he reported, gasping for breath. “Three feet deep, then straight down. I don’t know how far it goes.”

He returned to shore, and they stood in a line, staring out at the water, potential heroes with no ideas.

Gardener reached into her ubiquitous pouch. “Maybe I can get some vines growing, pull the thing up to the surface.”

“We don’t even know what the fuck it is,” Hardhat said. “We’re just assuming it’s right under the buoy.”

“You have a better idea?” she said, glowering at him.

“It’s better than nothing,” Curveball said. “We can think of something else in the meantime.”

The conversation continued, but Ana was only half-listening. She was looking at the sand—the ground, the earth—and following it to where it touched the water. And continued, under the water. The soles of her shoes touched the sand, and she could feel the lines of earth spreading under the water. Maybe twenty, twenty-five feet. She’d dug wells hundreds of feet deep. This was nothing. She touched her medallion, mouthed the words por favor.

She could feel the whole area, the hills sloping up to where they butted against concrete walls. She could bring those hills down if she wanted.

“I think I can do it,” she heard herself say, and felt herself step forward, toward the edge of the water, before she realized what she was doing.

DB laughed. “What? What do you think you’re going to do? Hey—maybe you can dig a canal, drain the water. If there were any place to drain it to. And you could dig a swimming pool while you’re at it! But hey, we’ve already got one!”

“Would you shut up and let her try!” Kate said. DB actually shut up.

Ana knelt by the water’s edge. She buried her fingers in the sand. Only her knuckles and the tendons—tensed, straining—were visible. She reached into the earth. Watch this, Roberto.

The hills around them started crawling, the grass rippling. The ground traveled in waves, a subtle, miniature earthquake, creeping ever downward.

The surface of the water rippled, vibrating, like someone was shaking it. Then, the water lurched, splashing with a sound of crashing waves, and was displaced, pushed out, flooding the arena. Ana ignored the stream of water, several inches deep, flowing around her. She was bringing the earth to her.

The bottom of the pond rose to the surface.

The one large pond became dozens of puddles scattered around the whole of the arena. In the middle of the arena stood a brand-new island rising a few feet above the water. With a last shuddering of earth, a bridge formed, a stretch of thick mud leading from Ana to the island. Her hands were now sunk in mud.