Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) - By Dan Rix Page 0,52
over the lip. He strained his forearms, and gradually, feeling like his tendons were going to peel from his wrists, he lifted the weight off his feet. But then his fingers slipped and he crashed backwards. When he held up his hands, they were frozen in the shape of claws.
Aaron tried everything. He backed into the wall, jammed his feet against the stone for leverage. He spread his arms and wedged his fingers into crevices. He untied his shoes and stood on top of them. But the inside of the well was caked with squishy moss. He always slipped.
And the blood had withdrawn from his cold fingers, the nerves throbbed. Aaron gasped for breath, and his chest stung with each lungful of frostbitten air. There was only one more thing to try.
Aaron squatted, tensed his thighs, and jumped as high as he could. He slapped his palm over the ledge. For a moment, he gripped the ooze, then everything slipped and he collapsed painfully to the bottom.
It was like volleyball. To get maximum elevation, you needed an approach, you needed to build momentum. But even if you were directly under the ball, you didn’t just jump straight up. You executed footwork. You shifted your weight, and that got you a little higher.
Aaron closed his eyes and visualized a volleyball sailing over the net. An overpass. The other team’s middle was already up, his arm cocked. Aaron had to get it first, he had to set his outside hitter. He’d done this a thousand times.
Aaron swung his arms and exploded upward. He got both hands over the top, kicked off the back wall, and pulled himself up until his eyes were level with the ledge.
It was a tunnel leading out of the well, scarcely large enough for a human. He was clinging to the bottom edge. Before his strength gave out, he wiggled inside the opening and collapsed onto his stomach, hands near his waist. His body shook from the exertion, but he had done it.
Except the tunnel went deeper underground.
Hopefully it surfaced eventually . . . as opposed to plunging three-hundred feet to tap an aquifer. He would just have to find out.
There wasn’t enough room to swing his arms around in front of him, so he shifted his weight and scrunched forward. Darkness swallowed him, and the stale, extinct smell of moist concrete eroded his nostrils. With what little space he had, he made steady progress downward, half sliding, half crawling—deeper into the Earth.
Too deep. Aaron was about to turn back, thinking it was a dead end, when the tunnel leveled out. He breathed a sigh of relief and squeezed himself into the level portion of the tunnel. It was a tighter fit, and he felt his shoulders wedge against cold, damp concrete—and he had a terrifying realization.
It was only with the help of gravity that he had been able to slide down the tunnel. He would never be able to backtrack the distance he’d come. Either the tunnel led to the surface or—
There was a splash in front of him, and then liquid slipped under his torso and trickled between his fingers. Aaron lay still, panting. Had there been water in the tunnel all along?
He wiggled, moving only inches, and more water splashed against his chin. It was flowing from somewhere in front of him, submerging his hands and pooling underneath him. Sweet, icy droplets dribbled onto his lips—he knew the taste. Fresh rain.
It must have been raining again—no, pouring. The runoff from the hillside twenty feet above him was somehow draining into the well system, filling it up. Water gushed around him, drenching his shoulders now. Aaron strained against the cement, anxiety oozing in his stomach. He needed to lash out, tear the walls apart. But his arms were straitjacketed at his side.
And what if Clive and Dominic had already returned to find the well empty? They would assume he escaped and never check again. He was going to drown in this tunnel, alone.
Hours before meeting his half.
Aaron squirmed into the blackness, thrusting himself slug-like into the icy flood. Water rose in the tunnel, trickled down his back and sloshed up his nose. He stretched to keep his nostrils above the surface, but his head scraped the ceiling. His windpipe tightened in his throat. He coughed, but he couldn’t fill his lungs. It was terror that kept him moving, terror that kept him arching his back and jamming himself deeper.