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Because I didn’t want him to beat me up when I already felt like I was being blinded by pain.
“Sof,” Jace’s static-laden voice cut through the tension, crackling over the comms. “You okay down there?”
“I’m fine,” Sofia replied.
“What about the rest of you?” Jace asked. “You alive?”
“Define ‘alive,’” I muttered, checking for broken bones.
“Brilliant question, Jace,” Grayson said. “Your tech didn’t scan for pits in the ground?”
“No, computers rarely do that,” Jace replied, his voice crackling over the comms. “Usually people check with their eyes.”
“Jace,” Sofia said. “Chill. Things are tense enough as it is. Can you help us out here?”
“Sorry, Sof. You had me worried there for a second. I’m working on a solution,” Jace continued, oblivious or indifferent to the sarcasm. “But I need you guys to keep it together and look for a way out. Keep your heads on a swivel; that pit didn’t open itself.”
“Great, more cryptic advice,” I sighed under my breath, rising to my feet despite the protest of my muscles. I wasn’t fond of the idea of becoming permanent residents of this hole in the ground.
“If you had scouted the grounds like you were supposed to, Grayson–” Teo stated.
“Enough!” Sofia’s voice cut through the tension like a shard of glass through silk. Grayson and Teo stopped, their eyes snapping toward her as if they’d forgotten she was there. “Listen to yourselves. Bickering like kids while the ground literally just swallowed us whole.”
“Sof…” Grayson started.
“I’m still mad at you, but you’re right,” she said. “It’s dark, and you’re just trying to help me get my brother back to safety. You all are. Look, we’re all we’ve got down here. It’s us against this damned pit—and our real enemy isn’t each other. It’s him. My fucking father. He would love to know we’re bickering. We all want out. Let’s not make it any easier for him to win.”
“Okay, okay,” Teo muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. “So what’s the plan?”
“First—“ Sofia began, but I interrupted her.
“First, we stop measuring dicks and start measuring these walls for exits.” I shot a pointed look at both men, my patience frayed to its very end. “We need to be smarter, not tougher.”
Grayson and Teo looked at each other.
“Ugh,” Grayson said. “I hate it when he’s the reasonable one. It makes me feel like a fool.”
“It should make you feel like a fool,” I said. “But that shouldn’t be a novelty to you.”
Teo held back a smile. “Okay,” he said, his face softening, the lines of contention smoothing into resolve. “Let’s get to work.”
“Grayson, check that corner,” Sofia directed. “Teo, those vines over there—see if they’re hiding anything.”
“Got it,” they replied in unison, and I marveled at how quickly the air in the pit had shifted.
“Victor,” Sofia called me over, her eyes locked on mine. “You’ve been quiet. Thoughts?”
“Plenty,” I said, “but none as level-headed as yours.” I offered her a wry smile as I looked at her messy hair, the way the mud had splashed over her smooth arm skin. “Lead on.”
And so, we canvassed the pit, inches of stone scrutinized under the scrutiny of four pairs of desperate eyes. It was as if the darkness had a personality of its own, waiting to swallow us whole if we let our guard down for even a second. The walls of the pit loomed ominously above us, like the jagged teeth of some ancient, unspeakable beast. When I looked up, I realized we hadfallen quite a way down, the mud the only thing breaking our fall. We could have been seriously hurt.
The pit itself was relatively big. We split up, each of us covering a different area. Teo and Grayson didn’t talk to each other, both of them diligently working on finding something. The air was still, humid. We could hear water outside, and I felt a raindrop on my cheek as I looked around. “Guys,” I said. “We gotta hustle.”
Teo turned to look at me.
“It might rain,” I replied. “And I know that, in theory, we could float to the surface. But I have a feeling this pit has a hatch or something to keep it closed.”
Teo nodded, understanding the urgency in my words. “Alright, we need to keep moving. Let’s check each other’s areas and see if we can find anything.”
