Slow and Speedy Win the Fight

87. Water

Haresa

Water engulfed my vision and I barely was able to navigate my way through the drowned room.

The water was murky from the amount of dirt and dust that the room had collected and I swivelled my head around. I needed to find something, anything.

The more I swam, the harder it was to see and the dark slowly swallowed my vision, leaving no opportunity for my eyes to point out smaller details in my already blurred vision. I was a fast runner and I knew I was a fast swimmer but seconds felt like minutes and minutes felt like hours. I didn't want to lose track of time but it was already difficult to manage since my sense of time and super speed messed everything up.

My hands grazed a wall and my toes rested on the edges of the wall. My lungs were starting to burn with how long I was holding my breath and I could only look around in desperation in hopes that something would appear.

My head emerged from the water briefly and I took in another gulp of air. My eyes briefly met Sheldon's from across the room and he pointed at his watch.

I pressed my lips together before I went under again. I swam towards the room where the source of the water was flowing from. The resistance of the current pushed me back and it only prompted me to kick harder. The water violently rocked from my feet and I dove further into the room. If water spouted from there, it meant something important was hiding away in it.

I reached the bottom of the room and my body could barely stay still from the currents. Whoever made this trap didn't care how much water they were wasting.

There was a tile that rattled aggressively and I didn't give it a second thought. My foot crashed into the tile and a plume of debris erupted from it. My hands dug into it hoping it would reveal some vital clues but all I was met with was more rock.

My chest began to hurt again and anxiety clawed at my throat. I wanted to hyperventilate but I needed to keep holding my breath.

I didn't want to admit it but I had to abandon the mission and accept defeat.

Before I swam back to Sheldon, I saw something rattle in the corner.

The tile on the ceiling was open and a small box was stuck in the corner. I greedily grabbed it before planting my feet on the ground to launch myself out of the room.

I swam towards Sheldon's forcefield as fast as I could and the pent-up energy in my chest burst.

All the air I was holding just came out of me in a giant bubble. Water entered my nostrils and my mouth opened to cough only to swallow more water.

Before I began to flail my limbs, I felt my body being yanked out of the water and thrown against a hard floor.

I hacked up the water and I couldn't stop coughing. A loud indistinct noise coincided with my coughs and when I finally got a hold of myself, I realized Sheldon was scolding me.

"What the fuck, hare?" Sheldon's eyes were sharp and lit with an intense fury that I hadn't seen in a long time. "You almost died. That was more than two minutes by the way!"

"Wow, you stayed behind for me?" I tried to laugh but it only made me cough.

I patted the ground affectionately, still reeling from the near-death experience. The familiar cobble design calmed me down and I could smell my dad's cooking from inside the house.

It took me a moment but I realized we somehow teleported to my house.

"How did we get here?" My eyes snapped up to Sheldon and I noticed a small hole behind him.

It spat out a stream of water before it completely disappeared.

Sheldon didn't answer my question as he dug around in his bag before pulling out his copy of the house key.

"Do you have a different set of powers?" I asked him. My chest heaved and my hand gripped the box tightly.

It seemed like he was going to keep ignoring me but then he paused when he saw the small box in my hand.

"No way," he crouched down to me and took the box out of my hands. "I hadn't seen this in ages."

"What is it?" At this point, I was sitting cross-legged on the porch and I was sure I got every drop of water I could get out of my system.

"The prototype to my teleportation watch. Except it's not a watch."

I blinked slowly. "You have a teleportation watch?"

He shook the box and water came out of it. Now that I had a closer look, it was metal and had a few switches along the side of the box with an inward cone opening at the top.

"Yeah, it's ten times better than this old thing," Sheldon said mindlessly. "This wasn't made by me though. It's using a titanium outer layer which I didn't have access to as a kid. I usually used steel or wrought iron."

"Someone stole your design then?"

"Yep," Sheldon said grimly and turned over the block once more. "On the bright side, it shouldn't be hard for me to hack into it and find any preplanned destinations. It seemed like they might've needed this for emergency escapes but promptly forgot about it."

I let out a shaky "ha" with a smile big enough to split my lip. "We did it. We had our first successful mission together."

Sheldon's face became grim and he looked at me, his attention completely off of his old machine. "A successful mission?"

My triumphant smile shrunk into confusion. "What?"

"You nearly died."

"Just nearly."

"Don't fucking do that again. If I say you have two minutes, be back by two minutes or under. You can't just run headfirst into danger without a backup plan or a plan to make sure you actually survive."

I sat there staring at Sheldon, stunned at what I was hearing. "You care about me?"

Sheldon did a double take and began to sputter. "The hell? No! I just don't want to deal with the paperwork of you dying. Plus, I'm staying at your place. Your dad would blame me for killing you or some other wild idea that would make him hold a grudge against me. I'm not ready to be kicked to the streets again."

I slowly nodded and as Sheldon was about to insert the key into the keyhole, the front door opened to reveal my dad. He had an onion in his hand and he had a knife in the other.

"Hah? Why you wet?" My dad asked and I slowly got up from the ground.

"I had to swim for the mission, it's a new thing."

He had a concerned look but he nodded nonetheless. "Come on, gin kaow and change clothes. Ah pai."

"What?" Sheldon looked at me. "I understood half of that."

"He told us to eat and to go."

Sheldon nodded blankly before making his way inside and I followed.

I never expected Sheldon to have a teleportation watch. It made me wonder what other tech he made and hid.