Tethered Souls (Tethered Twins Book 2)

Chapter Three

Grace reached into her backpack and retrieved two plastic devices no larger than a small fingernail. "You two need these" said Grace, pointing to Rex and Rufus, then running her finger around Rufus' ear.

They inserted the plugs and connected them to clear plastic tubes that ran around the back of their ears. From a distance it was impossible to tell they were wearing them.

"What do you think?" asked Grace.

"I've had worse things put in places," replied Rufus "...but what do they do?"

"We've tuned them to block out the lingering sound wave in London so it won't be able to damage you."

"So how do we get into the city?" I asked Grace.

She walked me over to the van she had driven in and retrieved seven tight black rubber wetsuits, perfectly fitted for each of us. Inside the van were snorkels, clothing, backpacks, masks with air tanks and large rounded devices that looked like torpedoes.

"What are they?" I asked Grace.

"It's called a scoodo. It'll help you get around underwater," she replied.

We put on the clothes Grace provided as well as the wetsuits. Rufus wasn't too happy about how they would make his belly protrude but we coaxed him into them non-the-less.

I looked at Rex and we started to laugh. The way we looked in our suits was just ridiculous. Grace and Rufus soon joined in the laughter. Even Olive had a chuckle, although Tom and Chris stayed stern faced. Chris was most likely focused on the mission, whilst Tom seemed to be watching Chris eagerly waiting for instructions.

Despite our lack of training Grace made the scoodo's seem relatively easy to use. We simply needed to hold on to them whilst they pulled us forward. One handle was moved forward to proceed and tilted back to stop. Another handle could be angled to help us go up or down, whilst we could shift our bodies to turn. Testing them out on the surface almost made them seem like fun.

The route was relatively simple in principle. We were to follow the River Thames directly to the Houses of Parliament. Grace would lead us with a GPS device on her arm and we had more than enough air to do the trip and later return.

Sadly the River Thames hadn't been a safe body of water for a long time. As I lowered myself into the water the first thing that hit me was the deathly cold that the wet suit did little to keep out. For my hands and face, which were completely exposed the reaction was even worse. My face felt instantly frozen, the heat sucked from it. I kicked my legs in the water desperate to warm up.

On the horizon I could see abandoned ships crashed out on the banks of the river with shards of metal, wood and assorted debris strewn across the water. Once we started swimming surfacing would be near impossible; if the cold didn't kill us the other hazards surely would.

The scoodo's were not quite as easy to manoeuvre as I had thought they would be. They had a certain buoyancy to them that made them want to constantly rise to the surface when they were left idle. We could counter this by kicking our flippers, although the smaller members of the group, such as myself and Olive, still found them very difficult to use.

There was no time to practice any further so I put on a brave face and told everyone I was ready to go. Surprisingly Olive did the same, although I had seen her struggle minutes prior. I placed the mask over my face and put in a mouthpiece that connected to the oxygen tank, breathing in the artificial air for the first time.

We dived under the water and moved out in a convoy formation with Grace and Chris at the front, who seemed to have far more experience, with the rest of us trailing behind them. I gripped tightly on to the handles and tried to focus on travelling in a straight line. Olive, located at the back, was no doubt trying to do the same.