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JONAH

Jonah didn't want to return to the place where his friend had died, but here was was, doing exactly that.

Him and Kalin were rushing down the narrow tunnel toward the wide cavern with the ocean. Jonah was skeptical about his plan but he had no choice if he wanted to return to the Network as soon as possible.

The reached the end of the tunnel, which was raised about eight feet off the ground.

Minions clawed at the wall beneath the entrance. Man these creatures were relentless.

Jonah closed his eyes and imagined all the minions crumbling to dust as he leapt into the cavern.

His feet landed solidly and he started sprinting toward the shore once he heard Kalin land behind him.

They stopped right at the shore of the water.

Jonah knew that this very ocean fed water to the filtration systems in Lithana. He imagined the pipe dow here at the bottom of the ocean. He made sure he got then image in his head and then he turned to Kalin.

"We are going to ride the pipes connected to the ocean back to the Network," Jonah says.

"How?" Kalin asks.

"Very simply, actually," Jonah says closing his eyes. In his mind's eye he imagined the ocean drying up, leaving nothing but a gaping crater in the stone as evidence that an ocean ever existed here.

Then he imagines the pipe leading to the Network with no water in sight. Then he imagines him and Kalin standing in the mouth of that pipe.

He opens his eyes and is now looking down a slimy metal cylinder. It worked.

"How'd you do that?"

"Not that story," Jonah says, "not now."

They walk down the pipe, there footsteps echoing through the metal cylinder until they reach a part in the path there the pipe goes straight up.

Jonah closes his eyes and imagines them at the top of the bend way above

He opens then to find himself falling toward the bottom of the pipe, hundreds of feet below.

He catches the edge and Rachel's down and clasps Kalin's hand. Now they are dangling from a bend in a pipe, about ready to fall to their deaths.

"This is going to be harder than I though," Jonah says.

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