The Journey The Only Survivors

Chapter XXVI: The Fatal Collision

I didn't recognize the walls. There were five doors in the round room, and I had a feeling we went through the wrong one initially. We found our way back to the round room and came up with a new plan.

"Since we have already gone through the wrong one, and there are four more doors and there are five of us, one person will go through each of the four doors, and one person will stay behind here in the round room," Bryan said. "Anna, I think that should be you because you don't know the tunnels as well as we do."

Everyone nodded, and we moved toward our respective doors.

"Anna, if we are not back in five minutes, then choose a door and try to find one of us," Bryan said.

Anna nodded.

"Let's go," Bryan said.

I opened my door and ran through it. It looked like a hallway we had just run down. Maybe they all looked the same, but some led to a different part of the ship? The only problem was, only one of the dead ends held the fake wall. I picked up my pace. We had lost track of time. We would be making contact with the iceberg soon. I ran even faster.

As I burst through a second door, I felt more hope. The walls seemed familiar. I had forgotten how many twists and turns it took to get to the dead end. It probably just felt longer because of how nervous I was. I finally reached the dead end and banged on the wall. Nothing happened. I banged harder and harder. This has to be it. I can't stay down here. I kept banging until my hand was bruised. Clearly, I had gone down the wrong passageway. My only hope was that someone else had found the door out.

I darted back toward the round room. When I reached it, only Bryan was there. He shook his head. A moment later, Liam appeared. He didn't have any luck either. "Then it must be Bella," I said.

"It's been five minutes already, and she hasn't returned," Anna said.

Just as we were about to open Bella's door, it opened for us, hitting Liam in the face and sending him to the ground. It was a dire moment, but it was still funny. Bella gasped, saw us laughing, and began to laugh as well. Even Liam got a chuckle out of it. He rubbed his nose, and I could see a bump forming on his forehead. Liam didn't stay down long though.

"This is it. I found the way out." Bella said. We all sighed in glee.

Bryan took the lead, and we followed him through Bella's door. This is the correct hallway, I thought. As we reached the last few turns, I finally saw a glimmer of light, and, soon enough, we saw a slightly opened door held by a brick. We smashed our way through the door, scaring two women and a child.

"It's a secret door," I said. "You should check it out sometime. But right now, I would advise you to go up to the deck."

We hurried up the stairs, finally reaching the grand staircase where a clock told us it was eleven fifteen." We took a deep breath. Now we really needed to get back to the deck where Dad was and hope that the collision doesn't happen. We had no more time to look for the phone.

Dad must be headed for the deck by now. Maybe he is already there. Hopefully his talk with Nancy and Henry went well. And then it hit me. "The phone is close."

Everybody stopped and stared at me.

"This is the same feeling I had at the coliseum the day we found the phone."

"And I have the strangest feeling right now too," Bryan said. "It's as if I'm back in the coliseum fighting against Dad."

Liam raised an eyebrow. I couldn't blame him. It seemed crazy, but it felt true.

"What should we do?" Bryan asked. "Dad is going to be wondering where we are. He told us to be on deck before we struck the iceberg. He looked at the clock. It's 11:22. Come on!" He waved for us to follow him.