Submerged

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

                Everything hurt. My back ached, my ears were wringing, and my arm felt like it had caught on fire. Okay, so maybe my arm hurt a little more than everything else. I tried to move. Make that a lot worse. I had mistakenly tried to sit up and pushed myself up, using my arm. I screamed between clenched teeth.

                It was definitely my wrist. I felt something shift as soon as I put weight on my arm. I could only hope that it was twisted or sprained, not broken.

                I squinted through the dark to see the space I was now trapped in. Dylan stared back at me with wide eyes. This plan really had not been well thought through. While we were away from the immediate danger of the flames, we were now trapped and would soon run out of oxygen.

                “I’m sorry, Dylan,” I whimpered, “I don’t know what to do. We should’ve just jumped out a window.”

                He stared back for a few moments, as if debating something within his head. Then, he opened his mouth and said, “I think I might have a way out.”

                I gaped at him. He was twelve. He was scared and had been almost silent since the reaping. Now, he had an idea to save us?

                “When I woke up and saw the fire, I assumed the games’d already started somehow. So, I grabbed a knife off the kitchen table,” he said, as if it made perfect sense.

                “Let me get this straight,” I questioned, “You had a knife in your pocket when we jumped down an elevator shaft, so we could have stabbed ourselves escaping the fire?”

                He was silent for a moment before saying, “I didn’t think about that.”

                “Well, I guess it turned out okay, but one of us could’ve been killed.”

                “One of us could’ve been killed when we jumped,” Dylan argued. I didn’t want to admit it, but the kid had a point.

                “Fair enough.”

                I felt around the top of the elevator, which we were sitting on. Somehow, we had left a dent in the elevator’s roof, so it must have been made out of a very thin material. That would work to our advantage.

                I took the knife and ordered Dylan to sit in the corner, as far away from the center as possible. If the elevator caved in, I didn’t want him to fall. I figured he’d already fallen enough in the last three minutes.

                Hurrying, as I was beginning to taste smoke again, I gripped the knife tightly with my good hand and smashed it as hard against the indention as possible. I felt it give a little.

Again. Again. This time, the knife stuck. I smiled. With all of my remaining strength, I dragged the blade through the metal like I was opening a can of sardines.

When I felt like I had cut enough, I shakily pulled myself to my feet and kicked the circle of metal. It fell to the floor of the elevator. So far, we had gotten really lucky. Thin roofs and sharp knives. Now that I think about it, the capital had some horrible safety techniques.

“C’mon. I got,” I told Dylan.

I jumped, and then helped him down, but I could only half catch him due to the pain in my hand, which had subsided to a dull ache.

We clumsily pried the elevator door open, stumbled through the District One apartment, and pushed open the normal doors. The normal doors that were District One’s only advisory.

Fresh air hit me like a blast of ice cold water, and I promptly fainted.