All too soon, a bit of daylight was shining right into Alan’s face, waking him up. That’s funny, the light was coming from the floor and not from the windows, where the curtains remained well-drawn. Grumbling, particularly since John was just sleeping silently away in all his way-too-fit-I-work-out-and-I-don’t-eat-junk tight fitting pants that showed way too much taught ass from Alan’s angle, the half-ass engineer sat up. Maybe his phone had dropped off the table onto the floor or…
“Huh, that’s weird.” The symbolic diagrams on the floor were arranged in a pattern of structured links. The lined passed under the furniture though it also appeared to be floating slightly above the high spec engineered wood flooring. Alan knew exactly how high spec, Aaron made a point to tell everyone when he showed off the apartment. The lights were glowing with their own light, a sort of faint blue, mostly white. It was very much like the light from a phone screen in dark room but suddenly on a large scale. The pattern continued through walls and seemed to roughly encompass the entire apartment, with a thick circular border where he could see the edge of whatever it was.
It settled and disappeared under the floor, returning the room to darkness. Even through the well soundproofed flooring, he could hear the alarmed shouting of several voices from the bakery below. The world flashed a bright pale blue.
Even though he had been woken up prior to the sudden transition from couch to frigid open air, Alan was completely unprepared for it. Afterall, what groggy person sees a dream-like hallucination of a ‘magic circle’ or some nonsense that looked straight out of a fantasy anime, then actually expects to be teleported somewhere. Naked. That last bit, he didn’t even have a chance to contemplate, as he wasn’t just struck with icy cold air over his entire body, but rather he was struck with the sudden sensation of falling.
Alan may have been the only one awake but clearly not the only one who was experiencing this. Moments after his own scream fought its way through his lips, he heard three others. The clear blue water rushed up to meet them and they plunged in. The cold was utterly shocking. Alan would have sucked the water into his lungs excepting that he’d had just enough time to see it coming. Even so his diaphragm struggled to pull in air and the compulsion to do so was almost too much. Panicking and confused, he started to struggle to orient himself. Somehow the lifeguard training he’d had as a teenager that one summer kicked in and he relaxed his body, allowing himself to calm and start floating to the surface.
The water was truly, very clear. He could see John already kicking strongly to the surface near him. Two other figures flailed about wildly. One was female. Alan hadn’t ever seen Lucy naked nor had he honestly ever expected to, but given that John and two others came with him… wherever this was… and were spaced about the same distances they’d been from each other in the apartment, that must be her over there. That meant the other was Aaron.
Properly oriented, Alan pushed to the surface. John was already making headway towards where Lucy was only managing to froth the water. It looked almost like she was trying to climb a ladder out of the water and other than the sound of her splashing, it was almost totally silent. Disturbed at seeing someone drowning for real for the first time in his life, Alan almost froze. Aaron was too far from Lucy for John to help him as well though, so off he set to do what he could for his other friend.
Before he reached Aaron, Alan could hear retching and gasping accompanied by John’s panicked reassurance that she would ‘be ok’. That’s right, Alan might have had that one summer as a junior lifeguard, but John was a serious swimmer. Hell, John was a serious athlete. Had to keep the man-bod up for all his lady chasing. He suspected there was something else to it, unrelated to attracting the attention of the opposite sex, but Alan had just never been one to pry into other’s business. His own business? Eh, if they asked he had no qualms about sharing. Don’t do anything you regret and don’t regret anything you do was more or less his motto regarding personal privacy.
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Of course Alan just didn’t do a whole lot of anything, so that also made it a simple thing to adhere to.
Aaron was starting to struggle less and Alan pushed himself harder, regretting for this one moment that he didn’t ever take John up on that offer to join him at the gym more often… let’s be honest, at all. His arms and legs were already threatening to cramp up in the icy water and he had barely swum twenty feet! When he reached Aaron, he was immediately reminded of why it was hard to rescue a drowning person when you didn’t have a floatation device. Namely, that ‘ladder climbing’ behavior resulted in them frantically clawing their way up your body. Only you weren’t standing on anything and were thus immediately shoved under the water.
Water closed over his head and Alan sucked a small amount in before stopping himself, his lungs violently trying to throw it back up. Great, now he was going to be a drowning guy too. Only Alan wasn’t lost to panic. He let himself relax, even though Aaron didn’t let go and was flailing and kicking him. Working only to get Aaron up out of the water while his own oxygen held out, he felt the man start to convulse differently. Just before his lungs started to scream profanities, Aaron released him enough that Alan breached the surface again. He ignored the flotsam of bile and bits of nachos that met him. Frankly it was a very small price to pay to save his friend’s life. Aaron was still heaving out more fluid while managing to take gasps of air in the moments between. Alan just held the man and kicked hard to keep them enough afloat.
“What the fuck…!” Aaron eventually managed to shout.
“Right now, let’s just get to shore!” John yelled. Why were they yelling? Oh yeah, it seems they were in a small river and rapidly approaching some, er, rapids. The rapids looked kind of nasty actually. The water was so cold that Alan didn’t really feel his skin. Even so, the idea of riding the rapids bare-ass naked was not high on the list of things he wanted to do right now or ever, so he looked where John was swimming alongside a frightened Lucy, towards the nearest shore. Aaron and Alan set out and he quickly realized that of all of his friends… he was the most out of shape.
Damn Aaron and being a high paid tech CEO, doing his meditation and yoga and hiring personal trainers to work with him at work. The walking desk was probably a big help with that too… and that his meals were ridiculously healthy and from one of those partial-prep meal delivery services. Just heat, dump, stir per the instructions and you had easy, healthy, delicious meals. Alan had eaten plenty of those meals in the same day he had that double bacon double cheese double patty burger with the large seasoned fries and a large soda on the side…
Whatever Lucy’s motivation was, while she wasn’t a fitness nut, she and John had both gone ‘whole food plant based’ a long time ago. She also did go to the gym, though she was more of a runner and tennis player than a swimmer like John. She wasn’t a fanatic though so she was not ripped like John. Hell, maybe if he was going to get sucked into the rapids it was worth peeking under the water to see how good she looked out of clothes. She’d always been a very boyish build and often wore sweats and such when they hung out. Still, she had a cute face and John had held a secret flame for her despite his long string of curvaceous bombshell girlfriends.
Then of course John was like an Adonis, the bastard. Alan would curse them and all the other skinny, fit bitches out there, all gender inclusive, excepting for two things. He loved his friends more than his own family and… they had all reached shore and were shouting and pointing behind him. Turning over to take a look he barely had time to think about that survival show before he was pulled into the rapids. Something about going through feet first and on your back?