Jade desperately clung to Nina with all her remaining strength as the pair plunged into the moat. Piercing the surface feet first, their speed caused them rapidly sink out of sight as Jade kept an arm tightly wrapped around Nina’s waist. Nina was incapable of walking, so swimming was obviously not possible either. If she let go of her now, Nina would drown.
Under the surface, the sound of gunfire from above had faded away. A tranquil silence had replaced it, and it was almost eerie as it reminded her of earlier in the night when she had made her way to the Inin Estate. While she could picture it clearly, the events now seemed distant. The feeling of disconnection was odd, but she knew that she didn't have time to dwell on it. Forcing her eyes open with some discomfort she found that the water was surprisingly clear, although the darkness prevented her from seeing very far.
Her biggest problem, however, was that there was a current.
If she was going to escape in one piece, she knew that she would have to be getting out of the moat immediately. The Royal Guard would be swarming over her location within a minute, and Trim and Svanda’s covering fire couldn’t last any longer either. Right now she was a sitting duck, and after she had worked so hard to get this far she didn’t want her efforts to end up being in vain.
She tried to kick upwards, but the darkness around her had left her disoriented. Was she really swimming towards the surface, or was she just uselessly fighting against the current? It wasn’t something that she had factored in as she thought that the water in a moat would be relatively stagnant. It seemed as though her observations from a few days ago were wrong, as now she realised that the depths seemed to have their own story to tell. Unfortunately, it was a story that was currently dragging both Jade and Nina away from where she needed to be.
She cursed inwardly as she felt Nina’s weight tugging her in the direction that the water was flowing. Not only was she making it difficult to reach the surface so that they could escape, she was also preventing her from breathing. If Jade was finding things difficult, she didn’t know how Nina would manage to survive. In her state, she wouldn’t have been able to take a proper breath before they hit the water either and so soon she would run out of oxygen.
Kicking frantically, Jade swam in the direction that she thought was away from the current as she tried to spot any sign of the surface. If the flow was traveling in a circular pattern around the moat, swimming perpendicular to it should lead her to the surface. Her legs, however, were burning from her earlier push up the stairs, and she soon found that her stamina was essentially spent and her kicking was becoming weaker. For a split second she considered letting go of Nina to save herself, but she immediately scolded herself for having the thought.
The current that she had failed to escape from was picking up speed. She was truly frightened now, but there was nothing she could do as she was sucked along with it. Feeling herself swerve erratically through no motion of her own, she panicked as the current in the depths of the moat was now audible as it rushed around her. Clamping a hand over Nina’s face to prevent her from inhaling water, she almost screamed out what air she had left as her back collided with solid stone. The water had been dark before, but now her surroundings had turned into an absolute black as she felt herself scrape across a mossy stone surface.
Her mind flicked back to Reina’s comment when she had said that she didn’t want anyone to get stuck in a grille underwater. If she had guessed correctly, she had indeed been sucked into a chute of some form and her heart was now thumping as fear gripped her. If there was indeed a grate here, she would become stuck against it and drown. Alternatively, if this chute was too long she would also run out of oxygen and she would meet the same fate. Even if the chute discharged somewhere but didn’t offer her anywhere to breathe or escape to, it would also end up with her drowning.
And not only would she be dead, Nina would be too.
Fighting tears, Jade shot through the chute in darkness as her lungs began to ache. She had wanted to remain calm, but she couldn’t fight the panic back as she desperately clung to Nina's lifeless body. She needed to find the surface, and she needed to find it quickly. If anything, however, she was heading downward.
As though her prayers had suddenly been answered, the pitch black that surrounded her disappeared as the pair shot out from the end of the chute. Still underwater, Jade noticed that the current had noticeably slowed now however as a dim shade of brown crept into her vision. Finding it easier to orient herself now that the flow of water had relaxed its grip on her, she righted herself before drifting with the gentle flow and desperately kicking herself upwards.
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Ending her brush with death, her head broke the surface as she sucked in the musty air around her. Already she was finding it difficult to raise Nina’s head above the surface as she had no footing underneath her, but thankfully the water soon pushed her against a set of mossy stairs that led upwards. Slipping on them as she tried to haul Nina from the water, her arm was suddenly gripped from above which caused a short shriek to emerge from her mouth. Slipping backwards, she felt that Nina was being tugged away from her, and as a result she clung onto her with all she had.
“Do you want her to breathe or not?” Saela scowled as her voice echoed around the chamber. Watching as Jade processed what she had to say before letting go of Nina’s body in response, she grabbed the lifeless figure by each armpit before hauling her top half out of the water.
“You too?” Jade finally asked after she had pulled herself up and out of the water. The lighting down here was rather dim due to there only being a single light hanging from the centre of the stone room, but she could still see how the wet dress tightly clung to Saela’s body. With her short bob of hair in a sopping mess and a scowl on her face, she currently looked like a drowned cat of sorts. Not that she would tell her that.
“She’s breathing,” Saela finally sighed as she withdrew her finger from under Nina’s nose. “Somehow.”
Jade breathed a sigh of relief as a thin smile appeared on her face, but her gaze quickly hardened. It would seem that they had managed to escape from immediate danger, but she already needed to focus on what their next move would be. Their situation wasn’t ideal as not only were her legs aching, their clothes were also saturated which would weigh them down further. They didn’t have anything to change into either, and their appearances would certainly attract a lot of unwarranted attention if they tried to walk through the city. She didn’t think it would take that long for the Royal Guard to piece together what had happened to them, so it was likely that they would arrive soon. As much as she wanted to sit down and rest for a moment, they had to move.
“What is this place?” Saela asked, causing Jade to look around. Large, rectangular, and entirely hewn from stone, the room that stretched away from them into the darkness was silent besides the gentle the lapping of water on the stairs. Stone columns ran in neat rows as they plunged down from the ceiling into the water below them, and a series of intricate spirals that were carved into them were barely visible in the dim light. Besides the stairs that they sat on, it seemed that the entire room was simply filled with water as though it were a giant swimming pool, which had left Saela puzzled.
“It’s a cistern,” Jade replied as she examined a series of smaller holes that she could see under the surface near the bottom of the stairs. “There’s probably a series of them which are all linked to each other.”
“Why would that matter?” Saela asked as she shook herself off before frowning at the dress which still clung to her skin. Jade and Nina weren’t faring much better, but Jade had at least taken the initiative to peel Nina’s black sweater off before tossing it to the side.
“Because it’s why we were sucked through,” Jade said as she frowned at Nina’s saturated white shirt before looking around for the exit. Spotting a small steel gate in the corner of the room, she pointed towards it before returning her attention back to the water. “Someone is drawing water from further out which is causing the cisterns to level. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because we need to get out of here. Can you carry her?”
“I could pick her up, but I probably couldn’t walk anywhere with her,” Saela replied as the pair looked down at Nina. Lying on her side against the stone staircase that rose up from the water, Nina’s eyes were closed but the pain she was in was clearly expressed on her face. It was true that neither Jade or Saela had any idea what kind of condition she was in, so all they could do was take her back to Reina and hope that she had a solution. If anyone would be able to shed some light on Nina’s current state, it would be her.
“Alright then,” Jade said as she wearily stood up. “Get Nina over to the gate and I’ll get ready to take her from there. We’ll get out of this place and hide a short distance away so we can rest out of sight, I can’t do much with Nina over my shoulder right now.”
Saela nodded before picking Nina up with a noticeable struggle. Slowly pacing up the remainder of the stairs, she moved over to the door before dropping Nina beside it with a sigh of relief which caused Jade to frown. Was carrying her that far really that difficult?
“Easy lock,” Saela smiled as she looked back to see the scowl on Jade’s face. “I left my wires in my old clothes, do you still have yours?”
Jade nodded, and was about to step over to the door when the pair of them turned in surprise as the lock clicked open by itself. Swinging open with a shrill screech, the door was pushed aside and the pair could now see that in the dark space beyond it there was a man standing there as he scanned the dim interior.
Saela hadn’t seen him before, but Jade certainly had. Wearing a neat set of brown pants and an olive green jacket that looked completely out of place in the city, not only was this man one of Ormain’s, he was also currently pointing a rather mean-looking submachine gun in their direction.
“Looks like I was right,” he smiled as he glanced at the pair before his gaze flicked over Nina. “Thanks for picking her up for me.”