Unity Read Online Free Page B

feet, there are three sets of glowing green and impressed eyes looking at me. “It’s called leverage,” I say, uncomfortable with their attention.
    “We understand the concept,” Daniel explains. “We just couldn’t do it.”
    I’m not sure about Gwen. She seems pretty capable. But Daniel is right. He and Gizmo would be trapped in here without help. I put my shoulder into the door and shove. There’s a slight give, but the door isn’t budging for me. “Going to need help.”
    The moment the words leave my mouth, Daniel and Gizmo throw their feeble weight into the door. After turning her back to the door, even Gwen adds her body to the effort. The hatch moves, but it’s like there’s someone on the other side, pushing back. When the door budges a little and water surges in, I understand why. We might not be adrift at sea, but we’re not totally out of the water yet, either.
    “We need to get it above the water line!” I shout, before grinding my teeth and shoving harder. Daniel shouts beside me, putting every ounce of muscle his little body has into the effort.
    Water surges past my ankles as the hatch lifts higher. The warm liquid rushes to the back of the cabin, sloshing against the far end and the door leading to the cockpit.
    The pilots.
    The hatch is freed from the water, and it rises up. The sudden rush of water sweeps the go-packs at my feet away, and Gizmo along with them. Hand striking out like a snake, I catch Gizmo’s flight suit before he’s pulled back inside the cabin. With one hand supporting the hatch, I toss Gizmo outside, into two feet of water. It’s going to fill the cabin until it’s even with the water outside. The pilots will be trapped. I crack my last glowstick and toss it outside, just beyond the water. A sandy beach is revealed.
    “Can you hold this up?” I ask Daniel and Gwen.
    “What? Why?” Daniel’s indignant. Afraid.
    “The pilots,” I say. “They’re—”
    “There are no pilots,” Daniel says. “It’s a drone.”
    A drone?
    A drone! A litany of three-, four- and five-letter words flows through my mind as a series of phrases that I think are something like poetry, an ode to obscenities. I keep it all inside, though. But I’m seriously going to punch someone in the face when I find out whose idea it was to send a bunch of kids across the ocean aboard drones.
    “Go,” I say to Gwen. When she ducks her shoulders down to leave with Mandi, the weight of the hatch becomes almost unbearable. Daniel grunts from the sudden strain.
    When my arms start to shake, I glance down at Daniel. “Get ready, Danny-boy.”
    “Dan...iel,” he says through gritted teeth. Then he pulls his hands away and dives into the water. The dive is graceful, but he’s forgotten about the go-packs around his arms and on his back. He slaps into the water, but quickly shoves up out of it, sputtering and gasping. It would be funny if I wasn’t now losing the battle with the hatch.
    “C’mon!” Gwen shouts. “Jump!”
    And I do. My feet push off, but there’s no traction. The foam-gel beneath my feet, mixed with the oncoming rush of water, has become something like soap. Instead of diving forward, I belly-flop out, my legs from the knees down landing inside the transport. I flip over and shove up from the water in time to see the hatch fall down like some kind of medieval execution device. I yank my legs back, but it’s not enough.
    My eyes scrunch shut as I wait for the explosive pain. Instead there’s a loud clang, and then pressure on my shoulders. As I’m dragged back, I see a piece of metal debris shoved into the door. Daniel is backing away from it. Kid saved my life. But he had help. I look up and see Gizmo straining to pull me. If not for the water taking some of my weight, I doubt he could move me an inch, though the look in his eyes says he would try.
    There’s a loud shriek as the shard of metal slips sideways and falls. The hatch slams shut, the gong of its impact sounding