Page 109 of The Amber Sunburst

The two of them go back and forth about the rhetoric and the word choice, and Ophelia glances next to her to see if the Educator is upset by the difficulty. He watches stoically, almost analytically, but he doesn’t seem angry, per se. Still, whichever Priestess wrote this is about to get into major trouble.

If it was a Priestess at all, a voice whispers in her mind.

As the water level rises, Alexander’s voice gets thinner and thinner with nerves. “We haven’t talked about the ‘I’ yet. Who could that be? Mine didn’t have an ‘I’.”

“Someone who’s monitoring. Or someone possessive, right?”

“Yeah, makes sense.”

“So who or what are they talking to? Is it, like, a concrete thing or an abstract idea?”

“I—I don’t know, Kallias, but I think I’m about to…” Alexander trails off.

“To what?” Kallias asks distractedly, like he’s trying to think of a million different things at once. Ophelia’s heart speeds up with anxiety.

“The water is about to get to my mouth and then I won’t be able to talk to you anymore, but just keep going, okay? I think you’re close,” Alexander blurts out as fast as he can as the water rises to his chin.

“But won’t you float?” Kallias says.

“I’m stuck to the floor.”

That snaps him back to reality. “Oh, Forms. ‘No safety net nor scuba mask.’ You’re going to drown if we don’t get this.”

“Yeah, gorgeous, I’m pretty aware of that,” Alexander shouts, the water quivering right at his bottom lip. “I—I’m about to go under,” Alexander says, but right before he does, his eyes widen, and he starts to shout, almost incomprehensibly given the water flooding into his mouth. “Cracks at fraying ends, Kallias! Look at the ends—the endings!” he yells before fully going under.

“Alexander?” Kallias asks, but receives no response. Alexander, from what Ophelia can see, is still breathing through his nose, but soon enough that will be covered too.

“Shit, Forms,” Kallias whispers, abandoning his always-calm veneer for helpless anxiety. “The ends. The endings. I—It’s not—” Kallias drifts off into panicked breathing, too fast to get words out. It looks like he’s trying to have too many thoughts at once and now he’s overloading.

He’s breaking down, Ophelia realizes.

Kallias grabs the front of his shirt like he just needs something to hold onto and slows his breathing with effort. “What comes at the end?” he asks himself. “The last word?”

He tries it out loud, but it’s nonsensical. Ophelia winces. Alexander’s whole lower face is now submerged, and almost his eyes too.

“Alexander, are you… I just—” one of his hands climbs into his hair, pulling so hard she’s scared he’s going to rip it out. “Forms, this is ridiculous,” Kallias chastises himself after maybe a whole ten seconds. “Endings. The last letters? I, t, s, y, o, u. Itsyou?” His eyes open wide. “It’s you.”

He takes a deep breath and asks, quietly, “I am… me?”

Red shines from the ring with a buzz.

“It’s you. It’s you. So what am I, then? I’m…” Then he goes silent, and now he’s not hyperventilating. He’s not breathing at all. Like he’s realized something more than just the answer to the riddle he’s solving.

“I am a firefly,” Kallias whispers before she can have a heart attack.

Ping!

“Alexander?” he asks.

“Both halves of the pair have completed the challenge. Stay still and await further instructions for the next zero minutes.”

“Alexander?” he says again, this time so quietly she can hardly hear it.

Ophelia sighs in relief when the water is suctioned out of Alexander’s compartment and he gasps for breath. “I’m here! I’m here.” The only person more relieved than her is Kallias, whose whole body sags from releasing the tension in his muscles.

Then a ringing sound blares through all of the televisions, and a voice announces, “The challenge is completed, five minutes is up.”

She whispers a thank-you to the Forms that her friends are okay, and that reminds her that not everyone is. The challenge is over and that means all of the many who didn’t finish are going to die, right?