You can thank LEPrecon for pushing me to finish this chapter. Thanks SOOOOOO much to ALL the people who reviewed, favorited, alerted, etc.; I've gotten A LOT of eMails the past few weeks. Sorry for the delay; without further ado...:
Sean looked up to the top of the chamber as he thought back to the time he had first stepped, or rather dropped, through it.
He jumped down into the hatch, just as the eel was about to grab him and Hank. There was water all around him; he couldn't breathe! The pressure on his innards loosened, telling him that the water was slowly disappearing. Suddenly, his feet touched down on a floor in the narrow chamber. To avoid injuring himself any further, he quickly hopped onto his good foot and leaned against the rusty frame of the hatch. He then realized that he could breathe once again and dramatically, and greedily, gulped in stale air; air that hadn't seen a natural cleanser in ages.
"Hey; you ready?" Frank said, snapping his fingers in Sean's face.
"Huh? Oh; yeah," came the confused reply, the boy quickly shaking himself out of his stupor.
"Then let me—," Frank motioned to the hanging rope and grabbed it out of the air and tying it around Sean's waist. "There! Now all we have to do is get up... Everybody ready?"
A chorus of "yup's" and "yes's" rang out.
"Climb on!" Frank announced, excited to see if his plan worked.
"Climbing," Sean said, remembering his old summer camps' rock-wall procedures.
Sean hopped his good foot onto the first rung, for the second time in less than 24 hours, and then used his upper-body strength to pull himself up far enough to hop again. He felt the rope's slack disappear, thanks to Gabato and Hank. He heard Craig start to clatter up near him.
This continued until he got to the top, the open air a nice change. Alexander and Kailani reached down to grab Sean's hands and pulled him up the rest of the way.
They might have pulled too hard, because when Sean tried to get his footing after the sudden yank, he spiraled back towards the sea beneath, and hitting his head on the side of the sub. He didn't even remember hitting the water.
One of my shorter chapters, but had to have the cliffhanger! Sorry!
