Crimson Red, Cerulean Blue

(Green)

“Why didn’t you bring it up?”

A few feet away, there was a family enjoying a picnic on the grass, and Orange waited until they were out of hearing range to reply.

“Because I felt it would be improper to mention anything in front of Blue. And really, what would be the point of another fight? We do have limited time to find Violet, you know.” He glanced at me. “The question is, why didn’t you?”

“Because I didn’t want to mention it in front of Blue either.”

We walked on in silence for a while before he spoke. “Blue’s different.”

“Yeah. She’s not a revenge-seeker. There’s no one in the world she wants to kill besides Argot, and even that’s only because of things he’s done to other people. But…”

He nodded, finishing the sentence. “She’s lost someone too.”

“Yeah. But not like us. It’s different.” I paused. “She’s lucky.”

Orange stopped walking and turned. “Green, what exactly happened back there?”

I unconsciously rubbed my thumbnail again, not meeting his eyes. “I thought you weren’t going to ask me that.”

“Blue isn’t here now. She’s searching the other side of the city with Red.”

“I know that.”

“You don’t have to hide anything from anyone right now.”

“I know.”

“What happened?”

My hand closed into a fist. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“She took your healing, didn’t she?”

I didn’t respond.

“She took part of your healing with your Mark. The same way they took my own magic.”

“Your magic came back.” I fought to keep my voice steady, to hold back my fear. “Mine will too.”

His voice was soft. “No, it didn’t. You know it didn’t.”

I couldn’t hold back my words.

“I know we’re not supposed to ask this. I know it’s probably painful, and that you don’t want to talk about it, and everything else, but I need to know.” I looked directly at him. “How did it happen?”

His eyes hardened, and he abruptly turned and began walking again without a word.

I scowled.

“Quit being a jerk, Orange. You know what happened to me!”

He didn’t respond, so I ran to catch up with him, not wanting to have to yell out sensitive matters in front of the entirety of Viole Town.

“I’ll ask Red,” I threatened. “He’ll tell me. I’ll make him tell me.”

He gave me a sidewise look. “Will he?”

I almost snapped right there and then. My own freaking magic had been taken away from me, which was seriously one of the scariest things I could think of. I needed to know how to fix it, but the one person who could tell me about that was being the silent jerk he was. It took every ounce of self-control I had to not send a forest shooting up over Viole at that exact moment.

“Look.” I struggled to keep my tone neutral. “I need to know, Orange. That lady’s got my magic, and if I don’t get it back soon, somebody could die.” I emphasized the “die” part so he’d know just how serious it was. “I wouldn’t pry for any other reason, but right now, I need to know.”

Orange was quiet, and I thought he wasn’t going to respond until he did.

“You might think you need to know, Green" he said softly, "but the thing is, do you really want to know?”

(Blue)

“We’ve been back and forth across the entire village for two days, and we haven’t found a single freaking thing!” Red raged, flame-kicking a soda can into the sand. “There is absolutely nothing here!”

The sun was setting across the ocean waves, which should’ve been a photo-perfect moment, only nobody had a camera and nobody felt like taking a picture. We were on an abandoned stretch of beach that Green had fenced off early yesterday morning with a spell when we’d arrived, the plane a couple feet away where Orange had almost crash-landed it.

“I don’t understand it,” he said, staring at the sand as if it held the answer to all of life’s mysteries. “We’ve been everywhere. There’s no other place she could be. Where is she?”

“Million-dollar question, genius,” Red shot back, his temper flaring. “If we knew that, then we wouldn’t be looking now, would we?!”

Orange’s eyes narrowed. “It was a rhetorical question. There’s no need to be so temperamental.”

“I’m sick of this!” he snapped, throwing his hands up in the air. The sand under his foot turned to liquid glass as it exploded into angry flames. “I’m sick of following random loose ends and hoping they’ll lead somewhere important. I’m sick of feeling like a total idiot all the time. I’m sick of the way Mask thinks he can pull all the strings, and I’m sick of the way he’s right, because we’re being stupid! And I can’t figure out how we’re being stupid, and it’s driving me crazy! I need to punch something in the face already!”

I bit my lip and didn’t look at him, staring silently at the water, watching the golden flecks of the day’s last sunlight dance on the waves. They sparkled like sequins, spinning, distracting, bedazzling everyone who looked at them with their brilliance. Distracting…

A distraction.

Oh. Of course!

And suddenly, just like that, it clicked.

I stood up so abruptly, I almost knocked over Orange’s laptop. “Of course!”

“Huh?” Red stared at me like I’d just grown another head and three arms. “Blue?”

“It’s genius,” I breathed. “No one would think to look there!”

Now everyone was giving me the exact same look as Red.

“Did you figure it out?” Green asked. Her tone was skeptical, but there was a hopeful look in her eyes.

I nodded, a huge smile spreading across my face. “There’s only one place in Viole we haven’t checked yet.”

“And that would be?”

I turned and pointed toward the sun. The sun that was setting over the ocean waves, turning them the color of Red’s eyes.

“There,” I said softly. “That’s where it is. The only place we haven’t looked.”

We left the shop a note that saying we’d return the scuba gear as soon as possible, and hiked back down to the beach to begin the search.

I was ready to dive in and get going, and I would’ve done it right away too if I hadn’t noticed the others staring at me with a weird look on their faces. And that’s when I realized that I was probably the only one who knew how to swim.

“Blue…?” Red began nervously, probably about to inform me of this exact flaw in our plans. “I don’t – ”

“It’s pretty straightforward,” I replied, cutting him off. “Move your arms like this, and kick your legs to go forward. If you get caught in a current or whatever, don’t freak out. It’s not like you don’t have any air, so just go with the flow and try to edge your way out somehow. Water isn’t like land; it’s harder to fight against. So the important thing to remember is to go with the flow. Do what feels natural. Got it?”

Looking slightly caught off guard, he nodded. “Sure. Got it. Are you sure this is safe?”

“Safe or not, you’re just going to have to deal, because this is the only lead we have,” Orange replied, handing out tiny earphone-thingies. “These are communication devices. I only have four, so don’t lose them. They weren’t easy to steal.”

“Uh-huh,” Red agreed, inserting the earbuds. “Four days we spent making plans to break into that equipment factory. It blew up in the end, but Orange liked these, so he kept them. Good thing he did, it turned out.”

“Are they waterproof?” Green had the misfortune to ask, and both Red and Orange looked at her as if she were the stupidest person in the world.

“Forget I asked.”

“Okay, so everybody ready?” I asked.

“When are we ever?” Green sighed.

I smiled. “Point taken. Let’s just do this thing.”

I waded into the ocean, waves washing over my feet, soaking in the salty sea air, the powerful waves, feeling the tide slowly rising, the currents somewhere far away flowing. This was my element. The ocean was my home.

I made it far enough out so that the water reached my waist and turned back to see how the others were doing. Orange and Green were right behind me, but Red was cringing with every step, the look on his face almost terrified. And that’s when I realized something extremely strange.

Red, who I’d always thought was completely fearless… was afraid of water.

I blinked at this a few times before splashing back to meet him. He looked surprised to see me coming back, cocking his head to the side and asking,

“What, did you already find it?”

“Nope,” I replied, taking his arm and pulling him farther out. “But you looked like you needed some help.”

He stumbled, eyes suddenly going wide. “Whoa! I’m fine, Blue. Just go on, it’s okay.”

“You are not fine. How come you didn’t mention that you had a fear of water?”

“I do not have a fear of water,” he scoffed.

I just looked at him.

“I don’t!”

I waited, eyebrows raised.

His shoulders slumped. “Okay, maybe just a little. But I’m a fire-user. You think a fire-user’s gonna be best friends with the ocean?”

“Probably not, but at the rate you’re going, we’ll probably end up finding Violet sometime next year. Come on. The ocean might not be your best friend, but it’s mine.” I flashed him a smile. “It’s not going to hurt you.”

“You sure?” he asked dryly.

The water was up to my chin now, so I slipped on my mask and gave him a thumbs-up. Then I dived under, watching Red’s startled face vanish from view.

Orange was already farther out than I was, and Green appeared a moment later. Red was right after her, shuddering once his entire body was submerged.

I turned back to Orange and saw him wave us over, the universal sign for Hurry up. Years of spending afternoons at the beach kicked in, and I swam after him, barely remembering to turn on the waterproof flashlight we’d gotten along with the scuba gear. Night had fallen a while ago, and without Red’s fire magic, it was pitch black in the water. Not good. It would be extremely difficult to find whatever Mask was hiding in these conditions.

“You think we’re going to have enough air to last until we find her?” I asked worriedly.

Orange’s voice sounded strange and sloshy, probably because we were in the water. “Hopefully. If not, we’re going to have to come back to the surface and dive down again. It could take all night.”

“All night?!” Red demanded. “Hold on, RT, that can’t be right. I’m not staying down here the whole night.”

“I don’t think it really matters anymore what you want, Red,” Orange replied dryly. “So if you don’t want to literally spend the night with the fishes, I suggest you start searching.”

I dived lower, searching the ocean floor. Nothing. Orange was probably right; this really could take all night. Possibly more.

Fortunately for us, however, it didn’t.

“Hey, you guys,” Green reported, her voice crackling. “I just found something here. It looks pretty sus – WHOA!!!”

Then silence. Almost deafening silence.

“Green?” I asked, the water around me suddenly feeling much too cold. “Green?”

There was no reply. Not good.

“Red! Orange! Green just – ”

“I know,” Orange responded. “She disappeared. There’s this weird thing… I’m – ”

And then Orange’s voice cut off midsentence, complete silence following. My eyes widened.

“Orange?”

No reply.

“Orange! What’s going on?!”

He still didn’t reply, and my body went limp, dead in the water, fear paralyzing my entire body. What happened?

“Red?! Red, are you still there?” I demanded, looking all around me. It was too dark. I was completely blind, and it was beyond terrifying.

PleaselethimbetherePleaselethimbetherePleaselethimbethere…

“I’m right here,” he replied, much to my relief. “I see you. Don’t move, I’ll be there in a second. What happened to the other two?”

“I don’t know! They just vanished out of nowhere!” I was panicking by now, my voice rising.

“Not good. Blue, do you see me?”

I did. It wasn’t hard, his eyes were glowing. “Yeah. This is bad. I think Mask booby-trapped the whole place.”

“Maybe. That’s possi… Huh?!”

At which point, right in front of my eyes, Red disappeared.

“Red?! Red?!”

Nothing again. No reply.

“Red, this isn’t funny! Answer me!”

Still no reply.

“Red, please! Orange, Green?! Somebody say something! Anything!”

Complete silence.

I was all alone.

Nobody’s coming to help you.

At that point, everything just stopped working.

Can you imagine that kind of terror? Picture yourself somewhere no one else can reach, and everything’s pitch black except the faint light of your tiny flashlight, a light too feeble to even begin to penetrate that crushing, overpowering blackness. Everyone you care about has just vanished without a trace into that awful darkness, and no matter how loud you scream, they’re not answering. After a while, your brain registers that it’s hopeless – and at that point, you give up. You can’t breathe, can’t feel, can’t move a single tiny bit. Everything goes limp, and your eyesight blurs from sheer, absolute terror, not that it matters because of that soul-crushing blackness. And there’s only one thought running through your head, over and over again:

Please don’t leave me alone again. I don’t want to be left behind again. Don’t leave me all alone here, please, please, please don’t leave me all alone here…

It felt like a dream, only worse, because this was real life.

I might’ve died down there. Everything in me had already given up. Spectrum might’ve been doomed.

And then, out of nowhere, I spotted a tiny flash of light somewhere in that darkness.

At first I thought I’d imagined it. What kind of weirdo coincidence is that? But then it appeared again, just for a second, just long enough for me to pinpoint exactly where it was and start swimming toward it like it was my last shred of hope. Which it was.

I reached the light and hovered over it, hoping against hope. And then, to my complete and utter shock, there was a sudden, faint burst of light from something down below.

It was a circle of rocks, with a symbol in the middle: two masks, one happy, one sad. I immediately recognized it as the symbol of Mask.

So, without even thinking about what I was doing, I dived toward it.

For a second, nothing happened.

And then I was thrown into what felt like the biggest washing machine in the world.

Water slammed me in the face, tossed me upside down and backward and right side up again, jerking me down, into Mask’s symbol. I squeezed my eyes shut and braced myself for the impact – that never came.

I shot straight through and into a place that I can’t really describe for you, because all I knew after that was water and spinning and having my scuba mask wrenched off from the force and thinking, I’m going to be SO dizzy when this thing is over.

And then whatever it was spat me out at the other end, where I collided with something that immediately grunted, “OOF!!!” in a voice that sounded like a dream come true.

I had to cough up what seemed like a gazillion tons of salt water before I could even try to choke out, “Red!”

“The one and only.” Red eyed me, looking concerned. “Whoa. You’re a mess.”

“Like you’re looking so much better,” I responded, because he looked just as bad as I did, hair and clothes sopping wet, eyes red from the salt water. (Well, redder anyway.) We were in an empty room surrounded by solid metal walls. I glanced behind, wondering what I’d just come through, but there was nothing there, just flat, smooth metal. The only way out was a thick metal door protected by a keypad. It looked exactly like the type of place where Mask would hide Violet.

Hmm. Maybe we’d actually had a lucky break.

Green appeared behind Red, looking exhausted but happy.

“You made it,” she said to me, sounding relieved. “We would’ve come back for you, only it looks like this is a one-way portal. Are you hurt anywhere?”

I shook my head, suddenly remembering why we were here in the first place. “Where exactly are we? And what do you mean, portal?”

“Ingenious,” Orange mused. He was standing in front of the wall, inspecting it. “To be able to build a portal like this, that performs its duties independently… It must’ve taken quite a bit of magic, along with careful preparations. And to have the other end located on the ocean floor… One of the only good things you’ll probably ever hear me say about Mask is that he’s a genius.”

“So are you,” Red pointed out. “Now quit geeking out over the wall and come on. We’d better move before somebody decides to open that door and find us in here.”

At which point, the door opened to reveal three guards who looked extremely surprised to discover us in the room.

“Too late,” he sighed.

One of them opened his mouth to yell, but I clamped both hands together, calling out, “Vacancy Compression!” All three guards reached toward their throats simultaneously and promptly passed out.

“Whoa.” Red whistled, staring at the defeated guards. “Can you teach me how to do that?”

“I would, but I highly doubt you’d be able to pull it off.”

I carefully stepped over the guards and entered a wide tunnel, lit by a couple of lanterns hanging from the walls. They obviously hadn’t bothered reinforcing this area with metal, seeing as the walls were just solid rock, like the walls in any kind of underground cavern. There were even a couple of stalactites hanging from the ceiling.

But I barely took in any of this, mostly because the first thing I noticed was the cold.

The overpowering, teeth-chattering, get-me-out-of-here-before-I-freeze-to-death cold.

My diving suit had been ripped apart by the portal, making the insulation useless, and I was dripping wet, which really didn’t help matters. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Green hug her shoulders, teeth chattering uncontrollably, and even Orange looked uncomfortable, rubbing his arms to warm them up. So I turned to Red.

“Mind giving us a little heat?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I was immediately blasted by a wave of heat, and his body slowly began glowing bright red, like an actual heater. I sighed.

“Much better. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

The problem with the temperature solved, Green turned her attention to a more serious issue. “Which way do we go from here? This place is a total maze!”

Unexpectedly, both Red and Orange blurted out “Right” at the exact same time, then stared at each other like they’d both just found out they both had an obsession with eating shoes.

Green looked from one to the other, a dumbfounded look on her face. “Okaaay. When did you two get synchronized minds?”

Orange just raised an eyebrow as Red shrugged.

“I don’t even know. I just… I just feel like we should go right.”

“You just feel like we should go right,” she repeated dubiously.

“Uh. Yeah.”

“And that’s not creepy at all,” Green muttered. “Guess we’re headed right, then.”

She headed to the right, leaving us to follow. Which we did, of course, because truth be told, the place was pretty creepy. Even with Red’s heat, there was a chill in the air, the kind of chill that meant terror and death and everything else associated with Mask. Which was probably actually a good thing. It meant we were in the right place.

We’d been walking two minutes before Red and Orange both stiffened and warned us of incoming guards.

At the exact same time.

Again.

It was beginning to creep me out.

“How do you even know that?” I demanded, because really, it was totally unfair that only the boys got to know this stuff.

Orange studied me for a second before deciding not to answer, while Red just shook his head.

“I don’t know. Something’s telling me where to go, what to do… It feels like my magic, but not really, at the same time. Kinda like Rogue City, only not really.”

“Kinda like Rogue City, but not really,” I repeated slowly, an idea forming. “What if – ”

“ALERT. ALERT. HOSTILE INTRUDERS. DESTROY AT ALL COSTS.”

And, like an idiot, I’d totally forgotten about the guards.

“They’re protecting this place with Robo-cops?!” Red asked, a grin making its way across his face. “Sweet!”

And before anyone could say anything at all, he was running at the robots, grabbing one by the laser arm, and slamming it into another, smashing both of them to bits.

“Oh, for chocolate’s sake,” Green sighed, and ran to help.

“Tornado Barrage!” I called, sending a flurry of spinning winds toward the baddies and sweeping most of them off their feet. Red’s flames took them out a second later, sending twisted chunks of molten metal raining down on us. He cracked a dangerous grin.

“Who wants more?”

And, of course, because Robo-cops are some of the stupidest things in the world, the rest of them charged us all at once.

Something shot out like lightning, coiling around two of the robots. Green smiled darkly, a rare sight, and yanked, snapping them both in half with a whip of thorny vines.

I made a mental note to never classify Green as just a healer ever again.

More robots poured out from wherever, replacing the ones we’d already destroyed, but Orange was there, disabling them almost the instant they appeared. He looked almost bored, and I was reminded yet again that our techie was probably one of the most terrifying people in Spectrum, despite all appearances. And that I shouldn’t forget it. Or else.

And then the enemy wised up.

I blew up a robot by expanding the air inside it, then looked up to find that the stream of robots had stopped. But something else was approaching through the smoke and fire, something that looked vaguely familiar…

“You again?!” Red demanded, sounding dumbfounded.

And my eyes widened as Kyore stepped out of the smoke and smiled through his armor.

“Well, well, well. What a coincidence, meeting you all here.”