Risa, Nate, and Lindy joined Chris at the entrance. Nate could see a long, shadowy hall with seamless stone walls. Light shimmered in the distance.
“Big chest,” Chris said, the words gently echoing down the corridor.
Nate snorted softly. “A building in a box. It’s kind of like the Hermit making a boat or a barn using some junk in his backpack. Weird magic.”
“Let’s go find the Protector,” Lindy said.
“She’s right,” Chris agreed. “We should hurry.” He bent down to grab the guidestone, only to find it solidly stuck in the ground. “It won’t budge,” he said.
“We’ll have to leave it,” Nate said.
“That means we can’t keep the Tanks out,” Chris said.
“Then, like you said, we should hurry.” Rising off the ground, Nate glided forward. The others followed his lead. The air was cool and still. Glancing back, Nate saw his fellow Jets hovering along the dark corridor, their feet dangling. They looked like phantoms. From up ahead, Nate heard a distant, steady pounding, supplemented by whirring murmurs and rhythmic squeals.
“Hear that?” Risa asked.
“Sounds like a big machine,” Chris said.
“A machine?” Lindy questioned. “In here? This place looks prehistoric.”
Nate increased his pace.
“Be ready for traps,” Chris warned.
Nate slowed a little. He could no longer feel everything the way he had in the water. All it would take was him brushing up against a tripwire in the gloom to trigger some serious trouble.
Up ahead, the hallway elbowed left. Golden light reflected from beyond the turn. The pounding, swooshing, squeaking, whirring sounds grew louder. When Nate reached the corner he stopped, then looked back at the others. “I think I found the traps.”
The hall stretched ahead of him, a chaos of moving parts, the scene lit by lamps embedded in the walls. Razor-sharp pendulums whisked back and forth at high speeds. Deadly blades whipped out of slots in the walls, ceiling, and floor, disappearing only to return, some alternating their vicious swipes, others twirling like propellers. Sharp spears erupted out of deep sockets, thrusting and retracting at a disheartening pace. Toward the far end of the corridor, large pillars pistoned up and down, pounding the floor with implacable force. The other Jets joined Nate, staring down the lethal corridor in despair.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Chris muttered.
“It’ll be like flying through a blender,” Risa said.
“Like flying through fifty blenders,” Nate said, surveying the lethal obstacles. “It doesn’t matter that we can fly. There are as many traps up high as down low. If we don’t get shredded into pasta, we’ll get crushed into paste.”
“There must be a pattern to it,” Lindy said.
“There’s a pattern,” Chris agreed. “Look at any specific part of the corridor. That pillar just goes up and down, same every time. That spike pokes in and out, over and over. That huge blade swings side to side. But the pattern is designed not to let anything through. We might dodge the first few blades, but then what? It’s the length of a football field!”
“Afterward we’d have to come back,” Risa pointed out.
“Is there a path through it?” Nate asked. “Like if we start on the lower right, then fly along the upper left side, then in the center, that sort of thing?”
They considered the passage together. Light glinted off sharp points and slashing blades. Nate traced possible routes through the obstacle course.
“They covered everything,” Chris said. “High and low, left and right, down the middle. The only hope would be to dodge and dodge and dodge perfectly for a really long time.”
“No way,” Risa said. “We’d have a better chance if we got flushed through a garbage disposal. Or caught under a lawn mower. Or sucked into a jet engine. Or—”
“We get it,” Lindy interrupted. “You’re not wrong. What do we do?”
“The Tanks would be suited for this,” Nate realized. “They can move super fast, and, even if they messed up, they might survive the damage.”
“Good for them,” Chris said bitterly. “How does that help us?”
“Somebody has to get the Protector,” Nate said. “If we go after it, we’ll find out what our insides look like.”
“You think we should let them have it?” Risa asked.
“I think we should let them get it,” Nate said. “Kind of like how they let us bring the chest up from the lighthouse. I’m not saying we should let them keep it.”
Chris shook his head. “They’re too strong and fast. Once they have it, we’ll never get it back.”
“Our whole strategy is built around never letting them catch up,” Lindy said.
“That was before we knew we’d have to go through a meat grinder,” Nate said. “Killing ourselves isn’t an option. Look at that hallway! We’d be lunch meat in seconds! But that doesn’t mean we have to give up. On land, we’d never get the Protector from the Tanks. Our advantage is in the air and in the water. We’re on an island. We’ll have a chance when they leave.”
“They might be in a boat,” Chris said.
“Then we sabotage it,” Nate said. “We sink it.”
“They’d still be strong and fast in the water,” Risa said.
“But they’ll need to breathe,” Nate said. He paused, aware that they were trying to recover the final object Jonas White would need to claim Uweya. Obviously they needed to beat the Tanks. But if they succeeded, what then? The time had come to find out whether Chris and Risa would assist with his real mission. “We need to talk about something.”
“What?” Chris said.
“Jonas White is a bad guy,” Nate said.
“Well,” Chris replied uncomfortably, “he’s kind of scary.”
“Not just scary,” Nate said. “Not just intimidating. Not just bossy. Evil. Jonas White is not the only magician in the world. Some are good, some are in between, and some are really bad. I fought a magician who was trying to take over everybody in Colson. It was Mr. White’s sister.”
“Does that make him evil?” Risa asked.
“She used a treat called white fudge to tame everyone,” Nate said. “It was addictive and made them oblivious to her magic. With his nacho cheese, Jonas is using a similar trick to mess with our parents and many other people. There’s a magical police force that protects the world from evil magicians. Jonas White captured their leader along with one of their best detectives and is holding them prisoner. I’m here undercover. I’ve been investigating the arcade to help them. Same with some of my friends.”