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The ocean?
Intrigued, he bolted up the last few feet and carefully peered out the circular hole His eyes had slowly adjusted to the glow of the light co froed Blinded by the brilliance and deafened by the sound, he needed a few seconds to get his bearings And when he did, his jaw dropped
He e out of the churning waters of a reat crystalline plu wine The noise of it was a rushing boo the air A spray of the pluasped He wiped it out of his eyes, felt the slight sting of salt It was exhilarating andti in every direction, its choppy surface full of whitecaps, like frosting on a purple cake There was no ship, no birds or sea life or land to speak of Two other rocky spits were the only things that broke the monotony They stood equidistant a few hundred feet away, forle with his own perch He didn’t catch it at first, but as he gazed out at the other rocks, he realized that a person sat on each one And he was pretty sure who those people were
Bryson and Sarah
Michael clie of the hole He waved his ar his friends’ names as loud as he could, but the roar of the wind and the ocean swept his voice away Eventually both of his friends noticed hiine where they’d been sent--or why--but he didn’t really care at that moment He was just relieved to be reunited with Bryson and Sarah
He looked back down at the hole he’d climbed out of and watched as it disappeared, only to be replaced by rock congruous with the rest of the little island The area looked as if nothing had ever been there
What is this place? Michael wondered
He scanned the choppy waters beloishing he had the courage to swie about the ocean, besides the fact that it was purple There was a static look about it, sparkles and flashes and fuzzy lines, allin the water like sea creatures And when he really thought about the color itself, it rera to be molded by code
Swi about the possibility of coding a bridge when Sarah beat hiht suddenly stretched from her rocky perch into the air It was si the distance between theiantthe rush of the cold water that had splashed over his body He knew exactly where she’d gotten the code for this beauty It was fro as it sounded, and they’d only played it a couple of tis
Even before it reached Michael, another bridge started connecting Sara’s rock to Bryson’s, where he sat like a sunbather, leaning back with his face open to the gray sky even though clouds hid the sun It made Michael think Bryson spent way too ainst the wind, just as another wave crashed into his island and sprayed hiain For athat had happened and just s of the world
As soon as Sarah’s bridge of light reached Michael, he jumped onto it and sprinted toward her The surface was rubbery, just like he reame Goose bumps covered his skin as the wind ripped at his wet clothes, and the feeling gave hiy He picked up his pace
He was about twenty feet away--al below him but air He yelped as his heart leaped into his throat and he plury purple water
The ice-cold water sed hi his heart pound from the shock of it He kicked and pulled hiht Treading water, he looked up at Sarah’s rock, only a few feet away now, to see his friend staring down at hiot those things had unpredictable tihed, tried to cover it up, then laughed again Bryson didn’t even bother trying to hide his glee Michael would have laughed, too, if he didn’t feel like his nether regions were about to freeze solid
"I didn’t know you were that slow!" Bryson shouted down to hie purple water, then swa out of the corner of his eye So--and there werefrantically until he reached a slab of low black stone angling into the ocean and clie of the water until he backed into a wall of jagged rock
He ducked as a huge wave slaainst the stone When it receded, he quickly cli plenty of places in the rocks for hand- and footholds About halfway up, he found a flat outcropping and stopped He got onto his stomach so he could lean out and look down at the water, madly curious about what lurked in this bizarre ocean
Another cold wave crashed below, its crest splashing over him as he ducked his head When it receded, he wiped his face and spit, slicked his hair back And then he stared
It wasn’t eels or fish slithering around in the water They were spliced lines of code--actual, literal lines of nu around like electrocuted worh his throat "Get down here!"
By the tiotten to his feet He crouched over, hands on knees, studying the water below There was just enough room for the other two to squeeze in beside hi over the edge of the rock A wave crashed, spraying thehed
"Whoa!" Bryson shouted, pointing at several different spots "What was that? What are those …" Michael knew Bryson had seen the sarown as immobile as the wet stone on which they sat