Peregrine's image told them: "You must retrieve the contents of a locked safe. The safe is located at the end of an obstacle course. Your entire team must reach the end of the course before you may attempt to open the safe. Deliver the contents to me, tonight, at the American Hero headquarters, for your chance at immunity."
The video display went black, and the members of Team Hearts stared at the screen.
"Cakewalk," DB said. "No problem."
"Famous last words," Hardhat countered.
In fact, the obstacle course wasn't difficult. They followed their GPS tracker instructions to an abandoned industrial lot. There they found a maze built with concrete walls winding through the yards and buildings. Wild Fox commented, "Sure be nice to have a bunch of flying bugs to give us a view of this." Everyone shushed him. Drummer Boy hoisted himself to the top of the wall, which was only (from his perspective) about ten feet tall. He helped everyone else up, and by following the wall to the end, bypassed the maze entirely.
Next, they encountered about five acres of genuine military obstacle course: coils of barbed wire laid in the dirt, high walls to traverse—the works. After bypassing the maze, they decided that was the right strategy for the rest of it. Gardener's vines tangled with the barbed wire, and as they grew they lifted, pulling it out of the way, creating a path. Hardhat built steps over the walls, Drummer Boy's strength helped lift people over, and Curveball's explosions broke through a couple of obstacles. They were on a roll. After the last challenge, this almost easy success felt wonderful. But Ana was still waiting for her chance to do something.
At the other end of the obstacle course, they found a concrete drainage tunnel, large enough that even DB could walk inside without ducking.
"This thing just keeps going, doesn't it?" Curveball said. Like all of them, she was sweating under the summer sun, streaked with dirt, and visibly tired.
At the end of the short tunnel was a locked iron gate.
"I'll blow the lock," Curveball said, tossing a pebble in her hand. "No problem."
DB glowered. "I think I've got this one."
"But this'll be easier—"
He'd already put his head down, hunched his shoulders, and charged. All six arms pushed against it. The bars buckled, but didn't break. Grunting, his mouth twisting in a rictus of effort, he tried it again, digging his feet into the ground, slamming his bulk as a living battering ram against the barrier.
Ana expected the lock to pop, the bars to break, something. But the sound she heard was crunching, a ripping felt as a vibration under her feet—like rock breaking.
The gate's hinges exploded free of the concrete in a shower of dust and debris. The rest of them ducked back, sheltering their faces with their arms. Somebody coughed.
DB dropped the gate in front of him. It landed with a thud. Chunks of concrete still adhered to the hinges.
"Like you said. No problem," he said hoarsely, rolling his primary shoulders into place, brushing off the effort.
Curveball didn't even look at him as she stalked past, stepping carefully in between the bars of the gate. The others filed after her. Ana waited until last, trying to think of something to say. Something that wouldn't sound trite, or wouldn't inspire him to take a swing at her. Not that she thought he'd really hit her, but right now he looked like nothing so much as a primordial creature from a forgotten jungle, hunched over, hands clenched into fists, hooded gaze staring after the blonde princess he could never have. It might be best to simply creep away silently, and hope he didn't notice.
"Thanks," she said. A simple gracias always helped smooth things over.
He growled and marched after the others.
The tunnel opened into a space that looked like an arena: a bowl-shaped park with grassy sides sloping down to a pond some fifty yards in diameter. The surface was dark, opaque. No telling how deep it went.
A flag fluttered from a buoy bobbing in the center of the pond—bright red, X marks the spot. The prize lay somewhere under the surface of the water.
"Well, shit!" Hardhat said. Ana could already hear the bleeps on the final cut. "Diver on Clubs'll have this all tied up!" Diver, the woman with gills, could breathe underwater.
Despite the maze, the obstacle course they'd succeeded in traversing, despite making it this far with the sort of flair the judges had to appreciate, the game did seem fixed at this point.
"Maybe it's not that deep," DB said. "Maybe I can wade in."
"Dude, can you even swim?" Wild Fox asked.
"Dude, does it matter?" the drummer shot back.
The water lapped almost imperceptibly along a sandy stretch that led out from the tunnel. DB went straight into the pond, shoes, clothes and all, until the water was up to his ankles, then up to his knees. He continued, dragging against the water, all his arms out for balance.
Then, abruptly, he disappeared. Sank straight down and out of sight. Kate gasped, hand over her mouth.
A second later he came back up, sputtering, shedding water everywhere.
"It drops off," he reported, gasping for breath. "Three feet deep, then straight down. I don't know how far it goes."
He returned to shore, and they stood in a line, staring out at the water, potential heroes with no ideas.
Gardener reached into her ubiquitous pouch. "Maybe I can get some vines growing, pull the thing up to the surface."
"We don't even know what the fuck it is," Hardhat said. "We're just assuming it's right under the buoy."
"You have a better idea?" she said, glowering at him.
"It's better than nothing," Curveball said. "We can think of something else in the meantime."
The conversation continued, but Ana was only half-listening. She was looking at the sand—the ground, the earth—and following it to where it touched the water. And continued, under the water. The soles of her shoes touched the sand, and she could feel the lines of earth spreading under the water. Maybe twenty, twenty-five feet. She'd dug wells hundreds of feet deep. This was nothing. She touched her medallion, mouthed the words por favor.
She could feel the whole area, the hills sloping up to where they butted against concrete walls. She could bring those hills down if she wanted.
"I think I can do it," she heard herself say, and felt herself step forward, toward the edge of the water, before she realized what she was doing.
DB laughed. "What? What do you think you're going to do? Hey—maybe you can dig a canal, drain the water. If there were any place to drain it to. And you could dig a swimming pool while you're at it! But hey, we've already got one!"
"Would you shut up and let her try!" Kate said. DB actually shut up.
Ana knelt by the water's edge. She buried her fingers in the sand. Only her knuckles and the tendons—tensed, straining—were visible. She reached into the earth. Watch this, Roberto.
The hills around them started crawling, the grass rippling. The ground traveled in waves, a subtle, miniature earthquake, creeping ever downward.
The surface of the water rippled, vibrating, like someone was shaking it. Then, the water lurched, splashing with a sound of crashing waves, and was displaced, pushed out, flooding the arena. Ana ignored the stream of water, several inches deep, flowing around her. She was bringing the earth to her.
The bottom of the pond rose to the surface.
The one large pond became dozens of puddles scattered around the whole of the arena. In the middle of the arena stood a brand-new island rising a few feet above the water. With a last shuddering of earth, a bridge formed, a stretch of thick mud leading from Ana to the island. Her hands were now sunk in mud.
In the middle of the island stood a safe, a two- by two-foot square of heavy steel with a handle on the front, and on top of the safe rested a round red buoy, its flag tipped sideways and dripping.