No Way Out at the Entrance

Rina was standing next to Sashka and sympathetically watched Vlad. “Keep in mind, I got really badly scratched by this lilac. It seems, I think, the leaves…” she said and began to climb the stairs.

Makar overtook her, ran up to the plaque and the white cockroach letters finally formed into the inscription “Guildhall of Divers.” “And whatsa here? They teach diving?” he asked, trying to beak off the plaque.

“Drowning!” Cyril joked.

“H-h-hands! Both!” someone ordered in a resounding voice. Makar and Cyril fidgeted in a startled way. “P-ut in the po-o-ockets! Don’t touch the inventory!” the voice finished cheerfully. The door was open. A thickset fellow in a jacket of rough skin examined them with interest. He looked to be twenty-twenty-five years old. The worldly Makar began to worry. He had gotten it in the neck most often precisely from this age range.

“I’m Ul! Can be Oleg. All questions afterwards! For the present, if anyone gets anything into his head, digest three things. First: this isn’t a school of witchcraft and other magic. Whoever maintains the opposite, I’ll cast a spell on him! This is neither school nor institute nor college at all, but simply the modest and only one of its kind HDive. Second: from this moment on you’re divided into teams of fives. For convenience in tasks, duty, and patrol. One team: Makar, Sashka, Alice, Danny, Rina! The other: Cyril, Lena, Vlad, Lara, Freda… And third: no one keeps you here by force.”

Burning with indignation, Freda jerked up her hand.

“Well?” Ul generously allowed her.

“And the fence??? If no one keeps us by force, why couldn’t Vlad climb over?”