Read Nightlord: Sunset for Free Online Page B

I’m envious as hell.”
    I grinned evilly.  “Wanna arm-wrestle?”
    “No, thanks.  I want to keep my knuckles.  How about a swim?  Jogging with you androids is tiring.  Have you ever heard of ‘pacing’?” he asked and headed for the showers.
    “Yep.  That’s what you do when you’re nervous.  Involves a lot of walking back and forth.”
    Travis made a rude noise at me, then smiled.  He decided a nice float in the pool and a trip to the steam room would be just the ticket.  I decided to hit the high-dive and then join him.
    I like to dive.  I’m not good at it, but I like stepping off the twenty-meter platform and plummeting.  It’s the free fall; I love it.  I like roller-coasters and hang gliding, too.  I even jumped out of a perfectly good airplane, once.  With a parachute.  It’s not quite flying, but it feels like it.  So, while Travis floated in the shallow end, I went up the ladder.  There were a few other people in the pool, but they were all at the shallow end, playing what appeared to be a game of drown-your-buddy, involving a ball.
    I stepped off the platform and fell like a brick.  I hit the water, heels together, nose held shut, and probably with an idiot grin on my face.
    I sank to the bottom like a brick, too.  And stayed there.
    I would have sighed, but I needed the breath.  I tried to swim upward and only managed to thrash a lot.
    Not good.
    The pool ladder—the water was twenty feet deep—went only about three or four feet into the water.  I’m six feet tall, with maybe another couple feet of reach.  Somehow, to reach that ladder, I needed to grow another eight feet, minimum.
    I wasn’t even coming close to floating.  It occurred to me that my weight problem might be about to kill me.  I resolved to never again get into water deeper than my chin once I got out.
    If I got out.
    So I did the only thing I could think of: stay as calm as possible and walk as fast as I could toward the shallow end.  It had a sort of nightmare quality to it.  I had a sense of infinite hurry, backed by my decided need to breathe, along with a creepingly slow uphill struggle.
    I’ve never noticed how long an Olympic-sized pool is.  I noticed then.  About fourteen thousand miles, give or take a few hundred yards.
    I made it.  I had red flashes behind my eyelids and bright spots dancing before my eyes, but my head finally broke the surface.  I blew like a whale, I think, and kept walking, getting my head completely above water and gasping.  Then I realized Travis was right there.  Lifting me and hauling me forward—he was completely underwater, lifting and shoving while holding his breath.  I think he saved my life.  I know they’d never have managed to get me out of the pool for mouth-to-mouth in time.
    We made it the last few yards to water shallow enough to stand in and still breathe.  We both gasped for air and slowly walk-drifted to a corner with stairs.
    “You okay?” he asked, panting.
    I nodded, still too out of breath to answer.
    “You must’ve been down for four minutes, man.  What happened?”
    “I can’t swim,” I gasped.
    “Well, yeah, you’re a lousy swimmer—”
    “No,” I broke in, then coughed for a moment, “I don’t float.  I can’t.  Sank like a stone.”
    We reached the three-foot deep corner and the stairs.  I sat down and put my head down on my knees.
    “So you sink?” he asked.  “Interesting.”
    “Yeah.  Remind me to buy a lifejacket.”
    “Sure.  How about one of the inflatable kind?” he suggested.  “You know, we should have seen this coming.  You weigh too much for your build.”
    I just nodded.  I never floated well anyway, but I could at least swim.  Now I was trying to swim with a hundred-pound weight strapped to my back.  No wonder I nearly drowned.
    “Jacuzzi?” Travis suggested.
    Relaxing was a good idea, but I really didn’t want to have to deal with water at all.
    “Sauna,” I countered.  Travis nodded