Anna didn't remember hitting the pock-marked surface of the cave floor, but the pain in her right side and shoulder told her enough to know she hit it hard. When she breathed, it felt like the cold air was rubbing shards of glass on the inside of her lungs and throat. She clutched her fingers and tried to stretch her legs, and found her whole right side and the better part of her back was swallowed by freezing cold silty water. A pins and needles sensation pulled at her muscles as she rolled to her to left, onto her stomach, and out of the icy puddle. There she lay. The rock below her slowly sucked the little heat out from under her, as she tried to gather her strength and listen.
An anonymous babble of water was the only thing that broke an otherwise utter silence. Its location was impossible to tell from the ambient echo of the cavern and its impenetrable darkness. When she finally gathered the strength to push up from the rock, a searing pain slashed across her abdomen. Her eyes watered and she felt something like a wimpier creak from her parted lips. Still, she levered he knees below her and sat up.
She probed her face with the tips of her fingers, and when her skin felt the cold leather of the glove, she ripped it off and touched the part of her lip where she tasted wet iron. Even without the glove, her fingers were like ice against the delicate flesh of her face. She reached for her wrist and tried toggling the light on her watch. After the second attempt to turn it on - her surroundings were suddenly illuminated by a bolt of stark white light.
Now with the light of day on her wrist, she could see her bright green sweater was torn to ribbons with lengths covered in blood. What was left of the fabric and the shirt beneath was heavy with brown freezing water. At a glance at least, it looked like her legs had faired better. Her jeans had taken a few scrapes and a couple of tears but were otherwise intact. Her dense hiking boots, aside from the mud and water stains, look as if they were still off the rack. She felt by and large like a giant bruise, but nothing, as far as she could tell, was broken.
She played her flashlight off the walls and the cave ceiling. It seems like she had found herself in some sort of smaller outcropping to a larger corridor that looked just tall enough to stand in. Slowly, she pushed herself to her feet. Her knees buckled and her thighs burned taking her weight, but after taking time to flex and massage the muscles with her hands, they were willing to start working again. She was about to wiggle her way out of the outcropping when she spotted her backpack resting on the floor of the longer cavern.
Like her boots, the high-class hiking backpack Ororo had bought for her from the 'outdoor adventures' store still looked like it could have still had the price tag attached. She hoisted the pack up by the handle, her side screaming as she did, and pulled it into the outcropping with her. When she unzipped the top, she found everything inside looked a little jostled but otherwise completely fine. She tried to shoulder the pack, but her right arm screamed with pain to the point she was forced to drop the bag and it rolled back into the puddle she awoke in. She clapped her hand to her mouth and fought through the tears. Taking the pack by the hook handle, she drug the thing behind her till she was out of the outcropping and securely in the corridor.
Anna dug in the pack's many pouches till she found her phone. Still dry as a bone, she keyed in her password and checked for any signal. She shook her head, "I don't know what I expected. There was no service on the way here. Why would there be in a fucking mountain?" A raspy cough rattled her bones and she realized how much she was beginning to shiver. She tucked her hands under her armpits. "Fuck!"
She shoved the phone back in the pocket of the pack and opened up one of the larger zippers to find her packed clothes. She selected her only other sweater, a bright pink one Kitty insisted on giving her for luck, as well as a new set of shirt, and jeans. Swapping out her clothes was like changing in a deep freeze locker where they stored slaughtered pigs. It was difficult to thread on her pants and shirt from how hard she was beginning to shake. She made to change her socks, but when she kicked off her boots, she found they were still dry inside. If only her whole body could have been made out of those freaking boots.
Nice and changed, she already felt like a new person. The shivering and random muscle spasms had calmed down, but she was pretty sure as long as she was stuck down there, the feeling of ice creeping down her neck and rattling in her lungs was never really going to go away.
"Anna!"
Her ears perked at the sound of her name. It was without a doubt Scott's voice. "Scott!" She shouted the sound of her own shrill voice slapping her back in the face. She looked either way down the tight hallway-like corridor.
"Anna?" She heard again. He sounded like he was behind a wall somewhere.
"Scott! Where the hell are you?"
"Anna! What's around you? Describe it to me, I'll find you and get you out!"
She looked around with her neck on a swivel. "Uh - I'm in this long hallway-looking thing! I fell in from some winding shaft into a puddle."
"Keep talking! I'll follow your voice!"
'Follow my voice? Find me?' Anna thought. 'Wasn't I down here to save his stupid ass?'
"Okay! Um - I fell in this puddle. I got soaked but I still have my pack. I'm cold as shit."
"Keep talking, you're doing great!"
She looked around. "No way I'm going to develop claustrophobia or anything after this…" She looked all around. "Scott, you sound lower than me."
"I think I am. If we can hear each other, there must be something connecting the areas we're in. Can you see a shaft or anything?"
While Scott spoke, Anna ran her hand along a wall till it grazed a massive crack in its otherwise smooth surface. She knelt down and pulled back a bunch of little rocks clustered at the foot of the crack.
"I think I see movement!" Scott was much more clear now. "Anna, is that you?"
She chucked the last of the rocks to the side and peered down a narrow hole. Beyond she could just see Scott glancing around in a tattered windbreaker. "Hey! She showed her light through the hole. "See me?"
"I see you!" He waved his hand. "Step a few feet back, I'm going to blast that hole wider."
"Oh god," She scampered back and got low to the ground. "Okay! Fire away!"
A blast of scarlet light illuminated the cavern like an exploding firework. Rocks and rubble scattered everywhere till they finally rested at Anna's feet. "Alright, give that a try." Anna looked down the newly made hole and found it roughly formed a slide towards Scott's level. He looked up at her. "Are you alright? How's your ankle?"
"My ankle? It was you who got yourself stuck down here and needed bailing out. I'm fine… Well, I was at least till I fell down a 50-foot hole in the fucking earth."
"Um -" His brows raised. "Anna, I saw you fall down a hole. I heard you calling out for help."
"Well, whatever you saw was a ghost or something, because that definitely didn't happen."
He shook his head. "Look, whatever - we can work out the particulars later. What matters is that you're okay. You still got your pack with you?"
"Yeah. I can't carry it though. I think I messed my shoulder in the fall."
"That's fine, I'll carry it for you. I lost mine on the way down here." He lifted his hands up. "Toss it down first."
Anna gathered up the unwieldy thing in her arms and rolled it down like a bowling ball. Scott caught it, though it did knock him back a bit. He placed it gently on the ground and then held his hands up again. "Alright, you next."
"You're going to catch me?"
"Yes, now come on!"
"Oh god, Scott." Anna sat at the lip of the slide. "Just… watch where you're putting those weird straw-man hands of yours." She crossed her hands over her chest and allowed herself to pick up speed on the bumpy slide. Finally, she launched off its end and at full speed and flew headlong into Scott, knocking him off balance. By the time the smoke cleared, she found herself atop him with his back to the ground. Without even thinking, she wound back a hand and slapped him across the face.
He clapped his hand on his cheek. "Ow! What the hell?"
"For any gross thoughts that just skipped across your empty, crater-riddled, hormonal boy brain." She stood, using his chest as a prop for her foot, and took a look around with her flashlight.
"Well," He sat up with a groan. "Glad to see that foot of yours healed up so quick."
"You got lead in your ears or are you just that stupid?" She looked back at him. "I told you, I came in here after you! I saw you walk in this cave, then heard you calling to me from the bottom of some god-forsaken hole in the ground!"
"And I'm telling you," Scott dusted himself off. "I saw that same thing, but it was you."
She glared back at his dumb face from under her brows. She'd been staring at that same stupid face from across the dinner table for long enough to tell when Scott trying to tell a crappy joke or some pointless story, and it was clear this wasn't one of those times. She pursed her lips and sifted her jaw to the left then the right. "We got set up."
Scott looked down at her, then nodded. "I think you're right."
She illuminated the pock-filled floor and long overhanging stalactites far above them in the wide-open chamber they found themselves in. "So now what?"
"We find our way out."
"Right. Only problem is-" Her flashlight reflected the many imperfections in the cave wall, then the passages both narrow and tall, then short and round that fed into other passageways. "Which way is out?"