TN Dino or Demon
Chapter 1: Descending
Pairing: None
Characters: Jim, Wash
Genre: Gen/Horror
Rating: Nc-17 (Nonsexual – See Warnings)
Spoiler Alert: All of Season 1
Warning: Blood/Demonology/Gore/Language/Violence
Summary: Wash enters a cave system determined to find the missing expedition team member, but finds something more sinister awaits her in the darkness.
AN: This is a prompt fill for Arbiter_01 on LJ who prompted with Wash/Jim – Demonology. To me, Jim and Wash are not a romantic couple, but comrades in arms. I'm picturing this as a cave exploration in Skyrim. Creepy caves anyone?
Wash ran her cold gloved hand along the damp cave wall as she stepped slowly on the uneven rocky ground following Jim's voice in the darkness.
She cursed herself for following him. When she showed up at the cave where a member of an expedition team radioed from, she could already see Jim standing just inside the cave entrance half in shadow.
She guessed he arrived a few minutes before her. He had radioed back to her minutes ago that he would join her and radio in for back up from the colony. There had been a member of a team that went missing a few days ago in this area. There was a brief radio com transmission asking for help that showed up on their maps as being just inside this cave system.
Jim said he had some supplies in his Rover, but when she caught up to him several paces inside the cave he did not have any.
"Shannon, there were several tunnels right when we entered were we could still see. How do you know this is the right way?" Her confident voice did not convey her sense of unease as her hand on the rocky wall guided her. Wash's other hand checked the placement of her sidearm for what had to be the tenth time in ten minutes.
"It's the right way. I'm sure of it." Jim's voice took on a strange edge that Wash had never heard before. It was also as if his voice was raspier the farther they went. She berated herself reminding herself that closed in spaces have made her feel panicked since she was trapped in an abandoned well in Eritrea's Southern Red Sea region. She forced the claustrophobic memories away.
"Shannon. We don't have the right equipment for searching for the missing expedition team member. I know he radioed from inside the cave, and we just happened to be nearby. But, we need proper supplies. We don't even have night vision or nav. The only workable nav was in the Rover controls."
She could hear the sound of him walking ahead. She almost stumbled over a rock and paused noticing he was moving much faster than her. The new angle of decent farther into the cave was making it very difficult for her.
"How are you seeing where to go? I can't see anything." Wash waved her gloved hand over her face, and was not even able to detect Jim's movement anymore.
Silence.
"Shannon?" She could not hear him walking and the thought unnerved her even more. She became acutely aware of how dangerous the situation was because the lack of proper preparation usually leads to death in Terra Nova. "Shannon?"
His voice sounded from a distance. "It's the right way."
She strained her eyes when she thought she saw a flash of red light up ahead. "Do you have a nav or some type of light you're not telling me about?"
Silence.
Wash pushed back her rising anxiety with her anger. "Come on Shannon. This is not the time to play pranks. I could fall and get hurt."
"Yesss, you could." Jim's voice was only a couple of feet away and sounded menacing as if he wanted her to be injured. Her hand instinctively went to her side arm.
Wash held in the gasp that tried to escape. She would be damned if she let him see the effects this was having on her. Her mind offered that he had to be in a flat out run to get to her that fast.
She had heard nothing but his voice. A cold chill reverberated down her spine as her voice came out even. "Let's hoping I don't."
"Let's." His voice sounded very quiet.
Wash told herself that it was Jim talking to her and he would never want her to get hurt. She convinced herself that he meant let's hope instead of the other possible meaning behind that ambiguous word. She took her hand off of her pistol and shook her head thinking how preposterous the notion that Jim would try to hurt her was.
She reasoned with herself that he must have turned around the moment he stopped talking last and that was how he got there so fast. She nodded her head yes fully convinced.
Her voice came out flat. "For real. Do you have a light or a nav?"
"No." Jim's voice sounded almost normal.
"I thought I saw a light up ahead, so I don't think we're alone." She now knew that it was her anxiety concerning closed spaces that was causing her mind to create a situation that was not happening.
"We're not alone." Jim's voice started to inch away again, and she could hear his feet on the cave floor kicking at rocks.
She took a deep breath trying to steady herself guessing that was why he was moving forward. She decided that his eyes were better in the dark, and he probably was moving toward the light thinking it was the person from the lost expedition team.
"You think it's the member of the team? What was his name? Truman. Yes, it was Roark Truman. You think it's him up ahead?" Wash inquired as she inched forward.
"No." Jim's voice was almost a raspy whisper.
Wash strained concentrating on his voice when her foot slipped forward. She managed to catch herself on the wall and not fall into a hole in the cave floor. "Damn it!"
"Watch your step." Jim's voice practically sang to her in bouncy tones.
Wash scurried back and lay on the ground breathing hard from the exertion of her body and the rising fear. "Jesus Shannon! Give me a head's up next time."
Wash felt the cuts on her hands and the bruises on her leg and side assessing the damage that was done. Once again, she was thankful for the years of grueling military training. Without it, she was sure she would have fallen to her death mangled and bleeding out in the cold darkness of the cave. Her mind briefly wondered how long it would take a body to decompose in this environment if they were not able to get her body out.
"Ok." The raspy whisper responded pulling her out of her morbid thoughts.
Wash moved her injured hands along the ground finding a safe area to walk along the other side of the cave wall.
She leaned her back against the wall and used her right hand to feel along her pant leg for the pocket that had the med supplies in it. She pulled out a small container and dipped her finger inside taking out what she knew to be a bluish looking gel from a local plant. She rubbed her hands together knowing it was sanitizing and closing the wounds at the same time. She knew it would due until she got back to medical.
Wash was rising to her feet when she heard Jim's unconcerned voice in the distance reverberate off the walls in dead pan. "Heads up."
It was too late. She smacked her head into a protruding rock that her fingers missed. "Son of a fucking bitch whore!"
Without light, she was already a little disoriented, but now she could not distinguish which way was up and fell backwards to the cave floor again. She almost lost consciousness, but a tug on her body pulled her back from the abyss.
Her mind offered that Jim was there to help her, and did not even question that from a distance why was he able to give her a heads up and why did he waited till it would not help her. "I hit my head. I think its bleeding."
She thought hands would touch her skull and feel for the wound, but when he didn't she did it herself. Her hand touched something warm and wet a couple of inches up from her forehead. It drained down onto her face and shirt. "Shannon?"
"You need to keep up." His voice was nowhere near her and was back to holding that creepy edge again.
"Damn it, Jim. I'm on my ass right now bleeding from the skull. What the fuck is wrong with you?" Her unsteady hand applied pressure as her other fumbled for the an emergency dermal patch that would fuse to the wound. She first applied some of the gel to her scalp then pressed the patch down. It burned like fire as she heard bubbling sounds knowing it was closing off the gash.
"Nothing's wrong with me. I'm not the one going to get hurt." Jim's words reverberated more letting Wash know he must be in an area ahead where it opened up into a cavern.
"Getting hurt. Not going to get hurt." Her anger rose up again and the combination of that with the medicine helped push back the throbbing sensation on her head. Her mind finally cleared most of the way. She remembered the tug and felt for her sidearm.
It was gone.
She sat up very carefully knowing that nothing was making sense as nausea hit her. Every instinct told her to leave as quickly as safety would allow. She felt strongly that she should not alert Jim to her feelings, which normally would sound stupid to her. She had trusted her instincts before, and it had saved her and Taylor many times. She decided to trust it now.
Something was wrong.
Wash half crouched as much as her damaged body would allow and took one step toward the direction she came.
"Leaving?" Jim's voice was deep and grainy.
Wash froze knowing that his voice was half way to her.
Wash waited a moment not hearing any further sound.
Next, she put her back to the wall and faced him keeping her blank military expression in place in case he could see. "I need the med kit from the Rover for this head wound. I think I have a couple of lights there too. My eyes aren't as good as yours."
She allowed a slight smile to form and slowly shook her head yes twice while fighting the urge to shrug a shoulder.
"But they're just ahead. Come around the corner into the cavern, and you can help one of them back as you go." Jim sounded calm, and his voice did not sound any closer this time.
"I can't see for shit Shannon. I'm going to go get a light." She inched a step to the side along the wall away from him wondering why Shannon was acting this way.
There was one person missing, so she had no idea what he meant when he implied there would be more than one person up ahead. Nothing made sense to her.
A silent hand closed on her face and bashed her head back into the wall before she even knew someone was in front of her. She crumbled to the floor as consciousness eluded her.
A/N: I would like to thank Arbiter_01 for the interesting prompt. Very interesting…