Yep, another story. Y'all are never going to be rid of me. *sinister laughter*
I'm guessing this will be somewhere around 10 chapters. It will feature four different POV characters and hopefully have something for everybody to do, since I love this whole team so much and don't want to leave anyone out.
For the purposes of the story, I'm assuming Clay makes it back to Bravo at some point after season 2.
The bridge consists of two cables strung over a gorge with a swift, deep, ice-cold blue river at the bottom.
Literally. Two parallel cables. That's it.
"That's it?" Sonny says in disbelief, looking at the cables, then down at the ravine and turquoise water below, then back at the cables again.
"One for walking on, one for holding onto," Clay replies with exaggerated nonchalance. "What's the matter, Sonny? You scared?"
That draws the glare he knew it would. "Naw, son. This here is called having a healthy sense of self-preservation."
Clay exhales, watching his breath coalesce into a thick plume of fog in the chilly air. "Whatever you say, Karl Wallenda."
Sonny glares harder, apparently of the opinion that he is the only one allowed to hand out nicknames. He's probably also annoyed because he has no idea who Karl Wallenda is, and therefore no way of knowing how much he might be getting insulted.
God, Clay missed this. All of it: the cold, the dirt, the burn of tired muscles from hiking for hours straight. The purpose and focus of having a mission to complete. Being surrounded by his brothers in the field. Bickering with said brothers (especially Sonny).
His first mission back with Bravo, he had to keep convincing himself that it wasn't a dream; that he really had passed all the tests, reached all the recovery benchmarks. Aside from bearing some ugly scars and being a little bit slower, he's back to essentially the same guy he was before the bomb. Physically, anyway.
Now on his third mission back with the team, he feels like he's still adjusting, trying to find his place again, remember who he's supposed to be.
"Cut the chatter," Jason orders, focused and maybe a hint annoyed. "There's a family whose lives depend on us making it there in time. We need to keep moving."
The Rodriguez family is American, originally, but has spent a couple decades running a mission in a small, remote village not far from the Chinese border. For most of that time everything was fine, but lately unrest in the area has been growing, and anti-American sentiment along with it. At present, the Rodriguezes - parents and three children - are in the hands of a rebel group that wants to ransom them in exchange for a list of demands that will never, and can never, be fulfilled.
If their demands aren't met, the group has set a hard deadline for the family's execution, to be broadcast live on the internet.
Bravo should be able to get there before then, but they're cutting it a little closer than they'd like.
Without further banter, the team starts across the 'bridge.' Jason goes first, then Sonny; Trent; Brock, who has to keep his balance despite having a dog strapped to his chest; Ray; and finally Clay.
For all his teasing of Sonny, Clay silently agrees with him that the bridge is kind of a nightmare. The cables aren't strung as taut as they maybe once were, and the amount of give in them leads to some truly unnerving swinging and swaying - especially when the wind picks up. Which it of course does when he's maybe halfway across.
Clinging to the top cable, Clay tries not to be quite so acutely aware of the drop to the water below. He slows his breathing, focuses on the next shuffle forward, on maintaining the grip in his cold-numbed fingers.
He makes it another couple feet toward the far bank. The wind dies back, lessening the swaying. Clay breathes a sigh of relief, risking a glance up to see that most of the team has already made it to the safety of the solid ground on the other side.
He slides his foot forward. With zero warning, his right leg buckles. His feet slip off the lower cable; his fingers lose their grip.
He falls.
Twisting midair, Clay manages to hook his right arm over the lower cable. His fall stops with a jolt that sends a sharp flash of pain through his shoulder, that leaves him swinging wildly, grappling for some kind of stability.
His shoulder throbs. His arm feels numb. There's no damn way he's gonna be able to pull himself back up - or make it the rest of the way, hand over hand.
He completely forgets about Ray until he hears the yell.
"Clay, hold on!"
With the bottom cable jolting violently back and forth, Clay isn't sure how the hell Ray has kept from falling, let alone managed to move back toward him, but here he comes. "Hang on there, brother," he calls. "Gonna pull you up."
There's no way. If he tries, he'll just fall too. No point in them both going down.
Clay attempts to tell him that, but Ray completely ignores him. Edging as close as he can, he lets go with one hand, contorting his body to reach down and grab at the loop on Clay's vest.
He tries to lift. The cable swings wildly.
Inevitably, Ray loses his one-handed grip on the top cable, and they both plummet toward the river.
The drop is far enough to be dangerous, but not far enough to allow them to twist into an ideal landing position. Clay slams into the water half on his side. It's like hitting a brick wall.
The first thing he feels is the impact, forcing the breath from his lungs as he sinks. The second is the crushing, all-encompassing cold. Almost instantly, his body goes numb, pain swallowed up in ice.
Lungs burning, Clay struggles to orient himself. His head breaks the surface and he gasps a frantic breath.
Where the hell is Ray?
The river is swifter than it looked, current already carrying him quickly downstream, but the water is shockingly clear. He catches a glimpse, a flash of color that doesn't belong, and struggles through the water to drag his teammate's face above the surface.
Ray's eyes are closed. Clay can't tell if he's breathing. For now, the best he can do is keep his head above water until he can get them both to the shore.
The first rule of swimming in strong currents is not to fight, because that's a quick way to get tired and then dead. Clay hooks his right wrist through Ray's vest, leaving his legs and good arm free to propel them gradually toward the bank, working along with the current. He can't really feel his limbs but can at least tell they're responding, which is the important thing.
By the time Clay finally drags himself and his teammate out onto the shore, dripping and shaking with cold, they've been carried God only knows how far downstream.
Far enough to have crossed the border into China? Probably. Which means they're in deep shit.
There's no time to worry about that now. He rolls himself over and fumbles to check Ray's neck for a pulse, hissing in frustration when his numb fingers make it impossible to tell what he is, or isn't, feeling. He lowers his cheek over Ray's mouth, sending out a silent prayer to whomever might hear it, and nearly collapses in relief when he feels the puff of a strong breath.
So, unconscious and hurt, but alive. Clay can work with that.
He needs to get them into shelter, and he needs to get them both warm.
The shore they emerged onto is made up of fine black gravel. Where the gravel ends, large slabs of stone lean up against each other, leaving sheltered hollows between. Further still from the river, the boulders give way to sloped hillsides that rise into arid, fragrant pine forest.
Forcing himself up on numb, wobbly legs, Clay snags the back of Ray's vest, makes it a couple steps, and falls hard on his knees in the sharp gravel. He ends up crawling the rest of the way, dragging his teammate behind him into the shelter of the boulders. Once they're out of sight and shielded from the knife-edged wind, he clumsily strips off both his and Ray's soaked gear and outer clothing. Setting it all aside, he sighs in resignation and snuggles down close to Ray. Awkward or not, they need to share body heat if they're going to not die of hypothermia.
"God, I'm glad Sonny isn't here to see this," Clay mumbles, wincing at the blurry slur of his own voice.
As the cold-induced numbness starts to wear off, the pain creeps back in. Clay's shoulder throbs, but not as badly as his side. In contrast to the otherwise pervasive chill, his side feels hot and swollen in a way that makes him sweaty and deeply nauseated, and the shivering only makes the pain worse. He breathes slowly through his nose, trying not to puke, knowing instinctively that doing so would suck right now.
He should look at Ray's pupils to see if he's got a head injury. He should try to start a fire. He should check to see if they still have a working radio between them.
Clay tries to push himself up, makes it a couple inches, falls back with a groan, and decides moving isn't gonna happen anytime soon.
He closes his eyes, curls his good arm around Ray's shoulders, and passes out.
Coming up in chapter two: The rest of Bravo has a decision to make, a mission to complete, and plenty of trouble to get into.
