Note: WV being a state built largely by coal mining, there are a lot of mines, functional and not. Most old mines are sealed in one way or another, but the danger is still very real if you find an open one and you're stupid enough to go inside. But if you simply must see what a coal mine's guts looks like, there's always the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, in - surprise! - Beckley. Which I have never been to.

"I'm gonna die, and it's gonna be your fault!" Kat yelled over the noise of the whitewater. The noise was somewhat louder than usual, since she was clinging to a rock in the middle of one of the more vicious Class III rapids.

"Just hold your horses, Ryan!" Josh yelled back at her. She made rescuing so difficult. Like it was his fault that Ethan had slammed into her kayak and sent it crashing into an outcropping of rocks. Or that it was his fault that the fiberglass hull had spilt wide open upon impact - in defiance of its rigorously safety-tested design - and promptly been swamped, thus dumping her into the water. Or that it had taken him nearly five minutes to manuever out into the rapids - he couldn't change nature, no matter how many nanomachines he had swarming in his blood. "This is why we wear life jackets."

"No DUH!" she shouted. Her hands slipped a fraction on the wet, algae-covered rock, and Josh let out more line in a hurry. His grappling gun had many uses, one of them being emergency rescues - which was fortunate, because this was definitely an emergency and a rescue. It was also fortunate that the bank was close enough for him to anchor the business end of the line into solid, dry bedrock. He would've preferred, of course, not having to actually get in the river, but sometimes you just had to swim. His own kayak, still intact, was with Trip.

Wherever Trip was. After Kat had gone under, Josh's attention had narrowed to the scope of her rescue and consequently he had been ignoring the other two athletes, although he was thinking of a few choice words for Ethan.

"You owe me big," he said to her, letting the current swing him closer to Kat's position. "This water is freezing!"

"Don't make me repeat myself," she snapped. Her fingers slipped another few centimeters, enough for the water to win the tug-of-war and pry her from the rock altogether. But Josh was within grabbing distance now, and caught her wrist just as she was about to be swept away. He pulled her in closer, supporting her until she recovered enough equilibrium to keep herself abovewater, then shifted his grip on the grappling gun so she could take hold of it too. A flip of a switch and the line began reeling itself - and them - in.

"DUDE!" Trip called from the bank, and Josh looked over his shoulder to see him standing high and dry, with the three remaining kayaks beached close at hand and Ethan nowhere in sight. Trip was clearly impressed. "That totally ROCKED!"

"It took you long enough," Kat told Josh. Even with her wetsuit, she was starting to shiver. For that matter, so was he, and he began swimming to speed the return journey. Shivering, just like everything else these days, burned T-juice. Stupid nanoprobes.

He waited to respond to Kat's jibe until they'd reached the river's edge, some distance away from Trip and the kayaks. Releasing the grapple's end from its anchor and reeling in the remaining line, he asked, "And you survived for how long as a solo agent?"

She pushed him away with a heartfelt, "Bite me, McGrath."

"But I don't know where you've been," he said, feigning innocence and doing a poor job of it.

Kat gave him a death glare and started unstrapping her helmet. "Oh, you are just asking for it."

Josh's humor evaporated, and he shoved the grapple into his backpack with a violence that neither the grapple nor the backpack had earned. "Hey, I'm supposed to be the one with the attitude problem right now."

"Yeah, well, you know, sometimes I get sick of being rescued," she said, voice flatter than normal. Either she didn't care, or she was full-on angry. The latter was more likely, and had he been in a better mood, he would've cared more. "Damsel in distress I am not."

Trip, jogging over, stopped the conversation with a soliticious if ungrammatical, "Kat, are you like, okay?"

She got the helmet off and immediately rubbed one ear. "I'm freezing and my ear feels like a balloon. It's not swelling, is it?

Trip leaned in, squinting. "No, but it's seriously red."

Josh glanced at her, decided that red was the wrong shade (it was more like purple), and then refocused on something slightly higher on his priority list. "Where's Ethan?"

The other athlete was nowhere to be seen - hadn't been seen by Josh for some time, not since knocking Kat off-course. Given that they were standing on a deserted riverbank with nothing but a forested mountainside behind them and whitewater rapids in front of them, the opportunities for vanishing were limited at best. All of the kayaks were beached, which narrowed possibilities further. Still, it was Ethan.

"Who cares? Where's the nearest phone? Mine's trashed." She dropped the mangled, soaking remains of her cell phone on the ground for emphasis.

"Mine too," Josh said, lying. He wasn't carrying one; why should he? He had a biolink, and Kat carried everything. Besides, not having a cell phone left room in his backpack for a candy bar. "Trip, did you see where Ethan went?"

At the moment, all Trip could see was Kat. Josh made a valiant effort to keep the scowl off of his face; Trip had no business ogling his teammate. Not that Josh had any claim on her beyond that, but it was like Pete or someone telling him his sister was hot. If he'd had a sister.

Massively distracted, Trip somehow managed to get out a fairly coherent sentence: "Uh, yeah, up the hill. Mountain. Whatever."

Josh turned his back on Trip and Kat and scanned the mountain. A flash of raptor red moving upwards through the unmoving orange-yellow trees proved that Trip was telling the truth. "Why?"

Trip managed to stop looking at Kat long enough to frown in puzzlement and scratch his head. "I dunno. Oh, right. He got bored waiting and wanted to see if there were any caves or something."

Josh stared up in horror. There was no snow on the mountains - no avalanches here - but there were rockslides, and mudslides, and abandoned coal mines all over this stupid state, and Ethan, never big on safety or even common sense, was probably signing his own death warrant. If Team Steel didn't ride to his rescue once again. "I don't believe this..."

Kat slung her backpack on again and sighed. "Well, I know where we're going. Trip, could you see if you guys have a first-aid kit while we go find Ethan?"

"Sure," he said, an instantly obedient puppy, and ran towards the kayaks. Josh was already heading up the mountainside. A thin dirt track, badly overgrown but still sporting some gravel in the deep center ruts, led upwards in a mostly straight fashion. He started jogging a little, to make up for lost time; given the rescue and the conversation with Trip, Ethan had, at the most, ten minutes on them.

Kat caught up quickly, but the track petered out soon after.

"Now where?" Josh asked.

She surveyed the area for a moment, hands on hips, then pointed. "Right there. See the breakage? And there's a trail, probably made by deer or whatever lives on these mountains."

Josh blinked. The random tangle of trees and undergrowth suddenly resolved itself into a blatant trail. He shook his head and went down it. "I knew I should've taken that second round of N-Tek survival training."

Kat followed. "No wonder you always get your head handed to you in the Amazon."

"I do not!"

"Uh-huh."

The going was a lot tougher on this trail, but Ethan had definitely taken it - running, it looked like, now that Josh was alert to the signs. The track wound and twisted back on itself with a logic visible only to animals. Five minutes later and with no appreciable progress, or any sighting of Ethan, Josh's already frayed temper was nearing its end.

"Biocon is easier to find! Where is he?"

"Up a tree and laughing at us, I bet." Kat was still rubbing her ear. "Ugh. This is definitely swelling. Now I'll have to take my earrings out."

Taking the earrings out, he knew from prior observation, was a long and labor-intensive process under the best of circumstances, because Kat was uncharacteristically fussy about the care and maintenance of her jewelry. He kept trudging along. "It's your fault for having so many holes in your head."

"They're piercings, thank you, and they're cool."

"At least you don't have piercings anywhere else." As soon as he'd said it, though, he wondered. "You don't, do you?"

She snorted. "No. But I do have a tattoo."

That actually stopped him in his tracks, and he whipped his head around to stare at her incredulously. "A what?"

"That looks like a mine entrance up there," she said, ignoring the question and pushing right past him.

He opened his mouth to continue this particular line of conversation, then decided to hold it back for later heckling opportunities. Instead, he followed her to the alleged mine entrance.

She was right. The path leveled out and broadened into a grass-choked terrace. More gravel, mixed liberally with blackened dirt, crunched underfoot. The terrace curled around and ended at a blank hole in the mountain. It was slightly higher than Josh's head, and big enough for at least five people to walk into simultaneously.

And it was wide open. Not a barrier in sight. A cool breeze - colder than the October air they were standing in - whistled out of the mine entrance, carrying with it the scent of time and decay. There was something else, too, a tang of something Josh couldn't identify.

He scratched his head, frowning. "I thought the government or somebody sealed all of these off."

She crouched and examined the rocky soil in front of the gaping hole. "I guess they missed this one. Something's just been through here, and it wasn't a bear."

"There aren't any bears in West Virginia," he said, scoffing at the very idea. Then he remembered one of Berto's scare-tactic lectures. "Uh, no grizzly bears, I mean."

She stood up, wiping her hands off on the neoprene covering her legs. "Nice recovery."

He made a face; she made one back in retaliation. Then he turned back to the mine and to the never-ending task of saving Ethan from himself.

Inside, it was pitch black. There was the pale yellow-white beam of a flashlight sweeping around not too far inside, splashing off of gray-black rocks and alarmingly old-looking wooden supports. Everything he could see was coated with a sheen of oily water.

Josh stepped just inside the mine opening, feeling the cold and damp even with the clammy wetsuit on, and called out, "Ethan?"

"Right here, man." The flashlight was deceptive; the words came from much farther into the mine, and they echoed around. "You should see this!"

"Ethan, these mines aren't safe," Josh said. "Get out before you get hurt!"

"Dude, relax. Nothing's gonna happen." Ethan came closer, shining the flashlight directly into Josh's eyes. "Stop being such a chicken."

Josh put up a hand to shield his face, more annoyed than blinded. Even out of Max mode the nanoprobes compensated for a good deal. "Being safe and using common sense isn't being chicken, you moron."

It was a lesson drilled into him by two fathers - Jefferson more so than Jim, to be honest. Jeff was nothing if not dedicated to safety, both for his own son and everyone else's children. Josh had never participated in any kind of sport without the appropriate safety gear, took pains to make sure he didn't get too crazy as Max, and it violated all of his deepest beliefs to see someone acting recklessly.

He was starting to get the feeling that Ethan knew it and was deliberately provoking him. He wouldn't put it past him.

Ethan made a highly unattractive clucking noise and smacked one of the support beams. "Oh no, watch out! The sky is falling!"

"That is seriously not smart," Kat said, but was pretty much drowned out by Josh demanding, "Knock it off, Raptor!"

"Get real," Ethan said, the words spiked with mocking laughter. "I could do this all day long and nothing would happen."

To prove his point, he hit the support beam again, and harder this time. A handful of tiny pebbles fell from the ceiling, accompanied by a more generous shower of dust and dirt.

Josh lunged forward and grabbed Ethan by the arm, yanking him away from the beam. "Knock it OFF!"

Ethan shoved him back, indignant and moving quickly towards full-blown anger. Josh didn't care; a fight was preferable to a cave-in, and his main objective - getting Ethan away from the wall - had been achieved. But the damage had been done.

A low, groaning sound echoed through the mine, freezing everyone in their places. Josh had time to glance at the support beam, see the ancient, water-rotted wood splintering and grinding down on itself, look over his shoulder at Kat, and then above her head where deep fracture lines had appeared in the rock, racing towards the entrance in a dozen small showers of dirt and pebbles - or maybe the fractures had been there all along and no one had noticed, but there was nothing he could do about it now -

There was a sharp crack, the entire world seemed to shake, and then, somewhere in between him diving forward and Ethan falling backwards, the ceiling dropped with a thunderous boom. After that it was just pitch-black confusion, full of choking dust and the familiar but perpetually distressing worry that his teammate hadn't made it. The worst of the rockfall had been over her head, but she had nine eternal lives and quick reflexes besides. He hoped.

"Kat, status," he said, sitting up and fumbling for the flashlight in his backpack.

"Alive -" she coughed, somewhere to his left "- and kicking. Ethan?"

A burst of coughing that didn't come from either of them was answer enough. Josh stood up and flicked on the flashlight.

The dust was so thick that it looked opaque in the beam of light. It cleared after a moment, a little, and revealed a solid wall of rocks blocking their only way out.

"We're trapped," he said, wide-eyed in alarm and deja vu.

"Not if you-know-who shows up," Kat murmured, coming to stand beside him so Ethan wouldn't hear.

He considered it. Quickly. A thousand possible options and consequences. The rockfall was massive, but deceptively so. A brief scan with his nano-enhanced vision showed serious instability where the wall of rocks met the ceiling. But that was both blessing and curse. "Yeah..." he said, keeping his voice just as low, "I could punch through it and bring the rest of the mountain down on our heads. And I don't have the regenerator."

"So there goes that idea, in other words."

Behind them, coughing, Ethan said loudly, "Great, trapped in another cave. This is perfect. Nice going, McGrath."

"ME? This is your fault," Josh said, rounding on him with all the pent-up fury of the day. "It's ALWAYS your fault! You run off and do something completely insane and drag everybody else into trouble with you!"

"Hey, I didn't ask you to follow me," Ethan countered, stabbing a finger in Josh's direction. "It's your fault you're here, not mine. Okay? So take your jealousy and step off!"

Josh swung an arm through the remnants of the dust cloud, gesturing so broadly that even Ethan would have to understand the gravity of the situation. "We're buried inside a coal mine with no way to reach the outside world - and no one knows where we are! This is how people die, Ethan!"

"You know what? You can just kiss -"

But the rest of the sentence was lost, because there was a sudden dull thunking noise, and then Ethan's eyes rolled back and he crumpled forward. Josh caught him reflexively, then lowered him to the ground and looked at the place where he'd been standing in mild confusion.

"Blah, blah, blah," Kat said, tossing a fist-sized rock into the darkness behind her. "This'll be a lot more bearable with him unconscious, don't you think?"

Josh was delighted and aghast at the same time. "You hit him with a rock?"

"It was the only blunt object I had." She faced him with her hands on her hips. "So are we gonna look for a way out or what?"

"There's not much point," he said, which earned him a very incredulous stare indeed. "Look," he went on, sighing, "there's air circulating in here. Fresh air. I can feel a draft and all the dust is clearing out pretty fast. We're not going to suffocate. And Berto'll come looking for us sooner or later. We just need to sit tight and not do anything stupid."

"Staying put and waiting for rescue, as opposed to wandering off and dying" had, in fact, been covered in Survival Training 101 - and 102 - so Josh didn't expect much more argument from his fractious partner. And for once, he didn't get any.

"Oh, boy. Waiting. Always my strong point." She unslung her backpack and dropped it to the ground some distance away from the rockfall, then followed it a moment later. "I'll just sit here and contemplate my navel, thank you."

Minus the sarcasm, Josh felt that was a fairly good idea. He made sure Ethan wasn't having any trouble breathing, then sat down himself, leaning up against the rough, damp mine wall next to Kat. He flicked off the flashlight a moment later, conserving it, and they were plunged into dusty darkness. The only light came from the digital readout on his "watch," which currently said it was 11:02 AM EST, and the faint green glow barely illuminated his wrist.

He could see into infrared (well, Max could, and Josh could too if he squinted right) but chose instead to close his eyes. A blank feed from the biolink would alarm Berto just as much as one showing the IR profile of a mine... and it would conserve transphasic energy to boot.

The silence was vast and enfolding, broken only by their breathing, the faint irregular drip of water, and the occasional muted sounds of whatever else was in the mine with them. He hoped it wasn't anything larger than a raccoon. Of course, his imagination and experience quickly supplied him with a dozen scarier scenarios.

And then there was the little detail of having a mountain hanging over their heads.

To stop himself from freaking out, he said, "I can't believe you hit him on the head with a rock."

Ethan breathed, snoring a little. He was definitely out cold.

Kat made an indelicate noise that sounded a good deal like the snoring. "Oh, like you're complaining."

He checked again. 11:03.

"Bro," he said under his breath, "get here fast."