CHAPTER 3

Light filtered in through gaps of twisted metal, as dust and smaller bits of debris settled around them. "Lexa, are you okay?" Clarke asked, coughing as she inhaled some of the dust around them.

"Um… yeah, I think so," Lexa said, though she didn't sound like she was all right.

The blonde pulled out her phone and flipped on her flashlight app to give them some extra light. The pair spent the next ten minutes trying to push and shove their way out of the pit, but it was no use. They gave up and she saw Lexa take a seat. The brunette winced and rolled up her pant leg, revealing a gash across her ankle. There wasn't a great deal of blood, but it did look painful.

"Hey, don't touch it," Clarke advised. She reached over and grabbed her backpack, which had been over her shoulder when they had to jump to safety. Ever prepared for a lunchtime malfunction, she pulled out an extra shirt from the bag. "Let me help."

Lexa drew her hands away from her leg, and took Clarke's phone to shine the light on the wound. Clarke inspected the gash to make sure there was no debris in it. "Does it hurt?" she questioned.

"A little," the brunette admitted.

"Okay, I'm going to tie this around it, so nothing gets in it," Clarke explained her actions before doing them. She lifted the shirt and wrapped it around Lexa's ankle, careful as she tied it into place.

Lexa winced as pressure was put onto the cut, but didn't complain. It went without saying, where Clarke got her first aid skills from. Her mother was the Chief of Medical Staff at the hospital, and the most respected doctor there. "Thanks."

"No problem," Clarke nodded, moving to sit across from Lexa. In the silence that followed, they could hear rain hitting the metal that trapped them where they were. Only a few minutes of it ended up being more than she could handle. "So, did you tell your parents where you were going today?"

It was that simple, harmless question that made Lexa realize she knew much more about the moderately popular blonde than the other knew about her. "Um, yeah, I told my Uncle Gus that we were coming out here," she said, glancing down.

Another strike for the walking, talking disaster, Clarke thought to herself. "Oh my god, I'm sorry," she apologized. "I shouldn't have-"

"-No, it's okay," Lexa interrupted her. "Don't worry about it."

The blonde still mentally kicked herself for what she'd said. "Well, he knows we're here and so does my mom. They'll find us."

"The streets are so empty," Octavia commented as they drove down the main drag in the city.

"That's a good thing," Abby pointed out.

The menacing skies above had temporarily let up on the onslaught of rain, but it didn't look like this storm system was done with the city of Silverton, Oklahoma. The group needed to find Clarke and get to shelter as quickly as they could.

Abby slowed the vehicle as she noticed a small truck, covered in pieces of broken plywood parked alongside the road. Two backwater fellows by the looks of them – by their mannerisms and gall to drink in public – sat on a public bench nearby. They were going to get themselves killed.

She rolled down the passenger window of the car, since they were on the other side of the street. "Gentlemen," she called out to them, but they ignored her. "Guys! Hey, listen!"

"Hey, dickwads!" Octavia shouted out the window.

"Octavia!" Bellamy yelled at his sister.

However, her shout at the men got their attention. "What?" one of them asked.

"You need to get inside," Abby advised them. "It's not safe to be out here."

"Have you looked around? It's like… the zombie apocalypse out here," the other man stated, motioning to the abandoned street.

"Mrs. G., we should keep going," Raven pointed out.

"Wait, what's that?" Octavia questioned, leaning closer to the windshield as she looked up at the clouds. There were a swirling mass of gray not far ahead of them, and it was starting to lower.

The older woman in the driver's seat looked ahead of them as well, before her eyes widened. "We need to go." She threw the SUV into reverse, turning to look behind them as she stomped on the gas pedal. As they quickly backed up, a funnel dropped from the sky and made contact with the ground.

The tornado was a beastly mass of wind that obliterated the public library, but it was also a jumper. Abby spun the wheel hard and shifted them back into drive, but they hadn't gotten away fast enough. The vortex lifted from the ground and jumped, dropping dangerously close to the SUV. The wind took hold of the vehicle, spinning it violently and careening it into another car.

"Everybody out! Get inside!" Abby yelled over the wind. Her door was smashed up against the other car, and she couldn't get out, so she waited until Octavia was out and followed the teenager. Together, they ran across the street to a bistro, seeking safety inside.

Rain seeped in through the gaps in the debris blocking their escape. It wasn't a large enough amount to be alarming, but it did keep them uncomfortably wet. Clarke and Lexa had talked idly about school, friends, and homework, and fell back to a short-lived silence. The blonde made sure that Lexa kept her leg at least slightly elevated, to keep it from bleeding too badly.

"So, what internship was your application for?" Clarke questioned.

"I want to go into Environmental Law," the brunette explained. "There's a law firm in Tulsa that takes applications all across the state for two intern positions over the summer. I was hoping to get one of them."

Suddenly, Clarke remembered something. "Oh, yeah… you're the reason that the school recycles, and why we have to go so far as to separate out which kinds of paper go where."

"The school recycling the way it does saves three tons of perfectly reusable materials from going to landfills, to sit and rot."

"I heard you wouldn't leave the administrators alone until they started the recycling program."

"Yeah, I wouldn't let them ignore me. It was actually your mom who pushed the whole thing through. If not for her, all of my campaigning for going green would have been a waste of time."

"At least she did something good for someone," Clarke sighed as she leaned back against a wall of the pit.

"You two don't get along?" Lexa questioned.

"Not really," the blonde shook her head. "For a few reasons… one being she wants me to follow in her footsteps and become a doctor."

"That's not what you want to do?"

"No. I want to be an artist. So, instead of taking the advanced classes she wants me to, I went with Shop, Art, and Music. I just… told her I was going with the advanced electives."

A few moments of silence passed between the two after that, before Lexa spoke again. "Hey, I'm sorry I dragged you out here."

"No, no, don't apologize," Clarke responded quickly. "It's okay. Nobody could have known this would happen."

"Unless we had listened to the weather reports," the brunette replied, quirking a brow and grinning faintly.

"Well… maybe," Clarke shrugged. "But half the time they're wrong anyway, so… nobody knew the weather was actually going to get bad."

Lexa was about to speak again, but noise outside caught there attention. Things were shifting above them, it almost sounded like…

"Hey, we're down here!" Clarke called as she stood up to try and look out. "Help us!"

Lexa stood beside the other young woman, but it was impossible to see if anyone was out there. No one responded to their cries for help, but there was still movement above. Maybe their rescuer was working too hard to grunt out a response?

Suddenly they heard a metallic crack and several more objects fell onto the pit, making a few smaller pieces fall in with them. They heard rushing water, before torrents of the liquid starting pouring into the pit. Both girls jumped back to avoid the newly formed waterfall.

"Oh my god," Clarke said, looking back up at the debris trapping them. Any chance of pushing their way out was long gone now that more metal and concrete lay above them.

"It will be okay," Lexa tried to reassure her companion. "We're going to be all right."

It soon became apparent to them that the water was just as trapped as they were, as it began gathering around their feet. Whatever the pit had been used for, it now held them and the water very securely.

"We're going to die down here," Clarke shook her head.

Lexa walked over to her classmate, and took hold of both her hands. "We're not," she said confidently. "Let's see if we can move some of this debris again. If we can't, we'll still be okay. Your mom or my uncle will come to get us."

Clarke squeezed the brunette's hands, needing the reassurance. "Okay," she agreed after a moment.

Together, they went to one of the corners of the space, hoping that it would be the easiest spot to get out from. Working side by side, they tried several times to push a piece of sheet metal out of the way, but there was something heavy above that kept it in place. It was hard to say just how long the two attempted to free themselves, but eventually they were forced to give up again.

"We're stuck," Clarke stated the obvious.

"And that's okay, someone will find us," Lexa assured her.

After the tornado had passed and dissipated, the group slowly made their way out of the restaurant. "That was way too close," Bellamy decided.

"You three should stay here," Abby told the teenagers. "You'll be safer inside."

"No way," Raven shook her head. "You're going to need our help."

"What did I say about doing what I tell you to?" the older woman asked.

"We're teenagers," Raven shrugged. "Now, let's go get Clarke."

The small group headed across the street and got back into the now beat up SUV. Abby tried a few times to get it to start, but Raven got out to take a look under the hood when it refused to turn over. Mechanically inclined, she hoped to be able to fix whatever the problem was.

With her good leg, Raven pushed herself up onto her tiptoes, leaning as far under the hood as she could. It took a few moments of visual hunting, but then she found a belt that had come loose. "Bingo."

Reaching further in, she grabbed the item and placed it back on its track. "Try it now!" she called to Abby, though she stayed where she was so she could watch the ignition process. The doctor turned the key in the ignition and this time it started right up.

"Yes! Go me," Raven praised herself, dropping back to the ground and pulling the hood down.

"Get in the car!" Abby hollered up to the teenager.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming," Raven grumbled as she moved around to get into the vehicle again. Once she was inside, they got on the move again. It was a twenty minute drive from the center of town to the paper mill, which Bellamy pointed out would be a much more efficient if they took the side streets instead of the freeway.