For all disclaimers: See previous Chapters.
Faith
Chapter Four
/January 4th 2001, northern Afghanistan/
Anna got them past the gate guards with a nod and a quick word, after which they were off, Anna quickly leading the way up into the mountains, all of them only armed with an M-16 and pistol each with one clip a weapon. She didn't say a word to either of them, just led them on with a confident stride. He had to wonder just where they were going, regardless, even though he trusted her.
The rain had started to fall with some force even as the wind kicked up hard enough to have both women's hair whipping around their faces and throats, Matt, despite being sure on his feet, often finding the pebbles and dirt being blown into his eyes making the going difficult. It didn't stop any of them, let alone wipe the amused smile off of Xenia's face for a moment, but Matt did find himself wondering if whatever Anna had in mind was still going to be worth it if the weather continued to get worse. Of course, he didn't actually /know/ what Anna had in mind, so only time would tell.
They moved some way up a particular mountain, then on into a cave. The pace Anna set should have quickly left the light behind, but Matt soon discovered that high cracks in the walls allowed in a little sunlight, while some sort of natural blue-green luminescence provided all of the visibility they might have needed. They made a series of turns through tunnels, at least once doubling back on themselves as far as he could tell, before he started to hear the rumbling sounds up ahead which told him what it was they were heading for.
Sure enough, they came into a long, sloping passage which ran downwards sharply, one which turned out to be covered in running water ceilings, walls and floor, a stream underfoot making it all particularly treacherous. They edged their way down it until they came to the very mouth, then Anna edged out onto a ledge running around the outside rim and gestured outwards. "Well, what do you think?" she asked, inviting them to take a look even as the rumbling turned into a roar of sound and motion.
Matt stuck his head out into the open space revealed beyond the tunnel, making sure he had a solid hold first, then whistled. "Impressive" was all that he could think to say-and it was.
The exposed area was a huge underground cavern, one so broad he couldn't see the roof, floor and most of the walls, a fair-sized waterfall running past him from the very top of a broad plateau of rock which sat maybe ten feet above where he was standing into the deep darkness below. He could glimpse shimmering silver ripples where it was landing which suggested a considerable pool of water, but even with the phosphoresce created by what he presumed were forms of plant life and fungi supplied by the water he couldn't clearly see that far down to be sure. He noticed something odd and looked up as sharply as he could-up above the plateau, leading out onto the surface, was a massive natural chimney which had to reach up through almost ten metres of solid rock. Heavy rain was sheeting down through the chimney into the cavern, forming a silver wall against which a flash of lightning was briefly illuminated, followed by a long, echoingly loud rumble of thunder from the worsening storm.
"Interesting place" he said, glancing around himself again before shifting back to come face-to face with Anna, who was on the very verge of kissing him given her expression, a fierce grin on her face. He grinned back, tempted to respond. After all, he knew what weather like this did to Anna...
"Yes, impressive. Just one thing, Anna...are you expecting us to dive off of this rim into that pool down there? I ask because I, for one, do not wish to die that much" said Xenia, cutting in on Matt and Anna. Anna's smile became a smirk.
"No, we climb up there and /then/ we dive back down. So were clear, I found this place when I fell in here through that chimney and got washed off the plateau down into the pool at the bottom, suffice to say that sole scouting missions in the dead of night are not a good idea in unfamiliar terrain. I was nearly knocked unconscious and fell forty foot into the pool before I came back up again, then I spent five minutes coughing up all of the water I'd swallowed. I had to climb out with my bare hands and work my way through the tunnels back to solid ground, took me two hours and makes me sure no one else knows were here. The pool is thirty foot deep and fifty wide with an underwater passage you shouldn't try and swim where all the water escapes. Trust me, its safe. So, who wants to go first?" asked Anna, raising an eyebrow.
"If were climbing, I'm leading. What is the point of jumping headlong into the unknown if you are not the first, da?" said Xenia, edging her way onto the ledge Anna was on before reaching up and finding handholds, then footholds. The rock was rough and worn by weather and water, it had to be slippery from condensation if nothing else, yet as soon as she found her rhythm Xenia made it look easy, long legs powering her up the climb as strong arms anchored her, powerful muscles rippling as she moved with exceptional grace from hold to hold. She took less than five minutes to reach the top, then pulled herself over it and disappeared-just as an almighty crash of thunder roared and echoed outside.
Startled, Matt actually jumped, lost his footing and skidded frantically out of control before, spinning in mid air, his fingernails caught in a death grip on the edge of the ledge Anna was standing on. That smirk she'd been wearing was back and she looked slightly amused-as well as completely unphased. Typical, he should have expected that. He'd been in and fought his way through plenty of hairy situations where he'd gotten in and out only through a combination of mad luck, massive amounts of gunfire and explosions and a frantic determination not to die, added to no little applied skill of course. He'd also had very capable help in the form of his friends and allies, of course. But Anna?
From what little he did know about her, her speciality was Counter-Terrorism and Insurgency work added to Bodyguard duties where the individual being guarded was so important that to mention his or her name and mission would get you killed in public. Her history was made up of so many "Eyes Only" Black Op and Black Book stamps, Wetwork missions and any number of off-the-record never-happened jobs that it was a wonder she was allowed to socialise to him sometimes-and he knew what little he had heard barely scratched the surface. To expect her to get scared or shocked by /any/ weather conditions was like expecting Al Gore to have actually won the election against Bush, Jnr. years after the fact, utterly damn stupid. He made a mental note to see what he could /really/ find out about her before all this was over and they went their separate ways again...
"Well? Are you going to help me up?" he asked, suspecting that he knew the answer already given her expression.
"Nah. Race you to the top, though" she said with a grin, even as he felt his fingers slipping on the slimy rocks. He gritted his teeth. Fine, if that was the way she wanted it...
Y
Xenia had found the climb easy given some she'd had-climbing thirty storeys up the outside of a building in atrocious weather with no safety lines in the dark, after which she'd had to open a locked window from the outside kneeling on a six-inch ledge without waking the owners asleep inside, for example-but she wasn't expecting what she found when she pulled herself up onto the plateau properly. For one thing, not all of the sound was coming from the waterfall, as it turned out.
There was a literal full-scale river running through the plateau in a bed which had to be three feet deep at least, a good eight feet wide on top of that. The plateau was so broad it left another six feet clear either side of the river, but the river current was strong enough to force the water at speed over rocks and debris fallen down the chimney, creating a steady rumble of sound that only grew louder as it approached the drop-off point for the waterfall. White water showed in places and the water, occasionally and often, splashed up and over the channel to near her feet. The river seemed to be coming out of the far wall in the cavern, but she knew enough about geology to be sure that this was a surface river which had submerged at some point and been narrowed down to the point its natural speed and strength had been greatly enhanced. Impressive-and she hadn't known a thing about it, which was even more impressive.
Trust Anna to have found a place which it was likely no one else knew about, especially the way she said she had. Anna was harder than granite and less yielding than a volcanic eruption when things got in her way. The shock of an abrupt and unexpected thirty-foot fall followed by a tumble through a fast-running small river, leading to a forty-foot fall off a cliff through a waterfall which had to have tossed her into a deep pool of water still carrying all of her gear and weapons? Anna would only have been bothered by the fact it was going to take her time to climb back out of the place since she didn't know the route, it would have taken broken bones to even slow her down. There was a good reason Anna's Call Sign was a Demon name.
Maybe she could use this place to relax if she could persuade Anna to share? She could recall the route easily enough and this was /not/ a place easily found or reached by anyone. Calling Anna an expert tracker and hunter was an insult to the gifted woman's almost preternatural skills, she /never, ever/ got lost or lost someone she was tracking. If she wanted to find you, it was only a matter of time...
Xenia stepped up to the edge and saw Anna quickly climbing the slippery rock face, with Matt a little way below her still dragging himself back onto the ledge they'd all started on after evidently almost taking a tumble. Anna made the climb look even easier than /she/ had, dextrous, strong fingers closing on rough edges of slippery rock, sure feet finding every edge and hole, powerful body flexing as her muscles pulled her up the rocks. Again, just watching Anna move, Xenia was almost disappointed that she didn't think of women /that/ way. Not that the fact she liked men prevented her from enjoying the view...
Anna pulled herself up and over the edge, stood up easily and strode over to Xenia with her distance-eating steady soldiers stride. Relaxing a little, Anna tapped a foot as her eyes tracked across the cavern before she looked over at Xenia with an arched eyebrow. "You like?" she asked, with a smile.
"Very much, yes" replied Xenia, her answering smile sly as she caught Anna's double meaning. The cavern was a superbly out of the way location, certainly, a place where anyone who appreciated natural beauty and having real time to relax could come to be uninterrupted doing both, but that wasn't the only reason Anna had invited Xenia and Matt, particularly, down there with her and Xenia knew it.
"Open competition?" asked Anna, glancing over at Matt as he finally caught up with them, hauling himself over the edge of the plateau at last. Xenia let her eyes track across Matt's body and decided that she didn't mind what she was seeing, not at all. Handsome, young and very fit, with the way he moved? She almost felt like purring.
"Certainly" she replied, to a silent nod and wink from Anna. What was it they said these days? Oh, yes/the games afoot, that seemed appropriate. She wondered if Matt had any idea what was coming his way...
"Before you two starting plotting whatever it is your having girl talk about, I /really/ need to tell you something. I'm engaged, alright? I have a Fiancée back in the States, her names Melissa and I love her, very much, so just stop checking me out will you?" asked Matt, looking exasperated as he stood up and walked over to them. Xenia felt rather than saw Anna's answering smile.
"So now wouldn't be a good time to point out I have no trouble at all with the idea of being a Mistress, then?" replied Anna, an answer which visibly left Matt at a total loss for words. The smouldering look she sent Matt as she spoke would have made most men's hair stand on end, it was no little to Matt's credit that he stood up to it.
"I believe you mean that. I also believe that I have commitment issues, the kind which mean once I've made a commitment, I stick to it. I'd walk over hot coals to reach you under any ordinary circumstances, Anna, but I already have someone to look forwards to getting back to. Same for you, Xenia, sorry" said Matt, glancing at them one after the other.
A massive roar of thunder echoed outside, seeming to almost shake the mountainside and the cavern they were in. For a long second a brilliant flash of lightning illuminated the cavern so brilliantly that it was like being inside a searchlight, then everything temporarily went back to what passed for normal again. The rain only intensified, reaching torrential downpour conditions that swept down through the chimney with such force it sounded and almost felt as though the sea itself was battering at the roof and walls of the cavern.
Xenia wasn't spooked by much but that sound was downright eerie, dangerous too. Worse, though, was the fact that she could tell the water level on the plateau was rising, the water running faster and faster past them as it did. Wherever the rivers source was, it was taking in the avalanche of downpour hard and fast and feeding it through far faster than was safe, for them and who knew where else. They needed to get /out/ of here/now, but Matt and Anna were too busy trying to square off to one another still to pay any real attention.
What to do, though? Slapping Anna to get her attention would have resulted in a broken wrist-had she ever worked in Intelligence? She really /was/ getting old, there was a simple way to get the attention of both Anna and Matt-
A grinding crack not far away, almost above them, was followed by the awful creaking of massive stones under terrible stresses. The entire cavern seemed to move underfoot, the river flowing across the plateau almost completely dried up and they were all suddenly drenched as steams of water erupted from the roof everywhere. The water wasn't freezing cold but it was close and it, combined with the sheer shock of what was happening, made them all shut up and glance around themselves suddenly. If Xenia had been a cat, she knew her hackles would have been up. Her instincts, which she knew were good and never ignored, which kept her alive, were screaming at her. Something was /VERY/ wrong here.
"I don't suppose either of you happens to be a trained Geologist? I'll settle for any idea what's going on, by the way" Matt whispered, sounding scared.
"Do I look like I live in a cave, Matt? I think the mountainside is shifting, settling I hope, because if it isn't we might all be dead. Were inside a mountain and deep underground, if the damn rock face moves too much they won't find our bones for a decade if were lucky and they use DNA to identify the remains. If were unlucky, a million tons of rock falls down on us, we go splat and only Mother Nature ever knows we were here. Whatever you believe in, pray to him, her or it now" replied Xenia, staring sharply about her, taking in everything at once.
"It gets worse, Xenia. Ever seen a tidal surge in an enclosed area at sea level filled with people and buildings? A big one, even? I've seen too many bad things too many times, I can see this one coming. The rivers still flowing here, but the pressures built up so much that it's pressing against the walls rather than passing through it and building up an air bubble. Enough pressure against that wall? Boom, we get hit by shrapnel and a small gale before being blasted backwards off this plateau by water pressure which will make us feel as though we've been hit by artillery fire. We have to get /out/ of here" snapped Anna, uneasily eyeing the wall the water was still slowly trickling under.
"Has anybody else noticed that the floor is moving?" interjected Matt conversationally, trying to drive away his fear with flippancy. Both women glared at him, but he'd at least succeeded in distracting them for a moment.
They waited tensely, Matt crossing his fingers, all well aware that the only possible way out while the earth tremor continued was diving into the pool below, where there were no guarantees of safety or security to be had at all, even less than there were now. It seemed to take forever, but was more like ten minutes when the shaking slowly subsided excepting the occasional tremor. Xenia couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief-
The monstrous lightning bolt seared the retinas of all three of them, dropping Xenia onto her hands and knees as she gasped helplessly in pain, Anna sagging back in agony against the wall with gritted teeth and terrifying strength of Will holding in any expression of pain. Matt couldn't help a brief yelp before he lost his footing and landed back-first with a massive thud in the almost-dry riverbed, an impact which sent streaks of pain up and down his body. All any of them could do was grab at their eyes, shake their heads and wait for it all to pass. As it happened, they didn't have time.
A roar of chaotic physical fury which sounded like the gates of Hell being opened for the first time since Christ died echoed everywhere around and about them as though the planet itself was letting out an insane bellow of pain and rage. Everyone within a mile of the focus of the sound was left temporarily deafened, blood pouring from ears and nose as terrific pressure changes shifted the air patterns of the entire area in a way which suggested the massive affected region had temporarily been opened to space itself.
The ground itself seemed to physically jump a foot, Anna being catapulted head first against an extension of the wall she was leaning against with such force she was knocked unconscious with an audible crack of bone on rock. Xenia found herself spinning through the air like a whirligig and landed on her left side with enough force to bruise, her head spinning as though she'd been twisted and turned like a top in a mad child's hands, leaving her unable to even determine the directions of up and down. Matt was catapulted back into the air, slammed back down again and rolled like log almost fifteen feet before flailing hands and feet got hold of a solid enough grip to stop him. He felt blood on his forehead and left cheek, knew he was bleeding but didn't have time to think.
Xenia muzzily shifted as something caught her attention through the dim haze that was trying to put her down and out, even as her battered body and mind fought to compensate and reorientate her. She blinked once, twice, then almost swallowed her tongue in utter shock at what she saw as she found herself looking upwards at the sky above even as the chimney started to disintegrate right next to her. The /roof/ was coming down on them...
The clouds and the rains were gone, the winds had reached hurricane force suddenly, or so it seemed, but none of that was what scared her almost to death. No, what did that was much worse, not to mention simply impossible...
The sky was on fire, lit a swirling orange-red mixed with traces of bleached white and dark black that just might have been the remnants of clouds. The wind was literally screaming around and all about, she could feel it physically shifting sizeable boulders from the heavy crashing and thuds all about on the surface. Smaller objects large enough to physically lift were being swept right up into the sky even as she watched, Xenia suspecting that smaller specks she couldn't identify with just her eyes were animals and even people unlucky enough to have been caught up in the maelstrom from Hell... Had someone set off an Atomic Bomb? What the Hell else could do /this?
Sounds abruptly punched through to her numbed brain for a few seconds, screams and shouts, crashing stone echoing everywhere, Matt shouting, water racing... Semi-conscious or not, her smart mind quickly put all of the pieces together. All the same, she wasn't quick enough.
Her head snapped around and down to let her see the wall where the water had been coming towards them from. It wasn't there any longer. The entire structure of nature which had been holding back the massive flow was disintegrating in front of her eyes, sending shards of rock whipping past like knife blades, one slashing across her lower chest so quick and fast she barely even felt it as the edge bit into her flesh and blood instantly began to flow. Spurts and explosions of water were erupting in all directions but behind all of that, washing almost a ton of shattered and broken rock straight at her, was enough water to fill half the cavern coming on at a speed a Leopard couldn't have run.
She was helpless as a newborn child and barely able to move she was so knocked around. She thought she was dead-then she saw a stirring Anna get pushed off of the wall, where she'd collapsed, blood streaming down from a head wound at the back of her skull, before being thrust forwards by pressure which tossed her bodily forwards towards the edge of the plateau as though she was less than a pebble. Anna's eyes blinked open, but Xenia glimpsed her face and she could see that one eyeball was full of blood. She wasn't sure that, with a head injury as severe as that, Anna would be capable of moving even to save her own life-
Anna's hands slashed out like claws and dug into handholds as though they were the last thing between her and the end of the world. She stopped moving so abruptly Xenia almost believed the water flow had let go of her for a moment, then she noticed the bunched muscles and white knuckles. With an injury that would have put most people in a Hospital Bed for a week, Anna Neagley was still willing and able to fight for her life...
It was as though anchor chains weighing her down had been cut. Just as the water hit her like a battering ram, led by lethal shards of stone and an awfully powerful physical force behind the stone, Xenia fought her way to her feet, turned and ran for her life, straight towards the edge of the plateau and the pool beneath it. A new shard gashed her upper left leg, something clipped her right shoulder, something else again punched her in the back. She ignored it all, even as she took in a desperate Matt scrambling for the edge as well, slipping and sliding in the maelstrom but fighting like Hell to survive.
Anna saw them coming as they raced for the edge, just above where she grimly held on, somehow managed a smile-then let go and vanished from sight in a heartbeat. Xenia got there next and went over head-first without even slowing down in a Swan Dive which was ridiculously graceful for the circumstances, plunging down straight and clean as an arrow even as Matt took the direct approach and simply threw himself off of the plateau, heading down with arms and legs spiralling until he hit.
Xenia hit the cold water with a shock on contact, but dived only deeper, looking for the underwater exit passage Anna had mentioned, knowing that it might be suicide but they had no other options left. She was a far better swimmer than Matt, she noted, as he came up fast behind her using a frantic crawl stroke which she could easily have outdistanced with her predators easy distance-drinking practised stroke, but now /really/ wasn't the time to be thinking of that. Spotting the passage, along with a possible trace of Anna's blood in the water, she dived deep and went straight in, Matt hard on her heels.
The water began to hammer in on top of them, led by big rocks and sharp shards that landed with enough force to tear right through the human body with a clean hit. Xenia poured on the power and accelerated sharply, leaving Matt in her wake, just getting inside the exit tunnel before something awfully big and solid bounced so near that a seconds delay would have broken both her legs at best. It got in Matt's way, so completely that she was forced to turn back and help, getting hold of his forearms and physically pulling him through with sheer brute strength, shredding his clothes and cutting his chest half to shreds in the process.
The moment he was through she turned and kicked away, slicing through the water like a shark as fast as she could even as she felt the water hammering down, causing massive disturbances in the water that tried to throw her against every edge even as she powered on, forcing her to use all of her strength just to keep moving in a straight line. The flow of water rapidly began to increase as well, speeding her pace up sharply and making passage increasingly rough. She could hold her breath for four minutes, Anna-when healthy-was four and a half, Matt she didn't know-and she wasn't sure it mattered. If there was no way out, then they'd all committed Suicide down here with an escape attempt anyway.
She paused a moment, struggled with the belt holding her pistol and gear, then unlatched it and let it go, her rifle long gone. Of all things she didn't need right now, extra ballast which could slow her down so those few, precious extra seconds which might mean the difference between life and death floated away was right at the top of the list. She didn't doubt that Matt had done the same thing, but wondered just how the seriously injured Anna was keeping ahead of them like this. /Was/ she, in fact? Or was she simply being forced through by the current?
She glanced around at the passage they were all passing through, barely six feet wide and three tall, with no end in sight and relatively clear water running through it rapidly being clogged up by much and debris from above. Corners, jagged edges and dips were everywhere, even black holes which could have led anywhere she didn't dare try for. Starting to feel her lungs burn, she increased her pace again-and saw a glimmer of pale light ahead that couldn't have come form any form of underwater illumination. Light, she was seeing daylight...
She spotted the dark smears on the rocks just by the lapping pools edge even as she fought her way up to the pool, finding that she had to roll over and drag herself into the pool upside down head first as she did. She felt her head break water, wrenched hard as she felt rather than saw a half-drowned Matt come up behind her with frantic haste and got head and shoulders clear, fighting the rest of her body up and out even as she drew in deep, ragged breaths of cold, clean air. Something stabbed her in the back again in the same place she'd been hit in the cavern even as she fought loose, sending a spike of sharp agony through her, but she ignored it. She didn't have time to be hurt right now.
She scrambled to her feet, staggered a few feet then fell to her knees, gasping and choking even as she heard Matt gagging for air as he dragged himself clear behind her. It was no minor Miracle they were all still alive, no questions asked...
"Its not over yet" said Anna loudly suddenly, obviously to force her words past the remains of the deafening impact in the cavern, almost making Xenia jump as she spoke unexpectedly. Xenia looked wildly around herself, taking in the small cave barely tall enough for her six-foot frame to stand upright in, various natural formations and a tall, thick crack in the roof which led all the way to the surface, providing them with the dim light available, before settling on Anna as the younger woman stood on the other side of the cave. When she saw Anna, though, she had to stop and stare.
Anna had stripped down to her bra and combat shorts, her clothes discarded to one side but for her shirt, which was tightly wadded against her head and quickly becoming soaked with blood. Blood was still streaming down over Anna's back and shoulders, but Xenia suspected that the rough trip through the water-filled passage had done more to prevent the bleeding from even beginning to clot or slow than anything else. If Anna had been so injured that the bleeding couldn't be stopped without medical attention even she wouldn't have been on her feet, an ability to manage pain and sheer force of will simply were not enough to override such massive physical injuries. It didn't take away from the fact that Anna had been knocked unconscious by an extremely violent impact, or the fact that one eye was terribly bloodshot meant something was seriously wrong /inside/ her head.
All of it also failed to take away from the simple fact that Anna Neagley was always going to be one of the most beautiful women anyone could ever see, let alone meet. With her body, soaking wet and dressed like that? Even covered in blood and marked as she was? Xenia found herself forced to simply stop and stare against her will. Fortunately, Matt gave her a sharp shove from behind which woke her up.
"The waters still rising, Anna, we can't stay here" said Matt, loudly, looking straight at the battered woman. Xenia didn't doubt he was taking a very good look too, but at least was able to keep his mind on the problem at hand as well.
"No, we can't, so we have to go through here" replied Anna, gesturing to her left and a shadowed hole Xenia had barely noticed before. She stepped forwards to get a better look, only to see a three-foot drop barely wide enough to take Matt's broad shoulders leading who-knew-where, reached by the simple act of stepping in and letting a fast current of whipped water take you. She swore in Russian, then shook her head and looked back over at where they'd come in. The water level was visibly rising even as she watched; it was only a matter of time until they drowned in here.
"This is going to kill us, you do realise that?" she said, looking at Matt and Anna pointedly. Anna didn't even blink while Matt just shrugged. Xenia sighed, then stripped down to Anna's level of dress while Matt got down to his shorts, revealing well-defined muscles Xenia appreciated with a glance she was sure he didn't even notice. Then she paused. /What the Hell.../ she thought, suddenly.
She and Matt were the same height, so she had no need to reach up or down to grab his head and pull his lips to hers. Instead, she just reached out, pulled him into her and held him tight before kissing him passionately. To her surprise-and his, she discovered later-he responded. In fact, it turned out he was a very good kisser...
He looked stunned as she slowly pulled away, even as she felt water beginning to lap at her bare feet. She didn't have to think to know that had been worth it. Anna was trying and failing to hide a jealous grimace, she didn't need to look around to see that, just as she knew Matt would never see that expression on Anna's face.
"Some things are worth dying for, Matt, or at least worth waiting for. One for luck, maybe? If we survive, we can...talk...more. Now, as you Americans would say? See you in Hell" said Xenia, before stepping off of the edge and disappearing into the abyss. It was impossible to tell what happened after her head went underwater, she couldn't see, hear or breathe at all, but she knew they'd both be right behind her.
The smaller passage threw her against the walls more than once but with more speed and less force, she was never in danger of suffering anything worse than scrapes and bruises, but there seemed no end in sight. Her air seemed to run out remarkably quickly with no end in sight, so quickly that she barely had time to think about it, which with death was probably a good thing, before something impossible happened.
Something smooth and cold and flat suddenly hit her, what could only be a wall made of /metal, then she found herself sucked inside it through a massive breach. Her hair got caught in a jagged area, the snap-stretch and wrench of pain as a chunk of it was ripped out bringing tears to her eyes, before she was suddenly being catapulted through clear air. She landed hard, skidding painfully across a steel floor, crashed through a wooden table that disintegrated under the impact while knocking aside two sturdier chairs-then hit a metal door head first with a solid /THUD/ which almost knocked her out. Barely even semi-conscious, she wasn't at all aware of the state of the room she'd somehow landed in, let alone who else and what else was there.
Anna and Matt were right behind her, but Matt had passed out from lack of oxygen before they hit so Anna was the only one of three to remain fully conscious throughout. Her injuries meant that her eyesight was impaired by a dark red veil on the left side, while her head was ringing as though she'd taken a baseball bat to the back of the head followed by a sledgehammer to the lower back so hard she'd never forget it even if she walked again. Bloody, bruised and half-dead to all intents and purposes, she should have been the one who found out later from the other two what was going on after they all got out of wherever they were. Instead, it was the other way around.
As she slowly fought her way back to full awareness her senses started to function again, a deep rumbling sound announcing that her hearing was returning. However, she smelt smoke, burnt wiring, the smell of cordite-disturbingly-and, worst of all, the charnel house stink of death, rot and destruction. She could feel the heat of fires nearby.
She sat up slowly, awkwardly, then opened her eyes properly and looked around the place she'd found herself in. When she saw the truth of the place, she just screamed...
/End of Chapter Four. All Reviews welcomed./