Are they alive?

"Ian? Wake up man, come on!" Ian groaned as he opened his eyes difficultly, Finn was standing in front of him, darkness surrounding him with the exception of a flashlight's light beam in Finn's hand.

"Finally, are you okay?" Finn asked with a worried voice. It took him a moment to answer back. His body was sore all over but apparently, he wasn't hurt.

"Wha-what happened?" he said as he began to fumble with his seatbelts. All around him grunts of pain filled the air as Serena and Judy regained consciousness.

"I think the floor collapsed under the pod. I don't know if Alexander is okay. We're in some sort of cave."

"Where is James? Is he okay? Serena questioned as she stood on shaky legs. Finn didn't answer, instead, he lowered the flashlight until the light revealed James's lifeless body lying on the pod's other side. Serena and Jill let out a small sob as they stared at him, obviously, the pod's terrible fall had been deadly for the unfortunate man.

It took them a few more minutes before the four survivors ended up outside. Luckily for them, the pod had landed on the right side, having slid on a long, rocky slope before ending his downfall. Finn scanned the walls with his lamp, It was the only light in the otherwise pitch-black cave. The hole through which they fell was almost out of sight, a hundred meters above the large slope on the cavern's side. While Serena was helping Judy taking care of her sprained ankle, the two men were inspecting the pod and salvaging what they could. Both of them were worried about their situation. Most of the pod's systems were broken and couldn't be repaired with what they had, its batteries were dead, as well as the main computer. They only found a bag of food and water, an extra battery for the flashlight and a portable emergency beacon station.

They finally joined the others near the cavern's only accessible's exit, a dark tunnel leading God's know where.

"So, what do we do now?" Serena asked. They were all cadets and despite having different assignments on the Odyssey, none of them really wanted to take the lead. Finn was the first who answered.

"I think we need to find the exit, Alex is probably still on the surface so our only hope is to get out, use the beacon station and find him."

"Will the beacon work?" Judy said as she tried to stand up by leaning on a wall.

"Not here that's sure, we need to activate it outside so the rescue team can find us."

"I think we're in a system of tunnels, probably lava tubes. The previous probe sent data about some volcanic chains created by some hotspots, like in Hawaii. This area was probably flooded with lava a few millions of years ago but it's now safe. My guess is that the end of the mountain range has active volcanoes."

"Ok, so you review your geology lessons before the crash, great." Serena said with more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice."More seriously, can we go out of it quickly? We don't have a lot of supplies and Judy's leg..."

"My leg is fine" Judy interrupted her friend, "It's useless to spend hours talking about it. We need to move, I don't like caverns, especially this one."