It's complicated

"Hey, Valerie! You okay?"

The sound of her name in her ear shook Valerie from her sleep. She began to stir awake.

"Thank god.", she heard a sigh of relief from a familiar voice. She felt a finger on her neck as that voice began to speak into a radio. "She's waking up. No visible signs of injury."

"Hawk?", she asked as she finally opened her eyes. She tried to move, but couldn't, and that moment of alarm finally caused her to return to her senses. She opened her eyes and looked around to see where she was.

She was hanging a couple of feet above the forest floor, her body completely immobilized due to being tangled in a combination of her parachute and vines in the forest. She tried to move, but some painful prickly sensations made her stop - upon further inspection, it seemed some of the vines had thorns, some having pierced her suit. Fortunately, she didn't feel any had pierced enough to do any real damage, but she was effectively completely immobilized from her head down.

That wasn't the first thing that came to her mind, though. "Oh no", she exclaimed. "What time is it? How long have I been out for?", she asked Hawk, worried.

"It's around midday. We had some trouble locating you, but thankfully one of the guys managed to locate your signal about an hour ago. I volunteered to dive in and extract you.", he replied.

"Extract?", she replied, alarmed. "B-but I still have time! I can finish the test!"

He knelt down next to her so his face was level with hers. "Look, I'm sorry. The rules are that you must get to your destination without any assistance." He glanced at her constricted and immobile body. "And since that isn't a possibility, we're going to have to cancel this test and try another time."

Valerie was deflated. She knew how it worked - failing her test meant she would be sent back to the academy, to train for at least one more year until she could give another test. She had worked so hard to get to this point, and now a small accident was going to take away an year of her life. She felt her eyes burn as tears began to form.

He saw her devastated expression. "Hey.", he consoled her. "It's okay. Almost no agent passes their first test. Heck, it took me three tries, and I just passed mine last month. You'll make it next time."

Valerie tried to hold back her tears, trying once more to move and somehow free herself. The only thing she managed was to shake slightly in her cocoon-like trap, and causing some of the thorns to prick her skin through the jumpsuit.

"I'm sorry, Valerie", Hawk replied. "I'll call for backup."

"Wait!", she exclaimed. "I-I have an idea."