Deeper underground

The billowing cloud of dust and sand washed over them like a storm. Bleu reacted before Dustin could even think - her form rippling out like a shield to surround Dustin and Rye in a ball of clean air. A moment later, the Queri woman’s face appeared from the living dome that covered them, eyes wild. “Rebreathers, both of you. There’s god knows what in this dust, and I don’t want to spend the next three weeks rebuilding your lungs.”

Dustin felt like his expression had to be equally frantic as he rummaged in his pack for the tiny rebreather tube, biting down on the mouthpiece to activate the device and trying not to freak out as it folded outward into a full facemask. Beside him, Rye mimicked his actions, the pair looking like divers as Bleu tentatively reformed her regular body. The slime woman glanced back the way they’d come and winced as she spoke. “We’ve got a problem.”

The three of them stared back down the passageway, where their torches illuminated a wall of debris; it looked like the side of the building had caved in, blocking their path back to the lift shaft under twisted metal and desert sand. “Fuck.” Rye’s words came out muffled by the mask of her rebreather. “I swear I checked the structural integrity where I cut and it should have been fine.”

Dustin rested one hand on the bunny girl’s back. “This place is ancient and buried, Rye. It could just be bad timing and metal fatigue, or we disturbed something when we walked over the the top earlier, or any one of a whole bunch of things. What matters now is…” he directed his torch across the debris “…how we find our way back out.”

Rye pulled out her tablet and began tapping it in increasing degrees of frustration before finally slumping down against her pack. “Sand’s fucking with the signal. Can’t get a clear read on Sola or the shuttle from this deep. Could maybe patch something together to use vibrations to signal via the ground scanner, but odds are that’d bring more of this place down on our heads. We’re on our own down here - at least until Sammie figures out we’re not coming back tonight.”

The others sank down next to the Rabyth woman. For a moment, no-one spoke, the trio just staring into space - and then Dustin shook his head. “We’re not going to wait for Sammie to realize we’re stuck somewhere. For starters, we can’t guarantee how long the rest of this place will last without collapsing. I need your smarts on this one, Rye. It’s not your fault we’re here, but you have the floorplan and the scanning data on your tablet even without an uplink to the ship right? Figure us out the safest and quickest route you can back to the elevator shaft or the surface.”

Bleu’s arm wrapped around Rye, the medic noting the tension in the engineer’s shoulders as she added her own words of encouragement. “As Dustin says, we need to get out. We have faith you’ll figure us a way forward. Let me know what you need - if it’s scouting through narrow gaps or whatever, I can manage that.” Then the Queri glanced back at the mound of debris and gave a sigh. “If things really get bad, I might be able to squeeze through the spaces there. Pushing the sand out of the way will be a pain, but if there’s gaps formed by broken metal and brick I might be able to escape to go get help in the worst case.”

Dustin frowned at that. “I’d rather you stayed with us, Bleu. The risk of us needing medical attention increases the longer we’re trapped down here, and neither I nor Rye has anything beyond basic first aid training.”

The danger of further collapse - and the unknown dangers that might lurk in the unexplored parts of the building - were good enough reason for the group to stick together Dustin thought. Rye’s despondent expression had smoothed over after his and Bleu’s pep talks, and the golden haired woman was already hard at work trying to figure out an escape route as he inspected the debris. Eventually, a grunt of annoyance drew his attention back to Rye just as she spoke. “Got three options, we’ll work through them in order. There should be a staircase at the end of this floor. It’ll be part filled with sand, ‘cos it should lead to the roof and there isn’t any sign of it on the surface where the roof exit should have been. Might let us get up a coupla floors.”

The Rabyth woman took a shaky breath through her rebreather, then continued. “Second option, we can cut our way through the ceiling to the next floor up. It’ll take some time - the false ones are easy to hack through, but the main ones are pretty thick and load-bearing. There’s also the risk of my cutter starting a fire; can’t see too clearly what’s directly above until we open up a hole. Third option’s not much better but is the backup if the other two plans don’t work. It’s possible that the cave-in collapsed this entire side of the building, or the elevator shaft. If that’s the case, we’ll need to go down a few levels to find a place we can route around to the far side of the elevator and work our way back up through the space the counterweights used to use. It’ll be a tight fit, but it’s the best alternative if we’re really screwed.”

With Rye’s plan laid out, the trio worked their way through decaying rooms and rust-speckled corridors until they made it to the stairwell the bunny girl had mentioned. Bleu eyed the door suspiciously. “One moment,” she said, before slowly extending a tendril of slime into the lock. A moment later she withdrew the tendril and shook her head. “Thought so - there wasn’t a draught coming from it. It’s completely blocked on the other side - mostly crushed wall, not sand. Probably from when the building collapsed. Either way, this isn’t a way out on this level at least. What’s next, Rye?”

Biting her lip in frustration, the engineer glanced at her tablet. “Two rooms back, that door in the ceiling. If we can get through there, there’s a corridor that runs under a similar one the next floor up. It’ll be our best bet to cut through without setting anything on fire. Gonna be a stretch to get up to the door though, that was a big conference room back in the day.”

Backtracking, the room Rye had mentioned was as Dustin had remembered it - a cavernous space, with the remnants of a massive desk and chairs littering the wall that was now their floor. Far above them, the door they needed to get out via hung like an ominous hatch. “It’s open at least” Dustin muttered, glancing around to try and figure out a way to get up to it. “We could maybe move some of the desks in from the other rooms we passed, that might let us build a way up?”

Tugging the desks through from the other rooms was at least a productive exercise that provided hope and prevented moping. It was difficult for even Rye to feel worried about the situation while moving furniture that had survived the centuries since the building was in use, given the only ones left intact enough to risk adding to their crude scaffolding were either solid metal or made out of thicker than average timber that had turned to something approaching concrete with the passage of time, and thus weighed rather a lot.

The pile grew steadily; it wasn’t quick, but it was consistent work and Dustin was almost sad to see the end of it when Bleu stretched (literally; her arms extended by over a foot) upward to grab the edges of the doorway before hauling herself into the darkness beyond. A moment later, the slime woman’s face popped back into the torchlight. “It’s clear up here. Grab my hands and I’ll pull you both up.”

Clambering into the corridor, Dustin was deeply relieved to see the absence of the all-pervasive dust that had flooded the lower areas after the collapse. Beside him, Rye was already tapping her tablet to double check before striding ahead, her heavy pack seemingly not impeding the woman at all.

“We go this way. There’s a bathroom above us right now that’ll be a pain to get through all the pipes, we want the corridor that connects to it,” the Rabyth said, hands moving to un-holster her laser cutter and fiddle with it’s settings. Dustin and Bleu followed behind - they were completely lost without directions in the endless dark of the collapsed tower, but both had the utmost faith in the bunny girl in front of them.

Rye paused once or twice by further doors in the floor, checking her bearings before pointing to the side of the passage - what had once been the ceiling. Most of the tiles that had been suspended below the true ceiling had decayed away here, and it was the matter of a minute or two for Rye to carve a large enough gap in the structure so that she could start work on cutting into the thicker partition separating the level they were on from the one above.

Metal sparked as the torch burned it’s way through; the bunny girl sat back on her haunches after a moment, then nodded and delivered one powerful kick to the circle of glowing metal she’d burned between the floors. With a rattle, the cut out segment fell away, and she poked her head through, flicking her torch left and right. “Thank fuck for that. Looks clear. Let’s see if we can get back to the elevator on this level.” Her voice was muffled by the mask and from where she was sticking through the hole, but her words unwound a tightness Dustin hadn’t noticed he was carrying in his chest.

The scramble through to the next floor was awkward; Rye had carved a gap that was just big enough for their packs, not wanting to further weaken the structure of the building. As they regrouped and caught their breath, Dustin shone his torch in the direction of the elevator shaft. “You’re right, looks clear. The question then is did the wall just collapse in which case the shaft will be clear, or are we about to run into a hole full of sand?”

The answer turned out to be a mixture of both. While the bulk of the damage had indeed just been a collapsing exterior wall on the floor they’d been on, their route back wasn’t in much better of a state - huge drifts of sand had poured into the lift shaft, while parts of the former sides of the shaft that now formed the passageway’s ceiling were buckled concerningly in between the places where they had given up entirely. Below the trio, their torches now hit only dusty sand where they’d once have glinted off water at the base of the building.

“I don’t like this route.” Rye said after a moment’s considered scanning of the state of the shaft. “There’s metal under pressure the entire way up now. One wrong noise could bring the whole place down on our heads. Ya mind if we go slow and cut our way up to closer to the surface Dusty? Will probably take us a coupla hours longer but…” She gestured towards where the shaft had already partially collapsed, leaving the comment hanging.

With a nod, Dustin turned, scrambling back the way they’d come, through where one of the doors to the shaft had fallen partially open. “Lets go Rye. We trust your judgment - get us out of here.”