Chapter 3: The Cave [https://i.imgur.com/9Ln6eUa.png]

With a groan, Nicholas slowly awakens, his entire body sore and complaining to him. He opens his eyes, though there's no difference between what he sees with his eyes closed and when they're open. He can feel a strange mixture of wet, freezing cold stone underneath him, and warmer flesh next to him. He's afraid to move, so for a while, he doesn't. Gradually growing more courageous, Nicholas starts to pull himself together, feeling around for the flashlight he once had.

He can hear someone cough in the dark. Soon, he begins to cough too, the result of so much dust particulate in the air.

The immediate area lights up a dull blue as a cellphone turns on, Ava's face obvious first in the glow, dirtied and bloodied. Behind her is Sarah, who is also covered in dirt, the phone's lighting making it look like they're covered in ash.

It is quiet. Only the occasional distant clack of stone falling from somewhere high echoes through the area. Out of the darkness, another face pops into existence, coming closer toward the glow. It's Sophia. Her forehead seems to have taken an impact from somewhere as it is somewhat bloody. She crawls over toward Sarah and Darius, who are untangling themselves from one another. "Is everyone all right?"

"Yeah," Nicholas says, taking the time to dust himself off. "I think so. Is anyone hurt?"

"I'm fine." Darius chimes in with a hoarse sounding voice, having inhaled dirt. "Sophia, you okay?"

"Yeah," she answers back. "Nothing too serious. I'm good."

"Me too," Sarah speaks up, though considering the quiet of their surroundings, one could hear a pin drop. She digs through her pocket to produce her own cellphone, adding more light to the pool.

"We're probably under miles of rock," Nicholas says. Like the others, he removes his cellphone, but quickly discovers his is broken. "Damn." He pockets it, clearly upset that he can't have his own source of light. "Turn on the lights on your phones. Let's try to see where we are."

The other four do as they're told, and four separate beams of light shine in various directions. The cave has since opened wide, much taller and wider than before. But the darkness swallows the light after a certain distance, making it impossible to see beyond the immediate area.

Focusing back on where they came from, Nicholas stands and carefully makes his way over to what was once the entrance. It has been sealed by massive amounts of rubble. He takes a moment to try to dig, but his rough movements only serve to agitate him.

Ava crawls up to Sarah, who is looking at her phone to see if it has any service. "Hey, do you think someone could've seen us go in here and told someone, maybe they're sending a rescue?" She says, visibly shaken; the once narcissistic girl more humble due to their situation. Sarah turns her gaze toward her, unsure of what to say.

"Let's try and look for a way out," Darius suggests, turning the beam of his cellphone toward the darkness awaiting them deeper within the cave. The others focus their beams in front of, or around them, giving them an idea of what the cave is like.

"You sure?" says Nicholas. "Maybe we're better off just staying here."

"I'm freezing, and covered in dirt," Ava complains, shuddering. "If I knew I was going to be trapped in some god forsaken mountain I'd have brought a sweater." She lifts her hands up to rub her arms.

Sarah looks at the wall next to her with her light illuminating it. She can feel it slightly vibrating when she places her hand on it. "This place is not stable."

"I don't think staying put is a good idea. If we can find another exit, we don't have to be stuck here, waiting for people to find us," replies Darius, who is already making his way deeper into the cave. "It could take them days to even figure out that we're missing. Do we want to take our chances?"

"Alright," says Nicholas, conceding. "Then let's go."

The group make their way into the dark, passing by some ruptures on the ceiling dripping water onto the ground. Each step takes them further into the cave. The tunnel leads to even narrower passages. After a while, the beams of light guiding them begin to dim. The batteries on their phones gradually becoming low or depleted.

"This is stupid," Ava speaks up, visibly dragging her feet behind everyone else. "Where the hell are we even going?"

"Let's just keep moving," Darius says, trying to motivate the others. "If we can't find a way out, we'll backtrack."

"My feet are sore. My head hurts." Ava continues. "I'm covered in filth..."

Nicholas sighs, looking back at Ava with disdain. "As are we. You don't see us complaining."

Noticing something different overhead, Darius turns his light upward. The ceiling begins a gentle slope above them, but there's something else there, vaguely metallic in the way it reflects his light. Everyone else notices it and slows to a stop.

"What is that?"

Darius is the first to step closer to the object, walking up the slope carefully. He moves to investigate, curious. Just as he extends his arm to touch it with his finger, and figure out what it is, the entire world begins to shift and heave, sending everyone, including Darius, immediately to the ground.

With the grinding of stone all around them, it's nearly impossible to hear, but Nicholas can make out the faint cries of his fellow teenagers around him. He holds on to a part of the wall next to him to stay balanced, but surprisingly, it begins to move.

Out of the blue, a blinding light engulfs them from every direction, flooding the cave with white. Nicholas covers his eyes, the transition far too sudden and painful after suffering the pitch dark of the cave for so long. There's a loud, eerie hum from where the light is coming from, and for a moment, Nicholas thinks he hears the turbines of an aircraft revving up.

Darius turns his attention to Sophia who is clinging on to him, then looks back at the light. Sarah, mesmerized, pulls her dirt-covered hoodie off from her head and stares at the illuminating glow. She holds her hand up to cover her eyes, but the light is too strong to shy away from.

Nicholas begins to feel a pressure unlike anything he has ever felt before, like being firmly gripped by hundreds of hands all over. He leans back, struggles against it, but the motion ultimately serves only to tire him. Ava gets up and screams, terrified, but her voice is drowned out by a loud humming sound coming from the light. Sarah is the first to go, her shriek cut short by noise and distance. Then, Sophia is taken, torn from the arms of Darius and flung into the light. Desperate to save her, Darius courageously charges forward.

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"No!" Nicholas calls after his friend, only to feel the cold breeze created by Ava's body as she's pulled past him by the same invisible force. His attempt to grab hold of her as she sails by is met with failure, unable to react in time. As he stumbles forward, he begins to feel his own feet leaving the ground. His cries for help are drowned out by another ungodly sound coming from inside the light, as he's pulled inward deeper and swallowed by the glow.

#

Almost as quickly as the entire ordeal had begun, it was over, Nicholas feeling a momentary weightlessness in his new environment before falling to the floor unceremoniously. He groans deeply and fights the urge to curl into a fetal position, slowly rolling over onto his stomach from the pain the impact on the metal grating had caused. The gratework beneath him is like nothing he's seen before, with a sterile white light illuminating his face from each hole. He struggles to push himself to a stand, though his eyes aren't greeted with anything familiar.

He quietly takes in his surroundings, realizing that he's in the middle of a hallway. The walls are made of a color that resembles cement or asphalt. He can see an archway a few feet in front of him, which opens out to a smooth ceiling, before dipping back into an arch. Every several feet there is an archway. At the end of the corridor, a large vault door appears sealed next to two pillars.

"Darius? Sophia?" Nicholas calls out, his voice echoing through the hall, but reaching no ears.

Waiting a few moments, greeted only with a low, mechanical hum in the background, he slowly hobbles forward, courageously heading toward the end of the hallway. He reaches a door on his right side, or what he thinks is a door. One large, solid pane of metal. He reaches out to touch it. A thin line of blue energy stretches down the middle of the door from where he presses his fingers into the cold metal, and it splits in half, opening without making any sound.

Past the door, Nicholas can see several chairs surrounded by what look to be electronic consoles, and numerous screens, which line the walls of the entire room. The consoles are illuminated by that same white light pouring gently from the grating that extends from beneath his feet into the room. Even though things are quiet, he waits patiently, tense, ensuring that nothing is waiting to leap out at him.

Pulling together every ounce of bravery he can muster, he crosses over to the inside of the room. Only two steps in, and the environment lights up like a Christmas tree with various colors.

The grating beneath him no longer generates its glow, but only because the entire room seems to come alive with enough light that everything can be seen easily. The screens come to life, some of them showing numbers and letters written in another language that Nicholas can't even begin to fathom. He stops quickly, backing his way out of the room.

Almost as if he had flipped on a switch, the rest of the exterior, including the hallway, has come alive. The walls are properly illuminated, and every corner inside the corridor pulses with thin strands of blue light that originate from the room he'd entered.

With his heart thudding rapidly in his chest, Nicholas tries his best not to panic, turning slowly in place to watch what seems like chaos erupting all around him. His gaze shifts everywhere, looking for some sort of detail he'd missed to show this was all some sort of crazy prank. He quickly turns when he hears footsteps approaching, moving quickly to hide. It's not until the door on the other side of the long hallway opens to reveal the familiar faces of both Sophia and Sarah does he finally relax.

In the light, it's more obvious now that Sarah and Sophia are sporting some fresh bruises, likely from the earlier falls in the cave. He tries to intercept them, but they're too quick, leaving the hallway to go inside another room. Nicholas gets out of his hiding spot and simply calls out to them.

"Sophia!" He shouts, looking to the place where he had just spotted them.

The two girls pop back out of the room, hearing the echoing shout.

"Nick!" Sophia yells back, as she's the first one to see him. She quickly rushes over to him in a panic.

"Are you okay?" Nicholas says.

"I found Sarah," She says, burying her face against his chest. "I'm so scared. I don't know what's happening."

Nicholas looks up to check on Sarah. She seems to be in much better physical shape, but the dumbstruck look on her face tells him everything. She may not be panicking like Sophia, but she's clearly in some sort of bewilderment.

Sarah sits down next to what looks like a large computer and puts her elbows to her knees, resting them as she covers her face with her hands, attempting to come to grips with reality.

"Nick? Sophia?" From one of the side doors enters Darius, slowly stepping into the hallway, holding high what looks like some sort of metal pipe. "Oh my God, it's you guys." He breathes a sigh of relief, lowering the pipe in his hand. "I'm going crazy here. Where are we?"

Nicholas shakes his head slowly. "We're still trying to figure that out ourselves." No longer the rock of choice, he feels Sophia disengage and rush over to Darius for warmth.

Darius hugs Sophia and pats her head as a big brother would. A pause, as he looks around. "Wait. Where's Ava?"

"We haven't seen her yet." Nicholas's response is simple, and he slowly walks over to Sarah, reaching a hand out to gently touch her on the shoulder. She jumps in shock, turning her attention to him, eyes wide. "Sorry. I'm just—" She pauses, looking away. "I'm okay."

Darius gently releases Sophia, standing tall again, lifting the pipe still in his hands to rest against his shoulder. The pipe is clearly no traditional pipe anyone can recognize, but it definitely seems, just by the shape and length, to be hefty enough to be used as a weapon.

"Most of the doors I tried didn't open, only the doors that led me to Sarah and Nick," Sophia says, finally calming down from her initial panic. "Almost like someone wanted us to get back together."

Turning his attention away from the others, Darius notices the open door in the hallway, behind the others. "Has that been open the entire time?" He motions toward the door, to which Nicholas glances back at it.

"Oh yeah, it opened when I touched it. All these weird lights came on when I went inside, and everything started going crazy." He turns to cautiously step back into the room, still alight with information glowing on the various screens. The others move to follow along in a similarly cautious manner, taking in the sight of the interior for the first time as they enter.

"This is so weird." Sophia mentions, reaching a hand out to touch one of the chairs. Like much of the environment, the chair is made of the same asphalt-looking metal, but with a softer material weaved into it for sitting. Deeming it safe, Sophia hops up to sit on it, noting that the size of it is much larger than normal. It's clearly not meant to seat someone of her size, nor anyone else's for that matter.

Nicholas peers around and, emboldened by the presence of his friends, he examines the screens. The symbols are unintelligible. "Well, it's not English. Can't understand any of it."

"You know what this reminds me of?" Darius chimes in suddenly.

"What?" says Nicholas.

"A ship."

Everyone else turns to the two boys, before looking back at the screens. 

"A ship?"

"Yeah. A spaceship, you know? Like aliens?"

"Yeah," Nicholas says, reaching a hand up to scratch at the back of his neck. "It does sure look that way, doesn't it?"

"But that's crazy, right?" Sophia says as she looks between the other three, who seem to be without an answer. She squirms in her seat, moving to stand so she can see the whole room at a glance. "Why would there be a spaceship in a cave?"

"Guys?" Sarah speaks up, cutting Sophia off, everyone turning to look at her. She points toward one of the screens on the wall. It is much larger than the others. The image on it shows a planet; a white and orange gas giant with a red mark on its belly. "Is that...?"

"Jupiter," says Nicholas, frowning. "What the hell?"

Sophia hops down from her seat, moving to join the other three as they watch the gas giant grow larger and larger, until it disappears behind the camera, leaving them with a live image of nothing but darkness.

There's a deafening silence as the four exhausted, battered teenagers take in the revelation. The larger screen is not a screen at all, but a window.

"Are we... in space?"