Uh… success…?

She thinks.

It's later. How long she's not sure. Probably not very long.

Pain had happened.

And noise.

Quite a lot of both.

She remembers grabbing Kendra and dragging her to the edge of the pit. There was a ladder but not enough time to use it. The dog-thing was right behind them.

Worse then that, the ceiling was hanging down, swollen like a great pregnant belly, and then something important above them had gone ping and she'd thought, "Ok then," and she'd…

Bina winces.



She'd jumped. She'd bloody well jumped hadn't she?

Bina remembers hitting the ground, and thinking, 'Well that's it knee's, it was nice knowing you, and we've had some good times with the whole bending of legs thing, but I think you're probably done now. You did a good job. My internal organs thank you for your sacrifice.'

"Kid? Kid! Are you in there?"

Hmm… seems like Kendra's shouting again. That's all right. Pretty good actually. If Kendra's shouting it means she's OK. Well, OK enough to shout anyway. Bina has the feeling that Kendra would have to be in a pretty bad way to stop shouting.

When they had landed, instead of the bone shattering crunch of rock or brick that she'd been expecting, there was a farty squelch and the cold sinking sensation of landing in what turned out to be, several feet of loose mud.

And then Kendra had landed on top of her and things got… confused.

She remembers shoving Kendra forward, down what looked like the mouth of a tunnel.



Then there was a lot of noise and something hit her in the back, hard, and her next clear memory is of a garbage can, probably the same one she'd hit the dog with several hours and a thousand years ago, landed right in front of her.



A small potted plant had followed immediately afterwards, in a hail of pebbles.



It landed inside the garbage can and she thought 'Ah! At least we won't have to clean up that one up. It's already in the bin.'



Which is a completely ridiculous thing to think while trying to escape from a collapsing building.

And then Kendra had her by the wrists and was pulling her.



Pulling her, and the mud was sucking at her legs, and all around them washing machines fell like giant metal raindrops, and then…

And then…

And then she was dreaming of the time she got lost in India.

And now… this.



"KID! It's all sinking into the mud, I think! I can't be absolutely sure about it but it's been a 'everything sinking into the mud' sort of day. Something hit the light when it all came down and I can't see anything. I know you can't talk but make SOME sort of noise so I can get you out before you dr-"

She pauses, unwilling to say the word 'drown' out loud maybe.

"Just make some noise. Please!"

Ah, that's actually vaguely encouraging. Not the part about the mud, that's not great, but the bit about the light getting smashed.

Bina had tried to open her eyes a few minutes ago, she was going to mention it, but the lack of change in the absolute blackness from having her eyes open or shut had her half convinced that she was either dead or blind or both.

Instead it's just dark.



Really dark.

And… well… she's soooorta up to her neck in mud.

On the plus side she's fairly certain that she still has all of her important bits, and even better, she no longer has to pee!

…

She decides that she's just going to feel happy about that one, and try not to think too hard about why.