Dark Places || ONC 2023

Too Far Gone

 Janelle repels back down to Adam, her hands shaking and her stomach in knots. They have a choice, up or down, but there's no real choice at all.

"Everything okay?" Adam asks when her feet hit solid ground. He keeps looking up like he knows something was wrong about the climb, but Janelle is pretty sure he hasn't figured it out yet. No reason to worry him.

"All good," she says, and she thinks she pulls off nonchalance. It's either up or down, and down is easier. "Let's keep going."

Adam nods and glances over the edge of their little lip. Janelle sees again the wound behind his ear, it's dripping faster, something is pressing it's way out of his skin. That's one of the final stages of the disease. She wonders how many other cuts he has on his body. He was worried about her hand. He should have been worried about himself.

Janelle runs a few of her ropes through her hands, picking their next one. She pointedly doesn't look over the edge. It's too much like looking up.

"We should move quick," Adam says. "Before the city council or someone else sends the fire department in after us?

"Huh?" Janelle's struggles to remember that at one point their hole was in a community park. She assumes no one is coming down for them now. Wherever they are.

"We should go down," Adam repeats, like that's the confusing bit about what he said. Janelle nods. Down is easier than up.

Janelle's got a large collection of stoppers and anchors looped around her harness. She pulls two and sets about finding perfect anchor points for their next rope. She follows a steady and familiar rhythm of looping knots and locking caribeeners into place. She checks and double checks the knots, and locks, and makes everything as safe as can be so if they die in a black endless void she can at least say it wasn't her faulty climbing practices.

She hooks herself off, checks Adam's equipment. They keep moving. 

This time she goes first so she can be sure to find a good platform for their next pause point. It's easy again, just kicking off the wall and letting out some rope, rinse and repeat. The air gets stickier as she goes down. There's something tacky about the rocky walls, but no visual difference. She doesn't think about it, just thinks about how far down they can go with the rope she still has, and where a good stopping point will be. About forty feet down she finds a ledge. Larger than the last at about three feet. There's a steal can with a soup label still on it rolled to the edge, something clumpy and green beside that. Janelle tries not to smile too hard.

"There's trash here," she calls up to Adam.

"Sounds amazing?"

Adam doesn't seem as delighted about the find as Janelle, but at least he's not openly hostile about her excitement. She's explained her grad thesis to him, and she thinks he gets it.

There's maneuvering and yelling back and forth and then Adam is on his way down. It sounds like all his equipment is correct, and he's making good progress, until he's not. Janelle hears the scuttle of rocks underfoot and then a pained yell.

"Shit!" Janelle is up against the rock looking for handholds before she knows what she's doing. Adam's only about fifteen feet above her. His body has drifted back to the wall and he's hanging hunched against the rock. Janelle's palms sticky stone and she pulls herself up, hand over hand.

"Adam?"

She's halfway up, and when she spares a moment to look at him instead of the wall, he's curled up trying futilely to twist into a fetal position while hanging from his waist. Adam is in danger and she's free climbing, and the wall feels wrong and hurry, Janelle thinks. =