Black Hole Heartbeat

Elizabeth - 30

Cold. Dark. Her eyes rattled, unable to settle in the pitch black. Wet rock chilled her

skin. Numbness crawled her spine.

"Are you okay?"

The ringing in her ears quietened. Ana, calling to her.

"What happened?" Elizabeth asked.

She dragged herself to her feet.

"We're sealed inside the cave," Ana said.

"Cave?"

Elizabeth's brain was a thick soup.

"I pulled you to safety when the grenade went off."

The green through the air. The sound and the force.

"I... remember," she said.

She noticed Ana's arm, the armour broken. Red with blood.

"The tremor from the blast caused an avalanche."

"Brack?" Elizabeth asked.

Ana looked away from her, "I couldn't save everyone."

Elizabeth's blood froze. She hollowed out for a moment. All she could hear, all she

could feel, was the empty thudding of her heart.

She ran both hands through her hair. A grenade at close quarters. People didn't

survive that. It didn't matter. Unless they could get out, they would not survive long.

She tried to roll one of the smaller stones aside. It would not budge.

"A little help?"

Ana scurried over but her efforts added nothing.

"Maybe we can go this way?" Ana said, pointing further into the cave, "It might be a

tunnel."

"Shh," Elizabeth said, holding up her hand for silence.

There was a faint whisper.

"I hear it too," Ana said quietly.

They crept around the shadows.

"It's louder near you," Ana said.

Elizabeth walked in slowly collapsing circles around the cave, but the volume never

changed.

"I can't figure it out."

Ana leaned into Elizabeth.

"I think it's coming from you," she said.

Elizabeth patted herself down. What sort of macabre cave dweller had latched onto

her skin? She lifted her left hand to inspect her cheek and the whisper started to

scream static. Her bracelet. The speaker was hanging limp by a single frayed wire,

the grille shattered.

"I think someone's trying to communicate with us. It's Brack, it has to be! Let me see

your bracelet!" Elizabeth said.

"It's broken," Ana said, holding up the smashed shards of evidence.

Elizabeth carefully wrapped the distressed wire around the drum of the speaker and

pressed it back inside.

"Hello? Brack?"

"Elizabeth!" Brack's voice shouted back.

"You're alive! Look, me and Ana are trapped in the cave and we can't –"

"Elizabeth!" Brack shouted over her.

"Yeah, I'm here, I'm here. But I'm stuck. Listen, you need to –"

"Elizabeth!"

A desperate wail.

Isoline's voice came through the speaker, "We have to go, Brack."

"We can't leave her. I don't see her or Ana anywhere."

"They're gone."

Isoline spoke with finality.

"We're in here!" Elizabeth shouted into the speaker.

"They can't hear you," Ana said.

"We'll be okay. We have each other, don't we?" Isoline said.

"Turn it off," Ana told her, placing her arm around Elizabeth.

"Yeah, we do," Brack said, the sadness suddenly washing away from his voice.

"We'll get through this. Pin um," Isoline said.

"Pin um," Brack replied.

Pin um. It sounded more beautiful in its original tongue. Now the words were molten

barbed wire wrapped tight around her heart.

"Turn it off," Ana said again.

She reached across Elizabeth to flick the com link switch. Elizabeth shrugged her off

with an elbow to the ribs. Elizabeth smashed her wrist off the rocks, splintering her

bracelet into a fine electrical spray of frazzled fragments.

"There! You happy now!" Elizabeth yelled.

"Elizabeth, I –"

The rest of Ana's words were muffled. Their lips met in a hot and violent kiss.

"Elizabeth, are you sure about..."

"Shut up."

She pressed Ana up against the cave wall.