Jamie was crying. Alison wanted to cry too, but she was The Responsible One, which meant she had to be brave for him, even though he was older.

She hugged his arm tight. “It’ll be fine, Jam-Jam! I’m sure they’re looking for us by now.”

“Th-the coms signal can’t get through, so-”

“But the last signal would be us going into the cave, right?” Alison forced her voice to stay confident and chirpy. “So they’ll know we’re in here. Then they just need to send something in to find us!”

“Mmm…” Jamie didn’t say anything, and didn’t return the hug. They lapsed into heavy silence.

At least this part of the cave still seemed sound. But the air was thick with dust. And she knew they were using it up.

Oh, if only she’d been more responsible! If she’d thought to check the weather maybe she could have realised there’d be a landslide. Or… maybe she should have insisted they not go into the cave at all, since nobody was allowed in here. But all the kids played in here all the time, and it was fine!

Except for today.

She tapped her com. Waking up the Virtual Helper she’d put to sleep before they left the house.

“HELLO, ALISON! HOW CAN I HELP YOU?” The flat cheer of its synthetic voice was jarring in this situation.

“Can… it says the signal can’t get through. Can you… do something?”

“SCANNING!” The ‘please hold’ icon cycled several times. “YOU APPEAR TO BE UNDERGROUND!”

“…Yeah.”

“BASED ON THE LAST GPS COORDINATES YOU MAY BE IN THE OLD MINING TUNNEL.”

“Mm-hm.”

“THIS LOCATION IS DANGEROUS! YOU SHOULD LEAVE.”

“We can’t. That’s why we need a signal.”

“THE SIGNAL IS BEING BLOCKED BY THE ROCKS. YOU WILL NEED TO LEAVE THE CAVE TO REESTABLISH SIGNAL.”

“We C-CAN'T. There was… the ground shifted and stuff collapsed the entrance and…” Alison felt her voice begin to shake and bit her lip hard.

“PROCESSING!” Nearly a minute of ‘please hold’ this time. “WHERE IS THE ENTRANCE, ALISON?”

“Um…” Alison closed her eyes and thought back. The route they’d taken was so familiar she’d barely noticed the turns, which made it hard to describe. “This is the sugar bowl. So… um… th-the first turn was to the right… then we took the second tunnel… uhhh…”

“PROCESSING… WHEN DID YOU ENTER THE CAVE?”

“W-whenever we lost signal.”

“PROCESSING… ACCESSING ACCELEROMETER DATA… PROCESSING…”

She stared at the pulsing icon and wondered what it was thinking.

“ALISON. PLEASE PUT ME DOWN.”

When she obeyed the com sprouted its little legs, usually only deployed to hold onto the charging station, and started slowly wobbling across the cave floor.

Jamie lifted his head to stare blankly at it, then huskily demanded “What are you doing?”

“I, um, I asked it to…” Alison trailed off as she realised she wasn’t sure what, exactly, the com was trying to do. “…Help?”

“How is it gonna help?” Jamie scoffed. “Do you think it can dig us out?”

“I-I dunno!” Alison folded her arms and glared at him, the stress starting to bite. “At least I’m TRYING to do something!”

Jamie winced and pouted and looked away with a resentful humph. Leaving her feeling worse.

The silence pressed down. She could hear her own heartbeats, and every breath either of them took. Plus all the fabric whispers.

She rubbed her arms and wondered if these shivers were nerves or cold. Probably both; she hadn’t bothered wrapping up, since normally they were moving around the cave and didn’t feel the stone’s chill.

Getting too cold would be bad, right? But moving around to warm up would use more oxygen. But there was plenty of cave left, so plenty of air, right? Though… no telling how much of the cave was safe now… So moving might-

Jamie interrupted her fretting. “What’s that?”

“Huh?”

“Can’t you hear it?”

Alison listened. A distant jagged rumble, clearer to her skin than her ears.

“What is that?”

“I-I don’t know.” Alison scooted against him. “Do, do you think that’s what caused the landslide?”

“Oh… m-maybe.” Jamie hugged her tight. “Then we should be quiet.”

The whirring persisted. Got louder. Then with a crashing ROAR it stopped.

They held their breaths.

Scraping thuds echoed along the tunnels. Footsteps?

It was getting closer. Unerring. Like it could hear them despite their terrified hush.

CLUNK. Whirrrr.

Jamie’s com light illuminated a huge, filthy figure hunching into their hiding place, rows of teeth glinting dully as its misshapen head scanned across.

A rock dropped off its face - and beeped. “ALISON!”

Her mouth fell open. The com was so dirty and chipped that she hadn’t recognised it.

“SIGNAL SUCCESSFULLY - ERROR. SIGNAL HAS BEEN LOST. PLEASE FOLLOW EXCAVATION AND RESCUE UNIT 448 TO THE ENTRANCE TO REESTABLISH SIGNAL.”

Alison grabbed for her com as Jamie lifted a shaky hand to properly illuminate ’448’, whose robotic form was now clear under the mud coating it.

Relief exploded, crashing into the fear packed tight in their chests, and all they could do was cry.