Thanks to u/voila- for "requesting" this story. They were a pleasure to work with.
Summarized idea: A college volleyball team is invited to visit their sponsor's brand-new underground chemical laboratory. During the tour, an explosion splits up the group and traps some of the girls deep in the facility. They're mostly fine, but who knows what chemicals the explosion might have unleashed?
Contains: orgasm control, aphrodisiacs, and some confusion about sexuality.
My head hurt. Rubbing a hand over my face, I found that my cheeks were gritty, covered in something like sand. I opened my eyes, then had to reach up and touch them to make sure they were really moving. It was utterly pitch black, in a way I'd never experienced before. The darkness was suffocating, and the sound of my breathing was strangely muffled by the ringing in my ears.
What happened?
I remember coming into the huge room with everyone. After walking through what felt like miles of claustrophobic corridors and touring fancy new chemistry labs that were entirely lost on a college volleyball team, a big green open space was heaven. The domed ceiling was somehow illuminated to be bright blue, and a dazzling fake sun shone down on us with real warmth. The scientists escorting us had started to explain the importance of the experimental plants growing in the open hydroponic basins, but we were already running out along the network of white stone pathways, giddy after 'escaping' the underground. After letting us play around and bask in the 'sunshine' for a while, our guides had started to lead us back out the way we had come...
...and then the room shuddered, a horrible noise battered my ears, and I was thrown backwards into darkness. Right.
Ouch.
"Hnnmnh?"
"What?" I said, or at least tried to say. I couldn't hear my own voice very well.
"Ymm ommm?"
"What?"
"You okay?" someone repeated, enunciating clearly. Lillie.
"I... I think I'm fine," I replied hesitantly, attempting to sit up as the ringing in my ears began to die down. Little shards of rock and plastic cascaded down my shirt, but when patting myself down, I couldn't find any injuries other than a general sense of being bruised. "Are you okay?"
"I'm soaking wet and flat on my ass in a bunch of plants, but yeah."
I let out a stupid little giggle at the mental image of my tall blond teammate's legs sticking out of one of the basins embedded in the floor. "What about everyone else?" I looked around uselessly in the pitch blackness. "Cheryl? Gail?"
"Here," Gail groaned from further away. "Ow. God."
"Cheryl?" I called again, to no response. "Jo? Tammy?"
Only silence answered me.
"They were ahead of us... right?" Lillie asked nervously. "Like, already in the hallway..."
"Maybe they didn't get hit by it," Gail offered. "Whatever it was that exploded. They were pretty far ahead."
"Yeah," I agreed. I didn't want to think about the alternative.
A sudden spark of light was almost blinding, and I squinted at whatever it was until I could make out a phone screen a few dozen feet away. It illuminated Gail's dark-skinned arm before she flipped it around and shined it around the room, barely highlighting the debris of the explosion and revealing Lillie's lean form sprawled across a hydroponic bed.
"Hey girl," Gail said. Lillie gave her a tiny wave and fished in her pocket to pull out a dripping wet phone.
"I think mine's dead. Hannah?"
Realizing that I was sitting on my purse, I shifted to the side and tugged out a phone that felt entirely the wrong shape. The screen still lit up when I pressed the button, showing that the background photo of me and my mom was warped by the bent casing and shattered screen. "I fell on mine, but it works. Sort of." I stood up on unsteady legs and carefully turned on the flashlight mode to make my way over to them. I also passed the beam over the walls to check out the exit - well, where the exit had been. The corridor was packed with rubble that extended out into the room.
"Shit," Lillie muttered. "That's gonna take a hot minute to clear out."
"Yeah." Gail blew out a heavy breath. "Are there any other ways out?"
I traced the light around the room, but if there was another exit it wasn't an obvious one. Sighing, I offered my hand to Lillie, helping her out of the water. The three of us were silent for a while as I tried to find a semi-comfortable place to sit in my skirt, listening to the sound of Lillie's soaked clothes making a puddle.
"Well this fucking sucks," I muttered after a while. "I didn't even want to come here in the first place."
"Sorry," Gail said quietly. She had been the most enthusiastic about this trip to our team sponsor's new lab. "But... we're here now." She reached out to rub my shoulder and gave me a weak smile. "We should probably try to save the battery on our phones."
"Oh, yeah." I checked for signal, unsurprisingly found it still zero bars, and turned my phone off, setting it beside me as Gail did the same. The darkness returned like a suffocating blanket over my eyes and mouth, making my chest feel tight.
A wet hand on my shoulder made me jump, but I reached up and held it when Lillie murmured "Sorry" and started to pull away.
"No, it's okay. I... I don't like the dark."
I was expecting to be teased about my childish fear, but Lillie just gave my fingers a squeeze. After a few moments, Gail's hand found my leg, and I held both of my friends' hands, comforted by their presence.
"Wonder how long it will be until someone comes and rescues us?" Lillie mused.
"Too ff-fucking long!" she groaned, digging fruitlessly at the top of the rubble as I held up my phone's flashlight for her. "How much time can it take? Give us
something!"
"Are you okay, Lil?" I asked. She was visibly shivering.
"I'm not ff-ff-fucking okay," she muttered, climbing down from the heap of debris blocking the way out. "It's f-ff-FUCKING cold now and I'm still w-wet."
I waved a hand through the air, realizing that the pleasantly hot temperature of the dome had dropped gradually but significantly since the explosion. "You should take off your clothes."
"Ooh, I bet you'd l-love that," she said, suddenly grinning in the light of my flashlight, and my cheeks went a fiery red.
"No! I- I meant- they're wet, so- you'll be more cold-"
"I'm just teasing!" she laughed, and I could hear Gail giggling in the darkness. "You're probably right."
Lillie started tugging off her shirt, and I immediately moved the flashlight away, trying to ignore her snickering.