The captain's voice came over the plane, "We've got a sudden mountain storm brewing, and airspace restrictions mean we don't have a good way around it. I'm turning on the seat belt light, folks, so buckle up and hang onto your lunch." The plane was a small private jet, with just the captain, one flight crew member, and three passengers - Cassie, her mom, and me. Cassie was a year ahead of me at Evergreen State, although the first time we met was when she came by and said hi to her mom about three days into my freshman orientation. Her mom was the head of my secret service detail. Oh, yeah... my name's Eric McIntosh, and you've probably seen my picture around, because my mother Karen is the Vice-President of the United States.

I groaned as I reached over to buckle the seat belt, hating the way I'd always been prone to motion sickness at the drop of a hat. I hadn't enjoyed the Six Flags field trip last year in high school, I stayed away from Cedar Point growing up in Ohio, and I would much rather drive for a road trip than fly if I had a modicum of a choice about it. But, when your mom's the vice-president, you don't really get that choice. You're stuck in a bubble, too - never more than about 40 feet from somebody who's packing a concealed handgun and has the hand-to-hand training to kick somebody's ass. The lack of privacy makes it hard to have a girlfriend, too, which was why I was still incredibly awkward around girls of any sort.

It didn't help that Cassie and I got along like.... well, take your pick of two completely incompatible things. At least for now I was in an education program, with an eye on following my uncle's footsteps into teaching language arts to middle school students. Cassie was into one of the sciences - don't ask me which one, since we'd hardly spoken to each other directly despite it being six months at the same school and running into each other periodically since her mom knew where I was all. the. damn. Time.

That's about when things started to get really bad. Don't ask me the technical terms for what happened, but the plane started to buck and pitch, dropping about 15 feet in a matter of a couple seconds. Cassie hadn't taken her belt off, so she and I were OK, but her mom's head slammed into the roof of the plane before she fell back to the floor. That's when the screaming started.

I couldn't process what was happening for the rest of what felt like hours but was probably about 5 minutes. What I know is that at the end of it, the plane was on the ground, burning, in about four pieces, the adults all looked like they were dead, and Cassie had a gash running down her arm that looked pretty bad. Honestly, I was probably concussed, and I definitely had that sour taste in my mouth that said I’d just been puking up everything I’d eaten at breakfast. But I knew that as badly as we hated each other, we were going to have to cooperate if we wanted to get out.

Groggily, I fumbled to unbuckle the belt that had held me into the seat and started to stand up. "Ouch. Fuckfuckfuck," I complained, realizing that my ankle had probably gotten injured in the crash. My first couple of steps had me nearly falling over, vision blurry amid the smoke, wind, and dizziness. I tried to put a good face on everything as I limped over to her seat. She, of course, was clear of everything by then and knocked me on my ass trying to get over to first her mom, then the 30-ish dude who had been the flight crew. I think I’d seen her checking him out when she thought her mom hadn’t been looking.

“They’re dead, Cass. Or if they aren’t, there isn’t anything we can do for them without dying ourselves,” I screamed. “What’s left of the plane is on fire, the wind’s practically a gale, and it looks like we’re going to get soaked to the skin in about 10 minutes!” I could see the dark clouds off to my left, moving fast and with blue-yellow crackles arcing mid-air and down to the ground.”

“Get the fuck out of my way, Eric,” she yelled back. Dropping to her knees next to the adults, her hands darted out to their necks, feeling desperately for the pulses that I already knew weren’t there. It didn’t matter to her. Stubborn, methodical Cassandra wasn’t going to leave them without being sure.

The wind whipped smoke into my eyes as I dropped to my knees so that I didn’t have to try to walk on that ankle and crawled past her toward the piece of the plane that had the cockpit. I think it’s a good thing I’d thrown everything up already, because otherwise I definitely would have when I saw the pilot. “Don’t waste your time over here. Even if he’s alive, there’s not a damn thing I know how to be able to do for somebody who’s been shrapneled by the window glass and looks like a voodoo doll.”

By the time I made it back over to Cassie, she was on her feet and looking around. Pointing downslope, she called over everything, “I think there’s a place we can get out of this about a half-mile that way. See that dark patch? If we’re lucky, it’s a cave or overhang of some kind.” And without waiting for me, she started to walk, occasionally falling knee-deep into the winter snow, still piled high waiting for the warmth of early summer that would finally trigger it melting completely.

I kept falling as I tried to match her footsteps, and when I finally made it there - it really was something barely bigger than an overhang and not big enough to be a cave, but at least blocked a couple directions of wind and rain - I was drenched. As I shoved my back up against the rocks trying to make my own body as small as I could, I got my first good look at what had happened to her. Of course she was in better shape than I was, but there was a tear in her shirt that went from the back of her neck all along the back of her shoulder to her armpit that was bleeding pretty steadily.

"Shit, Cassie. I know it looks like you were trying to take care of everybody else, but you’ve got a hell of a nasty cut there.” One advantage of being on a private plane was that I’d gotten to keep the multitool my grandfather had given me for my 13^th birthday, and I fished it out from the holster on the side of my belt where it usually lived, trying to cut some strips off the sodden leg of my jeans. “Hold still and let me do something about this. We may hate each other at school, but I’ll save you. Not much choice if we want to get out of here.” Brilliant Eric, I thought. Way to try to be all macho and shit for a girl you don’t even like.

“Not if I save you first, asshole,” she answered.

General notes:

• I'm definitely open to her name getting changed; I just needed something to work with as I was writing and have a thing for names with mythological/literary allusions.
• Descriptions pretty vague on purpose.
• I hope it's obvious that this is going to be a medium/long-term prompt. To that end, I should not that I'm going to be away and out of the loop most of this weekend, but will have plenty of time for tonight & tomorrow to get things rolling if I get any takers.
• Also to that end, it's worth pointing out there will be a bunch of slow burn before the sexy stuff starts happening.
• In the event you recognize it, yes I rather blatantly cribbed the title and set-up from the newest book by Ally Carter. Haven't had a chance to read hers; that'll have to wait until summer.
• When we wrap up, or get close to it, I'm very likely to want to put together a [share] post. You'll get a final OK pass before that goes live.

So, all that said... turn my inbox orange?