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This is my response to Day 1 of http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/'s 30 Days of Flash Fiction, the list for which can be found at http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/221684.html?view=1245940#t1245940.

“It’s going down.” Hakkon sounded pleased, understandable given that the rising tide had trapped them in this cavern for over an hour.

“Maybe we should just go home now,” offered Lyrica, shaking in the chill.

“If we do, we’ll never have another chance to explore down here”, objected Rance. “We’ve still a day and a half off before we have to report to work. The drones won’t look for us until then. By our next days off, the season’ll have changed and the seas’ll be too rough for us to get to the entrance.”

“When the season changes again, we’ll all be old enough to be posted away from our parents and we might not be here,” added Winown, the other girl in the group. “It’s now or never.”

“We go on.” Elgar made the call, as always. He led them, light stick in hand, through the tunnel they hadn’t entered the cavern by and into another chamber. This one was dry but held water drifted sand and debris, testament to the height of king tides or storm surge. Elgar hid the light stick under his coat.

“Up there!” Lyrica pointed at a vertical crack of light above them, surmounting a slope of rubble. “Perhaps it’s another way out.”

“It doesn’t look like daylight,” pointed out Winown.

“Only one way to find out.” Hakkon broke out his own light stick and tested the rubble for stability. Satisfied, he started helping the others up.

The crack was big enough for even the biggest of them to slide through without coat or pack. The lighting was artificial. What had been a door was collapsed rubble. A set of human-sized pods, transparent under their dust, were arrayed in a circle flanked by lit machines.

“Crap,” said Rance, “We might have found the Sleepers.”