Aberrant: Holiday to St Helens

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Following a lottery win, Nadia decided to spend her winnings on a splash of luxury holidaying. Travelling to the North West side of the French Caribbean island of Martinique.

Staying a bit further from the more tourist focused areas she was easily able to afford a few nights at the Hotel Villa Saint Pierre, where she found the veteran mountaineer Jerry and a fun-loving Paramedic Stephanie staying at the same hotel. They got to chatting in the shade of the hotel's modest restaurant where they enjoyed fish and crustaceans caught fresh off the boats and cooked within minutes of arrival.

They found each other pleasant enough company, so headed down to the Southern beaches together where there was more of a crowd and a party atmosphere, drinking and joining in a game of men vs women volleyball, which Stephanie and Nadia managed to come out ahead in, despite Jerry's best efforts. Flirting with some of the local boys Stephanie drove them back to the hotel and they all got some sleep.

However in the middle of the night, the building shook violently for a couple of minutes, damaging most buildings and knocking down older more decrepit ones.

They dashed out of bed, realising that time was short. A building across from the hotel had collapsed. A young boy was crying and his mother wandering around mildly concussed. The boy pointed out that his father was still inside the partially collapsed building. Nadia and Jerry leapt in to action, quite literally, with Nadia rebounding off a wall to parkour to the partially collapsed second storey, whilst Jerry forced his way through.

The man was pinned by a large beam on his bed and between the two of them, they managed to lift it off him and got him out just before the building finished its collapse in the aftershocks. Meanwhile outside Stephanie treated and triaged the injured.

As they were finishing up and the local authorities began to get the situation under control they were approached by Gifford Marcil, a local French-Caribbean diving instructor, who ran a diving school a few doors down from the hotel. He told them that he'd been informed by the Neptune Foundation that there was a paramedic and a mountaineer staying here and that he needed their help. All three of them quickly agreed and piled in to his rugged land rover.

He informed them that a team of geologists had been up at Mount Pelée with a vehicle. Helena Riggs, a professor of Volcanology at the University of the West Indies and her two post-graduate students. Whilst the volcano had not erupted, it was active and the teams vehicle had slid partially in to the caldera of dark but intensely hot stone. Furthermore the Earthquake had caused landslides and forest fires around the volcano making the passage almost impassable.

Fortunately Stephanie was up to the challenge, she took control and managed to drive on and off-road most of the way to the summit, where Gifford said there would be a drone waiting with rescue supplies.

However the roads never went all the way to the peak, for most vehicles there was a car park not far from the summit. So they got out and ran the rest of the ascent led by Jerry which forced them through the blaze of one of the forest fires. Unable to bypass it they used a fire blanket and a blanket soaked in water to burst through the flames. Although Stephanie's feet were burned in the attempt.

They finally reached the peak and one of Gifford's drones spotted the wreckage of the vehicle part of the way in to the caldera. The ground shielded the survivors for now, but the descent was hot and very difficult, however Jerry managed to secure and lift one of them up on a collapsible gurney, though the ropes were damaged in the process.

However Jerry and the expedition leader were trapped without the ropes they needed. Nadia threw down the last remaining heat reflecting suit and Jerry managed to free-climb out of the volcano before Stephanie drove them back out to the town where the injured were able to be rushed to hospital by the local authorities.

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