Immediately he falls back against the wall to sink into a sitting position, hands feeling rubbed raw from the rough tumble downward and trembling.

"Hey, yeah," Daniel answers Julian's question after a brief pause to regain control of his lungs that feel, unpleasantly, as though they've caught fire. "I'm, ah, I'm here. You okay?"

He squints in an effort to distinguish Julian from the clouded, inky darkness of the cave's interior. Short of the marginally less dim outside, they have no light source.