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“Not your job, Rawkner,” the foreman snarls, shoving past him and heading for the lift. “Pull 'em out if there’s a cave in, or better yet hold the damn tunnel up until we can get the team down to build a new frame.”

Fenrir watches the foreman disappear with the lift, scent of smoke thinning but no less worrisome for it.

He dunks his bandanna into a barrel and tugs it over his face, then heads down the shaft.

Section nine is the deepest section in this sector. Tunneled by hand rather than the dynamite sticks they’d begun to receive from a place called the Labs, it’d been sealed off the last few years due to unsafe blasting conditions. Now, the owners had opened it back up, the other veins they’d been following too dried up compared to section nine’s vein.

Fenrir runs a hand along the wall, counting the notches put there by teams of men over the last two decades. There are names and the dates of miners long since dead—either to an accident in the mine or some kind of disease that came later. Fenrir is adamant about wearing his mask, but too many other miners aren’t, but he’s seen the results. Knows the inconvenience is worth it.

“Foreman Rawkner!” A woman greets him at the fork in the vein with a salute. Someone must have passed the word around to pull his leg because he doesn’t recognize her either, but returns the salute, grinning through his bandanna.

“At ease,” he jokes but the woman’s hand snaps back to her side like it was a command. Fenrir shifts his weight but says nothing of it. “You smell that, yeah?”

“Smoke, sir. Been smelling it for the last hour.”

An hour? That wasn’t good. “Source?”

“Vein ten, got men in eight. Foreman says it isn’t a problem but at this rate I’m not so sure.”

“Let’s clear out of eight and head into six. How many hours are left on your shift?”

“Four,” the woman confirms, then turns to shout down the fork to her right.

“New orders, men! Clear out eight, we’re heading for six!”

Calls echo through the shadows, that strange violet phosphorescence that comprises every tunnel flaring yellow when the first few miners make retreat from the vein. There’s a secondary fork a few yards down, and Fenrir meets each of the miner’s waves as they turn down that fork and head for six. The team doesn’t seem scared and that eases his worry a bit, that is, until he feels the rumble under his feet.

From there, it all happens too quickly.

What was an orange flare erupts, an explosion blasting up from vein eight and spilling down the fork towards ten. What few men haven’t made it to six scream, and Fenrir charges for them, arm to his face to keep the explosive heat from his eyes. He drags the men from the vein two to a hand, their pink skin going slick where burns already fester. But of the four men he pulls out three are most certainly alive, the last unconscious but—the woman assures him—still breathing.

That should have been it, but the rumble hasn’t stopped. The scent of smoke grows stronger.

Fenrir stares down the mouth of the fork leading to ten and hears the cave in before he sees it, a monstrous roar that closes straight for them.

“The lift,” Fenrir breathes, barely audible. Then he screams, “The lift! Everyone, get to the lift!”

Men spill past him, headlamps winking out and plunging them into that phosphorescent darkness. Fenrir throws the unconscious man over his back and heads for the lift, navigating the darkness by instinct alone, memory filling in blanks that are ever changing, the veins they forge always banking, twisting, breaking off, and restarting again in new and different places. But they’re not far from the lift and the clang of metal chains confirms it.

He joins the miners shoulder to shoulder, awaiting the lift and then freezing when the clang of its descent goes silent.

“Hey!” someone further ahead shouts. “What gives?”

The rumbling grows, roar building into a wave. Collapsing stone shoots dust up the vein and into the pocket of air they all need to breathe. Fenrir drops to a knee when the ceiling above him fractures, pulling the man on his shoulder to his chest so he doesn’t take the brunt of the falling rocks.

“Make way!” he shouts, pushing towards the lift. “Foreman Rawkner here, make way!”

The miners part like the sea, guiding him towards the lift with nudges and shoves, until he’s at the cage separating them from the pulley mechanics and the shaft that tunnels hundreds of feet up to a surface they can’t see.

“Lift! Send down the lift!”

No reply comes. No grind of gears or groan of metal. Behind, the crash of the collapsing vein grows closer, the men at the rear beginning to shout and then scream.

“Send down the hells-damned lift!” Fenrir screams, then yanks the cage door open with one hand and reaches for the chain he knows hangs there.

Unconscious man in one arm, chain in the other, Fenrir pulls until it gives.

One inch. Then another. The scream of resisting metal is barely audible over the screams of the miners, but Fenrir does not give up, he pulls harder when someone beside him takes the unconscious man to free up both his hands.