Samori
I stood up straight and looked around. The cavern stretched before us like the belly of some ancient beast, its walls weeping mineral tears that had stained the stone in streaks of rust and copper. Dim bioluminescent strips, the government's cheapest lighting solution cast everything in a sickly green glow that made even the healthiest workers look like walking corpses. The air hung thick with coal dust and the metallic tang of pickaxes against stone, while the constant drip, drip, drip of cave water created an endless percussion that drove most newcomers mad within their first week.
They all looked like the sad, beaten, and empty people I've always known. Except two.
Two people behind Bean looked suspicious. Bean moved with a certain level of athletic grace as she picked up the rocks and moved them across the uneven cave floor toward the rusted metal bins that waited like hungry mouths near the transport tunnel. The dripping cave drops never hit her, she'd memorized every leak, every stalactite's reach as she continued the practice she'd done almost every day of her life since she was a young child.
The cavern floor was a treacherous landscape of loose shale and embedded coal chunks, slick with moisture and worn smooth by countless shuffling feet. Workers navigated around support beams that groaned under the mountain's weight, their metal surfaces slick with condensation and decades of grime. The deeper tunnels branched off like arteries, each one leading to darker, more dangerous extraction points where the newer prisoners were sent.
While Bean moved with practiced efficiency, the skinny weak woman behind her lifted rocks with her back instead of her legs, walking too heavily to the bins and placing the rocks carelessly. She wasted precious energy and would likely collapse before the twelve-hour shift ended. I'd seen it happen countless times before. The overseers didn't care; there were always more bodies to replace the broken ones well into the rising waters that reached this level.
I tried to look cleverly through the corner of my eyes, but before I could fully assess the situation, my gaze met the youngish man the woman stayed close to. He was lean and moved more naturally than his counterpart, lifting with his legs and navigating the treacherous footing as if he'd been in these tunnels for years. The shadows between the support pillars seemed to bend around him in ways that made my skin crawl. He smirked and nodded in my direction, and I quickly looked down at the jagged piece of coal in my hands.
'They're here to kill us, Bean?' I thought-whispered.
My voice barely audible over the grinding of metal wheels on the rail tracks that carried the ore to the upper levels.
[No, that's not their objective—otherwise I would have told you already. Sam, get a grip.] Bean's mental voice carried the edge it always did when danger circled closer. She was probably reading through all of the minds in the room to figure out their survival.
Taking a deep breath of the stale, dust-laden air, I picked up an especially large rock and walked over to the bin. The sound of my footsteps echoed off the cavern walls, mixing with the symphony of scraping, clanking, and muffled conversations that never truly stopped. At the same time, I heard a heavy clunk that seemed to reverberate through the stone itself.