Speaker 1: I'm not saying the money made it worth it, but
it did keep me faired. The kind of job I had, hell,
the kind of place we worked was the sort of
thing you didn't exactly talk about at family gatherings. I
never brought it up with my brother when he called,
didn't post about it, didn't take photos. I wasn't even
allowed to keep a journal, not a real one anyway,
only the pocket logs they issued, the kind where every
page was marked confidential in bright red. And even then
we weren't supposed to write anything more detailed than shift
notes and tool sign outs. But if you're the type
who's ever stared down the barrel of a second eviction
notice or wondered if that noise in the ceiling meant
you couldn't afford the exterminator again, you'll understand why I
took the job. I got the call through someone who
knew someone, a guy had contract rigging work with out
in Arizona. He didn't tell me what the job was,
just that it paid triple and they needed people who
could keep their heads down. The phone call was short.
I didn't even give a formal yes, just silence long
enough for him to say all right, I'll pass that on.
Two days later, I got a message on my old
work email that was still connected to my phone. I
hadn't used it in years. There was no subject line,
no sender list, just a set of coordinates, the time,
and instructions to bring id and steal toe boots. It
felt off every part of it, but I was behind
on rent and the other job I'd lined up fell through.
I told myself it was probably some private sector contract gig,
maybe security or survey were nothing legal, just quiet. I
drove five hours to a truck stop in the middle
of nowhere, an unmarked van already waiting. The driver didn't
say a word, just pointed to the back like he'd
done it a hundred times before, and I climbed in,
because desperate people do strange things. When the numbers finally
stopped working in their favor, we drove for what felt
like hours. The windows were blacked out and my phone
was taken and sealed in a lead lined pouch, the
kind you could only release with a strong magnet. Nobody spoke,
and when the van finally stopped, we were at a
small private airfield, bare concrete, a single floodlight and a
plane waiting on the tarmac. Too small to be commercial,
The plane wasn't marked, just a featureless charter jet. Inside
were half a dozen other guys, spaced out like strangers
at a funeral. The windows were frosted over. The only
thing they served us water in sealed bags like ivy fluid.
When we landed, it was dark again, and I was
left disoriented. Everything felt wrong in a way I couldn't
quite name. My body. Knew I'd crossed too many time
zones or altitudes or both, but no one ever told
us where we were. The air outside was thin and sharp,
and the men who met us wore plain gray jackets
and carried clipboards. They handed us gear bags at the
staging facility and told us strip out everything we came
in with, clothes, wallets, and anything from the outside, with
the exception of our boots. Our ideas were stuck facing
the outside so they could easily identify the owners, and
they stuffed it all into a heavy plastic bin that
was wheeled away. Without a word. They handed us jumpsuits
and blank eyed ee badges. All I know was that
it was up high somewhere. It was not quite mountain
range level, but definitely past the tree line. The air
was thin and cold enough that your nostrils cracked and burned.
You couldn't see anything outside the fence but gray sky
rock and snow smooth hills that never changed no matter
how long you stared. I don't think it was on
any map. I say that because I've locked. God knows
I've locked. The sight itself looked like a prison complex,
everything built from prefab concrete and modulus. Thee right orange
floodlights on timers that ran like clockwork, a mess hall,
four DRN buildings, a machine shop, and the shaft are
itself a series of structures built into the slope like
a scar that hadn't healed right. They couldn't shake the
feeling that there was a small chance this was a
trick and I was never getting that money they promised.
They called it the dig despite it being a mine.
Our job was to keep it operational. Cruise rotated in
and out every lunar cycle for exactly twenty eight days.
We didn't work by month. Instead, we worked by the moon.
What we were digging for wasn't exactly clear, not to
me officially. We cleared debris, stabilized support columns, and tested
gas level. The actual excavation was handled by remote systems
deeper down, All we ever saw would contain us being
brought up and loaded into sealed trucks, the guys unloading them.
More radiation gear. We won't given any, told we didn't
need it. The only rule that mattered, they told us
during induction was this, No one goes below level seven.
They made this clear. There was no reason to go
past there, not even to retrieve a lost tool or
follow a cable run. Even if people called for help,
we were told to ignore it. If you detect unauthorized
comms from restricted levels, log and escalate, do not engage.
The safety officer told us during the briefing that was
the only time the room went quiet. At first, it
all felt strangely normal. Sure, the job wasn't typical, but
for me it was easy work. The only thing that
bothered me was that my sleep didn't feel RESTful, like
my brain didn't have time to relax. Our schedule was simple,
wake up at six am, eat, do safety checks, grab tools,
and work. We spent eight hours down in the dark,
with only the hum of light and the grumble of
machines for company. Most of the dig was reinforced with
old concrete and steel. Everything beyond level three had that
pressure cooked look, with walls bowed in places and support
beams rusted but still technically intact. There was dust in
the air that never settled, so we wore respirators, but
the air still tasted like blood and chalk. By level five,
the stone changed. You could feel it under your boots.
Everything sounded different, too. Your steps didn't echo the same way.
It was like the walls swallowed sound. People talked less.
The deeper we went, probably from the thinner oxygen. Level
six had the worst of it. The air got warmer,
tighter in the chest. Even the lights struggled down there.
The bulbs glowed dimmer, always flickering. Some of the guys
swore they saw things in the far corners of the shaft,
just shadows, probably tricks on their tired eyes. But occasionally
someone would shine a light into the dark and claim
it bounced off something reflective, like cat eyes. And you
could always hear something beneath your feet. He didn't sound mechanical,
he was slower, heavier, something more like a breath or
a pulse. Sorenson didn't say much his first week, but
one day, when we were cleaning an old spill by
the lockers on six, he paused mid scrape, just staring
at the floor for a while. Then he said, almost
to himself, I think my dreams know more about this
place than I do. They showed me tunnel systems I
haven't been in, but when I get there, I recognize them.
What I asked, but he went back to scraping the
floor like he hadn't heard me. There was something off
about him that day, more than usual. He'd been getting
stranger all week. I heard other workers whisper things when
they thought no one was listening. Stuff that didn't make sense,
like the mine wasn't built here it was reopened. One guy,
Thompson saw he saw markings in the stone that didn't
match any of our tools. I couldn't help but find
the whole thing ridiculous. Being stuck in artificial life for
eight hours a day clearly impacted these guys, and I
wasn't about to let that happen to me and through
it all. Level seven just waited. The first time I
saw the door up close was during my rotation on
safety checks. Level six was on my route and one
of the daily tasks was to confirm the seal integrity
on the level seven door. Every shift, someone had to
take the elevator down, scan the world lines with the
handheld thermal unit, and log the readings manually. The Level
seven was solid steel, welded in three places, painted yellow
and black like a wasp's nest. No keypad, no lock,
just a placard restricted do not open. I marked it
off of my checklist and realized I was holding my
breath the entire time, as if something on the other
side might hear me, and I swear I heard someone
whisper from the other side, but I never told anyone
how to fear of admitting I was catching whatever mental
bug the other guys seemed to have. Sorenson disappeared on
day nineteen, but we didn't realize straight away. We got
used to guy's crashing early or skipping mess to sleep
off of migrain. Nobody kept track of anyone unless they
were your tool body for the shift. But when we
lined up for checking the next morning, he didn't show.
Someone joked that he'd finally quit and maybe he'd hiked
out in the night. We all knew he'd been unraveling
little things At first, he'd stand too close to the wall,
as if listening for something. He started skipping mess and
keeping food in his bunk, as if he didn't trust
the kitchen. Once I found him standing in the equipment hallway,
just staring at the rust stains on the floor. I
remember he said they reminded him of a pattern, but
he couldn't remember from where, maybe his dreams. Once again,
he'd never expand on what he was saying. He started
keeping a journal in his pocket. Log I caught glimpses
of sketches of Spirali like shit apes and some teeth
as well. One page had a date circled three times
with the words do not follow underlined hard enough to
tear the paper. He had been stationed near the freight
elevator on six and said he kept hearing voices over
the intercom even though no one was broadcasting. Said the
signal was from seven. They said they pulled security footage
to the check, but they never shared it with us. However,
word got around. One night he bypassed the maintenance override
and forced the service lift down. He'd taken a breathing tank,
a work light, and one of the old crowbars that
was it. He went down alone when everyone was sleeping.
When we woke up and got to work, I noticed
the lights across the lower levels started flickering in rhythm
in a slow timed pulse four seconds on, four, off,
over and over. The morning after that, Sorenson's name was
gone from the manifest. The side supervisor wouldn't let any
one descend below five for the next two days. Safety concerns,
they said structure review. There was no mention of him
in the bunk records. His gear locker was empty. Even
his plate and cup from the mess were missing, like
he'd never been there at all. That's when it really
started to go wrong. On day twenty two, Wyatt took
the emergency ladder between four and five after the main
lift locked up again. It was the second time that week.
He was furious, muttering about how the maintenance crew should
be fired, and decided not to wait. He slept thirty
feet and cracked two ribs on the landing. Said the
rungs were slick with something, but when we checked they
were spotless, like they'd been scrubbed. One day twenty three,
Briggs had a seizure in the mess hall. Full tonic
cronic he bit through his tongue, blood everywhere, and he
took six guys to hold him down. He didn't remember
it afterward, but he kept asking where the lights had gone.
The lights were still on. Not long after that, a
soft rattling started in the ventilation system. Constant like metal
beads rolling around inside the duct work kept some of
us up at night. We asked maintenance to check it out.
They sent a guy. He climbed into the crawl space,
came back down an hour later and said there was
nothing there. Wouldn't meet our eyes when he said it.
By day twenty four, our radio stopped working reliably. We'd
hear our own voices looping back on a delay. Sometimes
they came back distorted. Sometimes they said things we hadn't said.
Someone asked to leave early and was denied. They said
there wasn't transport scheduled until the next cycle, and breaking
protocol would void its payment. He packed anyway and disappeared
during the night. Nobody saw him again. The rest of
us stopped asking questions. I started seeing shadows move where
they shouldn't, first in the elevator reflection, then the corners
of the dorm showers. They always disappeared when I turned
to lock, and then there was the door to level seven.
Every morning, during safety check on six, some one would
swear the welds looked thinner, just a little like heats
dress had started to pull them apart from the inside,
but none of us wanted to be the one to measure.
We didn't want to get close enough to prove it.
It happened on day twenty six, midshift. We were down
on Level five clearing out some half collapse support corridors
when the tremors started. It didn't seem unusual at first,
the place groaned all the time, but then a chunk
of ceiling came down and took out our primary lift,
an emergency ladder. One second we were tagging a busted pipe.
The next second alarms were blaring and the whole tunnel
was filled with dust and blinding us. We had five
of us down there emergency protocol radio to use the
service access shaft by the old pump station. It went
around the main shaft, but was deeper and looped down
through old maintenance corridors before connecting back up above the
only working one left, which meant to go up. We
had to go down first. That meant passing near seven.
I remember standing at the base of the ladder and
thinking how bad it had been for them to root
us through that level despite the warnings. But the supervisors
had radioed it, so he climbed. We hit level six,
out of breath and wired. Deeke was coughing so hard
I thought he'd pass out. Elson kept looking down at
the shaft like he was paranoid. I couldn't help but
think about my three remaining days, that after all of this,
it would be worth it. Then we reached seven. The
change was instant. The temperature spiked like we'd stepped into
a sealed room with no ventilation. It clung to us,
hot and humid, like a sauna, but instead of wood,
the air tasted of rot. It hit the back of
the throat and stayed there, and breathing felt like inhaling
through a soaked rag. Pressure built in our ears and
sweat started pooling inside the masks. Jeez, it's like breathing soup,
I muttered, Why is it so hot down here, Deeke said,
yanking at the strap of his mask. It's supposed to
get colder the teeper we go. It's not just the heat.
Nelson said, something's off. The air's thick. Then the lights
behind us went individually, like someone was following and flipping
a switch as they came. Deeke Slamp started to cut out,
flickering to the rhythm of his footsteps. Nelson stopped climbing
altogether and just froze. Do you hear that? He asked.
I didn't want to, but yeah. There were voices in
the walls, murmuring somewhere deep in the rock. Gomez dropped
his bag, trying to reach for his emergency beacon. It
tumbled down the shaft, climbing off steel until the sound
just stopped. We kept going. At the next landing, we
left the shaft and headed down the corridor that led
deeper into seven. Inside was a chamber that felt almost alive.
The walls weren't stone so much as tissue, dense and
wet looking, with a surface that glistened in the lamp light.
They flexed in slow waves, like muscles of a throat
mid swallow. Every step squelched faintly, and the smell was
worse than before. Then we saw him. Curled near the wall.
Was what was left of Sorenson. He was dead. No question.
His body was slumped like it had been dropped, but
the chamber hadn't let him go. Something had fused him
into the floor. His back was half sunk into the
wet surface, skin stretched thin where it met the tissue,
as if the walls were slowly pulling him in. The
Film across his body pulsed faintly. One eye was still open,
dried and glazed over, like a dead fish, while his
jaw hung slack in a way no living person could hold.
You could see where the veins are darkened, branching into
the floor like roots. The stench of raw meat left
out in the sun invaded through our respirators. Gomes whispered,
that's why they redid the world. Geez Deeke muttered, voiced
tight and higher than usual. He had one arm half
shielding his face, like that would help. What the hell
is this? This is sick, Gomez gagged behind his respirator.
His voice was hollow. It feels like we're inside something's body.
Nobody corrected him. Elson was shaking. I remember how his
helmet light jetted across the walls like he couldn't keep
his head still. We shouldn't be here, he kept whispering,
We're not supposed to see this. I didn't say a word.
I was trying not to breathe to get through it.
No way, I was cracking. With just a few days left,
the ground beneath us throbbed. Go Miss said something about
a lighter head. I didn't see anything at first, just
shadows stacked on shadows. But then something shifted, and I
caught the shape of another shaft, lined in rusted brackets
and half buried conduit. It looked like another access tunnel,
smaller than ours, stretching straight up. Is that the old vertical?
Deak asked, squinting, his voice cracked. He goes all the
way upright top side. I nodded. We all knew the
layout from the emergency map. This one was a backup
escape route, sealed decades ago, supposedly useless, But there it was.
Then the light shifted again. Whatever comfort that shaft offered
disappeared when I realized it wasn't just exposed, It was open, unsealed,
like it had been used recently, as when the skin
of my arms crawled. The heat pulsed again, thicker than before,
and the walls began to breathe slower, heavier. I felt sick,
like I was fighting a childhood fever. There was something
in the center of the chamber, massive and still carved
with ridges, like the roof of a mouth, only wider
than anything should be. He didn't move, but I swear
it felt like it was waiting. I stepped closer to
get a look, and the thing in the center didn't move.
Behind me, someone whispered my name. I turned, but no
one else had moved. The light posted again, not a flash,
more like a deep rhythmic contraction. Everything flexed, The floor
dropped half an inch beneath my boots, and the film
rippled like it was breathing harder now. Deeke shouted something,
but his voice didn't carry right. It came out bent
and muffled, as if we were underwater. Nelson started backing
toward the exit, stumbling over his own boots. That was
when the tunnel behind us began to close in a
slow tightening. I don't know what made me move first,
maybe instinct, but I ran, leaving the others behind, pushing
through the thick air, and I didn't dare look back.
I threw myself into the old vertical, dragging with my
elbows behind me. The corridor dimmed, swallowed by that pulsing heat.
I remember the way the metal of the vent burned
against my palms, the way the air changed, less heat,
more cold, thinner again. I kept crawling, didn't think, just crawled.
When the tremors started again, I thought the whole shaft
would give, but it didn't. I kept climbing, hand over hand,
forcing myself up through the shaft. It wasn't built for
this kind of escape, too narrow and extremely old, but
I didn't care. I just needed to get above level seven. Eventually,
the tunnel curved and connected to a collapsed service hall
at the back end of level six. I had to
crawl over the rubble that had caved in earlier. My
legs scraped against rebar and broken stone. Every movement felt
harsh in my body. That's when everything tilted. I felt
something shift in my head. When I woke up, I
was in the infirmary on level one. The lights were
too bright and everything smelled like bleach. My throat was dry,
and someone had shaved part of my scalp for electrodes.
The medic didn't say much, just clipped a monitor to
my finger and asked if I felt nauseous. His tone
was practiced flat, like I was a routine checkup, as
if nothing unusual had happened. I asked, what happened to
the others. He said, I must be confused the service shaft.
I said, we took the one near the pump station,
as the supervisor said that was the way out. The
menic didn't even look up, just said there were no
orders given over the radio. That channel's been dead for days.
I didn't say anything after that, just let him finish
what he was doing. But I couldn't stop thinking about it.
The calm in the voice that told us which way
to go, the exact timing of the tremors, and the
fact that the radio hadn't crackled or cut out like
the others. How stupid we were to just follow the
commands without questions. They said I'd been unconscious for five days,
long enough that they'd already processed my dismissal. I went
home like nothing had happened. I followed their itinerary, bordered
the plane and tried not to think about what I'd seen.
I didn't remember going through the terminal. I barely remember
the flight, everything between the infirmary, and my front door
felt dull, like I was moving through underwater. The next
day the deposit hit and I received double hazard pay.
As if that squared the books. I haven't slept through
the night since. The dreams are always the same, that soft,
flexing pressure of walls that breathe, the taste of metal
and sick in the back of my throat, sometimes from above.
Other times I'm crawling. Since I returned, I've been waking
up to find dirt under my finger nails and I
didn't know how it got there. Then muder my slippers,
and eventually there were calluses in my palms. Turns out
I'm digging back yard mostly. Then it was the patch
of dirt in the alley behind my apartment, and at
one point I woke up in a drainage stitch places
I shouldn't have been. I don't remember walking out there,
but I always wake up near a pit with raw
and blooded hands and dirt packed tight under my nails.
It was never the same hole. I called the guy
who got me the job to ask him what the
hell kind of thing he dragged me into and whether
he was digging too, But his voice on the other
end was flat confused. He didn't sound tired or haunted
like I was. Oh, I never gave him your name,
he said. I meant to. I drew Ino pulled up
and everything, but I got distracted and forgot. The job
I was going to recommend was a Nevada warehouse gig,
graveyard shift, but good pay. I swear I never passed
it on