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What seemed like a millennia later, the pulleys screeched, the cable within forced over its wheels. It moved in painful increments, the void filling with an awful grating sound, the clanks of steel and the groan of timber reaching me. But the lift was rising. The wheels spun in their mechanisms. The cable sped by, the clanking grew closer and closer.

And then I could feel it beneath my feet, something heavy rising fromthe belly of the world, forced from its middle. The lift ground to a halt when it hit the ceiling and the cable couldn’t pull it any further.

Dizzy, I scrambled to the lift’s doors. I pulled on the steel lever that clamped the gate shut. Moans within, shouts. I threw all the weight I had onto the lever, and inch by inch, it moved. A crack appeared, widened. Twenty, thirty fingers fed through the gap, prying the gates apart.

And then Gunner spilled out, landing on his knees, coughing violently. Blood seeped from his eyebrow, into his beard, already black with soot.

Behind him, twenty or so men appeared in the weak glow of my lamplight. Some held up by others, some slumped to the floor with their back against the walls. All of them gasping for breath, blackened by the earth, visible only by the stark reflections of their eyes.

“He sent theCharmerin?” Gunner panted, his voice nothing more than a scratch. But he smiled up at me, spitting a gob of soot to the ground. “Figures.”

I swayed, seeing two of him. “This Charmer is going to get you out,” I told him. “Unless you’d rather stay?”

He exhaled and it might have been a laugh. He accepted the hand I offered to stand on shaking legs.

I glanced over his shoulder, to the men behind him. “Can they walk?”

“They’ll fuckin’ crawl if they must,” he rasped. “Lead the way.”

I kept my hands to the walls as I ascended again, looking over my shoulder constantly to the train of miners following. The unconscious men were carried on backs, the conscious dragged their feet and sucked breath through hollowed cheeks.

I thought of things my father said when I was a child, about air temperature and gas in the head and lead feet that wouldn’t move when commanded.That’s what the tunnels do, he’d told me.They make it so you can’t run, can’t see right. When you realize it, it’s already too late.I hastened, feeling my brain slosh to one side. I couldn’t get enough oxygen.

“Easy, there,” Gunner said at my back. “One foot in front of the other, girl. It’s just a bit of gas.”

I nodded, though it distorted my vision, sent fragments of picture into a moving kaleidoscope. I fell down and felt no pain, just hands pulling me upright again.

Men moaned. The walls sung a dirge. The tunnel extended on and on, its length somehow doubling, then tripling.

“Almost there,” I said aloud.

And then, in a cage swinging from the hand of a miner, a canary gave its last warbling titter and became silent.

“Stop,” Gunner said, his hand grasping my shoulder. My lamplight fell onto his stricken face, his slackening mouth. It made a ghost of him.

Then, from deep in the earth there was a catastrophic shudder. It rippled first from somewhere deep below, then through my fingertips, the soles of my feet. In my mind, a billion separate and connected sparks sputtered.

“Gas!” one man yelled.

“A blast!” another heaved.

“GO!” Gunner growled, shoving me forward with all the strength his arms allowed, and I was pitched headfirst into the gloom ahead, the walls around us trembling.

Rafts of dirt fell from the ceiling, clodding the path, filling it with rock. I blasted each blockade backward, again, again. The walls held so long as my hands glanced them, then collapsed soon after. Twice I heard the bellow of a man struck. The shouts of the others to keep moving. Keep moving.

Too heavy. It was too heavy. If it all fell at once, I wouldn’t be able to lift it away.

And then, ahead, there was a light. It permeated the dust and the falling rock.

And Gunner pushed at my back, screamed “RUN!” into my ear, and the walls descended and crumbled all around.

But I pressed my back to the wall, my palms to the ceiling, and I let him pass me by. I counted the men who barreled through, and held thehill atop us, refusing to let it cave in.Just a few more men, I told myself.Nine. Ten. Eleven men. Stay standing, Nina.

But the mind can only hold so much, and I lost count of the bodies that collided with mine as they passed, lost sight as the grit poured into my eyes, and inch by inch, my mind slackened. There was simply too much.

So I let it go, and I bolted for that shrinking light ahead. I felt rock slamming into my back, my calves, piercing my skin, and I let it all crumble in my wake. I forced my muddied eyes to stay open and begged my legs to carry me out into the air.

CHAPTER 46NINA