Shaft Nine

The mess hall of Shaft Nine tasted of powdered nickel and freezing recycled vapor. Two hundred and twelve miners jammed the iron benches beneath rattling overhead conduits, every exhale hanging in dense, white plumes under the yellow emergency strip lights. The digital life-support board above the kitchen hatch hummed and blinked down by another minute, its dull red digits confirming what the terminal sirens had already screamed across the lower sumps: the company had cut auxiliary scrubbing to enforce production quotas, leaving the shaft with barely two days of breathable atmosphere before carbon dioxide poisoning sets in. Granger stood atop an overturned drilling-bit crate, his stocky frame shivering inside grease-blackened canvas overalls. He raised his right hand—the ring finger sheared off clean at the knuckle decades ago—and pounded a scarred fist into his palm. "They want our lungs to do the work of their damn scrubbers!" he roared, the weathered lines around his grey beard twitching with rage. Sitting against the bulkhead just beneath him was Maeve, her hollow cheeks wrapped tight in a faded linen scarf, shivering inside an oversized wool sweater as she smothered a sharp,…