The air in the shaft tasted of wet limestone and old sweat. Elias had forgotten what the sun looked like. For three years, he had lived in the "Hollow," a network of abandoned mines in the Nebraska flats that the government had forgotten and the law didn't care about. It was a sanctuary for the invisible—men and women who had slipped through the cracks of the American dream.

There were twelve of them in the main cavern. They didn't talk much. Talking wasted oxygen, and oxygen was the only currency that mattered. Elias spent his days digging. Not for gold, not for coal, but for a way out.

He had a map, drawn in charcoal on a piece of burlap, given to him by a man who had died of pneumonia in the first winter. The map showed a ventilation shaft three hundred yards to the north. If he could reach it, he could climb.

He dug with a rusted trowel and his bare fingernails, which had long since worn down to the quick. His world was a circle of dim light from a dying flashlight and the rhythmic *thump-thump* of his own heart.

One Tuesday—or what he imagined was a Tuesday—the ceiling groaned. It was a sound like a giant grinding its teeth. Elias froze. A single pebble fell, hitting his shoulder. Then, the world collapsed.

It wasn't a roar; it was a sigh. A wall of grey dust and shale slammed down, sealing the tunnel behind him and pinning his legs beneath a ton of rock. He didn't scream. He had no breath left for screaming.

He lay there in the absolute dark, the dust settling in his throat like powdered glass. He tried to move his legs, but there was nothing there—just a heavy, numb pressure. He reached into his pocket and found a small, dried piece of apple, the last of his rations. He put it in his mouth, but it tasted like dirt.

He waited. He waited for the others to find him, but the collapse had cut off the main cavern. He waited for the government to find them, but they didn't even know the Hollow existed.

As the hours turned into days, the thirst became a physical entity, a hot needle sewing his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He began to hallucinate. He saw his daughter, her yellow dress fluttering in a breeze he could no longer feel. She was calling him, her voice a thin thread of gold in the blackness.

Elias closed his eyes. He stopped digging. He stopped hoping. He simply became part of the strata, another layer of carbon in the indifferent earth, a small, forgotten knot of bone and regret.

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