Uh-oh, looks like someone has to go through a scary door.

Word Count: 5,613

Did I dare ask anyone else about this event? I was so frightened by his disappearance that I didn’t even bother to ask anyone else where he might have gone. I passed up the opportunity to find out if my coworkers had seen him; several times, the words almost escaped my lips. I tried to force them out, but my silence prevailed. I kept thinking that the drone may have had something to do with it – that if I spoke, acknowledged his disappearance in any manner, that I would be taken away to some dark place and destroyed.

Relax, I told myself. That’s all you need to do. Assess the situation and see what can be made of it.

I took Derek’s power tools in hand and began chiseling at our section of the Slate. The wind from the cracks was blowing at me, and I did as Derek had told me earlier – ignored it. Chunks of rock landed next to me, heavy metal that dented the ground. After those chunks were cleared away and shipped to purification, I chiseled away the ground as well.

Was this the work I had been doing all this time? Was it this horrible? Perhaps all I’d needed on the surface was a good friend, someone to make life interesting. For eight years, Derek had been that friend. With him gone, I felt as though I was back on the surface.

Over the course of the day, I took every encounter with the greatest caution. I made sure not to mention Derek in any way, and I noticed something peculiar – in a way, others seemed to be doing the same thing. None of us mentioned Derek, because none of us knew what was going on. It was my habit to ignore what I didn’t understand; Derek would tell me I ran away from the surface because I didn’t understand how to live there. I wondered why Derek might have run away from the mines – what it was about life here that, perhaps, he didn’t understand. And since I couldn’t understand what had happened to him, I subconsciously began to pretend that he did not exist.

But I knew he existed; I fought my urge to forget about him and move on. No matter how I observed the situation, his disappearance was the strangest event ever to occur within the mines. After the next night had passed and he still didn’t return, I decided it would be best to seriously investigate the issue.

I worked up the courage to approach one of the higher-ups as they patrolled the caverns with the droids. It was an awkward conversation; I wasn’t sure where to begin, and I didn’t know where to take it. Did I request for him back? Did I request a search party? If I got told to blow it out my ass, would I accept it and walk away?

The woman I spoke with looked new around here. Cockeyed, she tilted her head. She clearly knew something, but I knew she wouldn’t tell me if she did. The look on her face was one of a frightened, newbie soldier, clearly not attuned to the battlefield. “Derek Marland? I’ve never heard of him.”

And there we had it. She was dead-set on protecting her job, and nothing else.

“He was my squad member. I’ve been rooming with him for the last eight years.”

“Was he the only other member of your squad?”I felt like I was talking to tech support.

“Yes. And he disappeared sometime during the night, two nights ago. He hasn’t been seen since.”

“I’ll certainly look into your situation, Mr. Torsten. We can’t have missing persons down here. Keep an eye out for me and let me know if you see him. I’ll speak to my manager and get back to you as soon as I can about the issue.” She untitled her head, turned the other direction, and swiftly walked away. I wanted to tell her that this was my friend, not some computer virus.

I’d never seen her before, and staff in higher positions never came from the surface. Before she was completely gone I managed to shout, “Hey! What’s your name?”

She turned back around and tilted her head again. “Maiya.”

That’s all she said. No last name – just her first name, then turned back around and walked out of sight. I noticed then that I had been tiling my head in confusion. I went back to chiseling rock, but couldn’t forget about Maiya. I hoped that she would return soon enough with an answer to my question, but I didn’t have high hopes that anything would come of it. I contemplated asking someone else; someone that I knew and could trust, but nobody like that ever passed by. All of the patrollers were new, like Maiya. I had never seen a single one of them before, and none of them knew who Derek Marland was. It was as though he’d been wiped off the face of Cydia. Wasn’t there a single person in the mines who had been there long enough to remember this man from three days ago? But not all was lost – friends from other enclaves still lived in their same locations. I thought I could finally open up and talk to them, especially after noticing that the patrollers were all new. And yet, my mouth was still closed shut.

I could say anything to any of them. I didn’t want what happened to Derek to happen to them, if something had happened. And if Derek left, I didn’t want anyone else getting bright ideas.

But, oddly enough, my perceptions of Maiya turned out to be very wrong. Later that night, she managed to find my enclave where I was lounging, alone, to inform me that she’d looked into Derek’s case. She asked me to come with her. Hesitant, I looked at her face for any signs that she shouldn’t be trusted. After I felt comfortable, I picked myself up and walked with her to wherever she wished to take me.

“Are you… are you new here?” I asked, hoping to not sound intrusive.

“No; I’ve been living here my entire life. My family and I grew up underneath District 589. Most of the Slate mined from underneath 589 was made into fountains and water pipes.”

“Then why have I never seen you before? I was sure I knew all of the patrollers around the area, but today everybody was a stranger. Care to explain?”

“I wouldn’t be able to. I’ve always been patrolling this area.” She looked straight forward as she said it; I, too, turned away from her face. Although I was focused on the path ahead, my mind began to wander elsewhere. I couldn’t reconcile that I hadn’t noticed her for eight years, and I wasn’t sure whether or not to trust Maiya’s claim that she’d been around for so long.

We passed by the nearby market. At this hour, it was always completely empty. All of the shops had closed up, their doors locked tight, their lights turned off. After the market, the tunnels became increasingly dark, so I called up some light from my glasses. This made Maiya look in my direction, where she urged that I shut off the light.

“It’s not real,” I said, which puzzled her. “It’s digital. From my glasses.”

She nodded, and told me to turn it off again. That it was in my best interest while we were walking, even though the tunnels we now pitch black without the artificial light. I obliged and shut it off. Once I couldn’t see, Maiya grabbed my arm and led me through the darkness, her firm grip painfully wrapped around my arm. Whether I was safe or not, I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t see, so all I could do was think.

Where was I? About seventy steps away from the market. That meant to my left were some restrooms, and up ahead was another chunk of mining sites. To my right branched the path to another district, which forked into several paths from there, each containing a network of homes and enclaves for other miners. So, which way was she dragging me? And how could she see?

She pushed me to the right. That meant we were leaving the district – or on our way to doing so. Along this path, the Slate ground had been mashed up into a sand-like powder, making walking more difficult, but more comfortable. This was definitely the living area. But then it dropped off into a location I was unfamiliar with. I never remembered this path going down before – especially down a flight of stairs. I motioned to turn on a light again, but Maiya reached out and stopped my other arm from making the gesture.

“No light.”

I turned to look at her; there was nothing but darkness. Once we were all the way down the stairs, she turned and flipped a switch, which activated several artificial lights around a very rectangular room. I lifted my glasses off my face; the light disappeared and the room became dark once again. I put my glasses back on. I figured this was some entrance to a corporate office, my employers most likely. It sure was located in an odd place.

The room was etched along the walls with designs I couldn’t make any sense of, and was much more polished than anywhere else in the mines. Perhaps it was because it reminded me so much of the fit and finish seen in the architecture on the surface that I started stepping backwards instead of following Maiya forwards; but when she motioned for me to approach the other end of the room, I couldn’t do anything but follow her to that bleak location.

There was a single door at the other end of the room, locked with card key access. Maiya summoned a key with her glasses by reaching into the air and pulling it down. She slid the card key into its slot and unlocked the door, then told me to go inside. That if I went in there, I’d find out something about Derek. Well, that I’d find out something, anyway.

I listened to her and stepped into the room beyond.