Tales of the End of the Century

When the iron gate was pushed open a crack, Bai Ye heard breathing. Not human breathing. It was the breathing of the mine tunnel itself—the wind seeped in from some unseen crack, passed through the rusted pipes, and whimpered behind the iron gate, like someone pressing their lips to the crack, hesitating for a long time, unsure whether to speak.

Tie Niu took off his gloves and stuffed them into his back pocket. He braced his hands against the edge of the iron door and pushed it in forcefully. The hinges screeched sharply, and rust splinters fell down like a swarm of startled bookworms in the beam of his headlamp. Behind the door was a downward-sloping alleyway, narrower than the previous one. The walls were no longer made of stone blocks, but were carved directly from the rock mass, their surface uneven. The headlamp revealed the chisel marks—line after line, slanted downwards, as if someone had spent a long time, chiseling away at the mountain.

"Ventilation tunnel." Tie Niu took the axe from his waist and held it in his hand. "In the past, miners would go down into the main tunnel, and the exhaust fumes would be drawn up through the ventilation tunnel. This tunnel was widened later—the chisel marks are too fresh; they weren't left when the mine was being mined."

Bai Ye stood at the doorway, not immediately going in. He placed his hand on the iron door frame; the metal was icy cold, making his fingertips numb. Along the edge of the frame were a row of shallow scratches, not chiseled, but drawn with fingernails. Seven or eight, varying in length; the bottom one abruptly veered off course halfway through, veering towards the crack in the door, as if the carver's hand had trembled at that point, causing the stroke to slip. He looked down at the scratches; they weren't marks, but dates—how many days someone had carved on the iron door in the darkness with their fingernails.

Lan Susu stood behind him, the beam of her headlamp falling across his shoulder onto the markings. She took a pencil and a piece of paper from her canvas bag and traced the arrangement of the markings. "Seven. It could be a week, or it could be seven stages. Sergei recorded the progression of the fissure phases in a similar way on the back of the test subject list."

"It's not Sergei." Bai Ye withdrew his hand from the doorframe. "The direction of the marks is wrong. Sergei is left-handed; these marks were made from right to left. It's someone else."

Tie Niu had already tied the reflective rope to the door frame, the end of which was threaded through the hinge gap and knotted. "Whoever it is, he's been behind this door for a long time. The door closed from the inside—not because someone locked him out, but because he locked himself in."

Bai Ye was the last to cross the threshold. He glanced back at the long mine tunnel behind him—the reflective rope stretched from the door frame to the end of the tunnel, with a faint reflective spot every so often in the beam of his headlamp. The last section of rope hung from the iron gate hinges, swaying gently in the wind. He closed the iron gate slightly and followed Tie Niu and Lan Susu deeper into the tunnel.

The ventilation shaft narrowed as it descended, at one point requiring almost crawling. Water seeped from the cave walls, making them slippery and cold to the touch, leaving a fine layer of rock dust on the fingertips. The air was thick with a pungent odor of rust and wet lime, pressing against the nostrils, making each breath a struggle. The headlamp's beam illuminated only a few meters ahead; beyond that lay only dense darkness. Tie Niu led the way, his axe held horizontally in front of him, stopping every few steps to listen for any sounds of collapse before continuing.

Bai Ye followed behind him. He focused his attention back on his breathing, letting his senses probe forward. After entering the Resonance Realm, his range of perception was much wider than before, but in the underground mine tunnels, this widening became a burden—the cave walls bounced the signals back and forth, the sound of flowing water echoed through the rock strata, and some unknown animal rustled and crawled deeper inside. These sounds mingled with his senses, like a tangled ball of yarn. It took him a while to suppress the background noise layer by layer, letting the superfluous sounds recede, leaving a blank space at the very front. Then, that spark rose from that blank space.

It was a little brighter than in the cave. Not a scorching light, but the glow of a smoldering ember beneath the ashes, gently stirred by the wind, suddenly tinged with a dark red hue from the greyish-black. Unhurried, unpressured, it simply shone. He was already very close to it.

The alleyway suddenly turned sharply to the left, at the end of which stood a wooden door. It wasn't an iron door, but a wooden plank door, secured from the outside by a rusty iron bolt. A very faint light seeped from the crack in the door—not lamplight, not sunlight—a soft, steady, warm yellow, like someone had lit a candle inside, blown out by the wind, the wick still glowing with its last embers.

Tie Niu reached out and touched the bolt, sending rust flying to the ground. He tucked the axe back into his belt, gripped the bolt with both hands, and slowly pulled it out. The bolt was stuck tightly in the door knocker, making a screeching sound with every inch it was pulled, as if it hadn't been moved in a long time. Bai Ye stood behind him, placing his hand on the wooden door. The wood was cold and rough, but the sliver of light filtering through the crack was warm on his fingers.

The last piece of the bolt slipped from the door knocker, and the wooden door creaked open. Behind the door was a small cavern. A moldy quilt lay on the floor, and on top of it, a faded old work uniform. A badge from Project Aurora was pinned to the uniform's pocket, with a number engraved on the back. An enamel mug and a piece of chalk sat in the corner. A photograph—black and white, its edges curled—waxed to the wall. It showed a woman and a child, dressed in clothes fashionable more than twenty years ago, standing in front of a birch forest. A few beams of sunlight filtered through the birch branches, falling at their feet. He had taped the photograph to the wall; the tape was long since dried, and one corner of the photograph curled up, fluttering gently in the wind like a paper bird with folded wings.

Bai Ye stood in front of the photo for a long time. He knew he was too late.

In another corner of the cave, several well-worn old magazines and a book without a cover were piled up. Tucked between the pages was a flattened, dry leaf, thin and translucent at the edges, revealing it was originally white. He bent down and picked up the enamel mug; a layer of dried, dark brown tea stains remained on the bottom. He held the mug up to his headlamp and saw a line of writing on the inner wall of the bottom—written in chalk, repeatedly written over and over again, each time on top of the previous one, the writing overlapping into a blurry white mass.

He recognized the handwriting on the topmost page. There was only one character.

"OK."

He put the enamel mug back in its place, stood up, and walked to the cave entrance. Tie Niu shone his headlamp into the deeper darkness; the alleyway wasn't over yet—the reflective rope was still long enough, and there were two boxes of spare batteries. Bai Ye glanced back at the photograph on the cave wall; the woman and child were still smiling in front of the birch forest. He left the wooden door ajar, the iron bolt beside it, not locking it. Then he turned and followed Tie Niu deeper into the cave.