There was no one here. The soles of his feet were burning, the sweat had almost dried off his body, his difficulty breathing pushed him to the edge of shock, but his mind was clear. With his last ounce of strength he walked toward his destination. The mouth of the shaft, glowing red from the fire within, beckoned to him. He had made it. He smiled.

He turned in the direction of the production building. The roof might be smoking but it was not on fire, at least. He walked through the open door and entered the long changing room. Light from the shaft fire shining through the window filled the room with a hazy red glow and caused everything to shimmer, including the line of lockers. He walked along the long row, inspecting the numbers until he found the one he wanted.

He remembered it from his childhood: His father had just been appointed head of extraction, the wildest team, well-known for being hard to handle. Those rough young workers had been dismissive of his father at first, because of the way he had timidly asked for a detached locker door to be nailed back in place before their first prework meeting. The crew had mostly ignored him, apart from a few insults, but his father had said only, “Then give me some nails and I’ll put it up myself.” Someone tossed him a few nails, and he said, “And a hammer too.” This time they really ignored him. But then they suddenly fell quiet, and watched in awe as his father pressed the nails into the wood with a bare thumb. At once the atmosphere changed, and the workers lined up and listened respectfully to his father’s prework talk….

The locker wasn’t locked, and upon opening it, Liu Xin found it still contained clothes. He smiled again, at the thought of the miners who had used his father’s locker over the past two decades. He took out the clothes and put them on, first the thick work trousers, then the equally thick jacket. The uniform smeared with layers of mud and coal dust had a sharp odor of sweat and oil that was surprisingly familiar, and a sense of peace came over him.

He put on the boots, picked up the helmet, took the lantern out of the locker, wiped the dust off of it with his sleeve, and clipped it to the helmet. There were no batteries, so he looked in the next locker, which had one. He strapped the bulky lantern battery to his waist, then realized that it was drained: work had been halted for a year, after all. But he remembered where the lamp shop was, directly opposite the changing room, where in his youth female workers would spray the batteries with smoking sulfuric acid to charge them. That was impossible now; the lamp shop was shrouded in yellow sulfuric acid smoke. He solemnly put on the lamp-equipped helmet and walked over to a dust-covered mirror. There, in the flickering red light, he saw his father.