All goes dark.

A rippling shape, black as tar, flutters over his head–

Blocking out the light. Whispering as it passes.

What the hell–?

Mookie roars. Stands up, unsure what he just saw. Whatever the hell it is, it’s moving further down the tunnel, toward the distant Sandhogs – and fast. But as he stands, he sees: the two goblins he tossed into the wall aren’t dead or even knocked out. They’re up and at ’em, coming right for him. One’s barehanded, swiping at the air with dirty claws.

But the other’s got a weapon.

A gobbo pop-gun. Not a gun at all, but a short length of iron pipe with a pull tab at the back of it like one of those party-poppers where you yank the string and loose confetti into the air–

This doesn’t release confetti. It barks a big bang and makes a hard flash – and Mookie suddenly catches a scattershot spray of shrapnel in his side. No idea what it is, but probably nails, glass, stones, gobbo teeth, shattered crystal. And when it starts to burn, sending screaming tentacles of pain up through the wounds in his side, Mookie knows that the stuff was first dipped in goblin poison – rock-snot, or dung-thistle, maybe.

Ahead, the tunnel is swallowed by a haze of smoke–

Mookie staggers left, tries to barrel ahead, but the pain is an immense thing, a thing with shape and presence all its own, pushing on his side and slowing him down–

The gobbos leap for him.

And somewhere ahead, he hears his old friend Davey Morgan scream.

Davey Morgan’s got explosives on his mind.

Dynamite, in particular.

Dynamite’s how the tunnel grows. Sure, for a lot of it they can use that big bitch machine, but for sensitive areas of the rock, it’s dynamite all the way.

You drill holes. Drop dynamite into the cavities. Head back upstairs, hit the button and – the ground shakes, the earth booms, and the tunnel’s dug another thirty, forty feet. Then the men clear the rubble, put up more wire cage to keep rocks from dropping on their heads, and the process begins anew.

That’s the job. That’s been the job for twenty years.

Davey’s good. They say he’s the best, but he doesn’t care for that kind of talk. He knows he’s good, and that’s enough.

But things are changing soon.

In less than a week’s time he and his men – loyal men, good men, capable men – will be underneath the juncture between all three water tunnels. Dynamite’s not a scalpel. It’s not even a fire axe. It’s precise like a hand grenade. You don’t control an explosion so much as politely suggest what you want it to do and then pray. Maybe God gives you what you need. Or maybe God decides to blow your ass sky-high to Saint Pete’s doorstep. You accept the judgment of the blast and move on.

A man a mile.

But soon, they’ll be detonating rock with two other water tunnels fifty feet and a hundred feet above their heads, respectively.