It was dark when I awoke. The side of my face that was pressed into the ground felt wet, though with the ferrous smell of a recent detonation heavy in the air it was hard to tell whether that wetness was water or blood. The relatively small exertion of pushing myself into a sitting position sent a shooting pain through my arm that almost caused me to black out again. My face burned as it moved through the air. Blood, then.

The darkness was absolute. There were no dim silhouettes to be picked out, just the constant kaleidoscopic flicker of randomly firing neurons behind my eyelids. I stood slowly, pawing the air over my head defensively in deference to the oppressive feeing of weight in the darkness above me. My legs held my weight without complaint, though I still patted them gingerly through what felt like jeans to be sure they were up to the task. There was a lump in each hip pocket. The right, a leather rectangle. Wallet maybe. The left, hard plastic. A phone? I fumbled the catch open and it spilled insipid blue light into the surrounding air. The floor was hard-packed dirt, the walls and ceiling rock, bolted and reinforced. From where I stood, three tunnels ran in a tee out of the circle of light. The phone beeped three times, feebly, then died, leaving me in the dark once more.