Inside were already five crates, one stack. It was waiting, but not for them. It was locked. Coal 106 advanced on the crowd of workers who had already arrived, not so hampered by Venus fly traps as she, all pounding on the doors as if this would shatter them. They swore at it as if this would loosen its doors, the open sesame of another world. But Coal, who felt mortally wounded just now, her hands and feet both stinging, her chest pinging with every inhale, didn’t have the strength to waste on emotional displays. She stood and stared. She let the dead end wash over her in all its details, its unfurling ripples of other dead ends to come. The supervisors would come for the survivors, she knew. What would happen to them, then, she did not know. Were they even worth anything alive as disobedient slaves? Coal stood and let the hopelessness fill her up. The sky above, hovering so dark and near to them. The mists creeping. The glass elevator, taunting them with its seeming openness.
