Alex lay on the floor panting, his mind a chaotic jumble trying to see where he was. He thought he’d experienced darkness before, the kind containing indistinct shapes. Yet, this darkness is so absolute it robs you of your best sense and replaces it with a primal fear. The cold air causes his eyes to instinctively blink, lubricating organs, which are now useless. There’s silence and that should bring his heart rate down, below the level of absolute terror of not knowing what else is in the dark, but it doesn’t.

With heartbeat thundering, stomach-churning and palms sweating the panic builds. Reaching for the knife, he winces in pain and then discovers there’s only an empty sheath. There’s a fuzzy recollection of pushing prana into the knife and using it to cut through a metal cover. Then everything becomes confusing as memory blurs and all he recalls is falling.

His fear of getting trapped and suffocating intensifies and he can’t think. He sets himself the goal of controlling his breathing as a first step to facing his fear. Placing a hand on his stomach, he breathes slowly and deeply. The air is still, dank and cold and there is no smell of mold or decomposition. As his heartbeat slows down there does not appear to be any problems in breathing. Nor is there any dizziness or headache, so there is plenty of oxygen. Now all he needs to do is determine his location and so he moves and cringes as the back of his head throbs.

“Great, I can’t see anything,” Alex mumbles in English.

The sound echoes back and recognizing that because you can’t see a thing, doesn’t mean you can’t see. With no light, sight is broken, but there’s nothing wrong with the other senses. What you cannot do is see nothing because the brain is active and firing building a picture in your head. Seeing is a brain activity, it’s not a virtue of the eyes at all.

Slowly feeling around on the ground shards and small stones are found. Brushing a large piece of rock causes a wince as pain flares in the injured hand. The echoes resulting from shifting around give the impression that the room is tall and long and not that wide. Taking a stone and lobbing it to the side causes an instant sound as it bounces off a wall. Lobbing a stone in another direction it flies further and results in a different echo. Repeating a few more times, sound fills in empty spaces, his mind collecting and retaining the information.

For the next few minutes, he gains an understanding of his surroundings, while making use of new skills. Comprehending that black is still something. Whereas most people believe black is the absence of light, he now knows black is not the absence of everything. Perhaps this is why when in total darkness, we fear, we can’t see anything, and yet we can feel that something is there.

To overcome fear is to comprehend it doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind. Breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, trying to remain calm. As clarity returns, so does the awareness that there is prana in the air. A few seconds elapse as some of the prana is sucked into his lungs, then into his channels before entering his core. He begins to draw in the floating prana and fill his core as it cycles around his body. He deepens his breathing to ensure he can remain calm and control the prana to do what he wants it to. When he feels the prana flowing he pushes part of it towards his collar and makes a call.

“Master, can you hear me?” The only response is silence. “Master, I’m not sure where I am can you please respond?” He tries several more times without success the echo of his voice taunting him.

Feeling his anxiety build again, he sits up and the pool of prana surrounding him flutters as if in agitation. He concentrates on clearing his mind pushing the feelings of being anxious and just straight-up scared down. It’s important to take that next deep breath and find clarity. Once he’s capable of getting his anxiety down to the level of unease he manages to get a handle on the worry and fear.

He observes the prana float and takes slow deep breaths pulling the neutral prana into his core. As he becomes calmer he observes the prana hit obstacles and change direction. It appears to follow the same principle as sound-wave reflection. He begins to be curious about where the prana is coming from. Focusing on an area a few meters away, he tries to sense the prana and detects some floating. However, it’s not as abundant, so he focuses yet another meter further away. Each increment results in less prana being detected until after seven meters none is found.

Reaching up, he traces the surface of the helmet and finds a large dent on the back. Removing the helmet he holds it with the dent facing him and waits. After a few seconds, he perceives prana exiting through a seam at the center of the indentation. He touches the back of his head and finds a tender spot right where the dent was. He absorbs the prana until there is no more leaking out and he puts the helmet back on.

“Better safe than sorry,” Alex mutters.

He shuffles forward, holding out his hand like a child foolishly expecting to find a monster. He jumps; not expecting his hand to scrape the pile of debris after moving less than a meter, his fear explodes in his chest. Sucking in a deep breath, he waits a few seconds until his heartbeat slows down. Shuffling forward again, he searches the rocks near him and discovers his pack, which is partially buried and covered in rock dust. Deciding to leave it where it is, he fingertip searches the ever-increasing piles of rocks.

As he progresses up the pile it shifts and several small rocks tumble to the floor. He freezes, holding his breath, then sits back exhaling and waits for a few minutes. There’s nothing, except echoes and stagnation. There is no light, no movement of air, no warmth. He warily moves backwards until he reaches the limit of the rope tied to the pack. Pulling on the rope he hears the scraping of the pack as it drags towards him. The pack gets caught several times and he cautiously pulls it free, without jerking the rope, in case it causes something to shift and fall. After a few tense minutes, he was able to grab the pack and he fumbles to open a side pocket. Pulling out a canteen he sips the water before pouring a small amount on his injured hand. Then replacing the canteen he slips the pack over his shoulders.

Making careful progress with the use of stones and the resulting echoes he moves towards what he believes is an open space. The scrapping of rough stones and pieces of rock under his boots causes echoes that appear louder with him being blind.

As the minutes pass every muscle in his body is tense, fit to spasm, with an impulse to call out to see if anyone’s there. Instead, he listens as the sound of his progress echoes back to him as he travels forward hand against the wall feeling as he goes. After five meters there are no longer any rocks or pebbles on the floor and the only sound is his footsteps. After another five meters, he reaches a corner and sidestepping across he discovers another. Recognizing that he stands at the end of the corridor, he clicks his tongue. The echoes that return make him confident he is facing a large room.

Moving a little way around the corner, he removes the pack and placing it on the floor, as an anchor, begins to crawl slowly forward. After a couple of meters, his fingers touch something cold and hard so he begins to feel around the object. It’s a flat disc about half a meter wide and half a meter off the ground supported by a single plinth that’s secured to the floor. Leaning forward, he discovers another two, one meter to each side of the first. Lifting his hand higher he encounters a ledge in front of the discs.

Retreating the way he came, he begins to go around the outside of the room. Every few meters he repeats his crawl towards the center of the room and encounters the same discs. He completes the circuit of the room and determines it’s a square room with sides of roughly thirty meters. The only other exit is on the opposite side, which he now moves towards.

He advances down the second corridor, using his left hand against the wall as a guide, after ten meters he discovers his first door. It’s recessed into the wall with a small rectangular panel next to it. He carefully runs his fingers around the edge of the door, standing on tiptoe to reach the top, but it’s securely closed. The small panel is inert when he touches it getting no response. In the hope that there would be a door opposite he moves the short distance across the corridor, but doesn’t find anything.

Crossing back to the door, he carries on down the corridor and after twenty meters encounters a second door, the same as the first and also locked. Another ten meters later the corridor leads to a cross junction. Turning around Alex goes back down the corridor on the opposite side; however, there were no more doors. Returning to the cross junction he stands and listens to the silence before turning right into a much wider corridor. Progressing about ten meters he starts to again find small rocks and stone littering the floor. Moving forward, he determines that the rocks are becoming larger. Only a handful of steps later he finds the corridor is blocked.

He returns to the cross junction and continues moving straight on. The lack of light that bothered him so much at first now becomes ordinary as he feels his way forward. His pace is increasing as he became more confident with moving around in the darkness. Thirty meters later he encounters a recessed door on his left that’s sealed and with an unresponsive panel.

“This must have been a bad neighborhood, everything’s locked,” Alex mutters.

After fifty steps, there’s another door, but this one seems larger, like a double door. Running his fingers around the edge he can only check three sides and he’s unable to reach the top of this door but discerns that there are no gaps. He discovers the panel and touching it detects a slight prickle running over his fingertips as if it’s ice cold. He places his palm on the panel pushes down on the glass as hard as he can and the prickle becomes stronger, but there’s no give and nothing happens.

He searches the whole surface of the panel and it’s smooth, with no holes or imperfections, but the prickle remains. He feels along the boundaries of the panel to detect any gaps, but there’s nothing. Laying his hand flat on the panel again, he tries to cycle prana into it and then senses a type of resonance in the glass. He pushes more prana into the panel and the resonance amplifies for a brief second. He gets a small shock and he jerks his hand back. He watches as a faintly glowing red script under the glass flashes and then his prana leaks out.

“Well Monty, if I had the time I’d love to see what’s behind door number one,” Alex mutters before resuming feeling his way down the corridor.

He moves a hundred meters before he discovers the material of the walls change. Alex reaches out and investigates the wall; it’s as smooth as glass, and colder than the air which is chilling his lips. He then moves warily forward ten more meters and encounters another door that seals the corridor. This door has large fifteen centimeters thick rods forming a massive X across its front. The end of each rod disappears into the glass-like lining of the corridor and in the center of the door is a cylinder. It seems to be identical to the door in the room with all of the machines. However, searching around him, couldn’t find any trace of a panel, just smooth cold walls.

The feeling of anxiety begins to build, despite the cold he starts to sweat and his hands tremble as he moves back along the opposite wall. He feels faint as the fear of being trapped underground builds and makes him feel like screaming. He braces against the wall and takes a deep shuddering breath.

“Well, better get my act together as no one’s going to save me but me.”

Trudging back along the wide corridor, he finds nothing as he returns to the cross junction. He turns down the last corridor he’s yet to investigate and warily tosses a stone listening to the echo then moves forward. After fifty meters he comes to the end of the corridor and there’s another large door and he begins to feel around the edge. It’s the same as the last doors, except this one is partially open.

Running his hands down the edges of the door, he determines the gap is about half a meter wide. He throws a stone into what lies beyond and hears it hit something metal and ricochet. He deduces from the sound that it’s another room not as big as the one containing the discs. He removes the pack and squeezes through the gap into the room. Standing still he lobs stones in an arc in front of him. Ahead and to his right, he hears the sound of metal being impacted, on the left, there is the sound of bare rock.

Duplicating the routine of using the pack as an anchor he crawls forward and checks. The ground has a fine covering of rock dust with a few smaller stones. On his first foray, he finds the metal object his stone hit and it seems to be a large box at least two meters long and a meter high. He repeats the process of moving his pack a few meters before foraying forward. After ten minutes of conducting the laborious process, he has a picture in his mind. The room is roughly fifteen meters long by ten wide. There is a metal table at one end two meters away from the wall. In the middle, there’s some sort of rectangular metal box. The bottom half of the room is empty except for a large door in the middle of the wall, which is locked and the panel unresponsive.

“I’m getting to kind of like it here. It's got a certain fatalistic charm, a certain je ne sais doomed.”

He sits next to the locked door and removes the canteen from the pack taking a small sip. Sloshing the two-liter canteen it feels about two thirds full; if careful, it’ll last two days if can’t find more dead in four. Can’t find any exits when the corridors are blocked and all the doors are locked. Only one door shows any sign of life and getting past that will be almost impossible.

He puts the top back on the canteen and places it back into the pack when his collar begins to vibrate. He cycles his prana and pushes some to the collar.

“Slave…..ear me? We…..tecting……nty meters away.” Hisses from the collar.

Alex sits there for a few seconds before responding. “Master, can you please repeat?”

“Move…. ere…..ten mi…..” He gets up and moves back toward the open door. “NO…..O.” Crackles the voice loudly.

“Sorry, Master. I can’t hear you.” He responds, walking back to the other door.

“Move……r way.” Alex walks to the wall opposite the open door.

“…at’s better. You’re… teen meters ….ay. Set sh.…charges…..nd find cover…..east two hun…..ters away.” the collar hisses.

“Master, can you please repeat? My helmet is damaged.”

“…..trapped. Confirm when ch….. s in place.”

“Yes, Master.”

“I need to get out of here and right now I’m spoiled for choice on how to do that.”

Remembering what he had been told about the use of explosives. He would use shaped charges first to blow holes and then pack those with explosives for a second detonation. This should blow a hole that they can use to get him out. On the other hand, explosions cause blast waves and a rapid rise in air pressure and spray debris everywhere. In an open space these usually last milliseconds. In an enclosed area the reflection of blast waves from walls and other surfaces creates complex waves of longer duration. The risk of injury was at least five times higher unless he was two hundred meters away behind cover. The furthest he estimated he could get was about a hundred and fifty meters and most of that was a straight corridor and there was no cover.