The Zero Game

MY STOMACH LEAPS into my chest as the cage plummets. For the first few feet, it’s no different from an elevator ride, but as we pick up speed and plunge down the shaft, my stomach sails up toward my esophagus. Jerking back and forth, the cage bangs wildly against the walls of the shaft, almost knocking us off our feet. It’s like trying to stand on a rocking rowboat as it bottoms out under you.

“Harris, tell her to slow down before-!”

The floor of the cage heaves violently to the left, and Viv loses her chance to finish the thought.

“Lean against the wall – it makes it easier!” I call out.

“What?!” she shouts, though I can barely hear her. Between the pounding of the cage, the speed of our descent, and the rumble of the waterfall, everything’s drowned in a never-ending, screeching roar.

“Lean against the wall!” I yell.

Taking my own advice, I lean back and fight to keep my balance as the rowboat rattles beneath me. It’s the first time I take a glance outside the cage. The safety gate may be closed, but through the grating, the subterranean world rushes by: a blur of brown dirt… then a flash of an underground tunnel… another blur of dirt… another tunnel. Every eight seconds, a different level whizzes by. The openings to the tunnels whip by so fast, I can barely get a look – and the more I try, the more it blurs, and the dizzier I get. Cave opening after cave opening after cave opening… We’ve gotta be going forty miles an hour.

“You feel that?” Viv calls out, pointing to her ears.

My ears pop, and I nod. I swallow hard, and they pop again, tighter than before.

It’s been over three minutes since we left, and we’re still headed down what’s easily becoming the longest elevator ride of my life. On my right, the entrances to the tunnels continue to whip by at their regular blurred pace… and then, to my surprise, they start to slow down.

“We there?” Viv asks, looking my way so her mine light shines in my face.

“I think so,” I say as I turn toward her and accidentally blind her right back. It takes a few seconds for us to realize that as long as our lights are on, the only way we can talk is by turning our heads so we’re not eye to eye. For some people in the Capitol, that comes naturally. For me, it’s like fighting blind. Every emotion starts in our eyes. And right now, Viv won’t face me.

“How we doing on air?” I ask as she looks down at her oxygen detector.

“Twenty-one percent is normal – we’re at 20.4,” she says, flipping to the instructions on the back. Her voice wobbles, but she’s doing her best to mask her fear. I check to see if her hands are shaking. She turns slightly so I can’t see them. “Says here you need sixteen percent to breathe normally… nine percent before you go unconscious… and at six percent, you wave bye-bye.”

“But we’re at 20.4?” I say, trying to reassure her.

“We were 20.9 up top,” she shoots back.

The cage bucks to a final halt. “Stop cage?” the woman asks through the intercom.

“Stop cage,” I say, pressing the red button and wiping the slime against my tool belt.

As I take my first peek through the metal safety gate, I look up at the ceiling, and my mine light bounces off a bright orange stenciled sign dangling from two wires: 4850 Level.

“You gotta be kidding me,” Viv mumbles. “We’re only halfway there?”

I press the intercom button and lean toward the speaker. “Hello…?”

“What’s wrong?” the hoist operator barks back.

“We wanted to go to the eight thousa-”

“Cross the drift and you’ll see the Number Six Winze. The cage is waiting for you there.”

“What’s wrong with this one?”

“It’s fine if you wanna stop at 4850, but if you plan on going deeper, you gotta take the other.”

“I don’t remember this last time,” I say, bluffing to see if it’s changed.

“Son, unless you were here in the 1900s, there ain’t nothin’ that’s different. They got cables now that’ll hold a cage at ten thousand feet, but back then, the furthest they could go was five thousand at a time. Now, step outside, cross the drift, and tell me when you’re in.”