Sink: Old Man's Tale by Perrin Briar

felt had given way to a nagging pinching sensation in his stomach. He ignored it, but the farther into the tunnel he went, the sharper the sting in his belly.
    “I hope to live on the surface one day,” Digger 138 said. “But for all my dreams, I have little idea what the surface even looks like. Can you describe it to me?”
    “That’s a hard thing to do,” Graham said. “I’m not a poet, so words fail me.”
    “Is it like magic?” Digger 138 said. “I imagine it’s like magic. To see a big ball of light in the sky every day without having to turn it on.”
    “You mean the sun?” Graham said. “You never really think about it. It’s always there.”
    “What about the stars?” Digger 138 said. “My father used to say the sky at night is bright because of all the candles in the sky, like the town during a celebration.”
    “It’s not quite like that,” Graham said. “The stars are far away and the light they emit is tiny.”
    “Oh,” Digger 138 said, disappointed.
    “But the moon is bright,” Graham said.
    “The moon?” Digger 138 said.
    “It’s a big ball in the sky, a silver-white color,” Graham said. “Sometimes it’s red.”
    “Wow,” Digger 138 said. “I’d love to see that one day.”
    “I’m sure you will,” Graham said. “Can we take a break for a minute? I need a rest.”
    It was a lie, of course. He could have kept going for days if he knew he was going to be able to get out of there. But he needed to organize his thoughts. They were beginning to bother him. They took a seat on a pair of large rounded stones. Digger 138 took some food out of his bag and offered it to Graham, who waved it away.
    “I’ll miss here too, of course,” Digger 138 said. “The silence, mostly. The calm.”
    “Why does it have to be one or the other?” Graham said. “You could travel between the two. The surface and underground.”
    “I suppose,” Digger 138 said. “But that would mean living near an entrance to a tunnel. And what happens if I get trapped underground again? It’s not worth the risk.”
    “Why are you helping me?” Graham said. “You didn’t have to. You don’t know the people on the surface. You could just leave us all to it.”
    “Because we are all of us brothers and sisters,” Digger 138 said. “If we don’t look out for each other, who will?”
    Graham nodded. He leaned forward and let out a sigh. Now he knew what the twisting pain in his stomach was. It was guilt. The sense he was letting Jeremiah down. Why he should think like that, when the old fart didn’t have a kind bone in his body, he wasn’t sure.
    For all he’d done in the past he’d never really thrown someone under the bus before, not intentionally and with his own hand. It’d always been indirect, or in a way so he could lie to himself about his innocence, that the situation had been unavoidable, like missing a deadline or ‘forgetting’ to make the necessary phone call. But now he was intentionally leaving an old man to his doom. It was on another level, and it was one he wasn’t altogether comfortable with.
    “Right,” Graham said. “And I wish you weren’t.”
    He got up and began walking back down the tunnel.
    “Where are you going?” Digger 138 said. “The exit’s this way.”
    “Yes, but my friend is this way,” Graham said.
    The twisting sensation remained in his stomach all the way back to town, only now it was of concern. For himself and what he was letting himself in for.

Chapter Twenty-Five
     
     
    A pair of guards stood outside the bathroom.
    “Do you think he’s all right in there?” Guard 668 said. “He’s been in there an awfully long time.”
    “Maybe Surfacers do it differently to us,” Guard 896 said.
    “How differently could they do it?” Guard 668 said.
    “I don’t know, do I?” Guard 896 said. “I do it the regular way.”
    They were silent a moment.
    “I sometimes stand on one leg when I go,” Guard 668 said.
    “What for?” Guard 896