opened, its whole wall hinges inwards, and Veronica begins to understand exactly where she will be imprisoned.
"No," she says weakly, staring at the cage door as if it is a fanged jaw that might devour her. Her heart begins to pound. Being buried alive has always been her greatest fear. "No, please. Put me somewhere else. Not down there. Please."
The men exchanged amused smiles as they pull Veronica inside. She groans weakly. The cage is just high enough to stand upright. Its floor is rusted sheet metal. A strong, hot updraft rises from the pit beneath.
The door clangs shut. One man lights the paraffin lamps that dangle from hooks on the ceiling. Veronica feels dizzy, her skin is damp with sweat, it takes all her will to keep the trembling seed of terror within her from flowering and conquering her mind and and body. Then the generator noise hits a new register and the cage lurches suddenly downwards. Veronica almost falls to her knees.
They continue to descend, a little more smoothly. The chains at the corners clank loudly as they rise. They fall into darkness, lit only by lamplight. The air grows steadily warmer. It feels like sinking into hell. Like being buried alive.
"No," Veronica moans. There is a roaring sound in her ears and her whole body fills with a electric tingling. She can't get enough air, there is a painful tightness in her chest as if her lungs have been squeezed shut. She closes her eyes, sags down the cage walls to a sitting position with her arms wrapped around her knees, and tries to forget where she is, to just focus on breathing, on not passing out.
An eternity seems to pass before the panic attack subsides. When it does Veronica feels completely exhausted, like she has just run a marathon, but at least she can think and breathe again - although she can still feel the panic lurking darkly in her mind, a crouching, howling beast ready to spring and savage her again.
Warm air blows up the mineshaft past them, wind from the center of the earth. Veronica opens her eyes. They fall past a dark opening in the sheer stone walls, an abandoned corridor like an open mouth. There is a faint glow from below. Veronica looks up. The mouth of the mineshaft has shrunk to a tiny dot, like a single pixel in a computer screen. The sight nearly triggers another attack.
One of her escorts pulls a cord that dangles from a corner of the roof. A cable runs up one of the chains that holds the cage, some kind of signalling mechanism. Their descent slows to a crawl as they approach an opening in the stone walls around them, lit by flickering lamplight. The man pulls the cord twice as the cage grows level with the opening. They come to a halt about two inches below the lip of the opening. Gaps around the edge of the sheet-metal floor reveal that the mineshaft continues below.
The corridor is about as big as the cage itself, eight feet wide and six high. Its walls and ceiling are sheer whitewashed stone. Narrow rail tracks begin at the edge of the mineshaft and continue down the corridor into darkness.
"He says we must not touch you," one of her escorts says, the first words that have been directed to her. He sounds darkly amused. "Very well. We follow orders. None of us will touch you."
The other pushes her in the back, ungently. "Go."
Veronica has no choice, she starts down the corridor. The two men follow. One carries a paraffin lamp. The stone ceiling grows lower, and Veronica has to stoop to keep her head clear. Pipes and cables run along the ceiling, rusted and in several places severed. She hears murmuring voice. They reach a little alcove where an old wooden desk stands beneath a dust-covered sign warning that SAFETY IS EVERYONE'S JOB. A half-dozen soldiers with rifles are here, seated on crude wooden stools, chatting quietly. After a brief conversation four of them stand to join the procession.
They continue into the mine, soldiers in front, then Veronica, then the two men in street clothes. The soldiers' boots echo hollowly on the stone floors. Other, smaller passages intersect this one, and connecting shafts ran diagonally upwards and downwards, covered by grids of old wood, presumably to stop rockfalls. They pass two small passages entirely blocked by rubble. In several places the ceiling is supported by wooden pillars with bases