Blind Descent

The elevator began descending before D.M.D found the controls. Its cables disappeared into blackness above, and the shaft walls slid past like the inside of a buried throat. No lights worked below the first hundred levels. He navigated by sound alone: the scrape of ancient gears, the distant groan of flooded tunnels, the low pulse rising from somewhere beneath the city. Each echo revealed another layer of ruins swallowed by the earth-streets, towers, entire districts sealed behind stone. The deeper the capsule fell, the louder the pulse became, until it matched his heartbeat. Then the floor indicator went blank. The cables stopped. For one breath, there was silence. Then the elevator dropped freely into the unknown.