It rumbles inside the walls, earth and rock shifting as it burrows free, a steady drumming sound in its wake as metal groans underneath its weight. The last time he looked back into the darkness Philip saw its maw, already too close and coming closer, a tube of muscle and teeth, devouring anything in its path.

Now he looks back and sees nothing.

Instead a door in front of him slams into the wall, and he barely has time to jerk to a halt. To stumble back, turn, and run again, but the sound has him transfixed. Not the giant mutantion come to drag him into darkness, not the Tuurngait out to make him one of their own. None of the faces that have haunted him, nothing to fear, except another mutt.

Philip rubs his eyes. Raw and weary they may be, but no amount of blinking stops them from seeing anything than a dog, a large dog, an ordinary dog that shows neither the mine's breed nor its decay.

It makes no sense to him.

He tightens both hands around the pickaxe, and stands ready to end it.