The heat is unbearable today. Thick muggy air with nowhere to circulate and black dust that hangs like acrid city smog, filling up his lungs and coating his skin in an oily film of sweat and coal. Some trickles down his forehead from the confines of his filthy yellow helmet and John swipes them away with the back of his hand before it can run down into his eyes.
He is crammed inside a low and narrow crawl space, chipping away at the brittle black seam in a bed of rock one mile below sea level, both small and strong, John is the ideal man for this back-breaking dangerous task. It feels like he's been wedged in here for an eternity. Four hours and no break, with a bone-dry throat and sore, cracked lips; he's desperate for a drink, almost delirious with dreams of a chilled pint of foamy amber ale at the pub after shift, but he's also quite desperate for a piss and won't be back on the surface for another couple of hours.
The lamp on the front of his helmet flickers and John feels a surge of irrational anxiety. Every one of them fears it, being trapped here in the dark, underground. It follows them daily, every time they step into the cage and the winding gear turns, sending them deep, deep down into the mine. His father died down here, and his granddad before him, caught between explosions when the men hit an unexpected pocket of gas. And the passage of time doesn't make things any safer, the job is just as dangerous now as it was a hundred years ago thanks to the traitors on the hill in that damn fucking castle, draining the life out of the rest of the County with their endless demand for electricity.
The headlamp flickers again and John can't understand why. They run on lithium batteries changed every week so exactly this sort of shit doesn't happen anymore. He places his pick down carefully at his side and reaches down to his tool belt for the short range walkie-talkie, to ask what the fuck is going on. Frozen, hand half-way there, he hears it, a low ominous rumble coming from deep underground even further down the tunnels.
Jesus fucking Christ.
John braces himself, rolling his body towards the rough black seam and drawing his knees up as far as he can. It won't be enough to protect him fully, but it's as much of a cover as he can hope for down here. Others aren't so lucky, he hears their frantic yells and heavy boots as they clatter down the iron tracks that split the tunnel in two. They are heading for the cage, but John knows they'll never get there in time, a twenty second window is all they can hope for and it takes a strength of will to stay put as the flood of panic washes over him.
Air, from god knows where rushes by the small space as the blast hits hard. Rocks tumble around him, bounce off his helmet and skitter away into the total darkness. The lamp cuts out completely and John can't see a thing, eyes open, eye shut, there's no bloody difference. He keeps them shut anyway, and his mouth too, as the rocks and debris keep falling around him and he wonders if this is it, if he will be buried here in a carbon grave, sealed in a tomb of black gold. But still John prays that the rest of the men will have the sense to hide and not run, this shit isn't over and the worst is yet to come. And then it does. The gates of hell are flung wide, high-pitched screams cut through the inky air and John knows that it's coming, coming for him, coming fast, and before he can give it conscious thought his mind sends out a bright pulse of empathy even though John knows it's too late to help; nothing can stop this. The roaring wall of heat and flame rushes past his hiding place and John feels the plastic of his helmet melting onto the top of his skull, a glutinous drop of liquid, the consistency of candlewax drips onto his cheek and sizzles on his flesh like oil on a griddle pan. The skin on his bare arms erupts into blisters and the soles of his feet burn with white- hot intensity through the bottom of the thick hobnail boots. He feels his eyelashes singe and curl like when you stand too close to an open oven door, and he turns his face against the wall and prays; his entire body burns and it feels like death, like the end of the world, like lying in the path of a fire-breathing dragon. He's a sinner, he's been judged and he's going to fucking hell.
But it passes in seconds, and John lies very still for what feels like an eternity but in reality is only a minute or so, until the rock-falls ebb away into a trickle of grit and dust and the final aftershocks rumble down the main tunnel. His head is a dull buzz of muted sound, deafened by the blast-wave, and a high-pitched ear-splitting whine cuts through it. Not dead then, he thinks and tries an experimental wriggle. Nuggets of coal fall away around his arms and legs as he struggles to free them.
Fucking hell it hurts. John groans as he pulls his right leg free and it screams with pain below the knee. White spots appear at the edge of his vision as a sharp chunk of rock falls away from his body and skitters away into the darkness. "Argh fuck", he grunts, flexing the limb. It's not broken, but the linen of his bright orange boiler suit sticks wetly to his skin and a warm trail of blood rolls slowly down his shin and drips onto the filthy ground.
He can't turn around and so he rolls out backwards instead, sliding down a bank of loose rubble unable to stop the downward momentum, until he comes to a halt, rolls over again gingerly and pushes himself to his knees. The lights are still out and he can't even see his hands where they scrabble for purchase on the shifting ground in front of him, so he stays as he is on all fours, wincing at the pressure on his damaged leg and crawls forward toward the desperate cries of the other men, their screams, muffled groans and waves of pain and panic. It takes every ounce of strength John has not to swoon.
Barely a metre in, his hand connects with a warm fleshy mass on the tunnel floor, and skirts up to ghost over the remains of what was once a low wagon, the one's that run the coal on rails for transportation to the surface. The conveyor belts are long gone, not enough juice to power them long-term and so they were forced back to the old-fashioned way, loading the wagons by hand to be pulled along the track by a team of tough little pit-ponies. John feels his way cautiously back down to the ground, his palms now sticky with blood.
He retches in the dust at his side.
The horse is dead, there is nothing he can do here.
"Mmngh" . John hears a muffled moan up ahead and turns, scrabbling in the dirt. Sharp shards of rock and debris cut into his palms and knees as he shuffles forward towards the sound and the flickering pulse of energy.
"J….John?" A weak voice calls out, turning quickly into rasping breaths and an ugly wet-sounding cough.
"Albert?" No answer. John urges his battered body on. They only spoke this morning, joking together as they stood in line for the cage to come back up, shivering in the pre-dawn light. Albert knew his Grandad when he started down here in the mine at the age of eighteen. John comes of age next year, if he makes it that far, but the odds of him surviving to see his next birthday are growing longer with each passing day.
"Bloody fish paste again" Albert groaned, shaking his lunch tin with a rueful sigh. "I told our lass, if I wanted to smell like a bloody rancid fanny all day, I'd sooner take a trip to the prossies down the Quay on Cowpen Road…what you got there lad?"
"Ham and pease-pudding", John admitted with a grin.
"Yer spoilt little bastard….I'll swap yer?"
"Fuck off Alb".
"Howay lad…I'll stand yer a pint later…."
The cage is at the surface and they both step in.
John finds him, trapped against the tunnel wall, his legs pinned down by a rock fall. John's gut roils again at the distinctive smell of burnt human flesh, every inch of him not covered by the rocks has been beaten by the flames. It's bad, beyond hope, and it doesn't take a Guide to know that as Albert's chest heaves with the effort it takes just to breathe, and all John can do is sit with him silently, taking his old hand in John's own filthy palm as he feels Alb's life slip away. John feels a knot of cold hard fury settle in his gut. What fucking use is he anyway? He can't heal them, fucking hell, he can't even help himself. Wave after desperate wave of empathy pours out of him but Albert dies anyway as John knows he will, forty-three years down the pit and this is how it ends and all because of those selfish bastards at Bamburgh. Because John knows this is their fault, the alarms should have sounded at the very first hint of a gas blast. Only one thing causes them to fail : power diversion to the castle.
The warning siren blasts out into the silence. Too fucking late.
John shuts his eyes and leans back against the hard tunnel wall, exhausted as if he hasn't slept for days and waits for someone else to do the saving this time. He never wanted this life, wishes he could cut it right out and bury it here in the depths of the mine forever. Being born a Guide is a curse and no-one will ever convince him otherwise.
He can hear them now, the sound of their voices piercing through him to fill up every part of him. "John!" "Where's John Watson?" "Where's the Guide?" "Help me John". "Help me John". "Save me".
He knows he can't help them.
He can't help anyone.
John presses his hands against his ears and screams.
"Ah fuck!" John hisses as the cotton swap drags over his raw, blistered skin.
"Sorry John, I know it hurts but I have to get the coal dust out first". Doctor Stamford tosses the dirty black swap into a bin at his side, reaches for another and soaks the clean cotton in an alcohol solution. Christ it stings, John winces, but he grits his teeth and grips the edges of the table where he sits. This all seems fucking pointless to him, surely a shower would have made more sense before they started this torture.
Harry stands in the corridor outside, waiting, John can see her blurred outline in the frosted glass panel of the door. A weak shaft of sunlight falls across his chest; it isn't even mid-morning yet.
"John…" Doctor Stamford begins, and John can feel his hackles rise in response because he knows what's coming, the same speech every time, but what makes it worse is that the Doctor is right this time and John knows it.
"No" John says stubbornly and crosses his arms with an air of finality. But Graham Stamford is used to this tactic, John's excuses and defensiveness, and so he takes a deep breath and continues.
"I could train you John, in the clinic here with Mike…you're a bright lad, six months and you'll be right up to speed…and it wouldn't cost your mother a penny…if that's what you're worried about". He looks up at John hopefully.
"No", John says again, more firmly, "What the fuck is the point…Guides can't be doctors…I wouldn't get past the medical let alone the induction".
"That's not what I'm suggesting", Doctor Stamford stutters awkwardly.
"You think I don't know that?", John huffs, incredulous. "Nurse…you mean nurse. I know right? How dare my weak addled Guide brain expect anything more!" He's shouting now. Doesn't care who hears him.
Doctor Stamford yells back. "And you call this more? Risking your life every day down that godforsaken pit while your mother worries herself into an early grave? She's already lost your dad John, it would kill her to lose you too".
John twitches guiltily, but he knows his father at least would take his side in this. John doesn't need a fucking Sentinel, doesn't want or need a bond and all the ridiculous out-dated shit that goes with it. John is his own man, Guide or not just like his father was and he'll be damned if he'll be subordinate to some arrogant Sentinel prick even if there were any left in the North. He knows he's better off than those poor captive bastards in the South, torn from their families and force-bonded by the Tower, every facet of their lives controlled. Doctor Stamford doesn't understand. That's why the family moved here all those years back for fuck's sake, to get away from all that elitist bullshit. But every brush with death down the mine makes even those reasons seem selfish and weak. Harry and his mother need him. And he can't be lucky every time, playing Russian roulette with his life down a coal-mine. Eighteen men and four ponies dead this time, twenty injured.
"Just give it some thought….for your mother's sake John".
John closes his eyes as Doctor Stamford folds a pad of gauze, presses it lightly against John's burnt cheek and fixes the edges down with medical tape. He already has a large pad on his shoulder where a shard of rock ripped through it in the blast and he didn't even notice. Dr Stamford starts in on his injured leg, swabbing the damaged flesh with a dressing soaked in iodine. He picks up the sterile needle and threads it in preparation to begin the row of sutures, flips down the magnifying light and settles on a stool by the bed. A pulse of pain rips through John's body at the first touch and his stomach lurches madly like he missed a step going down. He feels a rush of blind panic and his hands fly to his face, he can't breathe. Why can't he breathe? Shit, fuck, he claws at his throat and gasps helplessly. White spots appear across his field of vision and he feels it, the very second it happens, when the Shield around his mind is breached. They can't do this. He won't let them do this. John struggles desperately against invisible bonds, his chest feels crushed and his lungs are about to burst, a sharp chemical sting fills his senses…
"John? John! …Jesus Christ John what's wrong?" Graham Stamford's panicked voice grows fainter like he's falling into water, pressure builds in his ears and he now he can't hear at all…
"Someone get the crash-cart, he's having some sort of seizure…" Someone screams.
The world goes black…