The elevator creaked as Sophie and I stepped in. It could have been repaired just before we had gotten hired. Once the opening came into view, something else came into view. Oliver and Liam sat on the edge of an old mine cart near an open mine shaft. Hopefully, it isn't rusted, so we can is it for storage for interesting junk we find during our adventures in the few mine shafts available. It would also be nice if we don't destroy them during the 1st search. The sound of the elevator heading back up echoes throughout the opening. I look between the old and new maps of the mine, some details are missing due to the years of being abandoned. There is one detail that I keep going back to. One of the shafts supposedly connects to the village but we don't know which one connects there. Out of the corner of sight is the one thing that scares me. The first time I saw it, I swear I felt my stomach drop. A large portion of the map is missing, and I have a bad feeling it wasn't from the lack of people using it. It didn't seem like water could've helped over the years to dampen it, but tearing it seemed out of the picture.

"Hey, guys. I am honestly surprised you are here early." Sophie mentioned as we reached the mine cart.

"I wanted to try something new," Liam answered followed by a yawn. "So I decided to better start now than never."

"So you set an alarm for 6 am for the first time?" I asked jokingly.

"For a matter of fact, I did. I wanted to see if I could get here before the rest of you." He responded. "But it seems that Oliver somehow got here before me. I was confident that I would get first for once."

"Well I learned how to do things in a timely manner and I got used to waking up early," Oliver spoke up and answered Liam's rant.

" But knowing you, you usually get to work at 8 and not between 7 to 7:30 in the morning. You probably did set an alarm." Liam complained.

"Maybe but that is something you will never know," Oliver replied. Sarcastic arguments do happen within the group, though we don't do this often it is done when there is nothing else.

And like clockwork, Ace and Ezra stumble out of the elevator, probably inadvertently, passing out, falling face first. The gas mask at least stops the face from hitting the ground but doesn't do much else. Oliver was the first one there. The gas mask condition was what concerned me. It may be small damages but in a coal mine, who knows what may be dangerous for the body? The filters were one of the most important parts of the mask.

"There should be filter replacements at the table, okay?" Oliver told Liam, holding cloths over the broken parts of the filters. The sounds of things moving around echoed around the cavern.

"Where on the table?" Liam raised his voice in concern.

"They should be beside the gloves," He yelled back, getting Sophie to hold the cloths for Ace's filters.

"Found them," Liam announced after reorganizing the entire table.

"Now get over here," yelled Oliver, causing Liam to speedwalk. The filters were easy to replace. Both Liam and Oliver brought the unconscious two to the underground lake, the only place with an opening to the above. Much faster than taking the elevator.

For what felt like forever, one of them seemed to have better breathing and sat up. A collective sigh of relief was heard. The least he could do is to get his thoughts together before getting over here. Since they both passed out for some weird reason. Our eyes meet and I knew for sure he didn't get a good night's sleep. We all stared at him and Ace's unconscious body. We all watched Ezra walk slowly in our direction. To our luck, Ace just yawned and just rolled over to his side. It seemed like something he would do. He probably got very little sleep. I mean he could've also didn't a good night's sleep. To our surprise, Ace was promptly kicked by Liam, which to no one's surprise, woke him up. He did scream, which was something that often happen.

"What the heck was that for," questioned Ace.

"Why did the two of you pass out," retorted Liam, displeased.

"Have you ever heard of lack of sleep and exhaustion," countered Ezra, annoyed.

"Let's get to work," yelled Oliver, obviously wanting them to shut up.

First off let me tell you that a couple of the shafts collapsed, but have connecting tunnels which we discovered some time ago. It helps with redrawing the map, which we have barely redrawn. With only flashlights to light up the shaft, we made our way deeper into the shaft. Goosebumps appear at the slightest sound. I look over Sophie's shoulder to look at the map just to find out we didn't make much progress. I didn't feel that much scared as I did before until I noticed something to my left. Now, this is something that we should've found earlier. I wonder why we never noticed this before. Now all eyes were on me and I know it wasn't the group staring at me, but something was definitely staring back at me