Chapter 2

The ground shook under my feet. Dust and debris rained down from somewhere beyond the camp. I stumbled out of the tent, my heart hammering against my ribs.

"Secondary collapse!" someone shouted in heavily accented English. "Shaft Three is gone!"

I watched the rescue workers running toward the mine entrance, their faces grim. The helicopter that had just taken my husband and his precious Ivory was now a distant speck against the orange sunset. No chance of it coming back now.

A tall figure emerged from the chaos. Atlas Ironwood, the South African mine rescue expert. Even covered in dust, he looked intimidatingly competent. His dark eyes swept over me with what looked like irritation.

"You should have been on that helicopter," he said bluntly.

"Tell me something I don't know." My voice came out sharper than I intended.

He studied me for a moment, then shook his head. "Come on. We need to assess the damage."

I followed him toward what used to be our communication center. The satellite equipment lay in twisted metal pieces, crushed by falling rocks from the explosion. Our generator had died too – no power, no radio contact with Johannesburg.

"How bad is it?" I asked.

"Bad." He crouched next to the wreckage. "This was our only direct line to the outside world. The backup equipment was in Shaft Three."

The shaft that just collapsed. Of course.

A woman approached us from the cluster of remaining rescue workers. She was probably in her thirties, with dark skin and intelligent eyes. What caught my attention immediately was her left arm – or rather, the absence of it. Her sleeve was pinned up where her hand should have been.

"Atlas, how many are we down to?" she asked in crisp English.

"Seven locals, plus her." He jerked his chin toward me. "Everyone else was on the helicopter or..." He gestured toward the collapsed mine shaft.

"I'm Amara," the woman said, extending her remaining hand to me. "Amara Goldstone. Local human rights coordinator."

"Sera Ashford." I shook her hand, trying not to stare at her missing limb.

She noticed anyway. "Mining accident two years ago," she said matter-of-factly. "Lost my hand, gained perspective. Could've been worse – could've been my camera hand."

She was a photographer too. Somehow that made me feel less alone.

Atlas stood up, brushing dust off his knees. "We need to talk logistics. Water's running low, and our food supplies won't last more than three days. The UN peacekeepers pulled back to the main road after the shooting yesterday."

"What shooting?" My stomach dropped.

"Local militia testing boundaries," Amara explained. "Nothing personal, just making a point about who controls this territory now."

Just making a point. Like my life was some kind of political chess piece.

"When can we expect evacuation?" I asked Atlas.

He exchanged a look with Amara before answering. "Realistically? A week, maybe more. Depends on when the UN decides it's safe enough to send another aircraft."

A week. In this place that smelled like death and explosives, where armed men roamed around "making points." With my husband probably sipping champagne in a first-class seat right about now.

"I'm pregnant," I said suddenly. I hadn't planned to tell them, but the words just came out.

Atlas's expression didn't change, but Amara's eyes widened slightly.

"How far along?" Amara asked.

"Three months."

She nodded slowly. "We'll manage. I've helped deliver babies in worse conditions than this."

Worse than this? I couldn't imagine what that looked like.

As the sun began setting, the temperature dropped fast. I'd never experienced anything like the extremes here – scorching during the day, bone-chilling at night. My English clothes weren't designed for this.

Amara found me shivering outside my tent an hour later. She handed me a thick military jacket.

"Here. You'll freeze otherwise."

I pulled it on gratefully. "Thank you."

She sat down beside me on a supply crate. "Your husband left you here."

It wasn't a question.

"Apparently a stranger's baby matters more than his own wife and child." The bitterness in my voice surprised even me.

"Men do that sometimes," she said quietly. "Choose the woman who needs rescuing over the one who can rescue herself."

"You sound like you know from experience."

She was quiet for a long moment. "My husband left me after the accident. Said he couldn't handle being with a damaged woman." She flexed her remaining fingers. "Turned out to be a blessing. I discovered I was stronger alone than I ever was with him."

I looked at her, really looked at her. Despite everything – the missing hand, the dangerous environment, the uncertainty – she seemed completely at peace with herself.

"How do you do it?" I asked. "Stay so calm?"

"Practice," she said with a sad smile. "And purpose. When you're recording history, documenting injustice, it puts your personal problems in perspective."

She was right. I'd come here to photograph the mining disaster, to show the world what corporate negligence looked like. I'd been so focused on my own drama that I'd forgotten why I was here in the first place.

I pulled out my camera and started adjusting the settings for low light. The rescue workers were still pulling debris from the collapsed shaft, their faces etched with exhaustion and grief. These were the images that mattered. These were the stories that needed telling.

Through my viewfinder, I watched Atlas directing the rescue efforts with quiet authority. He moved like someone who'd spent his whole life in dangerous places, every gesture economical and purposeful. When he caught me photographing him, he didn't try to stop me. He just nodded and went back to work.

The next few hours passed in a blur of clicking shutters and changing memory cards. I documented everything – the rescue efforts, the families waiting for news, the makeshift medical station where injured miners received basic first aid.

Around midnight, exhaustion finally caught up with me. I was putting away my camera when a sharp pain shot through my lower abdomen.

I gasped and doubled over.