2026, Mumbai, India

They’d heard the rumbling coming towards them down the echoing stairwell like a locomotive train. Then all of a sudden it was pitch black, the air thick with dust and smoke. Sal Vikram thought she was going to choke on the grit and particles of brick plaster she was sucking in through her nose, clogging her throat and the back of her mouth with a thick chalky paste.

It felt like an eternity before it was clear enough to see the emergency wall light in the stairwell once more. By its dim amber light she could see the lower flight of stairs was completely blocked by rubble and twisted metal spars. Above them, the stairwell they’d been clambering down only moments earlier was crushed by the collapsed floors above. She saw an extended arm emerging from the tangle of beams and crumbling breeze-blocks, an arm chalk-white, perfectly still, reaching down to her as if pleading to be held or shaken.

‘We’re trapped,’ whispered her mother.

Sal looked to her, then to her father. He shook his head vigorously, dust cascading off his thin hair.

‘No! We are not! We dig!’ He looked at Sal. ‘That’s what we do, we dig. Right, Saleena?’

She nodded mutely.

He turned to the others trapped on the emergency stairwell along with them. ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘We must dig. We can’t wait for rescue…’ Her father could have said more, could have completed that sentence, could have said what they were all thinking — that if the skyscraper had collapsed down to this floor there was no reason why it wasn’t soon to fold in on itself all the way down.

Sal looked around. She recognized faces despite them all being painted ghost-white with dust: Mr and Mrs Kumar from two apartments along; the Chaudhrys with their three young sons; Mr Joshipura, a business man like her father, but single… enjoyed a string of girlfriends. Tonight, presumably, he’d been on his own.