📖 Chapter 16 – Digging Up the Living
Neo was the first to say it out loud.
> "What if some of the missing… are alive?"
Boitumelo didn't respond. She just stared at the list they made — names of the vanished. Some were just rumours, others were kids everyone knew. But there were no funerals. No graves. Just disappearances.
Kea circled three names.
> "These ones were seen after they vanished. Different, scared, silent."
Neo leaned back, "Then we're not just chasing ghosts. We're chasing prisoners."
---
They returned to Mme Nandi's house with one question:
> "Where are they keeping the ones who vanish?"
Mme Nandi sighed. Her face had seen decades of struggle, and now, it wore a new kind of fear.
> "Some say there's an underground place," she whispered.
"Old mining tunnels. Long abandoned. But not empty."
She handed them a map, hand-drawn and faded with age.
> "Go at night. Cameras can't see what moves in the dark."
---
That night, they met at the edge of the veld, near an old fenced-off shaft.
The fence was broken. The danger sign rusted.
Neo lifted the gate. Boitumelo stepped in first. Kea followed with a flashlight and pepper spray.
The tunnel opened like a mouth — wide, cold, and hungry.
They walked in.
---
Minutes turned to hours.
Dust clung to their shoes.
Dripping water echoed off the walls.
Then they heard it —
A voice.
Faint. Fragile. Female.
> "Help… me…"
Boitumelo froze. Neo lifted the torch.
A figure sat against the wall, covered in dirt and sweat.
> "Lerato?" Kea whispered.
It was her. Her eyes were wide. Her lips cracked. She shook her head violently.
> "You weren't supposed to find me."
> "What happened?" Boitumelo asked.
Lerato leaned forward and whispered:
> "They're watching… from inside. You have to leave… before—"
A siren blared. Red lights flooded the tunnel.
> "RUN!"
---
They sprinted.
Back through the tunnels. Back through the shadows.
Voices behind them. Boots stomping.
But they made it out.
They didn't stop running until they reached the graveyard behind Mme Nandi's house.
Neo collapsed. Kea vomited. Boitumelo turned around, chest heaving.
> "They're keeping them alive."
> "And hidden," Kea added.
> "And scared," Neo whispered.
---
That night, Boitumelo opened her journal and wrote a new line at the top:
> "We are not burying the dead. We are digging up the living."
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