Rain hissed softly above the manhole cover, the sound filtered through layers of wet concrete and dripping steel. Markus Neumann wiped a gloved hand across his forehead and adjusted his helmet light. Another leak complaint — third this week. He muttered under his breath, the words echoing along the tunnel like a prayer no one would answer.
The tunnel swallowed him in the way they always did — quietly, without acknowledgment. He climbed down the iron ladder steps, each one slick with condensation. His boots hit the ground with a soft splash. For a second, he just stood there. Letting his eyes adjust. Letting the place settle around him.
The Kanalwerk Friedrichshof Station always smelled like rot. Not the sharp, animal kind, but the slow decay of infrastructure — oil, rust, moss, time. And tonight, something else. Not strong, but present. Chemical. Artificial.
He exhaled sharply through his nose and switched on his helmet lamp. The beam cut across the curved concrete, catching glints of water droplets and age-darkened moss. Thin roots dangled from a crack above his head like hair from a wound.
He took a step. Then another.
His knees ached more than usual — long shifts, poor sleep. He was pushing fifty and felt every year of it in weather like this. He had worked these tunnels for over a decade, knew them better than the apartment where he barely slept anymore. Some stretches had earned nicknames: The Cathedral, The Gut, The Dead Loop. Friedrichshof didn’t get a name. It didn’t really deserve one. It just dragged on and got worse with time.
Dispatch had logged a minor drop in pressure data from Subsector 3. Nothing serious. A technician had gone down yesterday, young guy, said he couldn’t find the fault. Told dispatch the sensors were just “weird,” then clocked out early. Markus hadn’t met him. Probably wouldn’t.
He rounded a corner where the tunnel narrowed and ducked under a rusted support beam. The sound of the city above was gone now — no cars, no rain — just the gentle trickle of runoff and the distant buzz of an old fuse box.
He paused, letting the silence breathe.
Something felt… off.
He reached instinctively to touch the curved wall with his gloved fingers. Slick, but familiar. Except for a section just ahead, where the grime was scratched clean. A long smear, maybe a foot high, maybe more. As if something had been pushed or dragged against the surface. Not with wheels. No repeating marks. Just one long, low, continuous scrape.
He crouched. Shone the light closer.
There. At the edge of the smear — a small splatter of something dark.
Not sewage. Not oil. Something sticky, drying at the edges. A little too thick. Reddish under the lamp but not quite blood. Not quite.
He rose again, slowly. Not because he was afraid — not yet — but because his back ached. And the silence was pressing harder now.
The breaker chamber wasn’t far. One more turn.
As he walked, his mind wandered — as it always did when tunnels got quiet. He thought of Nadine, his ex-wife, still in the north. They hadn’t spoken since Christmas. He thought of the old Bundeswehr base where he did his first systems training. And he thought of the phone call from his supervisor two days ago, where they quietly asked if he’d consider “taking on more night shifts,” which wasn’t a question, just a polite order.
The city didn’t ask much from men like Markus — just that they show up when nobody else would.
He reached the door to the breaker chamber. Or what was left of it.
The heavy steel panel hung half open, one hinge warped and snapped. The edges were jagged, as if forced, not with tools, but strength. Something had pushed it in. Hard.
He stood there for a moment, letting the weight of that settle.
Then he stepped inside.
The air was different here — not just stale, but cold. Wrong. Like a basement freezer long unplugged. The room itself was in chaos. Panels ripped open. Wires torn out. A smell like scorched plastic mixed with wet dog hair.
His lamp moved across the floor.
And stopped.
A shape — partially buried under collapsed piping — wrapped in black, torn plastic.
Something about it triggered a deep, involuntary hesitation. He didn’t move. He just stared. And the longer he stared, the more certain he became that whatever was under there, it wasn’t just debris.
Something had been hidden.
Or discarded.
Or both.