The tunnels are quiet, now.
The stations still see the bustle of work, the Overground still the humming of life. But the cavern systems, the nooks and crannies and caves and chasms, those that lie in the near-forgotten depths of the Underground… they lie still. Silent.
One such location is a little different from its counterparts, though. One chasm holds rather a thrilling secret (… in fact, one could call it feverishly exciting.)
A quiet clean-up job, swept swiftly under the rug by the remnants of the Director’s Office, is exposed several decades down the line during a routine clearing of Archival Documents. Details are scarce, attestation scarcer, but notes pieced together tell a truly fascinating story.
One of a natural cave system, sealed shut during the initial Post-Disaster settling. Of a steady and certain build-up of natural gases, unbeknownst to the community’s scientists and leaders alike. Of an unlikely explosion, exposing the cavern and its passageways, and of the subsequent leak that followed. The poor maintenance of the ventilation systems, and the steady poisoning of the enclosed population. The hallucination and delusions that followed, affecting first the weak, the sick, the elderly, but soon manifesting in great swathes of the population. The biologists’ uncertainty, despite best effort, in the absence of proper and complete equipment. The eventual Directorial realisation, and the scrambled mess that followed.
The complete, and utter, lack of explanation.
No comment was put forward by former employees of Caput station.