A Secret Well Kept

The hum of the gate finally stopped with the sun having gone down.

We were now in the outer districts of Halden.

We passed the edge of the city like crossing into a memory.

Aboveground, Halden's outer districts always looked rough around the edges, industrial scars wrapped in concrete and wire. But even then, they still had clean streets, surveillance drones, noise ordinances. No one ever called it a slum.

It was one of Halden's proudest boasts: the only post-war city without slums. A utopia, on paper.

We stopped at what looked like the ruins of an old transport hub. Overgrown, fenced off, cracked signs warning of structural collapse. Cayos slipped through a bent section of railing and descended a narrow stairwell slick with condensation and graffiti.

The stairs groaned beneath our feet. I reached for the photo in my pocket without thinking, bracing for what I might find down there.

Rot.

Shadows.

Maybe even blood.

"Lucky it stopped raining," Cayos said casually, just ahead of me. "Would've been a lot worse if it hadn't."

"Worse how?" I asked, ducking under a rusted pipe.

He didn't turn.

"Sometimes the old tunnels flood. The Gutter knows how to swallow people."

—

The air changed. Got thicker. Louder.

And then-

Light.

Colour.

People.

I stopped cold at the bottom of the stairs, blinking like an idiot.

We weren't in ruins.

We were in a city.

A real one.

The tunnel opened into a vast, sunken dome stacked with makeshift homes and glowing signs… layers of life carved into every inch of the old structure. Neon lights buzzed overhead. Market stalls spilled into one another, hawking steam-fried dumplings, bootleg implants, hand-carved music boxes.

Strung lights crisscrossed with recycled banners. Murals covered every flat surface: wings, hands, wolves, gods.

Music drifted through the air, two competing songs from opposite balconies, overlapping in a strangely pleasant dissonance.

And the smell… Grilled meat, incense, machine oil. Everything, all at once.

Through the centre of it all ran a river.

Not a sluggish trickle, but a fast, living thing, swollen from the rains. Its surface shimmered under neon haze, catching flashes of pink, gold, and blue.

Pipes emptied into it from above, yet somehow, the water smelled clean. Purified. Tamed.

The banks weren't natural, they were concrete and stained, with narrow ledges where people walked or sat like it was just another city square. Bridges stretched across it, thin and lopsided, bound by cables and grated metal.

Skiffs floated past, ferrying crates and passengers. Some rigged with lights that cast ripples across the ceiling.

One old man fished with a neon-threaded line, humming off-key.

I should've felt relief. Or awe.

Instead, I felt… small. Like I'd stumbled into someone else's secret.

And everything… everything dripped.

Rain hadn't touched Halden in hours, but the dome ceiling still wept. Water seeped through old cracks like the storm hadn't ended. Drops fell from beams above, caught in funnels and gutters, redirected into rooftop gardens, hanging bottles, moss-covered filters.

Homes rose in clusters on either side of the river. They were mismatched, stacked, stitched together from subway panels, salvaged scaffolding, and shipping crates.

Some leaned over the water on stilts, their balconies wrapped in coloured cloth, laundry fluttering like prayer flags.

Whole clusters of plants had grown wild across the upper levels, ferns curling out of rusted ducts, vines draped across balconies, little violet flowers blooming defiantly on broken piping.

It looked like nature had claimed a corner of the underworld and no one had told it to stop.

A woman above us watered herbs from a bottle rig. A man whistled as he repaired a neon sign. Two kids chased each other barefoot across a grated bridge. A couple slow danced beside a broken vending machine. An old woman laughed so hard she had to brace herself on a walker made from bike handles and pipework.

This wasn't decay.

This was a heartbeat.

Something old, vital, stubbornly alive.

"I thought…" My voice caught. "I thought the Gutter would be…"

"Worse?" Cayos stepped beside me. His tone was unreadable.

I didn't answer. I didn't need to.

He looked out across the lights. "Everyone thinks that. They hear 'Gutter' and picture rot. Crime. Darkness. And sure, it's all here. But so is everything else."

I turned slowly, letting it all settle in. The colour, the sound, the layers. The weight of it pressing upward against the lie I'd always believed.

"I used to wonder," I murmured, "how Halden stayed so clean. No slums. No homelessness."

Cayos gave me a look. Calm. Sharp.

"It didn't. They just paved over the broken parts and pretended they never happened."

Maybe Halden's worst-kept secret was also its best-kept one.

A lie so clean it looked like progress.

"And this is what's underneath."

He nodded. "This is what's left when you push everything down."

Maybe that was true for people too.

Push hard enough, and something always leaks through.

Grief. Guilt. Or worse, hope.

I looked up.

No sky. Just girders and steel beams, flickering signs that climbed so high they vanished into shadows. Somewhere up there, the clean world still hummed, blind to the truth beneath its feet.

I wasn't sure whether to feel furious… or ashamed.

That I had never questioned it.

That maybe I hadn't wanted to.

I followed Cayos through the flow of people, trying not to stare.

A girl sat on a low step, maybe six or seven, her boots half-tied and her shirt inside-out. She was eating something out of a paper pouch, swinging her legs.

When she saw me, she froze.

Not scared exactly.

Just... alert.

Like she could smell that I didn't belong here.

Her eyes tracked me the whole way down the street.

I didn't look back.

But I felt it…

that weight, that wordless judgment.

Like the Gutter itself was watching me through her.

I stared.

"This place is…" I didn't finish.

"Alive," Cayos said for me.

I nodded, slowly.

The weight of it all still sinking in.

My stomach growled again, louder this time.

Then he grinned.

"I told you, I know a place," he said, already walking, humming a familiar tune.

I followed.

What else was Halden hiding?

How deep did it go?

And how did Anya fit into this?