Beneath the city lights

The Space Between Trains

The morning had ended before Aidan even noticed it had begun.

He’d meant to rest a few hours after his last shift, but when he closed his eyes, the hum of the tunnels followed him up through sleep. Even his dreams carried that rhythm — metallic, steady, endless.

By noon, the apartment felt smaller than usual. The radiator clanked like it had opinions, and sunlight fell through the blinds in harsh lines. He sat at the table, coffee untouched, staring at a city that looked too awake.

He checked the clock again. Six hours until he had to be back underground. He could try to sleep, but it wouldn’t come. It never came when he asked.

So he got up, washed the single mug he’d used, and gathered his tools.

The entrance to the service line was locked to the public, but he still used his badge even on off-hours. The guards didn’t question him anymore. They knew him as the quiet one who preferred working alone.

Inside, the air changed instantly. Cooler, heavier. It hit the back of his throat like he’d swallowed the city whole. The tunnels were quieter in the daytime, but not empty — trains still moved above and around, their weight vibrating faintly through the walls.

He started walking without turning on the lamp. He knew every inch of the line by now: where the walls bowed, where the air vents hummed, where the ground dipped by less than an inch.

This wasn’t an official inspection. It was habit. Motion kept his thoughts still.

He stopped at a junction where three tunnels met, a place most workers avoided. The air carried too much pressure, a constant low roar. He set down his bag, crouched, and examined the base of an old electrical conduit. The metal was flaking. He scraped a bit of rust away with his gloved finger. It left a red-brown smear like dried blood.

He tightened the bolts, sealed a minor leak, checked the connections. No one would ever know he’d been here. That was fine. He didn’t fix things for credit. He fixed them because broken things bothered him.

Halfway through, a faint sound cut through the hum — not the echo of trains or machinery. Lighter, irregular. Footsteps.

He turned his headlamp back on, the beam slicing across the junction. A shape moved at the far end of the tunnel — not threatening, just out of place.

“Maintenance line,” he called out, voice low but firm. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

The figure froze, then stepped closer into the light. It was Lila, wearing her supply jacket, a clipboard under one arm.

“Easy,” she said. “I’m not lost. They asked me to check the inventory drop-off for the east depot.”

“This isn’t the east depot.”

“I figured that out,” she said dryly, glancing around. “Got turned around after the last junction. Thought I’d find someone down here eventually. You just appeared out of the shadows like some urban legend.”

He didn’t answer. He just nodded toward the left passage. “That way’ll get you back to the main corridor.”

Lila stepped closer, squinting against his light. “You always down here when you’re not supposed to be?”

“Sometimes.”

She studied him for a moment, then smiled faintly. “Right. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

Aidan turned back to his tools, tightening the final bolt. Lila lingered a little longer, scanning the tunnel walls.

“It’s strange,” she said. “Up there, the city feels alive because of people. Down here, it feels alive in spite of them.”

He paused, the wrench halfway through a turn. That was exactly it, though he hadn’t found the words himself.

Lila adjusted her clipboard and started walking back toward the main tunnel. “See you around, Wolfe.”

Her footsteps faded, leaving him with the hum again.

He stayed there longer than he needed to, listening to the sound of the city moving around him. It wasn’t loneliness he felt — it was something quieter. Something close to belonging.

By the time he returned to the depot for his official shift, Rico was already there, throwing small stones at a wall and pretending it was target practice.

“Man, you look like you didn’t leave,” Rico said when he saw him.

Aidan didn’t bother denying it. “You ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be. Ortega wants us to sweep the ventilation ducts tonight. Says there’s been a smell coming from the C-line again.”

Aidan sighed. “That’ll be rats.”

Rico grinned. “You ever think about switching jobs?”

“Every night,” Aidan said. “And every morning, I still show up.”

Rico laughed. “That’s commitment.”

“Call it routine.”

They gathered their gear and headed into the C-line access shaft. The air thickened quickly, filled with dust and the faint stink of decay.

The ducts ran narrow — too narrow for comfort. They crawled through sections, flashlights cutting across rust and debris.

Rico’s chatter filled the space. “You ever wonder how many people are above us right now? Thousands, maybe millions. None of them think about this.”

“That’s the point,” Aidan said. “If we do our job right, they never have to.”

Rico stopped, his flashlight catching Aidan’s profile. “You ever miss the noise up there?”

Aidan shook his head. “I used to. Now it’s just another sound I don’t need.”

The kid fell silent after that. Sometimes, that was all it took — a single steady answer to still the air.

They worked until the smell lessened, patching the duct and clearing debris. Sweat mixed with dust, coating their sleeves in gray. When they finally crawled back into open space, the air felt almost clean.

Ortega met them halfway down the corridor. “Good timing,” he said. “Train test in fifteen. You clear?”

“Clear,” Aidan said.

Rico saluted half-jokingly and disappeared toward the lockers.

The test train roared through the tunnel a few minutes later. Aidan stood by the wall, feeling the wind pull at his jacket. The vibration traveled through his boots, through the rails, into his bones.

He thought of what Lila had said earlier — that the city was alive in spite of people. He looked at the flickering lights, the rusting pipes, the layers of repair over repair. She was right. It was all still holding, somehow. Not perfect. Not whole. But holding.

He picked up a piece of chalk from the floor and wrote something small near the wall — a simple mark, half habit, half instinct:

Still standing.

He didn’t know why he wrote it. Maybe to remind himself.

After the shift, he walked home again. The sky above was pale and washed out, the kind of dawn that looked like a photograph left too long in the sun. The city was already waking — trucks growling, windows lighting one by one.

At the corner, a newspaper stand was being restocked. A headline about a downtown power surge caught his eye. He bought a copy, folded it under his arm, and kept walking.

At home, he laid the paper on the counter but didn’t read it. He poured water into the kettle, let it hum as it boiled. The apartment filled with steam that smelled faintly of dust and old metal.

He sat at the table with his notebook open, pencil poised above the page. For a while he didn’t write anything. Then, slowly:

Day 127. Ventilation check. Found peace in noise.

He stared at the line until it stopped feeling like something he’d written. Then he closed the book.

The silence stretched, thin and familiar. Somewhere beneath the floor, he could feel the faint vibration of the early train starting its route. It was distant, yet steady — the sound that reminded him where he belonged.

He took another sip of his coffee, the taste bitter and grounding.

When the light shifted across the window, catching the edge of his scar, he didn’t turn away. He just sat there and let it be.

That night, when he returned to the tunnels, something in him felt slightly different. The hum wasn’t just noise anymore; it had a rhythm he could almost understand.

He stood at the platform, helmet under his arm, watching the rails shimmer under the weak bulbs. The walls smelled of oil and rain.

He thought again of the graffiti he’d seen near the junction: We live in the quiet between trains.

He whispered it once under his breath, testing the sound of the words. They didn’t echo. They simply existed for a moment, then vanished into the hum.

He picked up his gear and started walking.

Another night, another circuit of steel and silence. The city breathed. And so did he.