The newsroom hums. CRT monitors. Phones ringing.
Typewriters in corners. 1994. When news was still a mainstream family affair. The segment was just ending, going to commercial.
Stacks of microfiche printouts. Unsolved Missing Persons reports. Black-and-white photos. VHS tapes.
LEILA:
“You weren’t wrong.”
She slides photos across the desk.
Teenagers. Kids. Adults. Thousands.
All within a mile radius of storm drain systems.
MAGGIE studies them.
“And it’s not just now. I pulled archived pieces. 1974. Same pattern. Different neighborhoods. Same tunnel layout.”
Maggie’s jaw tightens.
LEILA:
“And something else.”
She presses play on a tape recorder she removes from a dusty box marked ‘Declassified.’
At first, there was multiple sounds of drawn out static, like radio station tuning.
Then —
CB RADIO CHATTER. Gunfire. Men shouting. Screeches. Then beastly roars and human screaming. Confusion.
Then nothing. Continuous static. Radio Silence.
MAGGIE stiffens, adjusting in her seat.
LEILA:
“Special Ops. 1974. It never aired. Buried.”
MAGGIE (quiet):
“How many?”
LEILA (reading from the report):
“Officially? Zero. Unofficially? One tunnel. Three teams of five. No survivors.”
Maggie absorbs that.
Something heavy settles.