The underworld of Paris didn't exist in guidebooks. It hummed beneath the pavement like a wounded animal, restless and abandoned. The light of day never touched it. Here, concrete wasn't painted with murals or café shadows — it cracked, crumbled, and breathed dust into tired lungs.
Brendon and Christopher stepped carefully across the muddy floor of a half-built metro tunnel in the eastern fringe, both dressed in stained construction uniforms and white helmets. Brendon wore oversized gloves to hide his claws. Christopher's usually neat face was half-covered with fake stubble and a smeared patch of grease across his cheek.
They had already visited four sites today — half-finished construction zones overgrown with weeds, sealed-off subway arteries that hadn't seen a train in decades, dead ends of service tunnels long erased from public records.
Each place was tied to coal ash residue, uncommon concrete composites, or fiber dust — just as Dr. Banik's lab results had hinted. But those were thin threads, and they were fraying fast.
But nothing.
No clue.
No strange scent.
No trace.
No rhythm to follow.
Just concrete tombs.
"Fifth site," Christopher muttered, tugging the collar of his jumpsuit as they entered another desolate metro spur. His voice echoed slightly. "If this is another dead end, I swear—"
"You'll swear again," Brendon said flatly, not looking at him. "Like the last four times. And probably the next."
They descended carefully. The old metal stair groaned beneath them. Dim flashlight beams sliced through the stagnant air, glinting off graffiti-stained tiles and shattered ceramic insulators. Time had gnawed the walls into decay. The reek of wet rust, urine, and bitter mold clung to every surface like a second skin.
Above them, a single rusted ventilation fan creaked to life for a moment… then died again. The sound was somehow lonelier than silence.
Brendon paused. He lowered himself into a crouch, brushing his gloved fingers along the cracked floor. A fine layer of dust — untouched. No footprints. No drag marks. No disturbed edges. Just age.
He sniffed the air again, slowly.
"Nothing," he muttered. "Mildew, rodents… rust. No hint of chemicals. No fabric particles. No copper from blood."
Christopher kicked a crumpled fast-food wrapper near the wall. It sailed weakly across the tunnel before settling into a puddle of stagnant rainwater. "No trace of rope. No marbles. No blood. No symbols."
He exhaled. "Just another graveyard no one buries."
Brendon stood, dusting off his knees. "The killer's smart," he murmured. "If this is where they live… they clean up well. Like a shadow that knows how light thinks."
"Too smart," Christopher muttered. "Which means we're not chasing a maniac with impulses. We're chasing someone who plans every step."
"And maybe," Brendon added grimly, "someone who's been doing this long before anyone cared."
They moved deeper, their boots crunching over gravel and broken glass. The corridor ahead was narrower, stifling. Old subway signage, half-burned, barely readable, flickered in their flashlight glow — Ligne 9... or what was once part of it.
A broken locker lay sideways, rust blooming like a rash across its doors. Graffiti lined the walls — rage expressed in every font and language, messages from forgotten people who once made this place their home. One read:
> WE BLEED AND NO ONE SEES.
Brendon paused there for a moment longer than he should have.
Christopher looked back. "You okay?"
Brendon's voice was low. "This place doesn't just feel forgotten. It feels erased."
The silence answered him.
They kept moving. Past a collapsed ceiling section. Past a crushed shopping cart. Past the bones of the city no one bothered to bury.
And still — no clue.
No scent.
No answer.
But Brendon could feel it now — not physically, but like a hum behind the walls. As if something had passed through this tunnel, long ago.
And something might be waiting to come back.
---
As the day wore on, they found themselves at the Old Lavoisier Platform, an abandoned metro station now turned into an unofficial camp for hybrids. Pipes hissed above. Generators buzzed somewhere unseen.
They blended into the surroundings. Other hybrids paid them little attention — life here didn't allow for luxury like suspicion. Each person carried their own storm.
Christopher's eyes darted from the broken tents to the makeshift fires, the crates being used as furniture, the children playing with rusted metal rods.
A feline hybrid mother fed her thin daughter boiled roots. A rhino hybrid with a fractured horn polished a pair of old military boots. A bear hybrid sat alone, staring into space, with tattoos scarred across his fur.
Christopher leaned toward Brendon. "This... this is how they're living?"
Brendon didn't answer. His silence said more.
A blind bat hybrid shuffled by them, tapping her cane rhythmically against the concrete. "I smell two fakers," she said gently as she passed.
Brendon and Christopher glanced at each other.
"I get it now," Christopher murmured. "I used to think all the hybrid laws—shelters, grants, protection clauses—actually meant something. But this—"
"They mean nothing down here," Brendon said, his tone hollow. "The surface world doesn't look down unless it needs labor or someone to blame."
Christopher stared around again. "You weren't exaggerating… when you said the bleeding-eye killer might be more than just a psycho."
"He's a message," Brendon replied. "And messages thrive where voices are silenced."
---
Meanwhile, back in Dr. Banik's lab, the elderly forensic coroner and geneticist peered through his microscope, squinting. He wore surgical gloves and a high-intensity visor. That tiny piece of fabric Brendon recovered was undergoing heat treatment, having survived chemical tests and fiber scans.
"Odd," Banik mumbled. "Organic fiber blend. Not commercial. Possibly home-spun. Traces of soot… and synthetic gel… likely for scent suppression."
He turned to his recorder. "Note: this is no ordinary clothing material. Whoever wore it was prepared for encounters with heightened olfactory senses — like a predator hybrid…"
He paused, brows furrowed. "Or more precisely… someone hunting predators."
---
Night fell.
Elsewhere in the city, hidden from flickering neon and crowded metro platforms, a shadow moved through a broken door of an abandoned apartment block.
The figure wore jet-black clothing, sleek but not tactical — just old fabric wrapped with purpose. A black hood fell over their face. A twisted ghoul mask, sculpted with an exaggerated open grin and hollowed eye sockets, covered their identity entirely.
In one hand, the figure held a rusted satchel.
In the other—
An eye spatula
They stood in front of a modest brick house — one of the few residential places not yet gentrified to death. Lights inside. Laughter.
The masked man tilted his head. In silence.
Inside the house, a family of four was setting the table. A boy placed spoons. The mother stirred stew. An old radio played something faintly joyful.
The figure reached into their coat and pulled out a note.
One sentence. Typed. Folded.
They tucked it beneath a brick near the mailbox and stepped away, vanishing into the alley shadows.
The note read:
> "Il faut répondre des péchés qu'on a oubliés avoir commis." ("One must answer for sins they forgot they committed.")
---
Back to Brendon and Christopher, still sitting near the edge of the hybrid camp.
Brendon finally stood up. "We've seen enough today."
Christopher nodded slowly. "Let's head back."
But Brendon's mind was racing. As he get Dr. Banik's text message.
> Coal ash. Fabric meant to block scent. Self-made clothes. Underground paths. The killer wasn't just avoiding detection. He was actually prepared for you. Functioning down here like a ghost.
Brendon looked up one last time at the cracked concrete ceiling. He could feel it now — a pulse, hidden beneath the earth. But a little confusion too. Why attacking him? He is an anthro... not a human. From their knowledge so the Bleeding Eye Killer is someone who is hunting humans down.
Is it possible that the killer find out about him? But how? No media report is there over his presence in Paris.
Something is brewing in the shadows, he can certainly feel that. (He sighs) "Hmm... he is quite sharp."
Christopher surprised from the remark asks, "What did you say?"
"Uh! Nothing." Brendon shrugs it off.