The machines snorted in the darkness.
The night shift in the city center dragged on with the resignation of the men who worked it; it was a matter of getting by with lukewarm coffee, half-smoked cigarettes, and helmets that no longer shone under the yellow floodlights nor protected them from anything at all.
The pit for the foundations of the new mall was a gigantic wound torn open in the earth—twenty meters deep, with mud that gleamed like oil and walls that sweated moisture. Rats, as if fleeing a ship sinking little by little, scattered in colonies.
Suddenly, the excavator stopped with a metallic screech.
The hydraulic arm dropped again, struck the ground, and stopped once more, as if it had hit bone. The operator muttered a curse, backed the machine up, and drove it forward again.
Nothing.
POCK!
It was as though they had reached the bottom of everything. The bucket rattled and the steel bent, as if it had bitten into something harder than concrete, more solid than stone. They tried the drills, and the heads came back shattered.
The foreman, a man with a reflective vest and a tobacco voice, raised his hand.
"Shut it down!" he barked, his face worn with exasperation. He pulled off his gloves. "Goddamn it," he muttered. "Now what?"
He checked his watch.
The engines died out in unison. It felt like a collective groan that left the air hanging in enormous silence. He sent one of his men.
"Kevin! Go down and see what the hell is happening down there…"
A skinny young man, with a headlamp strapped to his forehead and mud-caked boots, descended on an improvised ladder; it looked more like it was swaying than holding. Each rung creaked with the anxious squeal of metal supporting more than it should. The rest of the men watched from above, elbows leaning on the railing.
The worker reached the bottom, sweeping his light in circles.
In front of him opened an arch of dark stone, blackened by centuries, just revealed by the excavator's cut. The beam traced walls, twisted columns, inscriptions that seemed to burn beneath their layer of dust and the trembling light.
It wasn't an isolated wall.
It was a chamber.
The entrance to an underground city beneath the heart of the modern metropolis.
He raised his voice.
"Boss! I think we've uncovered some ruins. Or a temple. A necropolis," he said, remembering his honeymoon with his wife when they visited Etruscan ruins.
"What the hell are you talking about!?"
Cerveteri, the kid thought; the necropolis alive in his memory. The silence above broke with nervous laughter. His mother-in-law had given them the tickets for that honeymoon; she was a flight attendant.
Without knowing why, the thought hurt. His chest tightened when he thought of her, and then of his wife. Eight months pregnant. Damn—he was four weeks away from meeting his little girl.
He smiled.
"Goddamn it," the foreman spat. "If the Institute of Anthropology finds out, they'll shut us down. The contract's done. Ruins?! Archaeological ruins?!" he shouted.
Kevin spoke again, his voice vibrating with awe that spread contagiously.
"You should come see. I don't think they'll just suspend us… If you saw what I'm seeing, you'd know we've already lost the construction permit."
"Goddamn it," he muttered. "All right, we're coming down. Don't move."
Kevin turned the light—and then he saw it.
In the middle of the gloom rose a figure.
It wasn't a column nor a carving. It was a humanoid body sculpted with such detail it seemed to smell like flesh, though what reached him was the scent of damp earth.
"God…" he muttered. And then the sculpture seemed to furrow its brow, just slightly.
"Looks like petrified skin," he said, staring at the impossibly precise muscles, the veins traced in perfect relief.
A naked man, of marble-like beauty, with his arms crossed over his chest and his mouth barely open in a grimace, seemed to be looking at him.
The worker swallowed.
He stepped closer, cautiously stretching out his hand. He couldn't not touch it. Kevin needed to touch that perfect face.
"Marble," he whispered.
He touched the surface. It was ice cold.
A small slip, barely a shift in his footing, forced him to adjust his helmet, the lamp flickering.
Tick tick… Tick tick…
The bulb crackled, casting light here and there in stuttering flashes. Two taps and it steadied. When he looked back, something had changed in the statue's lips. He didn't want to think about it. He pulled his hand away, but too late; a hidden edge at the corner of the figure's mouth sliced his fingers. A clean, deep cut made blood run.
"Goddamn it!" he roared, pressing his hand to his chest. "I cut myself!"
The foreman's radio crackled on his belt. "With the statue?" he repeated, incredulous, glancing at the others, then staring down into the darkness below. "Hold on, we're on our way!"
Kevin opened his mouth to respond, but never had the chance.
A scream tore up from the bowels of the earth, so brutal it split the night open. The other workers shrank, hands over their ears, eyes wide as plates. A couple slipped down the ladder and landed beside him. Or where he should have been.
The dogs above, in the streets, began to bark.
"What was that?" one of the men asked.
The foreman peered into the pit.
"I think it was Kevin. Let's get down there fast, maybe he fell deep."
When they reached the bottom, they saw the arch—but not the statue.
"Hey! Up there! Shine the light!"
As the foreman turned to give orders, he saw it.
The pale whiteness of a statue rose at the edge of the pit. But no, it wasn't a statue. It was something else. The skin looked like marble lit from within. The figure stood tall, flawless; muscles taut as if it had just emerged from a divine mold.
And the smile. Red.
"What the hell…" one of the men whispered.
Another, eyes glassy, murmured: "It looks like Michelangelo's David. Only… sinister."
The foreman tried to answer, but the words died in his throat.
The thing was smiling.
A slow, bloody curve that belonged neither to stone nor to man; it was smiling at him.
Then, all that was heard were more screams.
Ripping, tearing screams.
Cries that rose from the pit and mingled with those above—the terrified howls of the men who didn't understand what was happening, but knew they were next.
A roar erupted from the depths of the earth, as if the entire underworld had exploded in lament. An inhuman cry, so powerful it made the beams tremble and water rush through hidden channels. The echo climbed to the surface, bouncing off the walls, reaching the streets, where pedestrians and vendors clutched their ears, unable to tell if it was an earthquake, an explosion, or the scream of something alive.
"Run!" shouted a passerby, not waiting for explanation.
That night, the neighbors in the surrounding blocks heard underground noises: dull blows, metallic shrieks, an echo that could be mistaken for the subway.
No one called the police.