New Vance City

Hidden behind a maintenance façade near the perimeter of the Glass Ring, the Service Tunnel Entrance is one of the few cracks in the Citadel’s otherwise seamless shell. Officially decommissioned, this tunnel was once part of a subterranean maintenance network used to ferry drones and waste beneath the Citadel’s pristine surface. Now, it serves as a shadow vein for those brave—or desperate—enough to bypass retinal scans and surveillance grids. Intelligence brokers, dissident coders, and Syndicate smugglers have all whispered about it, though no one openly admits to using it. To the Council, its continued existence is a silent embarrassment—one they're too proud to publicly acknowledge and too uncertain to fully seal. Within its narrow halls, secrets change hands under the hum of forgotten lights. It's not on any official map, but for some, it’s the only route to freedom—or sabotage.

The tunnel’s entrance is disguised as an obsolete sanitation hatch tucked behind a row of aesthetic foliage near a Citadel drone hub. Ivy-draped polymer panels and faux-marble trim obscure its presence, blending into the Council’s manicured facade. A cracked hazard sign still clings to the hatch, its bio-symbol faded beneath layers of city-approved graffiti. Once opened, the tunnel throat descends into dim sterility—narrow concrete corridors lit by flickering emergency strips in faded amber. Pipes crisscross the low ceiling, dripping condensation into grime-darkened grates. Surveillance cameras hang like dead flies—smashed, scavenged, or sabotaged. Scorch marks near the deeper junctions hint at past conflicts, and cryptic tags from the Shadow Syndicate pulse faintly in ultraviolet ink under the right light. Every corner feels like it’s watching, every echo like a secret holding its breath.