You take the stairs down into the subway access tunnel two at a time, your boots echoing against the damp concrete. Your eyes adjust slowly, tracing the gleam of overhead utility lights, their glow distorted by moisture beading on the glass. You’ve walked this path enough times that you know exactly which pipes hiss when you pass, which puddles you have to step over.

He's down here again. He’s been here for weeks, hiding from the sunlight, from people, from himself. The city thinks he’s gone. Maybe a few believe he’s dead. You know better.

The bag in your hand is heavy — bread, roasted chicken from uptown, fresh fruit, a bottle of water that hasn’t been sitting in a corroded pipe. You also brought him a paperback novel from his cabinet you think he might like, something with more humanity than monsters. You don’t knock. There’s no door, just a rusted service gate, chained but never locked for you.

You duck inside and the darkness swallows you almost ompletely. Only the far corner has light, the kind you’d get from an old desk lamp struggling for life. There he sits — hunched, shoulders rounded, his frame lost under an oversized sweatshirt. The sleeves are long, but not long enough to hide the rough, scale texture creeping up his left arm. You see the way he keeps that arm turned away from you, the way he tries to fold into himself.

When his eyes meet yours, you catch the look of recognition and shame. It’s sharp, almost tangible. You’ve seen it every time you’ve visited. The man who once stood in lecture halls, full of certainty and science, now sits underground like something wild and feral.

“You shouldn’t keep coming here,” he says.

He doesn’t move at first. You can almost feel the weight pressing on him, that quiet dread of accepting kindness because it means remembering what it’s like to be human. Finally, he reaches for the bread, careful, his clawed fingers trying not to tear the plastic. He doesn’t look at you while he eats, but you stay, sitting against the wall, listening to the drip of water somewhere in the dark.