Seventeen-year-old Kuba slips into the abandoned school dental clinic and finds a hidden world beneath it, where the walls are decorated with teeth and something is moving in the dark.
School had always felt ordinary to Kuba, the kind of place that looked different only after dark. That night, with a torch in one hand and his phone in the other, he slipped through the side entrance of the old dental clinic attached to the building. Rumour said the clinic wasn’t just abandoned. Rumour said there were corridors under it that no one had used in years.
Inside, the air smelled of dust, bleach, and something sour that reminded him of fillings and antiseptic. He crossed the waiting room, where faded posters still warned about sugar and decay, then passed the surgery with its cracked dentist’s chair and shelves of yellowing boxes. In the storage room at the back, behind stacked cartons and a broken mop bucket, he found the iron grate Tom had sworn was there.
Kuba crouched and pried it open. Cold air rose from below, sharp enough to sting his eyes. He swallowed, tightened his grip on the torch, and climbed down the narrow metal steps into the dark.
The tunnel opened into a wide underground passage lit by old bulbs hanging from exposed wires. Their weak glow revealed mosaics set into the walls: teeth in every shape and condition, white enamel beside blackened stumps, toothbrushes, floss, drills, mirrors. It was strange enough to stop him for a second, fascinating enough to make him keep going.
He started taking notes as he walked. Then he heard it.
A steady scraping, a brushing sound, as if someone were polishing teeth somewhere ahead. Kuba followed it through a branching corridor and stepped into a vast hall.
At the centre stood several figures he could almost recognise and almost not. Giant toothbrushes in work overalls. Toothpaste tubes with arms and legs. One of them held up a banner that read: Never underestimate tooth decay.
Kuba’s pulse kicked hard against his ribs. Before he could decide whether to run or back away, a new shape emerged from the shadows. It gleamed silver under the flickering lights, tall and precise, with a tool that shone like a blade.
The figure turned straight toward him.
"You’re here for the first time," it said. "The question is, are you ready to join the Night Patrol?"
Kuba opened his mouth to answer, but a deafening crack split the tunnel, like a thousand teeth breaking at once. The lights shuddered, then began to pulse...