October 12th, 1932

Vincent didn't drink. Not because he was 12, that really didn't matter much, they'd serve him alcohol if he could pay for it. He didn't drink because his body couldn't really handle it, due to malnutrition, and the few times he'd tried it, he had felt sick.

But he was perfectly at home in speakeasies. He'd make small talk, pretend to drink, generally pretend to be helpful, and occasionally offer to help people home. They would make it home. Without any money, but they would make it home. Sometimes he even managed to relieve them of their money without even leaving the bar, because he was very fast with his hands. The speakeasy owners generally tolerated him, even if they knew what he was doing, because he was pretty funny and kept people engaged.

Recently, he had become fascinated by one of the speakeasies. They had a bottle of wine on the wall behind the counter, protected by a pane of glass. Which was itself, odd, because the place barely sold wine. And Mr. Allen, the barkeep, had a story about it, how when he had owned a legitimate bar before Prohibition, it had been his most expensive wine, imported from France. He had taken it with him when they showed up to destroy his bar, how he'd rescued it from his first speakeasy a year later.  He was always bragging. He always bragged about his connections, for alcohol, for influence, for everything.

Vincent wasn't sure if any of that was true, but the wine sure looked expensive. And he was planning on taking it. There were only two problems. The first was that everyone would immediately be able to see it was missing, and the second was that Mr. Allen had noticed him eyeing it and if it went missing would immediately suspect him. Possibly try to track him down.

He had a vague plan to swap things out, but even so, that was very iffy. He had gotten an empty wine bottle and filled it with various liquid, of the right color, which meant, in the dim light down here, it could be mistaken for the expensive bottle until someone looked closely. Now he just had contrive a way to switch it, behind glass, without being noticed. He thought maybe if he did it near closing, no one might notice until the next day, and he could be long vanished. Maybe. Probably not. He knew it was a unlikely plan, and had half abandoned it, but the thought still fascinated him.

The day it happened, Vincent didn't see anything amiss on his way in, although admittedly he had taken a very roundabout way because the men who very unofficially stood guard on Old Lloyd Street had had a... disagreement with him the other night, and would no longer let him through the...gate, for lack of a better name. A lot of things didn't have names, the entire area didn't have a name, the speakeasy didn't have a name...well, the speakeasy probably did have a name, but Vincent didn't bother to remember it.

Luckily, Vincent did know another way down, an iron panel set into the ground down an alley. The panel covered a staircase next to a building. It had a chain on it, but the chain had enough slack that he squeeze in. At the bottom, the stairway not only had a door into the building, which was locked and mostly irrelevant, it had a grate into…an open space. That grate's lock was busted, and he stepped forward and around a corner into what seemed to be a magical land.

Smoke obscured the faint light that spilled from a gigantic opening that was a good two blocks away on Old Lloyd Street. That opening had boards and iron bars across it also, despite the fact that there were innumerable ways past them. A few lanterns flickered, but the gas lights that lined the street were permanently disabled. But despite the lack of light, Vincent knew what the place looked like. During the day, the sunlight would come in from the open end, illuminating the underground street. Because that's what it was. An entire subterranean chunk of Atlanta, a square of several blocks, 12 acres of the city that officially didn't exist anymore, hidden under viaducts with roads build on them. With boarded up storefronts that used to be street-level, until everything had relocated upward to where the new elevated streets were, and what had previously been the first floor became the basement. And it was Prohibition, which meant, at any given time, there were about three speakeasies down here inside those basements. Some accessible from above, some from down here. He headed towards his target, unaware it would be one of the last times he was down here.

The evening seem normal, and even when things eventually started happening, it wasn't clear what. The door from outside into the speakeasy was fairly heavy duty, and obviously kept closed, with a very small hatch carved into it. Vincent wasn't sure what sort of business this had been before, what business still probably existed upstairs, but it was clearly one with some heavy security. But eventually muffled sounds of outrage made themselves clear, before there was a loud pounding on the door.

"Open up! We're the police!"

There was instant panic. A few people ran towards the back, where there were some stairs up into whatever business was above and likely owned the building, but stopped at the bottom as they could see the large chained iron grate at the top of the stairs, in from of a heavy door. That was not a path out. The only ways out werethe small door in the side that the cops were pounding on, and a larger more ornate door that was the original front door of the building, but lead out into the exact same underground area, and hardly seemed to be a better exit...and also was chained.

Vincent remained calm, and quickly headed for the staircase, where his fake winebottle was stored, thinking vaguely he could swap things out..and then he froze as a glorious idea came to him. A way to make sure no one would suspect he had stolen it. There was more pounding on the door as Vincent tried to remain unnoticed walking to the bar, his fingers curled around a large metal mug picked up off a table. He had to time this exactly. The pounding on the door got louder and louder and it was clear there was some sort of battering ram in use.

Mr. Allen had been caught out from behind the bar when the pounding started, and he was trying to calm people, so Vincent had a clear path. He leapt on the bar, and, with all his force, smashed the mug into the glass. The smashing glass alerted the bar, who looked back at him, and Mr. Allen opened his mouth to shout, but at that exact moment the door flew open and the police poured into the room, causing complete pandemonium.

Indeed, it was a little too much pandemonium as Vincent grabbed the bottle and ran. Not across the room and out the door, as Mr. Allen had quickly positioned himself to both stop Vincent and deal with the police, but towards the back staircase to nowhere. He had a little trouble weaving his way, but managed to get there. He quickly pulled out the fake bottle of wine from the hiding place, which was a slightly dislodged wall panel, and then carefully slide the real one down, making sure it didn't hit the stone tiles at the bottom too hard. He then ran back out of the staircase, holding the fake, and sprinted for the exit.

By that time, the police were in, and Mr. Allen had his hands full. He managed to escape for a second, but got nabbed at the door, right behind Vincent.

Ironically, Vincent had made it out the door, and had only about five more feet towards freedom, which would have been disastrous for his plan. Mr. Allen would have tracked him down after this was all over, and demanded the wine back.

But luckily, at the last second, a policeman grabbed his shoulder, stopping him. Vincent had been hoping for that and, with a very careful motion, pretended to let his arm swing forward and the bottle slip from his grasp in an underhand throw, hurtling it into the darkness for a second before it loudly smashed against the underground street. 

"You dunderhead, what are you doing?" shouted Mr. Allen.

"Trying to save it, like you did!" Vincent shouted back. "Couldn't get out the back!"

"Well, you didn't save it, did you?" Mr. Allen said back, but without much rancour, as from where he was, he could see the police down the street pouring alcohol from the other speakeasies into street drains, and it was clear that the fate of the wine would have been exactly the same either way.

Vincent glanced that way too and shrugged. "Worth a try."

Mr. Allen let out a sigh and nodded.

Vincent had gotten away with it. All he needed now was to recover the real wine.

The next day

Vincent hadn't been arrested, just thrown back into an orphanage he walked right out of, so had come back the next day. He hoped he could get the wine out now, but really just needed to see what was happening. If he had to wait until the place reopened, he would.

Unfortunately, everything was very well lit with multiple lanterns and someone had even propped up some electrical lights. And there was a team of people mixing concrete in a wheelbarrow in front of the speakeasy. The large door was open, the small door was still dislodged, so he walked in and stared. All the furniture, even the bar, was gone, there was all sorts of construction, with strange iron grills bolted together and wooden frames being built around them.

"Kid, you can't come in here." said one of the workers.

"If you don't tell, I won't." Vincent said automatically, but stepped back a few feet to the door. "What are you building?"

"A vault for the bank." The man said. "New-fangled one, really secure." He pointed. "It's got those metal frames inside the concrete."

"What…bank?" Vincent asked, although he felt he already knew the answer.

The man raised an eyebrow and pointed up. "The one that we're in. Gate City National Bank? The bank manager let a speakeasy operate out of down here. All the muckety-mucks that owned the bank didn't know. They had some big emergency meeting last night, fired him for that, and moved forward on the vault plans that the manager was stalling on, probably to keep raking in the cash from this place. That's what my boss heard. All I know is they're going to pay to keep us working round the clock until it's finished."

Vincent attempted to casually edge around to try to see the staircase. It appeared the part of the staircase wall he had hidden the wine inside wasn't going to be inside the vault walls, there seemed to be a landing area at the bottom of the stairs and then the big vault door. However, the vault would be very much in the way of getting there from the doors down here, and looking around, he was pretty sure they were going to seal the doors afterward with the bricks they had piled up anyway.

"Hey!" said the man, seeing him moving around. "I told you, you can't be in here. You wanna watch, you can, just stay at the door."

"I was seein' if there was some trash I could take."

"Eh, they've hauled most of it out of here." He jerked his hand to point at a pile near the door. "But you can grab whatever you want, keeps us from have to put it on the cart."

If it hadn't 1931, a construction worker probably would not have told a small homeless child to paw through a pile of broken wood and metal with nails in it, but it was, and Vincent did. He found the small bronze plaque that had been mounted outside the door, a small sign to mostly indicate you had found the right door, which he grabbed. But there wasn't anything else in there.

Vincent sighed, and walked away. That entire plan had turned out completely pointless. Unless he intended to rob a bank.

May 22nd, 1967

A newspaper lays on a table, open to a headline proclaiming 'The City Beneath the Streets', and the article goes on to talk about talk about the incorporation of a company called Underground Atlanta, explaining that it intended to lease and develop a lower-level shopping district near Five Points, in a built-over section of the city that mostly had been forgotten about.

A cardboard box gets set on the newspaper by Vincent, now almost 50. He opens it and start pulling out diagrams and plans, laying them out, carefully tracing faint pencil lines. He mutters, "Now or never. I guess it had time to age...I wonder what it's worth now."

After an hour or so, faint pencil lines have become much firmer or erased entirely, timing are written out, a list of materials and skills has been made, and Vincent stretches, and stands up straight. A glint of metal still in the box catches his eye, and he pulls out a discolored bronze plaque and rubs it. "Guess you weren't really connected, were you, Mr. Allen? Maybe just connected to the bank manager. They raided the place anyway. But, ya know, the name ain't half bad, for a bar." He tosses the small bronze plaque saying 'The Connection' back on the table and heads out to start making phone calls.