At 2:47 a.m., a little girl called crying: "It hurts... Daddy's baby wants to come out."

"Look at that stomach!" exclaimed one of the interns, taking a step back, seized by a reflex of disgust. "Doctor, something is trying to rupture the abdominal wall!"

"Hold her down!" Cassandra yelled. "Call the ambulance! Her heart is going into supraventricular tachycardia—her heart rate is 210, 220!"

Tomás didn't hesitate. He stepped forward and took Lili's small, icy hands. They were stiff, her fingers clenched into claws. Holding them, a flood of memories overwhelmed him: those of his daughter Elena, whom he had held in this very hospital, feeling life slip away like sand through an hourglass.

"Lili!" Tomás roared over the din of the monitors. "Lili, listen to me! You're safe! The police are here! The doctors are here! Don't let them get away with it!"

Whether it was her voice or the strong dose of sedatives that finally took effect, the convulsions stopped abruptly. Lili's body collapsed completely onto the pillows. The terrifying movements beneath her skin slowed, her body relaxing into a sort of rigid, swollen dome.

The monitors gradually slowed down, their frantic beeping settling into a tense and unstable rhythm.

Dr. Velázquez wiped a thin, cold sweat from his brow, his hands trembling, as he examined Lili's pupils. "She's under general anesthesia. But her oxygen saturation is dropping. The mass is compressing her diaphragm. If we don't operate to remove it in the next few hours, she's going to suffocate from the inside."

"Then operate," said Tomás in a hoarse voice. "Take that off him."

“An open laparotomy on such a malnourished child, with a tumor attached to her main arteries? The mortality rate is over 90%, Si quan Reyes,” Cassandra said, staring straight into his eyes. “She’ll bleed out on the operating table before I can even make the first major incision. But if I don’t operate… she’ll die anyway.”

Before Tomás could answer, his personal phone vibrated violently in his pocket. It was Mariana Flores. He left the intensive care unit and put the phone to his ear.

"Tomás," Mariana said breathlessly and panicked. "You must return immediately to the house on Alamo Street."

"Mariana, I can't leave the hospital. The young girl almost died a minute ago. They're preparing for emergency surgery..."

“No, Tomás, you don’t understand,” Mariana interrupted, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper. “The forensic team I called to inspect the house? They just ripped up the floorboards in the master bedroom. The ones right behind where Lili was sitting.”

Tomás felt the air leave his lungs. "What did they find?"

“It’s not just about mold, Tomás. There’s a basement under this house that doesn’t appear on any city map. And… God, the smell coming from there… The forensic technicians found medical equipment. Old, rusty, but military grade. And there are files. Dozens of them. All stamped with a government seal from 2012, the very year the city supposedly declared this block unsanitary.”

A shiver ran through Tomás to his very bones. The missing piece of the puzzle was taking on a sinister, bureaucratic form. The system hadn't ignored Lilia García out of mere laziness or lack of resources.

The system knew exactly what was in that house.

"I'm coming," said Tomás.