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

Deep in the abyss

The midday sun failed to warm the ruins of 47 Alamo Street. Yellow police tape flapped in the wind, casting jagged shadows across the dusty courtyard. Two police cars were parked askew outside, their flashing lights silently rotating.

Tomás slipped under the security tape, his hand instinctively resting on the grip of his service weapon. He entered the house, passing the empty spot where he had found Lili a few hours earlier. The wall covered in her drawings seemed even more unsettling. In the harsh daylight, he noticed a detail he had missed in the darkness: the figures of "Dad" in her drawings didn't have normal faces. Their heads were drawn as large, entirely black circles, and they wore what looked like heavy hoods.

"Down here, Reyes," Mariana's voice echoed from a dark corner of the room.

He approached and saw that a heavy, rusty iron trapdoor had been ripped from the floor. A steep concrete staircase descended into total darkness, illuminated only by the halogen spotlights that the forensic team had set up.

Tomás swallowed his saliva and went down the stairs.

The air cooled instantly, filling with the smell of ozone, preservatives, and another, nauseating, metallic odor: the unmistakable smell of dried blood. At the foot of the stairs was a reinforced concrete bunker, the size of a commercial garage.

Forensic technicians, clad in full protective suits, moved methodically through the room. To one side, a shattered glass incubation tank had long since leaked its greenish liquid onto the concrete floor, leaving a thick, calcified residue. On the adjacent table lay heavy steel surgical straps, perfectly sized for a child.

Mariana stood near a rusty metal desk, holding a thick leather binder damaged by water. Her face was completely discolored.

"Look at the dates," she said, handing a piece of paper to Tomás.

It was a medical file. The patient's name, at the top, was blacked out with a thick marker, but the date of birth was legible:  2019.  The year of Lilia García's birth.

"This wasn't a gang hideout," Tomás murmured, reading the jargon-filled text. "Project...  Vesper ? What the hell is that?"