No, Tomás, you don’t understand,” Mariana interrupted, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper. “The forensic team I called to sweep the house? They just pulled 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 mold, Tomás. There’s a subterranean basement beneath that house that isn’t on any city blueprint. And… oh god, the smell coming out of it… The forensic techs found medical equipment. Old, rusted, but military-grade. And there are files. Dozens of them. All stamped with a government seal from 2012—the same year the city supposedly condemned this block.”
A chill settled deep into Tomás’s bones. The piece of the puzzle he had been missing began to take a sinister, bureaucratic shape. The system hadn’t just ignored Lilia García out of laziness or a lack of funding.
