The air grew instantly colder, thick with the smell of ozone, chemical preservatives, and something foul and metallic—the unmistakable scent of dried blood. At the bottom of the stairs was a reinforced concrete bunker, roughly the size of a commercial garage.
Forensic technicians in full hazmat suits were moving meticulously through the space. On one side of the room stood a shattered glass incubation vat, its green-tinted fluid long since drained onto the concrete floor, leaving behind a thick, calcified residue. On the table next to it were heavy steel surgical restraints, sized perfectly for a child.
Mariana stood near a rusted metal desk, holding a thick, water-damaged leather binder. Her face was completely devoid of color.
“Look at the dates,” she said, handing a loose piece of paper to Tomás.
It was a medical chart. The patient’s name at the top was blacked out with heavy marker, but the date of birth was clear: 2019. The same year Lilia García was born.
“This wasn’t a gang hideout,” Tomás whispered, reading through the jargon-filled text. “Project… Vesper? What the hell is this?”
“It’s an experimental biological program,” Mariana said, her voice shaking. “Look at the autopsy reports at the back of the binder, Tomás. There were others before Lili. Six other girls, all from impoverished families, all reported missing between 2015 and 2020. The system archived their cases as ‘runaways’ or ‘parental abductions.’ But they were brought here.”
Tomás flipped to the back of the binder. His eyes scanned the gruesome, clinical photographs of small bodies, their abdomens surgically opened. The descriptions were terrifyingly identical to what Dr. Velázquez had found on Lili’s scans: “Organism successfully integrated with host circulatory system… Host rejection minimized via immunosuppressive therapy… Acceleration phase initiated.”
“They weren’t trying to cure anything,” Tomás said, a cold, sickening horror wash over him. “They were cultivation vats. They were using these children to grow something.”
“And Lili is the only one who survived the integration,” Mariana whispered. “Her father didn’t hide her because he was just scared of child services. The people who ran this place… they told him to keep her here. They threatened him. He lied to us out of pure survival instinct.”
Suddenly, one of the forensic techs cried out from the far corner of the bunker.
“Sir! Sĩ quan Reyes! You need to see this! We found the primary power terminal… it’s still drawing current from an underground line. And this monitor just booted up.”
Tomás and Mariana ran over to a heavy, obsolete computer terminal built into the concrete wall. The green monochrome screen was flickering wildly, displaying a series of diagnostic telemetry data.
Tomás’s heart stopped.
The screen was displaying a live, real-time biometric feed. Heart rate: 112 bpm. Core temperature: 104.2 F. Vascular pressure: Critical.
It was Lili’s medical data, mirroring the monitors at San Miguel General Hospital perfectly. This terminal was still actively tracking the entity inside her.
But that wasn’t what made Tomás draw his gun.
At the bottom of the green screen, a flashing prompt appeared. A digital countdown timer that hadn’t been there a second ago, triggered by the sudden spike in Lili’s core temperature during her recent seizure.
[GESTATION CYCLE: 99.8% COMPLETE] [TIME UNTIL RUPTURE: 00:14:22]
Fourteen minutes.
“Oh god,” Mariana gasped, clutching her chest. “The doctor is about to cut her open. If they slice into that mass while it’s at full maturity…”
Before she could finish her sentence, the heavy iron hatch at the top of the concrete stairs slammed shut with a resounding, deafening CLANG.
The lights in the bunker instantly died, plunging them into absolute darkness, save for the eerie, green glow of the terminal screen.
From the top of the stairs, the heavy electronic click of an external deadbolt echoing through the concrete walls. Then, the sound of a ventilation fan grinding to a halt.
And from the shadows behind the incubation vats, a low, wet, scraping sound began to echo—something heavy, slithering out from a drainage pipe that led deeper into the city’s forgotten bowels.
Tomás raised his flashlight, the beam cutting through the dark, only to illuminate a pair of pale, elongated fingers gripping the edge of the shattered glass vat.
What did the system leave behind in the dark? Can Tomás break out of the bunker before the fourteen-minute timer hits zero, or will Dr. Velázquez unknowingly unleash a nightmare on the operating table? Find out in Part 3!
