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Chapter 4: THE HOSPITAL
publish date:
2026-08-31 13:55:07
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2:17 A.M. Chapter 19 : THE FIFTH VICTIM
Eliana spent the following days in a relative state of psychological calm, strange to her after weeks of constant tension. She exchanged two more emails with Dr. Winter, trading academic references and short excerpts of professional notes, and felt real gratitude for this new relationship in her life, however marginal it seemed compared to the weight of the bigger case.She hadn't told Daniel the details of this meeting yet — not out of any intent to hide it, but because it felt too personal to her to share within the context of the official investigation, a small refuge of her own amid all the surrounding chaos.But this relative calm didn't last long.Daniel called her one morning, his voice carrying a tension that had grown all too familiar now."New crime," he said, without preamble. "They found a man dead in his office this morning, in one of the old government buildings."Eliana felt her chest tighten. "Who is he?""An employee in the medical and government archiving department,
2:17 A.M. Chapter 18 : A NAME FROM FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
The reply to Eliana's message came faster than she'd expected — less than two days later, a short, warm message from an administrative assistant at Dr. Winter's clinic, telling her that the doctor herself had reviewed her request and expressed personal interest in meeting her, given her academic focus on criminal behavior and its relationship to psychological trauma.The appointment was set for three days later, a preliminary video call before any potential in-person meeting afterward, in keeping with the clinic's usual policy for new cases or academic consultations.Eliana waited for this appointment with a strange mix of tension and anticipation, entirely different from the fear she'd grown used to feeling with every new development in this story. She felt, for a reason she couldn't fully understand, that this meeting would carry something different — closer to a return than to a new confrontation.When the time finally came, she sat in front of her computer in her apartment, dresse
2:17 A.M. Chapter 17 : THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
The next day, while waiting to hear back from Daniel about the possible location of the Ravencroft facility, Eliana returned to the old photograph she'd found days earlier — the one taken of Claire Morgan and four other children in front of the stone building.In her previous passes, she'd focused on the children themselves, and on that vague fragment of a name visible on the building's facade, without paying enough attention to the rest of the photo's details. This time, she decided to study every corner of it more carefully, treating it as if it were real forensic evidence for her academic project.She zoomed in on the photo as far as she could without losing clarity, and began examining the background more closely this time, away from the children themselves.At the far right edge of the photo, partly outside the camera's main focus, she noticed an adult she hadn't paid attention to before — a woman standing slightly behind the children, her hands clasped in front of her in a profe
2:17 A.M. Chapter 16 : THE MISSING FILE
The next day, Daniel tried to officially access any record related to the Ravencroft facility, using his authority as a detective to reach into the broader government databases not normally available to the public.He began his search confidently, expecting to find at least some basic administrative documents: operating permits, tax records, routine inspection reports — anything that might explain the nature of that facility's work before it closed.But what he found — or rather, what he didn't find — troubled him more than any clear evidence could have.He called Eliana that afternoon, his voice carrying deep confusion."There's nothing," he said, without preamble. "I don't mean the information is limited or sparse — I mean literally nothing. That single record I found before, the one about the old property permit, has completely vanished now from the database itself."Eliana sat frozen in shock. "How does an official record just disappear like that?""That's exactly what worries me,
2:17 A.M. Chapter 15 : DANIEL'S THEORY
Eliana called Daniel early in the morning, after a night she hadn't slept through at all. She hesitated for long seconds before pressing the call button, thinking about the mysterious voice's warning the night before: "Be very careful who you trust."But after everything she'd been through with him so far, she couldn't imagine that Daniel was who that warning meant. She decided to tell him most of the details of the call, holding back only one small part she felt was too intimate to share right now — the precise smell, the full physical sensation of the pain, details that felt too personal to say out loud even to the closest person to her in this whole story.They met at a quiet café far from the station this time, at Daniel's own suggestion, who seemed eager to keep their unofficial meetings away from the eyes of his recently tense superiors.Daniel listened with total seriousness as she recounted the details of the call, his face growing darker with every new sentence."He asked if
2:17 A.M. Chapter 14 : THE FOURTH CALL
The evening hours dragged by in painful slowness, Eliana drifting between failed attempts at sleep and anxious bouts of wakefulness, her eyes returning again and again to the clock on the wall, as if watching it directly might either delay or hasten the moment she both dreaded and waited for.She finally lay down in bed around midnight, her old phone beside her, ready to record as usual, her main phone held directly in her hands, to make sure she wouldn't miss a single second of ringing this time.She didn't know exactly when her eyes had closed, but she woke suddenly to the phone vibrating between her fingers, before the ringing even began, as if her body had started sensing the moment before it actually arrived.She looked at the screen: unknown number. 2:17 A.M.She answered quickly, her voice still heavy with the trace of brief sleep."Hello."The usual silence, a little longer than normal this time, until for a moment she felt the call might not carry any words at all. Then the v
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