2:17 A.M.
Winter to share some useful academic references by email, and an open invitation to reach out again "anytime you need to talk, academically or personally."
Eliana ended the call feeling an unexpected warmth filling her chest, a feeling entirely removed from the tension and fear that had accompanied every other interaction connected to this mysterious case.
She didn't think again about that passing sentence Dr. Winter had mentioned quickly, in the middle of a longer, seemingly more important conversation, about "Project 217."
But the number itself, 217, had already settled, without her realizing it, somewhere deep inside her memory, alongside all the other scattered pieces of a puzzle whose f