Chapter 3 - The Uninvited Guest
When the doorbell rang fifteen minutes later, Mariana opened it to find Lucia standing in the hallway accompanied by Officer Vance, a veteran city detective assigned to forensic scene security. Lucia pushed inside quickly, her face pale beneath her blue scrubs.
"Where is Diego?" Lucia asked immediately, scanning the open living room.
"He went to the grocery store to get oranges," Mariana said, her chest tightening with an overwhelming sense of foreboding. "Lucia, please tell me what’s going on. Why did you bring an officer? It’s just a clogged drain!"
Lucia led Mariana into the kitchen, keeping her voice low so little Sofia, who was playing with her toy blocks in the corner, wouldn't hear. "Mariana, that photo you sent me... that wasn't a piece of animal bone from cooking, and it wasn't plastic. The structural density and porosity in that image belong to human skeletal tissue."
Mariana felt as if the air had been violently sucked out of her lungs. She backed into the kitchen counter, her hands shaking violently. "No... that's impossible. We’ve lived here for two years! It must be from the previous tenants or a construction error!"
"This building was completed six months ago, Mariana," Lucia said sternly, taking her friend by the shoulders. "You and Diego are the first people to ever live in this unit. The plumbing is isolated to your apartment's specific drainage line."
Officer Vance pulled on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and stepped into the bathroom with his tool kit. He knelt by the marble tile floor, unscrewing the decorative drain cover. The chemical smell grew stronger, filling the luxury bathroom with an acrid, haunting scent.
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"Somebody tried to dissolve something in this shower using industrial sodium hydroxide," Officer Vance said, his voice echoing against the glass shower walls. "They washed it down with boiling water, but larger fragments got caught in the secondary trap."
👉 Read PART 4 to discover the mysterious disappearance that had haunted Diego’s past!
