PART 4
I woke to the sound of someone sharpening a pencil.
Slow scrape.
Turn.
Slow scrape.
Turn.
The sound was so ordinary that, for a few seconds, I believed I was back in school.
Then I tried to move.
Leather straps tightened around my wrists.
Another crossed my chest.
Two more held my ankles against a narrow metal bed.
The ceiling above me was white.
The light buzzed.
The air smelled of bleach, old paint and the bitter chemical taste still coating the back of my throat.
San Gabriel.
I was back inside the hospital.
Not in Room 214.
This room was older.
Underground.
No window.
No clock.
Just a steel door and a small black camera watching from the corner.
Dr. Valdés sat beside the bed, calmly sharpening a yellow pencil over a wastebasket.
He looked almost exactly as I remembered him.
Silver hair combed carefully to one side.
Dark suit beneath a white medical coat.
Gentle eyes that made frightened families believe he could be trusted.
Ten years had added lines to his face.
Nothing else.
He placed the pencil on a clipboard.
“Good morning, Nayeli.”
My tongue felt heavy.
“Where is Lidia?”
“You have always asked about her before asking about yourself.”
“Where is she?”
“And that,” he continued, “has always been your greatest weakness.”
I pulled against the restraints.
The leather held.
“Where is Sofi?”
Dr. Valdés studied my face.
“The child is alive.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No. It was a demand.”
He picked up the pencil and wrote something on the clipboard.
“Subject remains confrontational upon awakening.”
I laughed once.
The sound came out dry.
“You kidnapped me, strapped me to a bed, and you’re offended by my attitude?”
His pencil stopped.
“You were returned to the institution that has cared for you for ten years.”
“The police gave me to you.”
“Some people still understand that public safety matters.”
I remembered the officers restraining me.
The nurse pressing the cloth over Lidia’s mouth.
Sofi being pulled from her mother’s arms.
“You own them?”
“Own is such an ugly word.”
“You pay them.”
“I support people who support the truth.”
I stared at him.
“The truth that Damian abused my sister?”
His expression did not change.
“Damian was undisciplined.”
“He tortured her.”
“Yes.”
The easy admission surprised me.
“You knew?”
“Of course.”
“You sent him.”
“I introduced them.”
My body went still.
Dr. Valdés leaned back.
“Damian was never supposed to become emotionally involved. His responsibility was simple. Marry Lidia. Monitor her. Find the missing records.”
“He nearly killed her.”
“That was not part of my instruction.”
“But you allowed it.”
“I allowed pressure.”
His voice remained calm.
Clinical.
As though we were discussing weather.
“You call broken bones pressure?”
“I call them unfortunate consequences caused by a man with poor impulse control.”
“And what do you call keeping me locked here for ten years?”
He considered the question.
“Containment.”
I pulled harder against the straps.
Pain burned around my wrists.
Dr. Valdés watched closely.
“Still angry.”
“Still breathing.”
“Barely, according to your original records.”
He smiled faintly.
“The wrong twin survived.”
The words from the photograph.
The words Mateo had written.
“What does that mean?”
Instead of answering, Dr. Valdés looked toward the steel door.
“Come in.”
The lock clicked.
A man entered.
He walked with a slight limp.
The right side of his face carried a thin scar from his mouth to his ear. One arm hung more stiffly than the other.
But I recognized him.
Mateo.
The boy behind the school.
The boy whose arm I had broken.
The boy whose blood I remembered on my hands.
He stopped several feet from the bed.
For a long time, neither of us spoke.
Then he said, “Hello, Nayeli.”
His voice brought back a corridor filled with shouting.
Lidia crying.
A chair scraping across concrete.
My fists striking flesh.
I pulled against the restraints again.
Mateo did not move.
“You sent the photograph,” I said.
“Yes.”
“You watched me inside San Gabriel.”
“Yes.”
“You wrote that the wrong twin survived.”
His jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Dr. Valdés answered for him.
“Because Mateo has spent ten years believing you murdered his sister.”
I looked at Mateo.
“What sister?”
His good hand curled into a fist.
“Marisol.”
The name meant nothing.
He saw that.
Pain crossed his face.
“You don’t remember her.”
“I never knew anyone named Marisol.”
“You lived beside her for six months.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You shared a room with her before San Gabriel officially admitted you.”
I turned toward Dr. Valdés.
“There was no one else in my room.”
“Not in the memories we permitted you to keep.”
For the first time since waking, true fear entered my body.
Not fear of the restraints.
Not fear of Mateo.
Fear of the empty spaces inside my own mind.
I remembered my first year at San Gabriel as a collection of disconnected images.
A white hallway.
Medication cups.
My mother crying behind glass.
A nurse washing blood from my hair.
Weeks in which I slept more than I woke.
I had always blamed the drugs.
Perhaps that was exactly what they wanted.
Mateo stepped closer.
“Marisol was fifteen.”
His voice trembled.
“She was brought here after telling a teacher that her stepfather was hurting her. Dr. Valdés diagnosed her with delusions.”
I looked at the doctor.
He adjusted one cuff.
Mateo continued.
“She kept saying she wasn’t sick. No one believed her. Then she met you.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You believed her.”
A faint image flashed through my mind.
A girl humming in the dark.
Thin fingers passing a folded note beneath a door.
Then it vanished.
Mateo saw something change in my face.
“You remember something.”
“No.”
“You promised to help her escape.”
“I was sixteen.”
“You were stronger than everyone here.”
“I was drugged.”
“You still tried.”
His voice broke on the final word.
Dr. Valdés made another note.
Mateo turned toward him.
“Stop writing.”
The doctor ignored him.
Mateo slapped the clipboard from his hands.
It struck the floor.
The pencil rolled beneath my bed.
Dr. Valdés looked up slowly.
“Control yourself.”
“I’m not one of your patients.”
“No. You are merely one of my many mistakes.”
Mateo’s face hardened, but he stepped away.
I watched them.
They were working together.
But they hated each other.
That mattered.
“What happened to Marisol?” I asked.
Mateo looked at me again.
“You got her to the service tunnel beneath the laundry room.”
Another image.
Bare feet running across wet concrete.
A red emergency light.
A girl holding my hand.
“You were almost outside,” Mateo said. “Then the alarms started.”
I closed my eyes.
A metal door.
Someone screaming.
Smoke.
“Marisol fell,” he continued. “You went back for her.”
My breathing changed.
“I carried someone.”
“Yes.”
“I remember carrying…”
But the face would not come.
Only long black hair across my arms.
Blood dripping onto my hospital gown.
“You reached the courtyard,” Mateo said. “And then Dr. Valdés found you.”
I opened my eyes.
The doctor had stopped smiling.
“What did you do?” I asked him.
Dr. Valdés picked up the clipboard.
“Marisol was already dying.”
“What did you do?”
“She had seen confidential material.”
“What material?”
He did not answer.
Mateo did.
“Files on children.”
Dr. Valdés shot him a warning look.
Mateo continued anyway.
“Behavior experiments. Drug trials. False diagnoses. Wealthy families paid San Gabriel to hide children who embarrassed them. Others were used to test treatments that had never been approved.”
The buzzing light seemed to grow louder.
“That’s why I was kept here?”
Mateo shook his head.
“You were already part of the program before you arrived.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“Your parents signed the forms when you and Lidia were eight years old.”
“No.”
“They needed money.”
“My parents were afraid of me.”
“They were afraid of what they had allowed.”
Dr. Valdés sighed.
“Mateo, this melodrama is unnecessary.”
“You gave them drugs,” Mateo said to me. “Both of you.”
The room blurred for one second.
“Lidia too?”
“Different combinations. Different doses. Identical twins were valuable because they gave Valdés a natural control group.”
I looked at the doctor.
He did not deny it.
One twin medicated.
One twin observed.
One twin pushed toward rage.
The other pushed toward fear.
I remembered bottles in our kitchen cabinet.
Small white pills our mother called vitamins.
Lidia always received the blue bottle.
Mine had been amber.
Joy hit me like fire.
Fear made my hands shake.
Anger moved through me like something living.
I had believed those feelings were simply who I was.
“What did you give me?”
Dr. Valdés sat again.
“Nothing that created what was not already present.”
“What did you give me?”
“Compounds designed to increase emotional response.”
“You made me violent.”
“You were predisposed.”
“You made Lidia afraid.”
“She was naturally compliant.”
I pulled so hard against the restraints that the metal bed shook.
Mateo stepped backward.
Dr. Valdés watched with satisfaction.
“There,” he said softly. “That is what I mean. Even after all these years, the response remains remarkably consistent.”
I forced myself to stop.
I closed my eyes.
Breathed through my nose.
One.
Two.
Three.
When I opened them again, Dr. Valdés’s satisfaction had faded.
“You taught me that,” I said.
“Control?”
“Yes.”
He gave a small nod.
“Then perhaps your treatment was not entirely wasted.”
“You should be grateful for one thing.”
“What is that?”
“You taught me how to wait.”
Silence filled the room.
Mateo looked toward the camera.
Then at the straps.
He had not come only to watch me suffer.
He wanted something.
“Why did you send Lidia the photograph?” I asked.
He hesitated.
Dr. Valdés answered.
“Because Mateo believed he could frighten her into revealing where she hid the records.”
“The records from Marisol?”
“Copies.”
Mateo moved closer to the bed.
“Your sister stole them the night of the school incident.”
The memory returned in pieces.
A classroom after sunset.
Lidia holding a thick envelope beneath her jacket.
Mateo blocking the exit.
His hand tangled in her hair.
Not dragging her.
Trying to stop her from reaching something on the floor.
A broken bottle.
No.
A lighter.
Lidia had been trying to burn the records.
“You were stopping her from destroying them,” I whispered.
Mateo nodded.
“She was panicking. She thought if she burned everything, Valdés would leave your family alone.”
“I saw you holding her.”
“You saw what he wanted you to see.”
Dr. Valdés had been there.
Standing at the end of the hallway.
Watching.
I remembered his voice.
Nayeli, she needs you.
He had pointed me toward Mateo.
Then stepped aside.
“You told me he was hurting her.”
Dr. Valdés folded his hands.
“You reached that conclusion yourself.”
“You used me.”
“I redirected an escalating subject.”
“You knew I would attack him.”
“I suspected.”
Mateo touched his damaged arm.
“You broke three bones.”
I looked at him.
“I thought you were hurting my sister.”
“I know.”
The anger in his face weakened.
For the first time, he looked less like an enemy and more like someone who had also spent ten years trapped inside one moment.
“What happened after I attacked you?”
Mateo glanced at Dr. Valdés.
The doctor remained silent.
“You were sedated,” Mateo said. “Lidia disappeared with the envelope. Valdés convinced your parents that you needed permanent treatment.”
“And Marisol?”
Mateo’s eyes filled.
“She died the same night.”
The image of the girl in my arms sharpened.
Black hair.
Blood.
Her lips moving.
A whisper against my shoulder.
Don’t let him keep the names.
I looked at Dr. Valdés.
“You killed her.”
“She suffered cardiac failure.”
“From the drugs you gave her.”
“She was medically fragile.”
“You killed her.”
Mateo stepped between us.
“I believed you helped him.”
“What?”
“I was told you attacked Marisol during the escape. Valdés showed me reports. Witness statements. Photographs.”
“All false,” I said.
“I know that now.”
“How?”
“Lidia contacted me six months ago.”
That hurt more than I expected.
“My sister knew you were alive?”
“Yes.”
“She knew all of this?”
“Not all of it.”
“And she told me nothing.”
“She was trying to protect Sofi.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Everyone keeps protecting me by lying.”
Mateo lowered his voice.
“Lidia found one of the original files inside your grandmother’s apartment building. It had been hidden inside a wall before your grandmother died.”
The property Damian wanted.
The reason Valdés sent him.
The building was not only valuable.
It contained evidence.
“Where is the file now?”
“No one knows.”
“Lidia does.”
Mateo’s silence answered me.
Dr. Valdés stood.
“This conversation has gone far enough.”
He moved toward the door.
Mateo blocked him.
“You said I could speak to her.”
“And you have.”
“You said you would release Sofi.”
“I said I would consider it.”
Mateo grabbed the front of his coat.
“Where is the child?”
Dr. Valdés looked down at Mateo’s hand.
“Remove it.”
“Where is she?”
The steel door opened behind him.
Two orderlies entered.
Both carried stun batons.
Mateo released the doctor and raised his hands.
Dr. Valdés adjusted his coat.
“You mistake access for authority.”
He turned toward me.
“Lidia has information that belongs to San Gabriel. You will persuade her to return it.”
“I won’t help you.”
“You will.”
“No.”
He smiled.
“Then Sofi will remain here.”
My control cracked.
I surged against the straps.
“Don’t touch her!”
“There she is,” he murmured. “The real Nayeli.”
One orderly pressed a button on the wall.
Electricity moved through the metal frame beneath me.
Pain seized every muscle.
My back arched.
My teeth slammed together.
The shock lasted only three seconds.
It felt like three minutes.
When it stopped, I collapsed against the mattress, gasping.
Mateo stared at Dr. Valdés with horror.
“You said the treatments had ended.”
“They have evolved.”
“You promised no one would be hurt.”
Dr. Valdés looked almost amused.
“You entered a psychiatric hospital with armed men and corrupt police officers, and you expected gentleness?”
Mateo’s face changed.
“You planned the shooting.”
“I planned a distraction.”
“Officer Ramirez almost died.”
“Collateral errors occur.”
The two orderlies grabbed Mateo.
He fought.
One baton struck his ribs.
The other hit the back of his knee.
He collapsed.
They dragged him toward the door.
“Nayeli!” he shouted.
I lifted my head.
“The pencil!”
The door closed behind him.
Dr. Valdés looked beneath the bed.
The yellow pencil he had dropped was still there.
Just beyond the reach of my fingertips.
He followed my eyes.
Then smiled.
“You always were resourceful.”
He kicked the pencil farther away.
The steel door closed.
The lock engaged.
I was alone.
For several minutes, I did not move.
I listened.
Footsteps faded down the corridor.
A distant door slammed.
The camera continued watching.
I turned my head slowly.
The pencil lay near the wall.
Too far.
But the clipboard had fallen closer.
Its metal clip had broken loose.
A thin silver piece rested beneath the bed frame.
I stretched my fingers.
Pain tore through my shoulders.
The restraints allowed less than an inch of movement.
I exhaled and flattened my wrist.
Again.
Again.
The leather scraped skin from my hand.
Blood made it slippery.
I twisted my thumb inward until the joint screamed.
Then I pulled.
My right hand slipped free.
I lay still.
The camera’s red light remained steady.
I reached beneath the bed and took the broken metal clip.
The ankle restraints opened first.
Then the chest strap.
Then my left wrist.
I climbed from the bed, every muscle trembling from the electric shock.
The steel door required a key.
But San Gabriel had taught me its secrets for ten years.
Every secure room had an emergency release.
Not inside the door.
Inside the wall panel beside it.
I removed two screws using the metal clip.
Behind the panel was a red lever.
I pulled it.
The lock clicked.
The corridor outside was empty.
I moved barefoot beneath flickering lights.
This part of San Gabriel had been closed for years.
Or that was what patients had been told.
Old room numbers remained on the walls.
B12.
B13.
B14.
From behind one door, someone whispered.
“Help me.”
I stopped.
A small face appeared through the observation window.
A teenage boy.
Behind him stood two more children.
All wearing gray clothes.
All watching me with the same hollow expression Lidia had carried into the visitation room.
San Gabriel had never stopped.
It had simply moved underground.
“I’ll come back,” I whispered.
The boy pressed his hand against the glass.
“They always say that.”
I wanted to open the door.
But I had no key.
And if I was captured again, none of us would leave.
“I will come back.”
I continued down the corridor.
At the far end, I heard voices.
Dr. Valdés.
The nurse.
And Lidia.
I followed the sound to a monitoring room filled with screens.
Through a narrow window, I saw my sister strapped to another chair.
The nurse stood behind her.
Dr. Valdés placed a telephone on the table.
“You will call the person holding the file,” he said.
Lidia’s face was pale.
“I don’t know where it is.”
“You moved it.”
“No.”
“Your husband searched the building for three years.”
“He never found it.”
“Because you removed it first.”
Lidia said nothing.
Dr. Valdés leaned closer.
“Where did you put it?”
“I won’t tell you.”
The nurse struck her.
My hand closed around the metal clip.
I forced myself to remain still.
Evidence.
Information.
Then action.
Dr. Valdés picked up the phone.
“Perhaps your daughter will encourage honesty.”
He pressed a button.
A video appeared on the monitor beside Lidia.
Sofi sat inside a small white room.
Alone.
She was crying.
“Mommy?”
Lidia threw herself against the restraints.
“Sofi!”
The child looked toward the camera.
“Mommy, where are you?”
“I’m here, baby. I’m here.”
Dr. Valdés muted the screen.
Lidia stared at him.
“If you touch her—”
“You will do what?”
He smiled.
“Call Mateo’s number.”
Lidia’s face changed.
Mateo did not have the file.
But someone connected to him did.
Dr. Valdés placed the receiver near her hand.
Lidia slowly dialed.
The call connected.
A woman answered.
“Hello?”
Lidia closed her eyes.
“It’s me.”
The voice on the phone became urgent.
“Are you safe?”
“No.”
“Where is Nayeli?”
Lidia looked toward the observation window.
For one terrifying second, I thought she could see me.
“She’s here.”
The woman inhaled sharply.
“Then he knows.”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell her?”
“No.”
“Lidia, you promised.”
“I couldn’t.”
Dr. Valdés pressed a finger against the speaker button, recording everything.
The woman continued.
“She deserves to know what you did.”
Lidia began crying.
“I know.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did she do?” I whispered.
On the telephone, the woman asked, “Does Nayeli still believe she was committed because of Mateo?”
“Yes.”
“And she still believes you visited her yesterday by choice?”
Lidia’s face crumpled.
Dr. Valdés watched her carefully.
The woman’s voice became colder.
“You need to tell her the truth before Valdés does.”
Lidia looked at the video of Sofi.
Then she whispered the words that made the entire room tilt.
“I can’t tell her I was the one who signed the commitment papers.”
I stopped breathing.
Dr. Valdés smiled.
Lidia continued, sobbing now.
“I was sixteen. He told me Nayeli would only stay for thirty days. He said if I signed, he would destroy our test results and leave us alone.”
The woman answered quietly.
“But she stayed ten years.”
“I know.”
“And during those ten years, you married the man Valdés chose.”
“I was trying to find the files.”
“You also helped them keep Nayeli sedated.”
“No!”
Lidia’s voice rose.
“I sent the pills because Valdés said stopping suddenly could kill her.”
“You never checked.”
“I was scared.”
“You always say that.”
Lidia looked as though each word was cutting her.
“I made mistakes.”
“You sacrificed your sister.”
“I was a child.”
“So was she.”
My fingers went numb.
For ten years, I had waited for Lidia’s visits.
For ten years, I had believed she was the only person who had not abandoned me.
She brought fruit.
Letters.
Warm sweaters.
And medication.
She had signed the paper that locked the door.
Dr. Valdés stepped closer to her.
“Ask where the file is.”
Lidia shook her head.
He unmuted Sofi’s video.
The little girl was pounding on the door.
“Mommy!”
Lidia broke.
“Please,” she said into the phone. “Tell me where you moved it.”
Silence.
Then the woman answered.
“I didn’t move it.”
Lidia stared at the telephone.
“What?”
“You did.”
“No.”
“Six months ago. You came to my house with the file.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Lidia—”
“I never came to your house.”
The woman’s breathing changed.
“You weren’t alone.”
“Who was with me?”
The answer came slowly.
“Nayeli.”
Everyone in the room became still.
Dr. Valdés looked toward the dark observation window.
Lidia whispered, “That’s impossible. Nayeli was inside San Gabriel.”
The woman said, “Someone who looked exactly like her brought me the file.”
A chill moved through my body.
Not Lidia.
Not me.
Another woman with our face.
Dr. Valdés rushed toward the monitoring controls.
He replayed the recording.
Someone who looked exactly like her.
Lidia’s eyes widened.
“Doctor?”
For the first time, Dr. Valdés looked frightened.
Not angry.
Not surprised.
Frightened.
He turned toward the nurse.
“Lock down the entire building.”
“Why?”
“Now!”
Alarms began screaming.
Red lights flashed through the underground corridor.
Every steel door slammed shut at once.
I stepped away from the window.
On one security screen, I saw the hospital’s front entrance.
A woman had just walked through the main doors.
She wore a black coat.
Dark hair framed her face.
My face.
Lidia’s face.
She looked directly into the security camera.
Then she smiled.
Dr. Valdés stared at the screen as if he were seeing a ghost.
“That’s impossible,” he whispered.
The woman lifted a small black device in her hand.
A detonator.
Every screen in the monitoring room went dark except one.
Words appeared across it in white letters.
YOU KEPT THE WRONG TWO.
Then the woman’s voice came through the hospital speakers.
Calm.
Clear.
Identical to mine.
“Hello, sisters.”
Lidia looked toward the ceiling.
I stood frozen in the dark corridor.
The voice continued.
“My name is Marisol.”
Somewhere beneath us, an explosion shook San Gabriel……………
LAST PART…
TO BE CONTINUED IN LAST PART…
