THE PRIEST
Father Gabriel wasn’t alone.
Two men stood beside the van.
Marcus recognized one of them immediately.
The convent’s security director.
Daniel stared at the screen.
“They’re taking her.”
Marcus nodded.
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Call the police.”
“I already tried.”
Daniel looked at him.
“No signal?”
Marcus checked his phone.
Nothing.
The entire morgue had lost communication.
Then the screen went black.
The cameras had been disconnected.
Marcus understood.
“This wasn’t about stealing a body.”
Daniel swallowed.
“What was it about?”
Marcus looked at Sister Mary’s empty table.
“Whatever she knew.”
He returned to the envelope.
It was gone.
But something else remained.
A tiny piece of paper had been trapped beneath the table.
Marcus picked it up.
There were only four words.
ROOM SEVENTEEN. UNDERGROUND.
Daniel frowned.
“What is Room Seventeen?”
Marcus shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Then he remembered something.
The old hospital complex beneath the morgue.
It had been built decades earlier.
Most of it had been sealed.
But there were rumors among the older staff about rooms that were never included on the official blueprints.
Marcus looked at the clock.
1:03 a.m.
The two-hour instruction suddenly made sense.
Sister Mary hadn’t been telling them to wait for her to return.
She had been telling them to wait until someone came for the body.
She knew they would come.
She wanted Marcus to see them.
She had been planning for her death.
Daniel whispered:
“She knew she was going to die.”
Marcus looked at the message on the table.
“Yes.”
“And she knew someone would take her body.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Marcus didn’t answer.
Instead, he grabbed a flashlight.
“Come with me.”
“Where?”
“Room Seventeen.”
They left through the maintenance corridor.
The passage was narrow.
Cold.
Old.
At the end, they found a rusted metal door.
There was no number.
Marcus pushed it open.
A staircase disappeared into darkness.
And somewhere below…
they heard a woman’s voice.
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