Chapter 7 – The Buyer
CHAPTER 7 – THE BUYER
The dragging sound didn’t stop.
It moved through the tunnels like something heavy being pulled across stone that had never been meant to see daylight.
Closer.
Then farther.
Then closer again.
Like the house itself was breathing it in and out.
Mariana pressed both hands over her ears.
“No… no, no, no…”
Daniel didn’t move.
His eyes stayed locked on Leo’s small shoe sitting on the raised platform.
A simple object.
But in this place, nothing was simple.
The underground woman stepped around the platform slowly, like she didn’t want to disturb something invisible resting on it.
Daniel finally spoke.
“Who is the buyer?”
The woman paused.
That question changed her posture immediately.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
As if she had been expecting that word eventually.
From above, another faint scream echoed.
Inés again.
But weaker now.
Farther away.
Mariana looked up instinctively.
“She’s moving,” she whispered. “She’s going down…”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
“Answer me,” he said to the woman.
Silence stretched.
Then—
She exhaled.
“The buyer isn’t one person,” she said.
Daniel’s eyes narrowed.
“Don’t do that,” he snapped. “Don’t turn this into riddles.”
Her gaze met his.
“It’s not a riddle,” she replied quietly. “It’s a rotation.”
Mariana shook her head, trembling.
“I don’t understand…”
The woman pointed toward the tunnels.
“Different floors. Different families. Different needs.”
Daniel’s voice dropped.
“Stop.”
But she continued anyway.
“Some want silence,” she said. “Some want obedience. Some want replacement. Some want disappearance.”
Mariana’s face twisted in horror.
“Replacement?”
The woman nodded once.
Daniel stepped forward.
“Who are you talking about?”
A long pause.
Then she said it.
“The people who pay to make children forget they were ever taken.”
Silence.
Even the distant dragging sound seemed to hesitate.
Mariana whispered:
“That’s not real…”
But her voice didn’t carry conviction anymore.
Daniel looked at the tunnels again.
At the markings.
At the symbols.
At the structure that wasn’t random anymore.
It was organized.
Like infrastructure.
He spoke slowly.
“So Patricia wasn’t acting alone.”
The woman shook her head.
“No.”
A pause.
“Your sister is a handler.”
Mariana flinched.
“Don’t say that,” she snapped.
But the word had already landed.
Handler.
Daniel repeated it quietly.
“What does she handle?”
The woman looked directly at him.
“Transitions.”
From above—
A sudden loud crash.
Wood breaking.
Patricia’s voice screamed something unintelligible.
Then silence again.
Mariana grabbed Daniel’s arm.
“We need to go back up—Inés—”
Daniel didn’t move.
His focus was shifting now.
Away from panic.
Toward structure.
Toward understanding.
“Explain it,” he said to the woman.
She nodded slowly.
“Children arrive in the system,” she said. “Sometimes through abduction. Sometimes through negotiation. Sometimes through failure.”
Daniel’s eyes sharpened.
“Failure?”
The woman hesitated.
Then:
“Families who agree to silence in exchange for protection.”
Mariana shook her head violently.
“That’s insane. No parent would—”
But Daniel interrupted quietly.
“They would if they thought they were saving them.”
That sentence made Mariana go still.
The underground woman continued.
“Once inside, the child is rotated between layers depending on demand.”
Daniel’s voice tightened.
“Demand for what?”
She looked at him.
“For absence,” she said simply.
A pause.
“For compliance. For grief. For replacements that don’t ask questions.”
Mariana backed away slightly.
“This is not happening,” she whispered. “This is not—this is not real…”
But the dragging sound returned.
Closer this time.
And heavier.
Daniel stepped toward the tunnel marked with the circle-line symbol again.
“The buyer,” he repeated. “Where are they now?”
The woman didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, she listened.
Her head tilted slightly.
As if she could hear something through the stone.
Then she said:
“They’re already here.”
Mariana froze.
“What?”
Daniel turned sharply.
“Where?”
The woman pointed downward.
“Below the last layer.”
Daniel stared at her.
“There’s more?”
She nodded.
“One.”
A pause.
“The receiving floor.”
Mariana laughed once—broken, disbelieving.
“Receiving floor?” she echoed. “This is a house, not—”
But her voice died when she saw Daniel’s face.
Because he wasn’t denying it anymore.
He was calculating it.
The structure.
The depth.
The impossible logic of it.
From above—
Inés’s voice again.
But now distorted.
Like it was coming through water.
“Daddy… she’s crying now.”
Mariana’s breath caught.
“Who’s crying?”
Inés didn’t answer directly.
Instead she whispered:
“The lady who opens doors.”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed instantly.
“Patricia,” he said under his breath.
The underground woman reacted sharply.
“Then she’s already begun the final transition.”
Mariana grabbed Daniel.
“What does that mean?”
But Daniel was already moving.
“Show me the receiving floor,” he said.
The woman hesitated.
For the first time, she looked genuinely uncertain.
“That’s not something you go to,” she said quietly.
Daniel stepped closer.
“I’m not asking.”
A pause.
Then she nodded.
But before she turned—
She added one warning.
“If you go down there, you won’t come back the same way.”
Mariana grabbed Daniel harder.
“No. Daniel, please—this is how they trap you, this is how they—”
But Daniel gently removed her hand.
“I don’t have another direction,” he said.
That was the truth.
Not bravery.
Not rage.
Just fact.
They moved again.
Down the final tunnel.
The air changed almost immediately.
Heavier.
Still.
Wrong.
The walls became smoother here.
Too smooth.
As if worn down by repetition rather than construction.
The dragging sound stopped.
Completely.
The silence that replaced it was worse.
Because now there was nothing to locate.
No direction.
Only presence.
The tunnel opened into a final chamber.
And Daniel stopped.
So did Mariana.
Even the underground woman paused behind them.
Because this chamber didn’t look like the others.
It wasn’t reinforced.
It wasn’t built like storage.
It looked… arranged.
Like a waiting room that had forgotten it was supposed to be temporary.
At the center of the room—
A large circular marking on the floor.
And around it—
Doors.
Not tunnels.
Not passages.
Doors embedded directly into the stone walls.
Each one labeled with faint, fading markings.
Some scratched out.
Some rewritten.
Some fresh.
Mariana whispered:
“Why are there doors underground?”
Daniel didn’t answer immediately.
Because he was looking at something else.
At the center circle.
There were footprints.
Many.
Small.
Bare.
And layered on top of each other like repeated arrivals.
The underground woman stepped forward slowly.
“This is the receiving floor,” she said quietly.
Daniel’s voice was low.
“Receiving from where?”
She looked at him.
“From everywhere above.”
A pause.
“From every house built on top of this system.”
Mariana shook her head.
“This is impossible…”
But her voice was weaker now.
Because even she could feel it.
The scale of it.
The structure of it.
The way it didn’t feel like a single house anymore.
It felt like a network.
Daniel stepped toward the center circle.
And that’s when he heard it.
A whisper.
Not from Inés.
Not from Mariana.
From inside the room itself.
All around them.
Soft.
Overlapping.
Multiple voices.
Children.
Daniel froze.
The whispers grew slightly louder.
Not chaotic.
Coordinated.
Like they were waiting for someone to arrive.
And then—
One voice broke through.
Clear.
Close.
“Dad…”
Daniel spun instantly.
“Leo?”
Silence.
Then again:
“Dad… don’t come closer.”
Mariana gasped.
“That’s him,” she whispered.
Daniel took a step forward.
“Leo, where are you?”
The whisper responded.
“On the other side.”
Daniel looked around the chamber.
The doors.
The circle.
The markings.
The system.
And slowly realized—
This wasn’t a room.
It was a threshold.
May you like
And as he took another step forward—
One of the doors in the chamber creaked open slightly from the inside.
