The Message That Arrived Tomorrow
· 9 min read
At nine fourteen that evening, Inés received a voice message sent from her own mobile phone. The message appeared in a conversation with herself, which she used to save notes. The sending date showed the…
Part 1 — Open case
At nine fourteen that evening, Inés received a voice message sent from her own mobile phone.
The message appeared in a conversation with herself, which she used to save notes. The sending date showed the following day, at seven forty-two in the morning.
Inés stared at the screen.
Then she checked the date on her phone. It was Tuesday.
She opened the audio file.
At first, she heard only a broken breath. Then her own voice spoke:
—If you are listening to this, I will already be dead tomorrow. Gabriel was right. Find box 318. When the clock rings, look underneath the table. Do not trust Salcedo.
The message ended with a sharp click, like the sound of a metal door closing.
Inés placed the phone on the table.
Gabriel had died six months earlier at the San Telmo Municipal Archive. He had fallen down the lift shaft while examining documents in the basement. The investigation had concluded that it was an accident.
Álvaro Salcedo, the archive’s deputy director, had been the last person to speak to him.
Inés played the audio again. The voice was identical to hers, but the sentences sounded as if they had been assembled from different fragments. There was no natural breathing between the words.
She opened the file information.
The message had not been sent from her phone. It had come from a tablet connected to the archive’s internal network.
At ten o’clock, she called Salcedo.
—Did you send anything from my account?
—At this hour?
—The message mentions box 318.
Salcedo remained silent.
—That box does not exist —he said.
—Then you will have no trouble showing it to me.
—We will talk tomorrow.
—What happened to Gabriel?
Salcedo hung up.
Inés did not sleep.
At half past six, she arrived at the archive. The building occupied an abandoned railway station. The circular clock still stood on the façade, frozen at seven forty-two after a fire in 1998.
The mechanism had been disconnected for years.
Inés went down to the basement and walked between the metal shelves. The boxes were arranged by number. Box 317 was in its place. So was box 319.
There was a narrow space between them.
Inés reached inside and pulled out a grey box covered in dust.
The number 318 was written on the lid.
Inside, she found a photograph, a small key and an inventory folder.
The photograph showed Gabriel standing in front of the lift. Salcedo and Marta Varela, the director of the digitisation department, stood beside him. All three were looking at the camera, but Gabriel’s head was turned slightly to one side.
A date was written on the back: 12 April 2025.
The folder contained a list of documents removed from the archive during the previous two years. Several were listed as destroyed or transferred, although Inés remembered seeing them only a short time before.
On the last page, Gabriel had written:
The documents do not leave through the register. They leave through the lift.
Several names appeared underneath.
The last one was Salcedo.
At seven forty-two, the station clock rang.
A deep chime travelled through the building.
Inés froze.
The sound came again, this time from inside the basement wall. The old mechanism was still connected to some part of the electrical system.
She remembered the words from the audio.
“Look underneath the table.”
In the centre of the storage room stood a wooden table used to examine documents. Inés crouched down and ran her fingers along its underside.
She found a metal object secured with tape.
It was another key.
She tried it in a narrow door beside the lift. The lock gave way.
Inside was a maintenance room. Several packing boxes, a portable lamp and an old telephone connected to a charger lay on the floor.
The screen was on.
Inés recognised her own profile picture.
The phone had a single application open. The audio she had received during the night was there.
It had been scheduled to be sent at seven forty-two.
The creation date showed that someone had prepared it on Monday afternoon.
Inés heard footsteps in the corridor.
She switched off the lamp.
Salcedo appeared in front of the lift.
—I knew you would find the box —he said.
—Did you send the audio?
—No.
—It is connected to your terminal.
—My terminal is connected to the entire building.
Inés raised the folder.
—Your name appears on Gabriel’s list.
Salcedo looked towards the lift.
—Gabriel did not discover what you think he did.
—He died because he found stolen documents.
—That was only part of it.
The old telephone made a sound.
It had received a second audio message.
The date showed the following day.
Inés pressed the screen.
Her own voice whispered:
—Do not open the door. Salcedo is there, but he was not the one who killed me.
On the other side of the room, someone slowly turned the handle.
Salcedo went pale.
—Who else has a copy of your voice? —he asked.
The handle stopped moving.
Then a second hand knocked on the door.
The station clock rang again.
This time, it gave two chimes.
The door began to open.
And someone said Inés’s name from the corridor.
Part 2 — Resolution
The door opened a few centimetres.
Marta Varela appeared in the doorway, holding a master key.
Her hair was tied back and she wore a grey coat. Her expression was calm, almost tired.
—Inés —she said. —You found the box.
Salcedo stepped back.
—Marta, this was not supposed to happen.
—You said she would not come alone.
—I did not know she had received the second audio.
Marta looked at Inés.
—So now you know everything.
—Not yet.
—You know enough.
Inés tightened her grip on the phone. Before going down to the basement, she had sent her location to Nuria Vega, an inspector she had met during the investigation into Gabriel’s death. The signal was weak, but the message showed as sent.
—Did you create the audios? —she asked.
Marta entered the room and closed the door.
—The voice, yes.
—The application was connected to Salcedo’s account.
—Salcedo had access to the servers. I had access to the voice reconstruction system.
Marta ran the department responsible for restoring old interviews. The archive contained hundreds of hours of recordings. With enough material, it was possible to reconstruct a voice and create new sentences.
—You used my voice to make me believe I was going to die.
—I needed you to come here.
—To kill me?
—To recover the folder.
Marta pointed at the documents Inés was holding.
—Gabriel hid evidence. He knew I was selling documents from the archive. Maps, letters, manuscripts. The buyers paid far more than any municipal budget.
—And you organised the sales.
—I found the documents. Salcedo removed them through the lift. Gabriel discovered the system.
Salcedo lowered his head.
—I only helped with the records —he said. —I never wanted him to die.
Marta looked at him with contempt.
—That is what you told Gabriel.
—I did not touch the lift.
—You removed the safety device.
Inés remembered the photograph. Gabriel had been looking to the side. He had not been posing. He had been watching the safety cable.
—He knew something was wrong —Inés said.
Marta answered:
—Gabriel tried to report me. On the night of the accident, he went down to the basement with a copy of the records. Salcedo was supposed to distract him. I tampered with the brake.
—And then you hid the folder in box 318.
—Gabriel hid it. It took me months to find it.
—Then why did you send the first audio from my account?
Marta took another phone from her pocket.
—Because I needed it to look like a warning sent by someone who was already dead. If they found you here, the explanation would be simple. You had entered alone, opened the wrong door and fallen down the lift shaft.
—But the first message said Salcedo was dangerous.
—I wanted you to distrust him.
—The second one said he was not the killer.
Marta smiled.
—I wanted you to lower your guard when you saw him.
Salcedo raised his eyes.
—You told me you only wanted to frighten her.
—I told you what you needed to hear.
Marta moved towards Inés.
At that moment, the old telephone rang again.
A red light began to flash above the door.
The archive alarm had been triggered.
Marta stopped.
—What have you done?
Inés showed her the phone.
—The call with Nuria has been open since before I came in.
Voices and hurried footsteps could be heard through the receiver.
Marta lunged at her.
Inés moved aside and hit a shelf. The folder fell to the floor. The small key rolled towards the lift.
Salcedo grabbed Marta by the arm.
—Enough!
Marta struck him in the face.
Then she picked up the key and ran towards the lift control panel.
—If I go up, I can erase the records —she said.
—The records have already left the building —Inés replied.
Marta froze.
Inés had photographed every page in the folder before Marta entered. The images had been sent automatically to Nuria.
There was pounding on the door from the corridor.
—Police! Open the door!
Marta tried to insert the key into the panel, but Salcedo threw himself at her. They both fell to the floor.
Inés opened the door.
Nuria Vega entered with two officers. Marta was handcuffed beside the lift. Salcedo did not resist.
The investigation lasted several months.
The police recovered documents from a private collection in Lisbon and from two galleries in Madrid. They also found copies of the audio messages on Marta’s computer.
The system revealed that the message had been scheduled from a tablet inside the archive. The future date had been caused by a server error. The server was exactly twenty-four hours ahead.
Marta had assembled fragments of Inés’s voice to create the warning. She had then used Salcedo’s account to hide her trail.
Gabriel had left one final piece of evidence.
On the back of the photograph, he had written an address and a time. The address belonged to a locker at the old station.
Inside, they found a notebook containing the names of the buyers, the amounts paid and Marta’s instructions for removing each item from the archive.
The last page was dated the day Gabriel died.
It contained only one sentence:
If anything happens to me, the person who appears guilty will not be the only one responsible.
The station clock rang again one week later.
It showed seven forty-two.
Then it gave two chimes.
Inés was standing outside the entrance when she heard it. She looked towards the basement, where box 318 remained in police custody.
For the first time, the sound did not feel like a warning.
It was the exact time Gabriel had chosen to leave the truth somewhere safe.
- #cuento
- #salcedo
- #gabriel
- #message
- #audio