Beyond the Hound - Autopsy Trigger

March 2068. Dr. Alina Crawford is suddenly summoned by Veckert Rainer of the ROPES department to dissect a strange corpse unearthed in Eastern Europe - a corpse that might hold some answers and open even more questions. A corpse that skirts the definition of what 'human' means.

“You ROPES idiots are going to be the death of me, innit?”

A sigh, a groan, a roar – all mingled together in the voice of the coroner, pulling her mask up, wearing a fresh set of gloves. Her tools were sprayed on a table close to the bed, arranged according to some alien logic only she could follow. At least, that was how it looked like to Dan and Veckert, silently watching the live dissection from the other side of a bulletproof glass. Veckert ignored the snide remarks of the woman slowly going through her selection of scalpels, sipped her coffee instead. Dan stirred his herbal tea with a spoon, without losing sight of whatever happened in the coroner’s room, resuming his discussion without paying attention to the mortician’s words.

“I think giving Rishel a second chance wouldn’t be that bad, Veck. He’s been behaving well in prison and he’s gone through a lot, you know – being a Dreamer and such.”

“Have you bedded him already, Dan?”

“…how is that even relevant?”

“I’d say it is. Your bias is showing. Much like with that Thai drug dealer last summer.”

Dan frowned, let out a low growl.

“…you’re too perceptive for your own good, Veck.”

“And that’s why I’m your boss.”

Veckert downed the rest of her coffee, glanced through the window again, at the woman preparing for her job with a mixture of annoyance and glee. Dr. Crawford had a stomach of steel. Willingly working as a coroner was already something Veckert could never do – too many entrails, too much blood, too many dead bodies. Yet, Alina Crawford didn’t seem fazed in the slightest. While she wasn’t an official member of ROPES, she was brought in every time they had issues with personnel availability. As long as there was a corpse to dissect and someone to pay for the funeral, Dr. Crawford would have never said ‘no’. That case, though, was different. The body, or what was left of it, had been dead for around three months and belonged to an individual that couldn’t be classified as human – at least not completely. The ROPES department retrieved it somewhere close to Bratislava thanks to an anonymous, mysterious whistleblower. And EiN, in his absolute lack of common sense and empathy, exhumed it from its makeshift grave in such a brutal way that it might have violated a couple dozen international laws and religious protocols. Still, the dead could not complain – or, at least, they couldn’t influence Yard’s funding lines. A cold chill ran through Veckert’s spine. Would her reaction have been different, if that was the corpse of Nyu Lyonell, her first girlfriend? Would she have been able to keep that indifference at the sight of her lifeless body, ready to be torn apart by a cadre of cold practitioners? She didn’t need to think too hard about it – she already knew the answer. And that answer made her heart skip a beat.

“Alright, azure bitch, we’re starting soon. I hope you’ve transferred the money to my bank account already, because I ain’t gonna raise a finger if I find out you swindled me!”

The voice of Dr. Crawford reached Veckert through the speakers, brought her back to the present moment. That blond woman in her very late thirties was a by-the-book example of what being a single teenage mother could do to a woman and her daughter. All considered, Jean came up pretty fine – despite having to share her life with that bizarre specimen she called ‘mother’. Around her, only two medical robots as assistants, no other human beings. Well, except for EiN, tapping his foot on the floor with a broken rhythm, wearing a white gown and a mask too. EiN, though, wasn’t there to operate on a dead body. He was there as insurance. If things went sideways, he had to save Dr. Crawford and kill the body with extreme prejudice. Killing something that wasn’t alive felt like a contradiction – but that’s what all ROPES were: contradictions, glitches in the fabric of reality. Even when it didn’t come to ROPES, though, being a coroner wasn’t the safest job on the market – not even when your patients were androids. Emmelyin Kranzner, one of Rosenmaester’s victims, experienced it on her own skin. Still, EiN couldn’t give it a damn. His reflexes were fast, his eyes were faster. Whatever happened during the operation, he was ready to act with extreme prejudice and seal the deal before it became too dangerous.

Dr. Crawford shrugged, carefully started to pull down the white blanket that covered the corpse. A Caucasian woman in her twenties. Black hair. Pale complexion. Several broken bones, a hole where her heart was supposed to be. Dr. Crawford squinted her eyes, glared at Veckert again, reached for the first scalpel.

“More than three months? Are you sure she’s been dead for that long? There’s no trace of the usual decomposition, even if this body was – what? – directly buried under a mound of dirt? This doesn’t check out.”

Veckert had a look at her printed documents, nodded.

“Yes. Her death is believed to have happened directly after the Underworld Auction in Slovakia. Our anonymous whistleblower was very precise.”

“And how can you trust them?”

That was a good question, indeed. Veckert rummaged through her papers once again, trying to remember that weird phone call she got at Yard, from an unknown Hong Kong number.

‘She’s resting there. Take care of her, before he does.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Question unanswerable.’

A dry, almost emotionless tone, altered by a voice changer. Just a couple days after ‘SPREAD_THE_TAPES.mpx’ became viral on the internet, no less. That video showed an apparently out-of-order elevator, one sporting a discolored sticker of an old Straosphere mascot, suddenly coming to life, opening its doors and swallowing the videomaker, whoever they were. That short clip, per se, made absolutely zero sense. The message that accompanied it, even less so. LILITH AWAITS. That’s it. That was the whole message. LILITH AWAITS. Nothing more than that. The net was fighting on the genuineness of that footage and on the meaning of that short sentence, with Stratosphere playing coy. Veckert couldn’t shake the ominous feeling that the two events were somehow connected. The timing was too precise and Stratosphere seemed to be involved in both incidents. Veckert didn’t believe in coincidences. They somehow happened, but more often than not there was a precise reason behind the curtains for that outcome. So, her working hypothesis was that someone at Stratosphere who knew the dead woman watched the video and decided to talk. Who the ‘he’ in that message was, though, was up to debate.

“Dr. Crawford, we have been able to ascertain the identity of the deceased individual as Katja Ljaveti

, codename Lemur – former Fourth Angel of Stratosphere. Confirmed missing in action by Mr. Greschnik at the end of December 2067. Her twin sister Rebecca Ljavetič was also declared MIA, but we have intel that suggests she’s still alive – in some shape or form. So, absent contrary evidence, this has to be her identity. Assuming she died during the auction, her corpse had to be buried down there for at least that much time.”

“Wait, are you asking me to dissect a bloody ANGEL?! Oh, for heck’s sake, Rainer, I knew I had to ask for more money! I assume there won’t be any funeral either – ‘cause Mr. Magnifico doesn’t even know about it, right? Ugh, this sucks so much for my revenue stream.”

Dr. Crawford played with the scalpel in her hand, twirled it around a couple of times, before finally moving it close to the porcelain white skin of the corpse. She took a deep breath. Inhaled. Exhaled. Then, started cutting through the body, readying her senses for whatever could come out of it.

**

A bucket was already full. The other close. Yet, Dr. Crawford couldn’t help it at all. She had to throw up, once again, under the gaze of Veckert Rainer, while trying to keep her innards at bay. A sudden retching, vomit leaving her mouth. Her breath was ragged, her heartbeat pumping. All while Dr. Danael Tey sat close to her, browsing through the CCTV footage, looking into the results of the chemical probe.

Only to be interrupted by yet another yell by Dr. Crawford, before she threw up her soul once again.

“…what the heck was that thing…?”

Her voice was weak, ragged, raspy. She still couldn’t come to terms with it, she still couldn’t believe it. Those weren’t organs. There weren’t organs inside her. Just a soup of molten entrails, of ruptured vessels, mixed and dissolved in a way she couldn’t believe possible. Her scalpel sunk into it, without finding any resistance, as if she were dipping it in a pool of water. There was nothing alive inside that mess, not even the usual bugs, insects, worms, whatever she was expecting to scrape. Just a tangle of dead cells meshing in a gruesome cauldron of tissue that, at some point, might have been the corpse’s entrails. Nevertheless, the dead woman’s outside appearance was almost spotless, in an unnatural way that had no chances of being real. Except it was, right under her nose. Which meant that even that gray goo had to be real. That gray goo that assimilated her scalpel. That gray goo that became inert immediately after, hardening and ceasing all activity as soon as UV light reached it. What was it? Dr. Crawford couldn’t tell. She was still in a state of mild shock, one she didn’t ask for. Why her? Why didn’t they leave that dissection to someone more familiar with ROPES?

Dan went through the analysis, the photos. He massaged his chin, turned to face his boss.

“Neither plant nor animal, Veck. Closer to a fungus, but not of any known variety. I’m not a biologist, though, so don’t quote me on that.”

“I know, Dan.”

“But I’m sure Dr. O’Rilley would be very happy to help Yard. Her latest paper on shoiga parasites and their potential cross-breeding mechanism with common Earth ticks was excellent. Her work on shoiga STDs was even more groundbreaking, if you ask me. I wish I were half as brilliant as her.”

Veckert glared at him, squinted her eyes with something akin to absolute disgust.

“…don’t say her name. Not when I’m around and can hear it. The fact that I still owe her the success of the whole Walking Night operation makes my skin crawl.”

EiN had of course left the room as soon as the dissection was over. He had no interest in dead things and no attitude for science, much to Veckert’s chagrin, leaving all the deduction work to her. She turned the page around, let out a low groan. The pictures flashed in front of her eyes, pictures of an amorphous gray mass gluing together all the innards of what once was a human being, a mass extending under her skin, inside her muscles. Her perfect outside appearance made that even harder to stomach. Veckert closed her eyes. Just like those plants. No signs outside until they bloomed and your tissues were completely replaced with vegetal matter. Still, there was a major difference: contrary to the flowers that took over their hosts, that goo was unquestionably dead. It reacted to the touch just as a non-newtonian fluid would, but didn’t show any signs of activity, neither chemical nor physical. It was a corpse inside a corpse, the remnants of something that once had to be alive, at least in some shape or form.

Dr. Crawford stood up, gritting her teeth, cursing under her breath, wiping her lips clean. That gray octopus wasn’t even the strangest part about that body, as shocking as it was. The way it reacted to the chemicals, the way its skin burned when treated with her tools… she had seen that kind of reaction only once. And it was with dolls. Zavira dolls. Scaffoldings of flesh and blood that looked human, behaved like human and felt like human, while being just time-limited, degraded versions of the real deal. Kitsunes models lived for exactly fifteen years before automatically ‘switching off ‘with their biological death trigger – all while never aging and never having a single menstrual cycle in their short life. Dr. Crawford felt like puking again at that thought. Zavira dolls were artificial creatures born only to please rich customers with too much money and treated as commodities, not even being recognized human rights in many jurisdictions. They couldn’t even hide well, as their bodies had a plethora of genetic and biological markers to identify them in case they tried to go incognito. Which was the problem there: that dissected body on the table didn’t belong to a real human being. It was a vat-grown replica of sorts, one with all the markers of a doll years past expiration date – living on borrowed time.

Dan rummaged through the pages again, focusing on the closing statement, on that ending remark. He frowned, gazed at the woman slowly regaining her composure, wiping her lips clean.

“…Dr. Crawford, this can’t be a doll. It’s illegal to create a doll in the likeness of a real, living person!”

To which said woman replied with a low growl.

“And when has that stopped anyone with money, Dr. Fairytale? If Greschnik told Zavira ‘I want a fuckable version of my daughter’, they’d go ‘yessir’, put their asses up and build that! Ethical guidelines are toilet paper when it comes to dollaroos!”

She ripped the copy of the report off Dan’s hands, slammed her hand on the open page twice.

“I’ve dissected my fair share of kitsunes, Snow White – and wanna know something funny? Their death triggers cause their brains to switch off and all of their organs to rupture, just like that. Except… that gray goo that dripped out of her soup of organs ain’t part of the package. Nor are the clear signs of growth. Like, not at all. This corpse was a teen at some point. Doll’s don’t age, yes? That’s also illegal, right?”

Dan clawed the report back from her hands, right as his eyebrow twitched at being called ‘Snow White’. He felt the urge to slap her hard, before remembering that A) he had the same athletic prowess as a snail under sedatives and B) Veckert was right there, glaring at him and their esteemed coroner of choice with a less than serene gaze. Still, he pressed on. Being called names was nothing new to him and complaining about it wasn’t going to address the elephant in the room.

“But what about her brain? Doll brains have a unique neural make-up that makes them programmable. Are you telling me that…”

“Yeah, guess what? Her brain’s a frogging mess too! There’s clear signs of neural repathing, Snow White! Someone took a blank doll brain and burned a specific neural map on it, based on some original template. This… thing is not natural, by any definition of the word – no matter what you or that azure bitch in the corner say!”

That’s when said azure bitch in the corner spoke, in a calm, matter of fact tone.

“First off, Dr. Crawford, I’d ask you not to use that degrading moniker for Dr. Tey. Calling an albino person ‘Snow White’ is as tasteful as calling me a dyke in front of my superior officer.”

Dan blinked, failing to hide a smile, feeling his heart a little warmer than usual. Dr. Crawford blinked too, confused, puzzled by that remark, gazing back at Veckert with her undivided attention. Hers was the gaze of a woman who went fishing with hand grenades and left affiliate links for her funeral services to other coroners. A woman with moral standards as low as the bottom of the Mariana trench. And yet, a woman that had to abide by the will of another woman, one that was in charge of the whole operation, casting her gaze and judgment on her. That woman, Veckert Rainer, was now moving on from that topic and turning back to the subject of the dissection.

“Secondly, I echo Dr. Tey’s sentiment. Dolls of living people are illegal… which means that Mr. Magnifico has some explaining to do. Or, well, would have it if we actually disclosed we have the body of one of his dead Angels.”

Dan and Dr. Crawford exchanged confused stares, before turning back to Veckert in unison.

“I’m not sure I follow, Rainer.”

“How does an extra four thousand pounds confidentiality bonus sound, Dr. Crawford?”

Alina Crawford’s mouth almost fell to the floor with a bang. She nodded without hesitation, grinning from ear to ear.

“I’ve never been here. Never seen this place. Never dissected a corpse today. Nope. I was going places with my daughter and fishing with explosives for the whoooole afternoon.”

Veckert let out a wry smile, nodded too.

“Good. We’ve never located this corpse. We’ve never retrieved it. We’ve never dissected it. All of this is strictly confidential.”

Her emerald irises closed on both Dan and Dr. Crawford, staring at them for a long, uncomfortable second.

“There’s something weird going on with Stratosphere. Something that might or might not fall inside our domain of expertise... unlike that bloody chaingear Rapture show.”

She snapped her fingers, turned around to look through the window once again.

“That… thing behind the glass shouldn’t exist. And that gray fungus...”

Veckert crunched her fist, gazed at the report once again. There was a chance. A chance of connection. A chance she couldn’t let go of. That was probably outside of her jurisdiction, deep into the uncomfortable grasp of other departments. That weird organism wasn’t a ROP, not openly, which meant she didn’t have a horse in that race. Yet, that never stopped her from pursuing the truth. Not even once.

And wouldn’t have stopped her this time either.

“Put me in touch with EXODUS, Dan.”

A dry smile opened up on her face.

“We might have some interesting news for Underambassador Dinox.”

She closed her eyes, let her palm rest on the bulletproof glass. Yes, that was the right choice. Cooperation. Sharing of intel. Moving towards a common goal, one she couldn’t reach alone. Even if that was nowhere as threatening as Baal, it was a symptom of something greater. Something that could explode at any time. Something she couldn’t allow to happen.

Veckert sat down at the desk, looking once again at the body sprayed on the bed, a body that once was a breathing, living woman – now a jumbled mess of molten tissue of unknown origin. She groaned, snapped her fingers again.

“…and call the phagefu—Dr. O’Rilley too… please.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

She gritted her teeth, swallowed her pride, a lump of saliva too. To find the truth, she’d cooperate with her bitterest enemy. To find the truth, she’d sign a deal with the devil. To find the truth, she’d allow a monster-loving weirdo to talk with her in person once again.

Because that’s what it meant to be Veckert Rainer.

That’s what it took to be her.