She opened her mouth to scream, but the only sound that came out was the soft, final click of a search engine finding no more results.

He reached up a translucent hand and grabbed Elena's wrist. His grip was cold, precise, and utterly final.

Until tonight.

Elena looked down. Her own hand, the one he wasn't holding, was beginning to fade. First to grey. Then to diagram. Tiny dotted lines appeared along her radial artery. A label bloomed on her forearm: Flexor Carpi Radialis (m.)

She swiped her card. A pneumatic hiss. The door swung inward.

Her legs moved before her mind consented. The corridors of St. Jude’s Mercy were a quiet blue, the vinyl floors squeaking under her scuffed Danskos. The air grew colder, metallic, as she descended. At the vault door, the red light above the key slot was, impossibly, green.

It wasn't a morgue. It was an amphitheater, small and round, like a forgotten Roman surgical theater. In the center, on a steel table draped in white linen, lay a shape. But the light didn't come from overhead lamps. It came from inside the linen—a soft, grey, bioluminescent glow that pulsed like a slow heartbeat.