The Aerilon Chronicles 2
Aleks Peters #1
A tall male dressed in black walked down a brightly lit corridor, coming to a stop in front of a pair of glass doors. Above said doors read “ASD Labs” in large bold, white text. He looked to a small keypad on the right side of the door, reaching over to type in a short code before an automated voice spoke. “Welcome, Lieutenant A. Peters.” The doors would then slide open and the man walked inside, hearing the doors shut behind him. He stood still for several moments before steam began to spray towards him from all sides, quickly flooding himself and the entire room. Then, after a dozen seconds the steam faded and the door on the other side opened. “Decontamination complete.”
Aleks wandered through to a large laboratory, wandering passed a few Scientists in lab coats typing on computers, filing through paperwork or just walking down the halls.
“Lieutenant.” One would stop, throwing Aleks a crisp salute, which he returned with his own two fingered salute.
“At ease.” Aleks responded as he walked passed, not stopping to address the man, simply continuing on down the hall. The man came to a stop outside a large white room, tapping a button to open the doors before walking inside and looking from left to right. Blinking once or twice, he’d then step over to one of the four operating tables in the room.
On this table sat a corpse. The body heavily mutilated, most of the skin missing or soaked in blood. Aleks reached into his breast pocket, removing a small tape recorder and setting it down, clicking down one of the buttons, placing both hands on the table and leaning as he started speaking.
“This is Lieutenant Aleks Peters. I’m here to analyse subject twentyfour dash B.” The man spoke with an accent similar to that of a citizen of New York, however the occasional word would have a slight hint of a Russian accent.
“Much like the other subject before it, Twentyfour B appears to be suffering from the same wounds as Twentyfour dash A. That being the majority of skin mutilated or torn away. The victim is unidentifiable at this time, however a blood sample is currently in the lab and this file will be updated when we have a match.” Aleks would reach to his right, collecting a small tool from the tray to his right.
“Much like Subject A, twentyfour B was discovered on the South side of the downtown district. However, this body appears to have been ripped in half at the base of the spine.”
Aleks would flick a small switch on the side of the tool in his hands, a small, blue beam appearing on the tip of the small blade like tool. The beam flickered, being no more than an inch in length and a few centimeters wide. Aleks reached a hand down, lightly touching the flesh of the corpse on the table, instantly cutting through the muscle and bone of the torso with ease.
“I’m going to start by examining the vital organs of the body, starting with the lungs and heart.” Aleks would announce to the tape recorder as he slid his hand down, creating a thin incision in the torso, switching off the tool and placing it down before adjusting his black, latex gloves. Aleks moved his hands above the cut, digging his two index fingers inside the cut and prying them away from each other, stretching out the cut enough to slip all eight of his fingers into the cut, letting his thumbs rest on the torso on either sides of the cut he had made. Aleks then pulled, snapping open the torso with far more ease than what would usually be needed to do such a task.
“Much like our last subject, what we believe to be advanced deterioration to the muscles have caused the flesh and bones of twentyfour B to be much weaker, meaning that tearing at the chest cavity is a far easier task than to be expected.” Aleks would ramble away as he shuffled his hands around, small squelching and squishing noises coming from inside the corpse as he moved around flesh, muscle and the lungs. “Lungs are in late stages of decay. In layman's terms, this smells like shit.” He would rummage around a little more, pulling out a large chunk of muscles and flesh, dumping them to the side. Aleks would give a nod, setting both bloody hands down on the table again.
“As I expected, the heart has deteriorated to a near liquid form, as if it’s been melted down to a paste of sorts. The cause of this is still unknown. As of now, no documented Oddities are capable of doing this to their prey. Aleks took a step to the left, moving to stand beside the corpse’s head. He’d tilt the head back, pulling open the mouth. Aleks took a moment to take note of the face of the victim, speaking loudly and clearly for a moment.
“While the Subject’s face lacks any proper skin, the facial expression of the Subject suggests a look of pain and terror. It can be assumed that our victim saw their attacker.”
Aleks would then reach two fingers into the back of the corpse’s throat, moving his fingers around only to feel a liquidy substance against his fingers, hearing a squelch from inside the back of the throat.
“As with Subject two-four A, the majority of the tongue has been melted away, collecting in the back of the throat in a liquid form which seemingly caused our victim to choke to death. Had this not happened, we are uncertain of how much of these injuries were caused after death and how many were caused while our victim was alive.” Aleks moved a little to his right, pulling out his fingers and peeling off both gloves, tossing them aside before pulling out a second pair to put on, reaching over to pick up the tape recorder.
“That will be all for our first analysis. As expected and now confirmed, our Subject was killed by the same creature. However we are unsure which. I will continue the tests once our blood samples return. Until then, this is Lieutenant Peters signing off.” And with that, Aleks clicked the stop button on the recorder.