"Here's the body you wanted to see, then."
Molly Hooper unzipped the body bag that lay on the cool, unfeeling steel table of the morgue. Although it had been cleaned up a bit, the figure inside was nothing pretty to look at. Something had gotten ahold of this body and done a number on it. A considerable hunk of the victim's neck was missing, and the tissue around it was nothing short of mangled.
John glanced up at Molly, noticing that she almost had a cheerful grin upon her lips. She honestly amazed John at times. She wasn't even remotely fazed by the gruesome sight. In fact, John was sure she'd most certainly seen worse without batting an eyelash. She could come off as a bit bashful, but she had steel.
His gaze drifted next to his flatmate, with that all too familiar expression on his face. John could almost hear Sherlock's thoughts whirring from behind his furrowed brow. He scrutinized every inch of the corpse, occasionally stopping to bend down and take a close look.
"What do you think, Sherlock?" John inquired, eyeing the body but clearly not seeing everything that Sherlock did.
"Those bite marks are unmistakably human. No. No, that can't be right," Sherlock muttered more to himself than to John. He pressed his fingertips together and balanced his chin on them, lost in concentration.
Sherlock's deep process of thought was interrupted by a buzzing sound from his pocket. He gave an exasperated sigh, removed his phone from his pocket, ignored the call, and shoved it back in without a second thought.
Barely a second passed before John felt his own mobile buzz to life. He wasn't surprise when he saw Mycroft's name on the screen. Before John could answer it, Sherlock strode over to him and snatched it out of his hand.
"Busy, Mycroft."
"No, Sherlock you don't understand, you've got to get out-"
Sherlock hung up and tossed the phone to the floor before John could hear where they were supposed to get out to. John frowned at his flatmate and bent to retrieve his mobile. Just before he got his hand to the phone, he paused. Something caught his eye. A flicker of motion. Did that corpse's hand just twitch? He knew that it wasn't uncommon for bodies to twitch after death, but surely this one had been deceased far too long for that to occur. Must have just been a trick of the light.
His phone buzzed to life just as soon as he got it back in his grasp. Mycroft again. That seemed like a strange phone call, especially for Mycroft. It wasn't unusual for him to phone John after an unsuccessful attempt with Sherlock, but he'd never heard Mycroft that frantic before. It was a bit unsettling.
"Don't humor him," Sherlock said offhandedly, knowing John was going to answer. John rolled his eyes and turned away to answer the call.
"Mycroft."
"John, you've got to get out of London. I'm sending a helicopter over to Barts, you've-"
Something wasn't right. He'd never heard Mycroft this frantic before. Not cool, collected Mycroft Holmes.
"Whoa, whoa. Mycroft, slow down. What's going on?"
John never got to hear Mycroft explain. He heard a bloodcurdling scream. Molly Hooper's. He might have even heard Sherlock gasp in surprise. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, his soldier's instincts started to kick in. He'd seen a lot of things, but when he turned around he wasn't prepared to see a corpse, a dead person, alert and moving. His phone clattered to the floor.
Most of all he wasn't prepared to see the mouth of that corpse clamped around Molly Hooper's arm.