"Do we know what killed them?" Joe asked while delicately pulling the sheet back up to cover the panic-stricken faces of the two corpses. Two bodies had came in this morning; one had been found in a parking lot next to a burnt-out car and the other had been discovered in an abandoned taxi. The victim in the taxi was covered in scratches while the other was totally unharmed. But both had the same look of frozen panic and pain etched onto their faces.
"I'm running some blood tests at the moment, Joe." Barry replied. He was relieved that Joe had fixed the sheet since the expressions were seriously unsettling to look at. "I should have the results any minute really."
"Sure." Joe looked at the covered bodies again. "So what can you tell me from what you already know?"
"Well..." Barry began, "The man is Dr Samuel Mossan, a lecturer of Psychology at Gotham University while the women is Professor Jean Wright and she's also a lecturer at Gotham University." He paused. "The injuries on Wrights' face and body appear to self inflicted but don't seem to be directly responsible for her death."
"Why would two Gotham lecturers be in Central City together?" Joe glanced at Barry questioningly. "Do you think it's a coincidence?"
Barry thought for a second. "No. I think I remember Dr Wells telling me about a conference which was being held on recent psychological breakthroughs. I suppose both would have been attending that."
Joe opened his mouth to respond when an intern walked in with a few files in hand. "That's the blood work finished. Lets have a look and see what's happened here."
"This is weird." Barry squinted at the readouts in front of him. "Both victims had a very unique variety of drugs in their system at the time of death. I don't recognise the formula but the blood shows that they were also experiencing extreme levels of stress at the time of death. If I had to guess, I think they might have died of heart failure Joe."
"So...murder?" Joe reached for the charts which Barry had in his hand. "There's no way this was a coincidence."
"I asked the coroner to send me up his findings too and he says that a brain scan has shown that the amygdala in both patients was severely inflamed. That may be a result of the drug cocktail."
"And what would that do to a person? An inflamed amygdala?" Joe asked confused.
"Well the amygdala is traditionally associated with fear conditioning and anxiety. Adding in the state of the victims and the blood work, I think these people might have been scared to death."
Joe grimaced. "Do you think this is a meta-thing?"
"Might be. I'll go run it by the rest of the team." Barry shrugged. "I'll get back to you when I know more Joe." Barry nodded a goodbye before disappearing.