"Another one today, Maria?"

Altaïr's assistant nodded as she wheeled a gurney into the room, her dark hair pulled back and braided neatly under her cap. She wore no makeup, as per usual, and honestly, he preferred her without. Makeup was impractical; it interfered with too much, in his opinion. The fact that she looked beautiful with or without did not change his opinion.

She smiled up at him sweetly, as if she understood the thoughts moving through his mind at near light speed. She seemed almost a psychic, at times. Or perhaps she simply knew him well. The latter was most likely—he wasn't one to jump to conclusions often, and he certainly was not a superstitious man.

Maria handed him a thin manila folder as he eyed the body bag that held the corpse. Biting his lip as he thumbed through the contents, his eyes skimmed over the reports. David Brewster, male, aged 38. Homicide? There had been quite a few of those, lately. He nodded as he concluded his quick scan, turning back to Maria as he took the gurney from her. She followed him in as he wheeled it to the back, her heels clicking against the tile floor. His shoes also clicked, for that matter, and the front right wheel on the gurney was not level with the other three. He had yet to find one that was, in all honesty. Level, at least.

He grabbed a toe tag and a pen from a stack on a small table, scribbling down the number listed on the papers along with his name, date of death and presumed cause of death. There was that familiar symbol drawn on the palm of Brewster's hand, of a rook mid-flight. Drawn with the ordinary Bic pen, most likely. This would be the third Starrick homicide this month, the sixth overall. He would need to point it out to Freddy, if he hasn't noticed yet. Maybe to Kenway as well. He highly doubted they had missed it.

"Haytham? I thought you two didn't get along," Maria asked, surprise painted on her pretty face.

He hadn't realized he had spoken aloud. He shot a glance at her, to which she simply shrugged in response. He sighed and wheeled the gurney into the refrigeration room, tugging a white coat on in the process to keep out the bite from the cold. Still chilly, but not as bad as without. Moving the body into a refrigeration unit, he pulled out a previous victim from the day before. He pushed the older corpse to another room, where several medical instruments were laid out on trays atop carts. He pulled on the pair of gloves and mask that Maria handed him as he entered. She did the same as he uncovered the body and took the scalpel from Maria.

Philip Twopenny, one of the aforementioned Starrick homicides, had been found dead in his office not two streets down from the mortuary. There was reason enough to assume all four murders were committed by the same person—the other two (or three now, including Brewster) being Rupert Ferris and James Brudenell—as three of the four had died from nearly identical knife wounds in the gut, and all had a rook drawn on the palm with any pen left lying around the scene. Twopenny had been found with bullet in his upper right thigh in addition to the knife, and Ferris a bullet in the back of the head. How many more would die by the hands of...of whoever the killer was? He wasn't gonna lie, no love was lost for the Starrick crew. But that did not mean he enjoyed the murders. Absolutely not. Even if they paid the bills.

"Miss Frye knows, yes?" Maria asked him after a moment.

He grunted in response, nodding to his hands as he cut away the flesh immediately around the wound on the corpse's leg. Maria handed him a pair of tweezers—no need to be mindful of pain, the man was already dead—and repeated her question as he placed the scalpel on the tray. He nodded slowly in confirmation, as he carefully extracted the bullet. Evie Frye had been the one who connected the dots the previous day—she knew something else, but she wouldn't say. It worried him.

He dropped the bullet, coated in the thick blood of a dead man, into a small plastic baggie that Maria held open. That would go to the forensics department—they were still on the case, tracking down the murderer. Maria set the baggie down on another tray, pulling out a permanent marker as she labeled it quickly. She was accustomed to this line of work. Sometimes Altaïr wished she wasn't.

His attention was drawn to the doors as someone entered. He eyed Maria wryly as Evie stepped into the room, clad in her normal scrub suit and lab coat, which was impeccable as always. Her hair was in a ponytail today, however, rather than her usual braided bun that Maria had adopted. She seemed to be more (he searched for the right word) somber of late. More serious, but she kept her wits about her.

Evie nodded professionally towards Altaïr as their eye met, cool blue clashing with deep brown. She offered a warm smile to Maria as well, which his wife returned easily.

"Your shift ended ten minutes ago, Altaïr," Evie stated boldly. Everything she said was bold, whether she wanted it to or not. She was an intimidating woman when she chose to be. She was intimidating when she wasn't trying, too.

He grunted in response, turning to pick up the needle Maria had threaded and bending back over Twopenny's dead body.

"And?" he challenged, as he started stitching up the open wound.

Maria sighed at his display of stubbornness as Evie rolled her eyes and took a spot beside Maria. "And I'm taking over now. It's my shift anyways."

He arched an eyebrow at her as he tied off the stitch, just to spite her. She frowned.

"Maria, could you...?" Evie said, trailing off for a moment as she turned to Altaïr's wife.

He suppressed a sigh as she turned and gave him The Look. "You really should listen to her, Altaïr. Weren't you saying this morning how you wished that–"

"Yeah, we can leave now," he said quickly, cutting her off mid-sentence. Evie didn't need to know about that.

Both women cracked a smile at his reaction, and the sigh he had suppressed earlier found its way out of his mouth. He finished stitching in silence, but judging from the way Maria was smiling, Evie was probably mocking him again.

Tying off and trimming the stitch, he handed the needle to Maria before tugging his coat straight and bending over to cover Twopenny's body again. Evie caught his wrist before he finished, though.

"I'll finish up with him. You go home, you look tired."

He nodded hesitantly after a moment, before following his wife out towards the door. Evie followed them out, and he couldn't help but notice the click click click of their shoes against the tile floor.

"Any word from Jacob?" he asked. The question had become habit, now, something he did before he left and when he came in each morning. Her steps changed as she—stumbled? he wasn't sure—the click of her shoes missing a beat before coming back to its original tempo. That either meant yes, I got word from my brother or yes, I have gotten word from my brother but I don't want to talk about it.

Either way, he was going to talk about it.

"Yes," she said after a moment. Altaïr nodded as he peeled his coat off, placing it on the back of the chair in front of his desk as he did every night. Maria watched her quietly, her surprise hidden behind a mask of calm. He knew she was surprised, probably in the same way she knew what he was thinking earlier. Maybe this almost-telepathy came from marriage. Who knew?

"He called last night," Evie continued.

His mind snapped back to the situation at hand, despite having only drifted for less than a second.

"Late last night. Around 11:30, although I suppose it wasn't late for him, being the night owl he is. Needed to be picked up from a bad part of Yakima. He was hurt," she said quickly, turning away as her eyes started to grow red.

"Yakima?" he asked, slightly confused. "Yakima's hours away from here. What was he doing there, of all places?"

She turned away completely before taking a deep breath to calm herself. "He wouldn't say. I took him to my place—Henry was asleep already, I told him I had to take care of something and wouldn't be back for a while before I left—I took him home and fixed him up. But he–he was gone when I woke up this morning. Or afternoon. We got home around...around 4 AM, and I couldn't sleep until around 8 AM. I– I don't know, I was so, so scared when I woke up and he wasn't there, I couldn't– I can't–"

Tears were pouring down her cheeks in thin rivulets, now, and she avoided looking at either of the two directly. Altaïr felt a sudden wave of guilt—why guilt? He didn't really do anything that would cause this situation, short of asking the question in the first place—and concern flooded through him. Evie was his friend. They had attended college together, they had crammed for tests together, heck, she had introduced him to Maria. If not for Evie, he wouldn't be married right now!

He opened his mouth to speak, but Maria cut him off as she touched his arm gently before turning to Evie.

"We'll look for him, alright? Haytham already set his son on him, and Altaïr has been asking around. If we see him, we'll let you know."

Evie took a shuddering breath, shutting her eyes as her lip trembled slightly. Eventually, she let the breath go, wiping away her tears as she hugged Maria gently.

"Thank you," she mumbled. Altaïr couldn't hear anything else of what she was saying. Maybe that was well—Maria often reminded him not to bother when she was having 'woman to woman talks'.

She peeled herself away from Maria after a moment, her eyes still red rimmed and hands clenched tightly. Jacob was a sensitive subject. They bade one another farewell, and Altaïr led Maria to the car after Evie went back inside. He would need to have a long talk with Jacob when they found him again. If they found him again.

It wasn't until he was brushing his teeth that night that he realized he doesn't work in shifts.

~o:O:o~

Two month had passed, and Maria comes in late into the day with another corpse draped in white fabric. Altaïr looked up from his desk, strewn with papers from legalities and other things he disliked. To put it mildly.

Maria approached him after parking the gurney some six feet away, pecking him on the cheek as she handed him another manila folder.

"From the hospital again."

"Ah."

He thumbed through the folder, with Maria leaning gently against his left shoulder. Malik al'Sayf, aged 29. Anoxic brain injury, coma patient for seven months—seven months!—before his brother, Kadar al'Sayf, finally decided to let him go. Malik. A Syrian name?

He nodded slowly before wheeling the gurney to the back yet again, handing the folder to Maria as he did so. It was late, so he might as well tag this one before locking up for the night.

~o:O:o~

It was cold when he woke. That was the first thing he knew. The next was that he was naked, and in something made of thick black material. A cocoon of sorts. He felt like a butterfly. Were butterflies always this cold? He didn't think so.

He didn't even like butterflies. Why did he feel like one?

There was something metallic lying against his torso, a thin strip running all the way down to his feet. That was strange. He shifted, something that would have struck him surprisingly difficult had he been in the right state of mind, but he wasn't, so there was that. There was something wound around his toe, but he could barely feel it. There was some kind of tag on whatever it was, as well.

The metal strip had ridges in it, like interlocking...fingers? Teeth? A zipper? Why was there a zipper? Was he in some sort of full-body jacket?

Sleeping bags, he reminded himself. Those are called sleeping bags.

In any case, weren't sleeping bags supposed to be, well...warmer? And why was he naked? What kind of full-body bag would–

Oh.

Oh.

A body bag.

He was in a body bag.

He frantically felt across for the tag, to no avail. He was tired. And cold. Eventually, he gave up and tried to break the zipper open. It did, thankfully, but the action tired him more than he would have initially thought. Cold air rushed in, stealing the breath from his lungs, and he felt a wall when he reached up, not six inches above him.

He was in some sort of cell...?

He felt around the inside of the...cell.., looking for some sort of...

Latch, he supposed.

A button would work, as well. Something to open the whatever-it-was.

His numb fingers found a small latch above his head, and dim light flooded through a large opening behind his head when he pulled it open. Air, much warmer and less odorous than the air inside his cell, filled his lungs as he examined the room, wide-mouthed and wide-eyed. There was a sink on the opposite end of the room, with several medical instruments and a cart with probably more medical instruments atop it scattered about in a not-so-random fashion. A type of hospital room...?

He spotted a box if tissues and a box of silicone gloves beside the sink, along with several other things his clouded and exhausted brain couldn't put a name to. There was a door on the other end of the room, and he was freezing. Maybe literally. Maybe he could find a blanket or something.

He climbed out with some difficulty, naked as the day he was born, before he collapsed in a heap on the ground. The ground was cold, but not as cold as the cell had been. He curled up, shivering. His body was sore. And stubborn. How did he get here, anyways?

Fleeting memories flooded through his brain, and he nearly flinched at the sudden rush. He couldn't grasp onto any of them. He remembered rain, and he was walking to...to where? He didn't know.

Bright lights running up the street, a man shouting, rain, and then–

Pain? He had felt pain, and a lot of it.

And it was raining, a lot.

He remembered seeing the...the car that had–

Oh, god, he had been hit by a car.

But–

Then he remembered hearing a sharp bang and the car veered and crashed into a something.

And then–

Nothing. That was it.

He groaned and brought his hand to his head. He needed to find something to wrap himself with. Some clothes, maybe. This was a hospital, right? Did hospitals have clothes? He didn't know. He was cold. It was frustrating.

He tried to sit himself up, to get a better view of the room he was in.

Nope.

He was hit with a sudden bout of dizziness as he did so, and his arms trembled under the weight of his upper body.

Not today, then.

God, what had happened?

He crawled towards the door with some effort, using his feet to push himself forward. He wasn't standing up today. Too weak for that. He kicked off the tag on his toe after some effort and went to find something to open the door. It was cold in here.

There was a hall branching off in both directions when he finally managed to get the door open several hours later. His neck was slightly damp with sweat, from the pure exertion required to find the gauze and other medical items he had used to open it. He scoffed. A snail could be faster than he was, at the moment.

A measure of shame crept into his mind over his predicament. He was too tired to push it away, so he crawled on. The hall to the left led to an exit, but he was naked and sweaty, so he didn't want to go there. He saw lights outside from the windows, cars passing by the building he was in on the streets (which, he noticed, were more busy than the streets of Bellevue). If he had to guess, he was in a large city, larger than his own town.

To be fair, though, Bellevue wasn't exactly small.

But a city.

Bigger than Bellevue, not super far away?

Seattle, he thought, if he had to guess. Most likely Seattle.

Yeah, he really didn't want to go outside now, if this was Seattle.

What was he doing in Seattle?

(I mean, he thought, at least this isn't Tacoma.)

He took the hall to the right, crawling down in his agonizingly slow pace in hopes of finding something to cover himself. His muscles screamed at him, and they felt like they hadn't been used in half a year.

He didn't realize how close to the truth he actually was.

Maybe he could sit up, now, from all the physical exertion he had just put himself through. Maybe he could almost-walk, using the walls for support.

Maybe he could raise the dead and get a PhD in Physics, while he was at it.

Eventually, he pulled himself into what appeared to be the front room, as plastic chairs lined one wall and a long desk stood to his left. A computer whirred quietly in the room (which, thankfully, had carpeting) as images grew and faded on the screen. He glanced at that momentarily before deciding it was probably best to leave it be.

He practically shouted with success when he spotted a jacket on the back of an office chair before the desk, hurrying over as quickly as he could (which, admittedly, was not very fast) and wrapping himself in the article of clothing. It was for a man about his size, thankfully, and he huddled in a corner near the heater as he buried his face into his hands.

Exhaustion had finally caught up with him, and he would have struggled to stay awake on any other day. However, he was fairly certain waking up in what appeared to be (it had taken him an embarrassingly long time to connect the dots) a morgue from what he, again, was fairly certain was not the normal mode of transportation within was certainly not normal in any conceivable way. Because really, who wakes up at (he paused for a moment, trying to remember the image he had seen on the desk) nine o'clock PM inside a refrigeration unit meant for the dead?

He fell asleep before he put any more thought into it. Which was good, because the next day he would realize how creepy that actually was, when he learns that yes, people work at morgues and no, not all of them are men.

Shocking, right?

~o:O:o~

ok so i have two things to say here

first, this was supposed to be a one shot but i said screw it this is gonna be a proper fic so

second, i wont be updating this one as often or as quickly as my other fic, what's left to lose, anyways

because, well, it's always been a sort-of side fic

i lied i had three things to say not two

lastly, i honestly have no idea what happens in a morgue so if i get things wrong blame my imagination and slight abhorrance of researching such topics

but anyways, thx for reading so far

cya soon maybe