Post Mortem

Erik woke up to white, artificial light blinding him, its source swimming above his head.

His mind instantly began to race, overwhelmed by the various smells around him, dissecting the macabre mixture of decay, peppermint, blood, antiseptic soap, metal and several human brains whose whispered to him of their ages and sizes and their state of health. One was still alive and working, the others in various states of decay, but all still edible.

Almost everything was edible when you were hungry and Erik was always hungry.

Perks of being a zombie.

The sole living brain was the one closest to him and once his eyes had gotten used to the light, he could make out its owner leaning over him.

A man who - judging by the looks of it - was just about to sink a scalpel into Erik's chest right above the heart, too focused on his task to notice that the body beneath him had begun moving and was now looking straight at him. For the fraction of a second Erik had expected to see Shaw, expected to find himself back in that place, strapped to a table in one of his basement laboratories, the last months nothing but a strange, drug-induced dream - But instead the man above him was younger than Shaw, pale skin contrasting with dark hair and blue eyes that seemed to glow in the pale light above.

The monster had awoken along with Erik, clawing at his insides to just grab the man, crush his head open and eat, eat, eat...

Erik cleared his throat.

The man above him hesitated, then looked around and over his shoulder, as if expecting to see an intruder, someone who'd walked in on this scene. Only then did his eyes wander back to the body in front of him and slowly towards Erik's face.

Their eyes met and for good measure, Erik winked.
He wasn't the type for winking - in fact, he was sure it made him look more demented than anything else - but the effect was well worth it. The scalpel slid from the man's grasp and clattered onto the edge of the metal table and from there to the ground without him even seeming to notice. Seconds ticked by on the man's wrist-watch until the man began to comprehend the situation. A trembling hand reached for his neck to take his pulse, but Erik grabbed it by the wrist before he could touch him.

"Don't."

The man froze, his mouth opening and closing and his mind obviously struggling to make sense of what was happening.

Erik gave him time to find his speech.

"Y-You were dead. Just a few minutes ago, you...you didn't have a pulse. You had a kn- You were dead when they you found you - there's is a death certificate…"
"I'll put with the others." The other man opened his mouth to argue, but Erik had already swung his legs off the cold metal table he'd been placed on. "Is there anything I need to sign to check myself out?"
"You mean to say that this is not...the first time something like this happened to you?"
The man almost managed to sound professional about this and even if medical professionalism was his go-to mode when the situation seemed out of hand, Erik couldn't help but commend him for it.

"I'm fine. And I want to leave."

He tried to stand up, but the pathologist blocked his path, his hands reaching out, ready to push him back down onto the table. Or at least - ready to try. Erik had little doubt that he could overpower him easily in a fair fight. Rational thought didn't help much against the irrational spike of fear he felt at the sight of a white coat, erie pale light and of gloved hands reaching for him from above.
Maybe the pathologist had noticed his flinch, because his hands retreated and when he spoke, his voice was calm and collected.

"You are fine, because you woke up before I cut into your chest, cracked your rips open, removed your inner organs, measured them, weighed them, put them back in and stuffed you with toilet paper."

"Nothing of what you just said wants to me to spend more time with you." He looked down his deathly pale - and stark naked - body. "Where are my clothes?"

"Shepherd's Bush Police Station, I fear."

"Wonderful."

The pathologist shook his head again, but this time he managed to look disappointed in a way that might have looked right on a teacher. Or a professor.

"I could have killed you." He said that in such a concerned voice, as if it truly meant something if he had. As if killing Erik would truly have been a bad thing. As if he or anyone else would even have noticed, when working under the assumption that Erik was already dead to begin with. As if he could have killed him permanently. As if-
His thoughts were caught in a loop. A sure sign that he needed to eat. Healing always left him hungry.

Something caught Erik's eye - a silver something on a table behind the man. A stethoscope.

"How about this - I'll let you examine me. If you say I'm fine, I'll walk out of here. If you say there is anything wrong - I'll see any doctor you want."

"You dropped dead for no apparent reason. That should be proof enough that…"

"Not proof enough for me."

Another huff and - if that was possible - the man looked even more disappointed than before. But he gave in, turning around for the stethoscope.
The second the pathologist had turned around, Erik single-handedly lifted the cast-iron lamp next to the table and swung it. It made a truly awful sound when it onnected with the other man's head and knocked him out cold before he hit the ground as a crumpled heap in a white lab coat, missing the edge of the table by the wall only through sheer luck.

Erik sniffed the air around him.

Food. He needed food. He didn't know how long he had been out - or what exactly had happened to him - but the hunger was worse than usual and that wasn't a good sign.
He had seen what would happen to him if he didn't feed. He'd seen them in the labs, empty husks with only hatred and ravenous hunger to keep them going. When he got angry he could feel it as well, could feel the hunger clouding his mind, leaving nothing more than wrath and hunger.

Painfully aware of his own nudity, he slid off the table and looked down onto the unconscious man in front of him. He was smaller than Erik and narrower around the shoulders. He'd have to get his clothes elsewhere.
Grabbing the man beneath the shoulders, he picked him up effortlessly and laid him down on the table. He didn't even stir, but his brain didn't smell damaged to Erik.
Actually, the pathologist had a very healthy brain, for someone whose liver smelled faintly of cirrhosis.

The front of his lab coat had a badge with his name on it.

Charles Xavier, MD. A name that sounded familiar and yet he couldn't place it.

"I do apologise, Dr Xavier."

By the wall stood a tray with a collection of scalpels and surgical instruments. Erik picked up the bonesaw and marvelled at it, before switching it on, feeling morbidly civilised, opening up a skull the way they were supposed to. The hissing sound of the saw echoed back from the tiled walls and made his hair stand on end, but at the same time he was fascinated by such a useful instrument.
Time for breakfast.

He sucked in the air around him, the sweet, fleshy smell of Xavier's living brain stronger than anything else. It almost made him dizzy and his mouth water...

No.

In the cold chamber behind him he could smell the dead body of a young woman, no older than thirty and apart from some traces of decay, her brain was in a perfect state, no signs of illness and a temporal lobe to die for.
He pushed the thought of what had become of him aside and pulled open the drawer with the body of the young woman inside, allowing himself to mourn what would happen to her bright red hair, before getting to work, removing the top of her scalp with the bonesaw. Handling the electrical saw wasn't as instinctive as he expected and the hole he left in her skull was uneven, but it didn't matter. He needed to eat

The taste of the young woman - now back in her drawer - still filling his mouth and clearing his mind and giving his body the energy it needed after healing whatever injuries he had suffered - he searched the morgue for spare clothes. All he found were some scrubs that made him look even paler than he was, but at least he'd be able to move unnoticed through the hospital and find the exit.
As a last souvenir, he nicked the keys from Xavier's desk.