The phone in their hotel room was ringing.

Why was it ringing?

Roy cracked open his eyes to see Atkins had answered it and was talking to someone- and he didn't look pleased.

He hung up the phone and sighed.

Roy sat up, swinging his feet over the side of the bed.

"What is it?"

"We got another victim. Fresh body. This is escalating." Atkins didn't look pleased.

Roy looked over at the clock. In was a little after 10am.

"Wait- at 10am someone found a body?"

Atkins nodded. "Yeah. Same MO, slit throat. Someone grabbed this girl in broad daylight and took her into an alley." Atkins was looking disturbed. "This is escalating. The killer is getting more brash. They're still processing the scene...".

Atkins was looking over at Ed, who was still curled up in the blankets. He quirked his lips. "I'd like him to come with us. This is fresh- so fresh- he might get something.".

Roy didn't want to take the kid with them. But he couldn't really think of a good reason to say no. Atkins was right- the killer was getting more bold, the bodies more frequent.

"What are you guys talking about?" Ed sat up, blinking the sleep from his eyes.

Mustang frowned. "There's another body."

Ed was already on his feet heading into the bathroom. He emerged five minutes later, dressed in his typical fashion. "Let's go.".

As they walked along, Ed walked along the canal on the sidewalk.

The woman with a toddler on her hip held her toddler and hung laundry to dry on a small line out her apartment window. The eccentric newspaper reader was sitting on his bench by the canal.

Roy noticed Atkins holding a plastic evidence bag with the women's shoe in it from last night.

"What happened to this one?"

"She was either grabbed by the assailant or lured into the alley and her throat was slit. She's a college student."

They continued to walk along. It was easy to find the crime-scene, since there was yellow crime-scene tape at the mouth of the alley.

Ed frowned, crouching to look at the cobblestones. There was no bloodstains at the mouth of the alley.

"She's pretty far in this dead-end to have been dragged. You'd think someone would've heard something if she tried to fight."

"What are you suggesting?" Mustang asked, looking over at Ed as they walked.

Ed shrugged. "Not sure. Just seems like a long way to be dragged by somebody if you're fighting tooth and nail. Maybe somebody she knew and trusted led her this way."

The scene was still swarming with crime scene photographers and detectives.

The girl was dressed in a knee-length brown plaid skirt and a cream colored blazer. Her school books were strewn about in a mess of papers and she was laying in a puddle of blood, lips parted in an expression of horror.

"Did they cut her vocal cords, or could they hear her screaming?" Mustang asked quietly.

Ed didn't bother to stick around to hear the man's answer, instead stepping as close to the body as he could without disturbing the pool of blood around her.

What happened to you?

He was hit with a wave of anxiety. "Mustang?" he turned, looking behind him reflexively.

"Yeah?"

"Just making sure you're still there." Ed said simply.

His heartrate was picking up, he could feel the blood starting to pound in his ears. God, why did he feel so alone?

His hands were starting to shake- he hadn't been this scared in awhile.

"Fullmetal?" Mustang had moved to stand closer to him, but even though the man was right next to him, he sounded like he was a million miles away.

And then. Everything. Stopped.

Mustang was next to him when he saw Ed's eyes roll back in his head, and he grabbed the kid and dragged him back, preventing him from making the gorey scene any worse of a mess.

"Ed? Edward?" Atkins looked alarmed.

"He's out cold." Mustang said simply, sitting the kid out on the pavement.

"You don't seem too concerned?" Atkins looked confused.

Mustang sighed, running a hand through his hair. "This has happened before. I took him to a crime scene right after he joined the military, forgot he was just a kid- sometimes, he passes out."

It was nighttime. And he was alone again. He was terrified- mostly because all he had was an address written on a crumbled up piece of paper in his hands. But he hurried down the street anyways- this was the only option he had- otherwise, he'd have to drop out of school and move back home.

He frowned, hurrying along, watching the house numbers as he went. On his right he could see the canal, and he looked down at the paper nervously. The only thing legible were the house numbers- the street name had been blurred by his tears hitting the page.

He wished he'd been brave enough to tell someone. Anyone. But the only person who knew was the doctor. He wished he'd asked his roommate to come with him.

His stomach fluttered nervously, and he paused, hand flying to his stomach and tears springing to his eyes. He kept walking anyways. He was nearly there, now. In the distance, he could see a house alongside the canalside sidewalk. Three candles burned in the window, just like they'd said there would be.

He stood on the stairway in front of number 443, anxious and nauseas. Was he really about to go through with this? His stomach jolted again, and nausea nearly overwhelmed him. The front door of 443 swung open, and light bathed him.

"-waking up..."

"Yeah, smelling salts will do that. They do stink, though..." the EMT was speaking calmly.

"Fullmetal- you with us?" Mustang was asking calmly.

"Shit- where are we?"

"At the crime scene. You fainted."

"Shit." was all he muttered. What else could he say? That's he'd been somewhere else- become someone else- while he was unconscious? He got to his feet slowly, looking back at the crime scene only to see a chalk outline and the startling absence of a body.

A spike of anxiety hit him. "Where is she?"

Over here!

His head snapped to the side- there was a gurney with a black body bag on it that they were wheeling towards the mouth of the alley.

Please! I don't want to be alone!

"Shit. I have to go with her." Ed said seriously. "Where are they taking her?"

"To the morgue. They still have to do the autopsy." Mustang said simply.

"I'm riding with her."

"You are? Kid- you just passed out, that's not a good idea."

"She doesn't want to be alone anymore!" Ed said, sounding more desperate. "Mustang- will you come with me?"

"You want me to ride in the back with you?" Roy asked quietly.

Ed said nothing, though he pursed his lips and nodded. And honestly- it was the first time Ed had actually asked for help during this whole ordeal rather than running off on his own, so he nodded.

"Okay. I'll ride with you."

Being loaded into the back of the ambulance with a dead body wasn't pleasant. Especially not with the smell of blood still coloring the air prominently.

The only sound was the ambulance, which was eerily quiet as it took them closer and closer to the morgue. There was no emergency, no life to save. No need for sirens.

"You seem anxious." Mustang said simply. Because Ed was. Ed seemed almost clingy since they'd gotten to the crime scene- and that was the exact opposite of Ed normally.

"She was afraid and she died alone. She didn't want to die alone. I can feel her anxiety. The killer slit her throat and fled. She bled out alone. I can feel the adrenaline- the fear... She just doesn't want to be alone anymore." Ed said simply.

Roy nodded. It made sense. Ed wasn't getting spoken to directly as much in this case- he was picking up feelings and thoughts.

"I assume you're going to want to watch the autopsy, then?"

"Yeah. I am." Ed nodded.

"Right. Either Atkins or I will be in the morgue with you...".

He'd expected Ed to watch from a distance.

But Ed pulled on the gauzy blue surgical gown the autopsy technicians threw to him and the blue cap meant to keep his hair back, and he pulled his chair right up beside the steel table.

The autopsy technicians were Sarah- a woman with blonde hair and pale gray eyes and a kind face, and Ivan- a man of about twenty eight with black wire rimmed round glasses who was quiet.

There was a silver-haired girl who wasn't more than twenty and sat calmly, green eyes surveying everything, autopsy report and pen held ready to write down whatever Sarah told her to.

"This your first autopsy, kid?" Sarah asked calmly.

Ivan frowned at him from beneath his surgical mask. "He's not a kid. He's military, or they wouldn't allow him to watch us."

"Are you military?" Sarah asked, looking at him skeptically.

Ed nodded. "I'm the Fullmetal Alchemist.".

Sarah nodded. "Right. Ivan, get a rectal temp." Ivan was already carefully undressing the corpse and inserting the thermometer.

"We get a rectal temperature to determine the time of death." Sarah said simply.

Ed frowned, pursing his lips. "She died at approximately 9:13 am. She was a university student- she had class at nine and she was running late."

Ivan wrote down the rectal temperature on the autopsy report, and Sarah frowned, looking over at him. "Did you know her?".

Ed shook her head.

Sarah frowned. "Were you there when she died?"

Again, Ed shook his head.

"Police psychic?" Ivan asked.

Ed shrugged. "I dunno. I can talk to dead people and I know things."

Sarah's eyes widened. "You're the kid who realized those two were related in here, weren't you? Then one who figured out that those two were engaged yesterday. They weren't married yet, we had to call their friends and family to confirm...".

Ed paused, looking over to the cold lockers. "You put their bodies next to each other in the cold drawers. The man and his dead fiancé.".

Sarah nodded, looking surprised for a moment, before her brow furrowed. "Alright. Well, we're going to keep going here. There's going to be lots of incisions and the removal or organs, but first, we're going to get a post-mortem blood draw.".

Sarah waddled away from the autopsy table and came back a moment later with a needle and tube, drawing some blood. Ed could clearly see her stomach protruding slightly. She was pregnant.

He could've sworn when he looked over at the corpse, she was tearing up.

Sarah walked him through the entirety of the procedure in a calm, cheerful manner. From the incisions and peeling back of the skin, removal and weighing of organs, all of it was done clinically and respectfully.

When it came time to stitch the corpse back up and make it more slightly, Ivan told Sarah to sit on a stool and began doing it himself. Sarah thanked him.

"I don't mind the work, but my back starts to hurt sometimes." she admitted.

"When are you due?" Ed asked.

Sarah smiled. "I still have two more months.".

"How can you tell if a person who died is pregnant or not?". he didn't know why, but he felt inexplicably sad.

Sarah had peeled off her bloody gloves and tossed them in the waste bin, and she motioned the gray-haired girl to come over with the autopsy report she'd been dutifully filling in.

"So this is the HcG column. It's a hormone that increases with pregnancy. In normal women, the amount is below 5 MIU/mL. It elevates as the pregnancy gets further along. Savannah here will get the blood test results and write it all down." Sarah smiled at the silver-haired girl, grabbing a fresh pair of gloves and sighing.

"Ivan, I'd like to suture the skull. I want to take special care in case they want to do an open casket." she said simply.

Ivan was suturing the woman's abdomen closed, and he nodded. "Be my guest." he said, calmly continuing his work.

"How'd you end up working here?" Ed asked the silver-haired girl calmly. He was pretty sure her name was Savanah, and she looked to be about nineteen.

Savanah shrugged. "I wanted to be a medical student. But then I realized people are exhausting- too stressful. I still like anatomy though. I'm shadowing right now- I intend to train to become an autopsy technician this summer.".

"Neat. So you see all the autopsy results?"

Savannah shook her head. "Not all of them. It depends who's on staff. There's Lindsay- she does the over night reports. I've only seen a few of them. What do you want to know?"

"I'm not sure..." Ed looked back at the naked body on the metal table, looking uncertain. "But can you come find me when the blood-test results come back for her? I have a feeling...".

Savannah nodded. "Yeah, no problem. You'll be around here?"

"Yeah, I will." Ed said absently.

He could feel the gravitational pull of the deceased on the table, her anxiety seemed to roll off her in waves.

Don't leave me alone. Always alone.

"She doesn't want to be alone. I'll stay for as long as I can."

"Right." Savannah said, though she looked uncertain.

"You think I'm a nutjob, don't you? Talking to dead people." Ed said quietly.

"We don't think you're crazy. We talk to dead people too you know." Sarah spoke up from where she was meticulously suturing the scalp back together on the corpse from where the brain was removed. "I'm skeptical that they talk back to you. But I kind of hope you're telling the truth. We'd like to get less murder victims around here. And weird stuff happens down here sometimes."

Ed blinked. "You hear screaming and stuff?"

Ivan shook his head. "Lights flicker. Slamming doors. Stuff falls off shelves sometimes.".

"Some people say it's scary, but it's actually pretty peaceful here at night." Savannah admitted. "For me anyways. But yeah, things have been more tense around here with all the murder victims. We're scientists, autopsy technicians- always weighing and measuring. But there is some paranormal stuff that happens. We deal with death everyday. It'd be hypocritical not to acknowledge it.".

Sarah frowned, finishing a particularly irksome stitch. She was nearly done suturing the scalp. "Savannah- can I get more thread? The black one. I want this to blend in with her hair well in case her family wants a viewing.".

Savannah nodded, moving to the cupboard and fetching another spool of suturing thread.

"So- you know that we put the two engaged corpses in lockers next to one another. But do you know where we put the other two?" Sarah asked, looking at him curiously.

Ed shrugged, walking over to the cold locker. He ran his hands over the handles of each locker, waiting.

There was an apathetic feeling that washed over him, and he wordlessly opened it to come face to face with one of the autopsied woman who'd been on the tables yesterday. The one off to the side, who had looked like Winry...

He kept moving, pausing at the next handle but not feeling anything, so he kept walking, moving another locker down, and another...

There weren't any familiar bodies resting in this row.

Up here.

He moved to the top row of the locker, though he had to stretch, and opened the last locker on the top right, sliding it out to reveal the last remaining victim from the other day.

"Found them." he said simply, turning around.

Sarah was looking at him with wide-eyes. Ivan blinked a few times, clearing his throat.

"How did you know which lockers they were in? We put them in early this morning, you had no way of knowing...". Savannah said, looking shocked.

Ed shrugged. "I've been trying to talk to them for days. They're upset and frustrated, but you get a certain feeling...I dunno.".

He sniffed. His nose had started to bleed, and he frowned as it started to drip onto the tile floor.

"Savannah, get him some gauze." Sarah ordered.

Savannah hurried over to the cabinets, coming back with a handful of sterile gauze that he gratefully took. "Thanks."

"Done making him do party tricks yet?" Mustang walked over, looking from the dead bodies Ed had correctly identified without having to even open the lockers in an unamused fashion.

"I was skeptical, I admit. But holy shit." Sarah said, looking surprised. "Especially when I heard Atkins was running the case. Atkins seems like the last guy who'd trust a psychic.".

"I'm not a psychic." Ed said seriously.

"Then what are you?" Ivan asked seriously, looking interested.

Ed sighed. "I don't know. I can see and talk to dead people. Isn't that called a medium or something?"

Mustang smirked. "You're not a small alchemist now. You're a medium one.".

Ed snarled. "Quit it with the short jokes already!"

The door to the morgue swung open, Atkins walking into the room with some handfuls of paperwork.

"Fullmetal- I want to bounce some theories off you.". He moved to an unoccupied steel autopsy table, Ed and Mustang heading over as well.

They stayed in their respective groupings- Atkins, Mustang and Ed working on one table and the autopsy technicians at the other, until lunch time.

Atkins sighed, sitting back in his chair. "Okay. We have a more accurate place of death for the woman that went into the canal thanks to the shoe Fullmetal found last night. She was found approximately a mile downstream from where she went in. So we have a pretty accurate map of the deaths- but they're all within a thirteen block radius. However, the fact our killer killed a man in addition to these women makes the motive sketchy at best...".

"What are the profiles of the victims?" Ed asked simply.

Atkins sighed. "What aren't they? We have a teenage sex worker, another sex worker in her twenties, two working professionals, a medical student, a newspaper editor, and the editor's male fiancé. So it's all over the place.".

"The woman and her fiancee are special. The killer broke his women-only rule for them. Why, I don't know, but maybe they felt like they as a couple had done something in particular to piss off the killer..." Ed frowned. "What gets me is these crimes aren't sexually motivated."

"The women had stab wounds tot he abdomen, though. That would suggest a sexual motivation. Or a hatred of women at the very least." Ivan spoke up from where he was working across the room.

Ed sighed. "Yeah, but all your autopsy reports show no genital trauma, no signs of forcible rape or sodomy, and no DNA.".

"Right again." Atkins said, heaving a sigh.

Ivan was moving to cover the newest victim on the table with a sheet, and even though Ed wasn't facing them, he tensed slightly.

"She doesn't want you to cover her eyes." he said seriously.

"What?" Ivan was almost finished covering the corpse with the sheet.

"She doesn't want her eyes covered." Ed said seriously. He wasn't even facing Ivan.

Ivan nodded, looking impressed, and tucked the sheet just below the woman's chin, like he was tucking her into bed.

"Right. Well she's going to have to go into the lockers after lunch..."

"Fullmetal. You can't just camp out in the morgue all day. You have to eat." Mustang said seriously.

Ed sighed. "I need blood test results.".

"Those will take a few hours, at least. You should eat." Sarah spoke up, looking at him with an almost motherly expression.

Ed sighed. "Fine. But I want to come back here when we're done." Ed sighed. "And I really don't want hotel food.".

"I know a cafe if you want. I get an hour for lunch, since we're not super busy today." Savannah had materialized behind him.

"Anything is better than hotel food. Lead the way." Ed said happily.

Savannah laughed. "I say the same thing about hospital food.".

There was a nice cafe a block or two away. Ed actually got to talk to Savannah for a little while- he learned she had an older sister who went to West City's university to be a doctor and one in school to be a nurse, and that Savannah aspired to become a medical examiner someday.

"I thought about being a cop, but I can't deal with criminals all the time. Why'd you become a state alchemist, anyways?" Savannah asked.

Ed shrugged. "Was the best thing to do. Got in an accident as a kid, had some limbs ripped off- all the top bioalchemy research is in the State Alchemist's library.".

Savannah looked at his arm with interest. "Sorry. I shouldn't stare. I've seen automail on a few patients in autopsy, I always thought it was cool.".

Ed shrugged, looking around to make sure nobody in the cafe was paying him much attention before pulling off his glove to reveal his metal hand.

Savannah looked at it incredulously. "Can I touch it?"

"Go ahead. It's just a hand.".

"Can you feel hot and cold with it?" Savannah asked, running her fingers over his palm.

Ed shook his head. "No. Can't feel touch either. It's got kick ass grip strength though, and it's overclocked- if I squeezed your hand as hard as I possibly could, It would break your bones.".

Savannah looked fascinated. "That's so cool."

Ed blushed slightly. "I guess. The best part about it in in fights, if I hit someone with my metal hand, I'm almost guaranteed to break their jaw.".

"I bet you could shatter a skull with it. Or at least fracture one." Savannah was looking excited. "You should totally let Sarah and Ivan see your hand. They think automail is cool too- we saw a guy in autopsy a few weeks back and thought he got hit by a car. Turns out he got in a barfight with an automail user in the middle of the street. But he was such a mess, we thought he got hit by a car. Skull fracture, ruptured spleen, the whole nine yards. But the cops got the guy and he went to jail for manslaughter.".

"That's fucking wild." Ed said, looking impressed. "That's why I try to only hit really nasty people with my automail. I mean, if it's an armed and dangerous person, I hit them with metal, but I accidentally stepped on my friend's dog once with my metal foot and felt really bad about that.".

Atkins and Mustang simply watched the conversation between the two teenagers with mild amusement.

Mustang couldn't help but feel slightly relieved- finally, Ed was talking to someone living again. The kid had been doing nothing but trying to communicate with the dead for the past few days, and it'd taken a toll on him.

Any theories on what's going on here? I'm always interested to see what you guys think!