III

Police immediately began pacing around doing their jobs, securing the crime scene, as the officer had ordered. They took pictures of the unmoving Emma as if she were a model for a porn video. Every single piece of evidence was tagged for identification. Eventually a dark man with short, clean cut hair entered the room ahead of a tall, pale female with long dark ringlets and a mole below the right side of her bottom lip. Emma assumed that they were there to dissect her. After a quick examination saying things like, "Time of death," "It must have just happened, she's still warm and rigger mortise hasn't set in." "Here's a foot print," The officer said, "bag them as evidence." "There is not a mark on her body." They moved her body onto a table with a black bag and zipped the bag up. Luckily, there was enough air in her prison to supply her slow moving lungs for a while yet.

Emma could hear the muffled voices of the police and the morticians. However, she could hear one thing very clearly from the man that vowed revenge, "I want information on this Jane Doe, Bug. I want a full autopsy on all of the bodies, but especially this one; whatever killed her has to be in her body somewhere. She must have ingested poison or drugs."

If she could have cried, she would have then. The fate that her kidnapper had promised her was becoming reality and she was powerless to stop it. She could feel the bed on which she lay roll roughly and was shoved into a vehicle. At this moment, amidst the scent of blood and death she lost all hope of continuing life.

It was not long before the vehicle came to a complete halt; she was removed from it, rolled onto an elevator and lifted an indiscernible amount of floors. Left in a room that was colder than winter, a chill ran down her naked spine but her body did not quake. The black bag gave her a certain amount of heat but eventually even the walls were like blocks of ice. Without being able to shiver to keep her body temperature up, Emma thought she would freeze to death.

She could hear movement, but only at times. She lay for what seemed like hours contemplating her life and what she had done to deserve this treatment. Thoughts that never would have entered her mind on any regular occasion crossed it like a squirrel jumping from branch to branch. Suddenly she felt movement and panicked that her final moments were in the cold hands of a coroner, examining her body as if she were dead.

After a short travel and the muffled words, "Trace evidence," the bag zipped open; light and warmth over took her. The same two doctors that had examined her back in the Red Hell transported her to another table. This was new hell to her, a cold sterile environment with tools to poke, prod, and slice her open. Instead of black ski masks, these demons wore splashguards over their faces, gloved hands, and blue smocks as their dress. The man took an instrument from a table that Emma could not see.

Emma gazed solemnly up to the woman's brown eyes as a last ditch attempt at mental communication. Thankfully, Jordan looked uneasy.

"Bug, have you ever seen a dead body with goose bumps?"

Looking at her arms, he said, "What is this?"

"Something's wrong," Jordan said, backing away from the body.

"I'll check her vitals," Bug said, perplexed. He removed the mask and brought his ear down close to her mouth to listen to her breathe while Jordan checked her limp wrist for a pulse. "Oh, my God, she's breathing! I think."

"And she has a pulse although it's very weak," Jordan said looking closely into Emma's eyes with a tiny flashlight, as if checking to see whether her soul was still in her body.

"Bug, warm her up and get her to the hospital, I'll call Woody."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" He asked, "Maybe I should call Woody and you should take her to the hospital."

Jordan paused for a moment, contemplating the situation with a depressing look upon her face that did not suit her. Her eyes looked down at Emma's seemingly lifeless body before she said, "Make sure you tell Garret too. I'll get Lily to help me. Then I'll drop by the crime scene and do a little work there, while you perform autopsies on the other bodies."

Jordan rushed out and Bug said to her, "You'll be alright, we'll figure out what happened here."

Instead of blood, warm relief seeped through her veins and for the first time, her mind relaxed.

AN: close call… R&R