I do not own Hawaii Five-0 or any characters. No copyright infringement intended.

Notes: writer's fan fiction license taken with Googled and researched medical facts! Apologies to my beta because I "touched it" again. *sigh* Blame the breakfast bunny. Thank you all for the great reviews on the first chapter - have a wonderful Holiday, everyone!

Chapter 2

H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O*

"Another one?" Steve complained as he took the call from an HPD sergeant. "Where? Did you contact Bergman?"

Muttering in disgust, Steve ended the short conversation and waved the team together. "Another body was found. This time by a beach comber who was out early this morning after the storm cleared. Max is on the way and HPD has the area sealed off, but the media got wind of it already."

The team departed in two separate vehicles as usual, with precious little to say. Each was lost in their individual thoughts about the never-ending frustration of their latest long-term case. Going on eight months, they either had one badly abused body washing up on a beach or found in a dumpster. Or oddly, a confused, distraught person appearing as if by magic at a hospital or clinic with a fresh and unexplainable jagged red scar. That raw mark was first-hand proof of a missing body part which could not be explained by the former owner who additionally had no recollection of the prior seventy-two hour block of time.

Until that morning, they had all hoped the person or persons responsible had stopped in their dire game. Almost three weeks had gone by without activity but evidently that long period had only been a momentarily lull. A respite before another offering was ushered forth. Pulling in to the remote beach parking lot, they walked past the swarm of officials, civilian gawkers and media representatives to find Doctor Max Bergman, their medical examiner, already buried up to his nose in the grim remains.

"Wow." Taken by a rare surprise, Danny literally choked as he caught sight of the bloated, discolored face. Cupping his fist to his mouth, what he saw was definitely not expected. "That's ...new. Different."

"I concur, Detective." Max rose to his feet, gloved hands busily bagging evidence. "This is the first time that the individual's corneas have been removed and the lids sewn neatly shut over the ocular orbits."

Danny half-turned with a disgusted wave of his hand but morbid curiosity drew him back. "What else?" Danny asked as Steve had the fortitude to lean down and twitch a side of the sheet. The look on his face silently imparted what the medical examiner so cooly verbalized.

"Heart, lungs and I daresay …everything of value." Max motioned towards the body. That too was different and now truly shocked, the team could only listen to Max's first impressions.

"This time, the corneas plus the kidneys have been removed along with other critical organs. But, I will need to do a through examination back at my lab. I am positive that anything viable has been taken and that the entire body was been harvested."

"Harvested? Max, that's .. sick." Listening to Max's laundry list of excised organs, Kono shuddered in repulsion not only at the use of the word. "Is our victim a male or a female?"

The body was badly decomposed and abused by the rough storm and salt water. Clothing was distinctly lacking and the body was so badly bloated, it was near impossible to know from where Kono had chosen to stand far back. "Can you even tell? Can you tell us when this might have happened or how long the victim has been dead?"

"I believe this victim to be male but I will have a great deal of work to do before I can finalize any of my reports. I can't possibly hazard a guess about the time of death right now." Max confirmed with a stark formality. The cause was obvious enough and with a tight expression, chose not to voice that particular fact.

Heaving a sigh with a light cough into the crook of his arm, Steve flicked the sheet back into place. "Let us know, Max. As soon as you have anything confirmed. We need something of value ourselves."

"Absolutely, Commander." The dedicated and skilled medical examiner agreed quickly as he bent back down. He was already enthralled with the initial findings and the team left him to do his work. But he called them back. "There is something more I might suggest."

Steve scowled because what they had in those dismal remains, in a way, was enough. "What?"

"Transplantation must be done in a timely fashion." Even Max looked a bit pale at his own budding theory. "Either our perpetrator or perpetrators have recipients waiting in the wings already tissue and type-matched, or he or she has escalated in a new direction."

"I'm not sure I follow." His scowl deepened at that.

Max rose to his feet again. "Certain tissues do not need a constant blood supply and they don't need to be transplanted as quickly as organs. These tissues can be stored for some time. Organs are much more sensitive and delicate."

Almost annoyingly he paused to gather his thoughts and find the right words. "Hearts and lungs are particularly sensitive to being without a blood supply and must be transplanted within four to six hours of retrieval. In the interim, the organs are stored at 4 degrees Celsius for proper preservation. The liver and pancreas must be transplanted within 12 hours of donation and the kidneys within 24 hours."

"Fantastic." Danny breathed out under his breath as he arrived at Max's final point very quickly. "So, he or she has a recipient or buyer in mind, or .."

Steve interrupted with an even angrier expression. "Or, these have become trophies."

He rubbed his eyes hard with another brief note of thanks for the medical examiner. "Keep this theory quiet. I don't want it hitting the media."

"This makes seven plus the two abducted live ones." Kono recapped unnecessarily. "Maybe we got a break with this change. He or she has never touched the eyes before and the idea of trophies." She grimaced and shook her head at the new learnings.

"Maybe." Lacking conviction, Chin muttered under his breath as they retraced their steps back to their vehicles. The case was wearing on all of them as time went on and they had zero leads to act upon. The change in modus operandi could provide a new important clue, or could just be a horrifying transformation to a new undefined level of insanity. This latter concept supported Steve's personal theory but with a new, alarming twist.

Regardless, people across many communities were scared and the media was having a field day with the lack of data which only exacerbated the general publics' insecurity. Five-0 and HPD were under the microscope as much as the too limited clues left by their unknown perpetrator.

"He or she has become more confident and refined." Steve held that theory based on two unsolved deaths from nearly twenty-four months earlier which he felt were related to the current string of events. It potentially made Kono's count of seven deaths, actually nine in total.

Those two were rushed and nearly botched jobs, the circumstances of which even made Max Bergman cautious to agree with Steve. Each certainly lacked the finesse of what the team was now investigating and the demographic was completely different. However, Steve believed that the two were the first attempts and that their general success bred a disturbed confidence that was becoming manic. If Max was correct, it was even worse than he thought.

Until that day, the commonalities for the more current deaths or abductions were few, but they were there: victims were predominantly between the ages of eighteen and thirty. Single and living alone, male or female, and mostly from a poorer social scale. Nearly all were Asian and none had medical insurance but most were essentially healthy, meaning they didn't smoke, do drugs or suffer from a significant prior illness. In other words, all the victims might have been considered poor, but they led good, clean lives.

Primary transplant organs were the bounty and were taken with a surgeon's skill. After being excised, wounds were precisely sutured closed regardless of the victim's final end state. The much earlier two lacked some of this care and consideration possibly out of uncertainty or even fear. As they returned to their vehicles, Steve voiced his theory again though and as a team, they at least agreed that things were escalating.

Their suspect was likely a current or ex-medical professional and fastidious about his or her work. A careful selection process to identify eligible victims had been developed and refined over and over. Hesitancy had been replaced by a strong egotistical vanity. As sick as it was, there seemed to be an attempt at properly respecting the body and giving it a normal appearance after surgery. Post surgical scars were small and precise; it was as if the disposal of the body was handled by a different person entirely.

None of the victims would be missed by family or friends, and definitely not by society. If the victim didn't reveal his or her-self by a twist of fate, no one would ever know to care and the abductions, deaths and organ thefts would continue.

~ to be continued ~