Chapter 3: Slot Four

The pair raced down the street as the sun shot like a bronze bullet into the sky, streaking the purple hued clouds with the sunrise. Finn stumbled to keep up as Edwina held him by the hand and maintained a quickened pace down the street towards the row of government buildings. The road was emptier than she expected, a single constable had blocked off the area. Edwina strode past the barrier with no resistance, slipping her hands from Finn’s as they neared the inspector.

Inspector Harold looked up and scowled as they approached. He and Edwina found themselves at odds often. The middle-aged man was Edwina’s height, wearing a gray, threadbare trench coat he must have worn for all his adult life, refusing to retire the old thing. In his youth, the inspector may have been a much taller man, but time and wary days had worn him into a hunch. He wore a fitted wool cap with a small brim atop dark hair that showed a bit of gray. He pursed his wrinkled lips and inspected the coroner with a disapproving look. Her confusion mounted; nothing seemed amiss except the open morgue door. Retracing her steps in her mind, she confirmed to herself she did indeed lock the door the night before.

“Inspector.” She greeted him and he only responded with a grunt to inquiry. “What’s been taken?”

“A body.” His tone was flat and he eyed her expectantly as though she should know to ask more questions. Edwina went to look at Finn but refrained. She gritted her teeth.

“Which one?”

“The missing one.”

Edwina wanted to strangle the man.

Finn subtly grasped her arm, as the thought of yelling or screaming entered her mind. She gently pulled away from Finn’s grasp, quelling the desire to lose her patience with the inspector. These sorts of guessing games riled her nerves. Harold had been in the business a long time and would often decide where an investigation was going to go, then shove the evidence into place until it fit, or close enough. Many times, undermining the coroner’s report and even on occasion indicating she was either grossly incompetent or a shameless liar. He retired to Millbrook after finishing his contract as a military investigation officer but found that sitting around at home retired didn’t suit him. So, he pulled that ratty old coat out of his closet and applied for the Millbrook Inspector position. He didn’t suit the position well, unable to readjust to civilian life from the military. He was used to things going his way. However, having a decorated soldier on staff wrote nicely in the papers for the Millbrook station, so the poor fit had been overlooked and Edwina suffered because of it.

“Who reported the incident?” she asked.

“Flower. She was digging around in the alley out back, heard the door open and saw two men leave with a full body bag. Didn’t get a good look at them though. She tried to use your telephone; said it was broken.” he pointed his pen towards a disheveled elderly woman that sat on the ground near the constable. She had layers of coats on her shoulders, ripped and torn from years of misuse. She was also a known vagrant from Sag Alley, Millbrooks poorest district.

“May I go inside?” She asked and he responded with a grunt, pointing her towards the open door.

Finn followed her in, and Edwina examined the room. After the situation with Benton, everything was just as she replaced it the day before. It all seemed to be where she put it. The doors to the slots closed and locked, the cabinets shut away and supplies all untouched. The only thing out of place was the earpiece of her telephone that dangled from its hook. She put the earpiece back and then pulled the door to slot four to confirm her suspicion, but the body was still there. Puzzlement stitched her brow together.

“Why were you expecting that one to be the missing?” Harold called from the doorway as he entered. Edwina turned and shoved the body back into its slot, shutting the door and clicking the latch shut.

“I was just going through all of them, Inspector.” The coroner schooled her face and tightened her tone.

“But you didn’t start with one, or six. You started with four. Why?”

Edwina didn’t answer. Starting at number one she opened it, finding one of the crash victims. The biker that had been caught between the carrier truck and the tram. She moved on to the next, finding the second crash victim, the driver of the carrier truck, who had been under the influence. Then she opened the third slot, empty save for a white cotton sheet.

“This doesn’t make sense. This was Mrs. Miller, she was a part of the tram crash, but she died of a heart attack at the hospital.” Edwina opened her filing cabinet and began rifling through the papers.

“Did you do a full autopsy?” the inspector asked.

“No, I wasn’t supposed to. She was declared dead at the hospital. Known cause.” The coroner sighed as she looked at the empty space where the file should be.

“Aren’t you supposed to investigate incidents? Provide a full report when someone dies unexpectedly. Wasn’t Mrs. Miller in the tram crash?”

“Yes, she was, but she didn’t die in the tram crash. She was transported to the hospital and died there. Her death wasn’t a mystery, it was a heart attack. I was just supposed to finish preparing the body for burial.”

“But you did a full autopsy on the other two, even though the driver was declared dead at the hospital, as well as Mrs. Miller.”

“The other two died as a direct result of the tram crash. Mrs. Miller was sitting in the back, nearly unaffected. She was 93 years old with a history of heart problems.” Edwina snapped as the man irritated her. He raised his brows and clicked his pen across his paper.

“Where were you last night, Mrs. Sharp?” The inspector muttered as he continued to take notes.

“Doctor, it’s Dr. Sharp.” Edwina asserted herself. She knew what he was doing, and she wasn’t about to let him lie about her again.

“She was with me.” Finn stated, stepping forward. “We spent the night together.”

“All night?” The inspector looked through his brows.

“Harold, what would I do with a dead body? Other than my job?” The coroner closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Her file is missing too.”

“You didn’t do your job, though. Mrs. Miller went unprocessed and now you’ve lost her file.” Harold’s accusation grated on the coroner. She gritted her teeth realizing she fell for his antagonizing bait.

“What are you implying, Inspector?” She pushed her hands into the pockets of her plaid wool coat to control the shakes that had overtaken them. The inspector shrugged his shoulders and cleared his throat, unbothered by the distress he was inflicting upon the woman.

“Anything strange happen yesterday?” he asked.

“No– yes,” Edwina resigned herself. Defeat washing over her. “My student assistant came in yesterday. He was high on Shreds, he got… violent.”

“Winnie!” Finn stepped into her view. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Did he hurt you?” Finn pressed.

“No, I scared him off.”

“How?” Harold cleared his throat to quell Finn.

“I threatened to cut him… with a scalpel.”

“Winnie…” Finn’s voice was dripping with worry and disappointment. She could see in his eyes that he was tearing himself up over the argument they had had the night before. Piling up those frustrations onto what happened to her yesterday morning.

“It’s fine, I’m fine. I haven’t seen him since, but that had nothing to do with Mrs. Miller. He left before the tram crash happened. I got a call to do a site report, then came back here when they brought in the first body. The driver came second, and Mrs. Miller wasn’t delivered until the end of the day.”

“But he still had access to the building. He has a set of keys, right?” the inspector asked.

“Yes, yes, he does.” She answered defeated as Finn went to slip her hand into his, but she pushed her hand back into her pocket.

“Well, that’ll be all for now. I’ll be in touch, Mrs.– Dr. Sharp, and--.” Harold stared at Finn expectantly.

“Finn Bartlow.” Finn answered.

“--Mr. Bartlow. I’ll want to talk to you again, for a proper inkwell interrogation.” The inspector rolled his wrist as he tried to place the small notepad into his coat, missing the pocket a few times before finally finding it and shoving it in. He sighed and grunted, leaving Finn and Edwina in the morgue. Flower hobbled down her alleyway and it was an hour before the constable finally left the street.

“What are you doing?” Edwina asked as Finn followed her back into the morgue and settled himself into a chair.

“Your assistant got violent, and I would like to be here if he decides to come back.”

“Finn, I don't need you here to protect me.”

“Maybe it’s not for you. Maybe Sam would never forgive me if he found out I left you here alone after your assistant tried to hurt you. Maybe Layla would be devastated if something happened to you, and then come to hate me, knowing I could have done something about it. So, no Winnie, this isn’t for you. Like it or not, people care about you.” Finn crossed his arms and splayed his legs out, lounging in the chair. Every chair always came up a bit too short for his height.

He adjusted his flat cap and settled in, signaling that he would wait for as long as it took for Edwina to do her work. A curt sigh escaped her lips as she went to retrieve her lab coat, pulling off her plaid woolen jacket, and relieving her fingers of her fitted leather gloves. She smoothed her soft brown hair as she pulled off her hat and hung everything on her coat rack in her office. Lacing her fingers into her hair, she pulled it all back and secured it into a brass hair comb she kept in her desk drawer. She didn’t have the time to prepare that morning when they hurried to the morgue. Her clothes were from the day before. Cream-colored blouse, hemmed with an inexpensive cotton lace pattern that fit snug just above her collarbone at the base of her neck, and reached down into quarter sleeves that buttoned at the end. She tucked the shirt into a rich brown wool floor-length skirt. Stockings and short kitten heels completed her ensemble.

The coroner began her morning, turning on the valve to let the gas through the pipes, and proceeded to light the gas lamps along the walls. Warm light brought a certain life to the otherwise dead room. The cold, hard metal softened in the glow of a warm fire. Finn still sat in his chair unmoving, with a patience Edwina could only dream of possessing as a virtue. She caught herself looking at him then peeled her eyes away to her paperwork and forms. She felt his eyes on her, though.

“You never told me how you became a coroner.” he softly stated.

“You’re right, I never did.” Edwina let the notion hang unanswered.

Finn’s chair groaned as he readjusted himself, she heard an inhale as though he was going to say something, but he settled back in the chair and didn’t say anything.

They had never really done much talking about her in all the time they had spent together. People could take every word, every story, and use them against her, hurt her with that knowledge. So, she packed every memory that defined her and tied them with twine, locking them away in her mind until they were safe to share.

Even after death, people's stories remained vulnerable. Every unfulfilled wish wrapped up their bones, imprinting the ending of their story with disenchantment. People would lament someone's death and say nothing but glowing confabulations about them. Edwina always saw past the flesh, where the rot that permeated them. She would never speak ill of the dead, but she saw just how hollow their life had been.

Edwina couldn’t figure out why the thieves had taken Mrs. Miller. She pulled Adam O’Hare out of his slot and transferred him to the center slab in preparation for the Fabrication inspector’s examination. Millbrook had established the Fabrication office just recently, as Voile enchantments started becoming more accessible.

The Voile was harvested from a coiled cotton-like plant. Just like cotton, someone discovered the delicate puffs could be spun into threads and woven into fabric. The fabric didn’t make for good clothing, the Voile was too fragile for it and would soak up the black in the falling rain. Through experimentation it was found that the Voile made a perfect sieve to separate the black substance in the rain and after processing it refined a heavy oily-like ink that became “living ink”. Then it wasn’t a far stretch to print inkwell sigils on the Voile make a canvas for enchantments and augmentations. The largest Voile plantation was North of Ebonport, in the Hellmark cemetery. The plant grew on the graves of the dead.

The rise in incidents involving Voile led to the Department of Fabrication Enchantments having to institute oversight everywhere. Including this sleepy little town. Edwina had yet to meet Millbrook’s DFE inspector.

“What are you going to do with that thing?” Finn asked as he sat forward. His eyes widened when Edwina pulled out a comically large needle and attached it to a syringe. She chuckled softly as the color drained from his face, stunned by the sheer imposing nature of the object. Finn was always squeamish around needles and especially knives. He had gotten a nasty splinter in his finger once that turned to infection. It took her and Chamberlin to wrestle him down in order for Edwina to make the small incision to pull out the little piece of wood. She could have sworn he would never forgive her for it.

“I’m going to perform a sigil reformation. After you die, your inkwell stops working. I can revitalize it with some living ink.” Edwina prompted him to observe. She pushed her finger into the gray flesh of the dead man, making a soft bulge in his skin. “The inkwell starts here, once I push the living ink into it and I should be able to tell what his Fabric augmentation is doing.”

“It’s still doing something? It hasn’t burned off yet?” Finn leaned over the body to observe; his hands held behind his back. His nose scrunched at the sterile smell. Edwina cleared her throat and averted her eyes as Finn looked down over her work. Having him around always messed with her thoughts.

“Yes, it’s still active. You’re going to want to look away before I do this.” She warned him as she lined up the needle and began inserting it. Finn jumped back and shook his whole body overdramatically, as if to wiggle away the uneasy thoughts of the needle. Curiosity lured him back as Edwina hummed in observation.

The black ink poured into the body, rushing down the channels of the inkwell like a breached dam. It filled in the normally unseen sigils, blackening the man's skin. The sigils resurfaced, the mental alertness, the debuffs, the strength, and dexterity all moving to their baseline. Edwina watched as his health line found itself. The sigil dropped low, nearing death, but it was still there. It clicked once more down, and Edwina gasped.

“Get my health kit in my office, it's a leather bag, in the back, in a low cupboard. Hurry!” She commanded, and Finn leaped into action.

“What? What happened?” He asked, as his long limbs crashed into her small office. He opened every cupboard, looking for the bag.

“He’s alive! But his health line is dropping.” Edwina climbed up on the examination table to gain some leverage and threw her whole body into chest compressions. Finn came flying back with the bag. “In the inner pocket on the left-hand side there’s a metal tin marked ‘VA’, it has syringes in it. I need you to take one out and shove it into his heart and push the plunger.”

“But I–”

“Just do it Finn!” she yelled. Finn’s finger lost all motor control as he fumbled with the tin. He picked out one of the small syringes and Edwina went back to walk him through the steps. Lined up with shaking breaths, he held the syringe with a tight fist before slamming down on the man’s chest. He placed his thumb on the plunger and pushed, liquid squirting out to the side.

“It didn’t go in.” Finn sputtered, confused.

“The augment. It’s in the way and it’s killing him.” Edwina slipped off the table and grabbed her scalpel. She found the edge of the Voile augmentation. She worked with steady hands to carve along the edge of the device. Finn’s breathing was the loudest thing in the room, but he couldn’t seem to peel his eyes away. Edwina removed the flap of skin. Strings of stretchy white thread snapped and coiled away from his body as they tore free from the flesh.

The rapid descent of the health line on the body’s forearm stopped. She looked at the flesh, tendrils of white cord curled like worms, searching, and reaching for something. She threw it into a nearby organ bowl and grabbed another one of the syringes, watching the health line, waiting to see if it dropped again.

“Did you save him?” Finn asked, and Edwina shushed him. The health line began to move upwards, and Edwina felt relief.

The line shot upward and pushed past the man's forearm, into his bicep and across his chest. Edwina moved away as Adam gasped and screamed, blood and black ink pouring from the large wound in his chest. The man violently convulsed on the table sending Edwina and Finn stepping back. The bubbling liquid coalesced into an appendage grabbing Finn’s arm and lurching him forward before brutally throwing him backwards into the far wall, glass cabinets broke with an uncharacteristic strength. Finn fell hitting the counter shattering glass beakers and throwing supplies as he tumbled violently to the floor. Edwina screamed as Adam O’Hare stood up, his body snapping unnaturally into place. His limbs jerked as the searing ichor began coating him. The stench was unbearable as the dead man sputtered out a growl towards the woman.

This was no longer Adam O’Hare.