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01. AFTER HOURS
SHE WOKE WITH the sound in her hears, rhythmic thumping like a heartbeat in her ears from faraway, screams echoing across an infinite expanse of darkness, unintelligible shouting that sounded garbled like it was coming from a vacuum. Her skin was hot, and everything burned and she knew that every atom of her being was on fire. When her eyes finally opened and the memory subsided, it felt like coming up from deep underwater.
Time bled into itself. Everything was liquid and jelly, ground-up broken glass dissolved into a paste that made it hard to move. She looked up at the ceiling, blinking against nothing in the dark and struggling to catch her breath.
The image made her sad, as if she could see it from outside of herself—she lay there, almost unrecognisable, completely still. The fan spun on itself, circulating air until inhaling became unbearable. The window half-open, siphoning in the noises of the East End after midnight—a woman cried, a man coughed, a police siren bellowed. The door stood ajar, allowing a thin blade of light from the hallway to enter the room, to fan out and crawl over to her face and warm it up, unwilling victim that she was.
She took a deep breath, felt it inflate her lungs. A memory punctured the balloon, sent all the air rushing out, forced her to sit up in the darkness, to rub her eyes with the backs of her hands and heave a sigh.
The night drained her. She slipped off the table, muting her own footfalls as she crept towards the half-shut door. A man with his back to the doorway stood hunched over an embalming table. It appeared just as she remembered—a steel surface held up by four large, thick legs.
He was deep in focus, protective gear on. Every time he moved, the plastic gown he wore crinkled, and a squelch sounded through the main room. He was at work.
She cleared her throat. He screamed.
It was hard not to understand the alarm, but it also irritated Val. She was the one who had come in here, begging to be stitched up. She didn't really need to stir up so much fuss over a little accident, but it was the Summer, now, and the air conditioning unit in her apartment hadn't worked for as long as she'd been alive. Being kept in a fridge seemed like a neat idea at the time, but Val hadn't anticipated that the morgue would be so...packed. Then again, it was Gotham.
