Blame: Book 2- Tick Tock (The Sequel to Book 1)

Old Faces

     Kyle's POV

     "Finally," Morgan huffed as he laid down the final dismembered body part upon the autopsy table.

For the past day and a half, my protégé and I were working hard, removing limbs, and other pieces of a victim's body from two hardened concrete blocks. Needless to say, it wasn't one of the most pleasant autopsies I've done so far in my career, but the great waves of satisfaction crashed upon Morgan and I once we finished. When I looked around the morgue, it reminded me of the ruins of Pompeii; chunks of gray concrete lying everywhere along the tiled floors, gray powder piles sitting there to collect more dirt and other dust particles.

"Okay, erm, I can take over the actual autopsy part for you," I offered. "It's pretty late," my eyes gazed at the clock, which read 11:06 pm.

"Yeah," the seventeen year old yawned. "This was exhausting."

"I know right? Talk about a killer who likes to make sure the autopsy gets delayed."

"But what about all this mess?" Morgan's head whipped around the room, spotting various areas of the morgue that were covered in concrete bits.

"Nah, it's fine," I assured. "The night shift morgue hands can help me clean this up."

"Oh, okay. Guess I'd better get home now," my protégé smiled with a tired demeanor.

Some time later, after Morgan had called his parents to pick him up, I was conducting the autopsy on the victim's calf, when I managed to sneak a peek at the lad, who was laughing on the phone with someone. 'Wait, isn't that my desktop hand phone?' I focused my vision, seeing that I was indeed correct about my prediction. My mind curiously wondered who the caller was, but shifted its attention to the unfinished medical examination of the limb sitting in the steel tray. It was more important to finish this autopsy procedure than to ponder on about some person's identity, so I ignored the conversation and picked up my scalpel.

'Hm...looks like a regular saw was used to dismember the body,' my hand quickly grabbed a pair of tweezers, plucking a shard of HSS (High Speed Steel) from a loose flap of blood drained skin. I already knew that the jagged edges along the skin were made by an object with a rough blade, but the piece of metal that I extracted from the body confirmed my suspicions. Additionally, I had discovered many blemishes in the pale skin; bruises, small scrapes and scratches, and many other signs that pointed directly to self defense. I loved it when murder victims fought back, it made it easier for me to find DNA evidence from the killer.

"Kyle! My mum's here!" Morgan peeped his head out of my office doorway.

"Okay! You can go now, just make sure you get some rest!" I shouted from the table.

"And by the way," he began, "Detective Orton wants to speak to you!" the teen hastily ran out the front entrance.

"Orton wants to speak with me?" I mumbled, confused.

With barely any blood or human fluids stained on my hands, I quickly walked to the sink, giving my hands a brief scrub before drying them and speed walking towards my office. And a small smile grew on my lips when I saw that Morgan had written down the number for me to call, neatly printed out on a clean slip of paper that came from my sticky notes pad. My fingers carefully pressed the ten numbers of the phone number, then my hand lifted the hand set to my ear, listening to the sound of my call reaching through to the other side.

"Hello? Detective Orton speaking," the familiar voice answered.

"Hi, it's Kyle."

"Oh, I didn't think you'd call back so soon!" the chief's voice chuckled from the other end of the line.