SATe [✔]

[14] selcouth

Awestruck. That was the best way to describe the expression that had filled the gaps of Cassiel's face as he looked up at the monitor. He had gone pale, his eyes scanning the words filtering onto the screen quickly. Whatever was being revealed to him was anything but good; at least that was the impression I was being given. For a moment I considered skirting around to stand beside him, I wanted to know what was causing him such concern; but then I realised I was left confused with simple diagrams, none of it would make sense to me.

The laboratory had gone silent again as Cassiel took a few steps away from the workstation and put both hands on the back of his head. The machines had gone silent, even the clear hum they had been emitting earlier vanishing. I couldn't stand it, stepping towards him briskly and forcing him to look at me, "I don't like that expression, Cassiel. What's going on?"

His face drops even further than it previously had. He seemed unsure of himself; far detached from the stoic soldier I'd first met. There wasn't a lick of that false persona on his frame.

"The morgue," He whispered, "The alien and its victims in the morgue. The new DNA strands match theirs." He hadn't said it quietly enough to avoid the range of Perry, who had just stomped into the room and caused us both to jump. I had no idea what Cassiel was conveying here, only a vague grasp of it reaching me and that was all I was comfortable with. Perry, on the other hand, both didn't understand and demanded to know more.

"What does that mean exactly?" He grunted; his eyes attached firmly to the various monitors attached to the ceiling. His long hair was being moved by the fan above his head as he stood monumentally in the centre of the room, arms crossed and lip trembling.

Cassiel had gotten straight to explaining, the vulnerability he was just showing vanishing immediately. "The only explanation I can come up with is that it's changing Marie into one of them," He reveals, picking up a fresh journal and beginning to scribble down notes in handwriting I could only associate with a doctor's visit, "And I imagine the two women we found might have failed that transformation and were gotten rid of."

I couldn't help but feel disgusted.

Those bodies.

Those bodies were clearly abandoned, thrown away like they were nothing more than packaging that had run out of filling. I could only imagine they were going to be replaced, with new, fresh produce that would last longer, perhaps?

What were they reduced to? What were they used for?

Apparently, I was the only one who had those women in mind, because both Perry and Cassiel had moved on in the conversation, pointing towards the screens to highlight different information. They were removing themselves from the narrative that involved those women and their deaths. As far as they were concerned, they'd already covered them up. As far as they were concerned, they didn't exist as people anymore, they were just bodies they were using to extract information that furthered the investigation.