Doc, you in here?

I call.

It's late, and the other staff members who work at the medical examiner's office have all gone home for the day.

It's the only way Dr. Jessup, the medical examiner, would let me in to see my friend's body.

But now I can't find him.

I wander around for a minute, trying to locate the exam area, or whatever they call the room

where post-mortem exams are done. Finally, I come across two scuffed gray doors with plastic

window set in them. I look through the windows, but they're so clouded and scuffed that I can't

see anything but vague shapes, so I push through.

Kendrick's body is on an exam table. His chest opened up, rib cage folded out. It strikes me how easy it is to forget we're just meat and bones and brains. As I push down my revulsion

and move forward, I catch a glimpse of blood on the floor.

I round the table and see Doc Jessup lying on the floor between a countertop and the exam table.

A pool of blood shines in the harsh light from over the exam table.

Doc? I say, stepping forward. But I don't touch him. I know instinctively that he's dead.

There's nothing I can do for him. So I step back, glancing briefly at Kendrick's open chest cavity as I move.

I stop. Something in the back of my mind telling me to look again, telling me that something's not right.

It is, after all, why I came here to try and figure out what the hell is happening to my friends.

I look into his chest cavity again, and what I see there sends me running out of the building.

As I jump into my car, I remember Kendrick complaining of chest pains a week earlier.

I also remember that he didn't seek treatment, and they went away after a few days or so.

But then he dropped dead yesterday, just like that.

And his best friend and roommate, Cameron, barely seemed to notice.

...