The officer's body lay on the table like it had been waiting.
Not peaceful—nothing about it was peaceful—but contained. Restrained by steel and protocol instead of fear. The head wound was catastrophic: skull fractured inward, bone splintered like dropped porcelain, gray matter visible beneath torn scalp and coagulating blood. The face was slack in death, mouth slightly open, as if caught mid-breath.
The smell hit first.
Copper and rot layered over antiseptic, sharp and unmistakable. The kind of smell that clung to fabric and hair, that stayed long after the room was scrubbed clean. It was death refusing to respect the sterility of the lab—refusing to be reduced to a specimen.
Ellis stripped off his bloodied outer layer with sharp, practiced movements. The motions were automatic, drilled into him long before he ever wore a lab coat. He dropped the stained fabric into a biohazard bin and snapped on fresh gloves, tugging them tight at the wrists.
Across from him, Dr. Michael Wallace was already doing the same, humming under his breath. A low, tuneless sound, almost comforting in its normalcy—as if this were just another late night chasing data instead of carving answers out of a corpse.
"You always hum when you're nervous," Ellis muttered without looking up.
Mike glanced over the rim of his glasses. "I always hum when the world's ending," he said lightly. "Helps me focus."
Around them, the room buzzed with controlled panic.
Emergency generators hummed unevenly, lights flickering just enough to remind everyone they were living on borrowed power. A lab tech wiped blood off a microscope lens with hands that shook no matter how hard she tried to still them. Near the wall, a soldier leaned over a trash bin and vomited quietly, then wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and straightened like nothing had happened.
No one commented.
Ellis leaned over the body, eyes narrowing.
"Time since death?" he asked.
"Less than ten minutes," a med-tech replied, voice tight but professional. "Reanimation attempt failed. No postmortem motor activity after head trauma."
Ellis nodded once. "Good. That means the tissue's still warm."
The words landed heavier than he intended.
Someone swallowed audibly.
Mike didn't flinch. "Brain first?"
Ellis shook his head immediately. "No."
He adjusted the overhead light, angling it across the torso. "We trace the pathway. Blood to brain—not the other way around."
He gestured with two fingers, precise. "I want full vascular sampling. Cerebrospinal fluid. Cardiac tissue. If this thing moves the way we think it does, the heart is the relay point."
Mike's expression shifted—less joking now, the levity burning off like fog under heat. "You think it's piggybacking on circulation."
"I think it's using the bloodstream as a highway," Ellis said. "And the brain as the destination."
He paused, studying the officer's face. The slack jaw. The faint crease between the brows, frozen in something that might once have been concern.
"This man didn't lose himself slowly," Ellis added quietly. "There was no fade. No confusion. He was overridden."
They began the incision.
The blade slid through skin with practiced ease, parting tissue cleanly. Ellis worked methodically, narrating as he went—not for drama, but for documentation. Every observation mattered. Every anomaly could be the difference between survival and extinction.
"Subcutaneous tissue intact," he said calmly. "Minimal trauma beyond cranial injury. No signs of systemic necrosis."
As he exposed deeper layers, his brow furrowed.
"This isn't postmortem breakdown," Ellis continued. "Look at the inflammation. Vascular response is still active."
Mike leaned in, adjusting the light, eyes narrowing. "Jesus… that's not decay."
"No," Ellis agreed. "That's occupation."
They moved with grim efficiency, drawing samples, sealing them, labeling everything in ink that refused to shake even when hands wanted to. When they finally reached the cranial cavity, the room fell silent in a way Ellis had only experienced once before—during an autopsy that had rewritten an entire field of study.
The brain tissue looked wrong.
Not dead.
Not alive.
Veins pulsed faintly despite the stopped heart, twitching like residual memory. Not reflex—something else. Something persistent. The tissue had a sheen to it, slick and almost oily, as though coated in a thin film that didn't belong.
Ellis felt his throat tighten.
Mike swallowed hard. "Ellis…"
The EEG leads, placed out of caution more than expectation, flickered.
Not flat.
Not normal.
Active.
Mike whispered, "It's still firing."
Ellis felt something cold and absolute settle in his chest.
"That shouldn't be possible."
But it was.
The brain wasn't dying.
It was functioning—fragmented, disorganized, but unmistakably alive in ways that defied every known boundary between life and death. Neural pathways lit and dimmed without pattern, like a city grid hijacked by an occupying force that didn't understand the rules but didn't need to.
They exchanged a look.
No jokes now.
No sarcasm left to hide behind.
"This thing doesn't need the body," Mike said quietly, awe and horror tangling in his voice.
Ellis nodded slowly. "No."
He stared down at the exposed brain, at the proof laid bare under surgical lights.
"The body is just transport."
Around them, the lab felt suddenly smaller.
The walls thinner.
The truth heavier.
This wasn't a disease that killed and left something behind.
It was something that moved in, took control, and kept going.
And for the first time since the outbreak began, Ellis understood with terrifying clarity that death was no longer the end point.
It was just the beginning of something else.