Chapter 3 - Leeds, Great Britain

Dalton slid the opaque latex gloves onto his hands. He mentally replayed the events of the day, and a slight frown creased the skin between his eyebrows. That poor girl, what had happened to her? Why did her body look like that? He slid the white lab coat over his clothes and buttoned it up to the chin.

He exited the small changing room into an even smaller hallway. His fingers found a pair of goggles on the wall, and Dalton slid them over his eyes. Then he pushed open the weighted swing door and entered the Pit.

She lay on the table in the middle of the room, her skin sickly translucent in death. Dalton let his eyes wander over her body, searching for reasons for her death. He didn't touch the corpse, though.

The swinging door opened and a small mousy woman entered the room, followed by Ashley. He looked whiter than usual.

"What's wrong?"

Ashley looked at him, as if seeing him for the first time ever. His eyes were wide, and Dalton remembered that he had only been an investigator for three months. "Ashley, what's wrong."

He approached Ashley, and grabbed his elbows. He was shaking. Dalton didn't know what to do. He didn't know what could have set Ashley off like that. And then the gurney came through the swinging doors.

The girl on it had had her face blown off, leaving only bone and muscle in its place. Dalton felt a surge of disgust at the sight, and he had been on the job for years. He turned away and swallowed the bile that had risen in his throat. He turned to the wiry mouse woman and said, "Do you need help here?"

She looked him in the eye, and responded, "No, sir, I've got this covered. I think you're the one who'll need some help." She nodded her chin at the white and shaking Ashley.

Dalton didn't answer. He was wondering where Lijah and Werner were. "Ashley?" Ashley didn't look at him; he stood in the corner, staring.

"Ashley," Dalton put his arm around Ashley's shoulders and led him out of the autopsy room, and to his office. There he sat Ashley down in a chair and poured him a cup of coffee.

"Where are the others?"

No response. Dalton picked up his phone and dialed the office's psychiatrist's extension. "Jon, I need you to come to my office. Yes, right now. It's an emergency, just be here!"

He slammed the phone down, and looked at Ashley. "Ashley, I'm going to get you some help. Jon's coming."

Ashley didn't acknowledge that he was speaking. Jon came in a few minutes, and a frown grew on his face when he saw Ashley. "He'll probably need shock treatment."

"Yeah," Dalton's answer came out as a whisper. Jon led Ashley away, and Dalton sat at his desk for a few more moments before going back to the autopsy locker room and re-suitting up.

He entered the autopsy room more sober than before, took one look at the dead bodies, and decided he couldn't deal with any more that day. He had to check out the scene more thoroughly.