Ace In The Hole

9:00 A.M.

Somehow over the years he had managed to spend a lot of time in morgues. And no matter how beautifully appointed, how perfectly cleaned, nothing could hide the essential factthey were freezers for dead human meat.

"I appreciate your coming down here," the M.E. was saying as he led Tachyon into the operating room. His eyes slid to Tachyon's stump, and quickly away. "Especially after… but I've never seen anything like this, and you're the expert."

"No problem. It's sort of fitting somehow."

The M. E. helped him into gown and mask. They walked to the table. A wan-faced woman was clutching rib cutters to her chest, and eyeing the headless body with wary alarm.

The corpse had been slit from sternum to groin, the ribs cut and pulled- aside. But pale yellow fat was growing across the glistening intestines. The ribs were putting out bony tendrils. Skin had grown across the severed neck, and pooching up from the center of the neck, like a finger thrust into a drum, was a tiny bud. Tachyon bent in for a closer look. Fascinated and horrified and unable to stop himself.

"It's almost as if it's… trying to… to… "

"To grow a new head, yes." Tach jerked back when he realized the embryonic head had eyes.

What if they suddenly opened? Would Demise's power remain? Would he make good his threat even from beyond the grave?

Stupid! He's always killed from beyond the grave. Bending Tachyon slid his dagger from its boot sheath, and jabbed it sharply into a buttock. The body arched and jerked. "Shit!" screamed the woman, and the M.E. didn't stop running until he reached the door.

Clinging to the swinging door, he stuttered, "Wha… what the fuck is that?"

"A mistake. A major miscalculation on my part. My nemesis and a reminder not to play God. May I suggest that we dispense with the autopsy, and move straight to cremation?"

"Great. You'll get no argument from me. What about the ashes? Are there any next of kin?"

A humorless smile touched Tachyon's lips. "I suppose I stand in loco parentis. I'll take them."

"Doc, you are one weird dude," sighed the woman, and she snipped off a rib that had grown beyond the edge of the chest cavity.