[u]Joseph[/u]

~A bit before the call to the Captain~

Joseph’s old eyes idly wandered about the hard colors of steel and bright light, giving the morgue the absence of anything remotely close to human warmth. Or even comfort. For half hour already, his nosed was now filled by the harsh chemicals used to sterilize it, combined with the icy chill seeping from the cold units. They were lined up, stacked on top one another in a five by seven formation with their metal handles waiting to be tugged and pulled outwards. Very few had labels which meant they were empty. Only one had been registered and now stood like a gaping, blacken tooth against the rows of shiny silver. The current resident, a Ms. Falk, was settled onto one of two autopsy tables in the room’s center. 

At the thought of the young victim, Joseph’s head turned instinctively to pull her image into view. It hadn’t taken much time or effort to remove her from storage, then to cut away her clothes, careful to keep them as intact as much as possible while they finished preparations. Her hair was let loose and skin paled from the blood which settled towards the back during the time since death, leaving the light above to cast her image into an almost alien glow. To maintain a certain respect to the woman’s person Joseph had placed on a green, thin sheet square cloth which covered her torso front starting at the chest and continued inches below her pelvis. At least Joseph knew he could provide modesty to the dead though her spirit might’ve long passed into the afterlife. Unable to linger anymore on the body without feeling the urgency to end this sad affair, his eyes jerked to the wall beside the double door entrance-made of wood and small glass rectangle windows- that broke the décor’s current theme. His eyes rested at the mounted light projector, a flat, rectangle sent in a horizontal position where usually x-rays were sitting of the body. Until any unusual results had given reason for foul play to be a possiblity, those scans were unneeded and wasted time to gain. 

Slowly, Joseph’s patience had started to thin. He was already suited up into a lab coat, his hands gloved and itched to examine the corpse. Already the pale skin seemed to drain herself of more color during the time she had been forced to settle before his arrival. His foot tapped gently and echoed within the small room, trying to hurry Niven along. It wasn’t until the sounds of water in the sink had died did Joseph face his fellow doctor. At meeting his eyes, Scott Niven uttered an apology and snapped on his gloves. Wordless he pulled beside Joseph with the cart in tow. 

It was nothing special. A simple, metal cart on wheels which held numerous instruments from bolt cutters to a scalpel and rib splitters. Currently however the only needed object was a small tape recorder. It would allow him to take notes which he would later write into a full report. After Scott had taken his place beside him, Joseph pressed the record button. The moment the little red light lite up, Joseph started his examination. This woman had waited far too long, it was time to put her rest and into God’s hands. 

“Let’s see, your name is Ylva Falk. A cascusian female and according to your files, you’re approximately twenty-seven years of age yet you look to be younger. Now, if you will excuse me my dear, but I’m going to start from your skull and work my way down.” Joseph said and shifted toward her head. 

His gloved hands reached out to cradle the skull, his fingers wrapped around it like a fragile egg. Ever cautiously he tilted her head to its side where his eyes scanned the hairline. Then his thumbs tenderly pushed away the hair line to reveal the more dominate bruising and pooling blood about a third the way down near the spine. He narrowed his eyes in confusion, absorbing and ticking away at the many different causes for such an abnormal symptom. He came up with very, very few which didn't paraylze or kill her. His head motioned for Niven. Curious at Joseph’s scrunched up expression, his companion drew closer. His eyes shortly followed Joseph’s and soon he too, widened in surprise. 

Unable to move his hand, a bit fearful he’d disturb something, Joseph made a request of his companion. “Scott, can you so gently feel that region? Where the bruising’s clearer and were the blood is gathering?”

Niven nodded then pressed his fingertips gingerly along the spine area. The section squashed down slightly too easily and underneath, the gathered blood shifted and moved at the light touch. Joseph felt rather sick to his inner gut. Something was off, that much he was certain, but the details eluded him. Not eager to hold her head much longer, Joseph set it softly down on its side. “Seems something odd has happened here, a few secrets you’ve kept hidden Ms. Falk? I hope for you sake this isn’t connected to the reason your medical file was red taped or Mr. Williams and I will have a slight discussion for the future.” 

Without missing a beat, Joseph had taken up the small, thin flashlight then lowered himself to peer into the woman’s eyes. He held the eyelids open while he scanned the unfocused and deaden pupils, fogged over in death. He ran the light over the outsider iris rings and looked for anything odd about the eye itself until he was interrupted by Niven; the older man had started to farther examine the skull and spine area, skin samples taken for lab testing. “Joseph, need me to hold her mouth open?” 

Pausing in his examination, the eyes now finished up, Joseph answered yes then stepped aside. Niven moved to pressed his hands between the teeth and carefully open the woman’s mouth, prying the head upright. Joseph shortly returned to Niven’s side, a long swab in hand, and directed it to brush into the interior mouth's lining. It came back bloody. He couldn’t help but comment on the fact. “You just keep getting more interesting by the moment, my dear.” 

He had done enough autopsy cases in his life to know what he found wasn’t normal. He turned to Niven with nervous eyes. “I’m getting a bad feeling about this. Very bad.”

“Me too. Something’s not quite right with this but I can’t guess why.” 

“I have a few .” 

“Any I might be incline to agree with or even like?”

Joseph went quiet. He already deposited the bloodied swab into a sealed container and placed to be examined by the lab, his hand reached for the cart until he was ready to answer. “First I need to check something… Help me get her throat open.” 

“Right.” Niven said, hesitantly, and handed off the cutting tool. 

Removing it from Niven’s grasp, Joseph started to cut the esophagus’s front then peeled it away for a better look. At the rear lining, there was rawness where he assumed came from the open cut and few abrasions within, as if fraction had been created just inches below the throat back. Even with an oral examine, it was invisible until he cut open the throat. His mind recalled her softened spine and pushed downwards where he came just where Niven had touched. It didn’t take long for Joseph to note the oddity. The tissue appeared to not have grown together and if he pulled the muscle apart, it seemed like an odd, collapsed area which he could only guessed was where fluid of some type could’ve collected. The only problem was… there was only blood and no pus or discolored liquid inside, often a link to infection with unnatural cavities within the human body. It was impossible for her to be still walking around. Joseph seemed more and more confused by his findings. 

“Joseph? Did you find what you were looking for?”

Joseph’s head snapped upright. His eyes stared deeply into the man’s face, his own filled with worry and concern. “We’re doing an autopsy. Now.” 

Niven protested with a shake of his head. “Not until we get the clear from her doctor and the fam-”

“Don’t argue with me, Scott. Something isn’t right. That area you felt, its completely hollowed out.”

“What? No… you have to be mistaken.” 

Joseph didn’t bother to entertain the man’s absurd conclusion with farther comment as he shifted toward the cart again. His hands reached for the scalpel and started the autopsy preparation. Niven knew he wasn’t going to gain an answer. Unable to reason with Joseph, he resumed his assistant duties in order to make this procedure quick and clean as possible. Niven would deal with the consequences later, but it was unlikely Joseph would appreciate the results. Together they peeled back the chest skin, revealing the bloodied and darkened white of the ribcage under the layers of fattie tissue and muscle. Joseph had reached for the bolt cutters while Niven held the splitter in position, ready to push it in then pry open the ribs bit by bit. The snap bone cracks shattered the grim silence between them in their effort to reveal the organs below. 

“Pity, to die so young and so far from home. It’s not a fitting fate for anyone.” Joseph said in a surprisingly compassionate voice during his work, unable to stand the grim atmosphere for long. Despite Ylva’s bizarre anatomy, he still felt the same as before.

His head tilted upright, skimming over the woman’s still figure and thinking to himself for a moment. Most his movements were automatic until the last bone was cut, allowing Niven to pull the chunk free and reveal the colligated insides. The hard bone made a clink when it was placed into the nearby pan nearly making both doctors jump. 
Joseph’s brown eyes drifted in guilt over his reaction, edging back to Ylva’s bust portion. His eyes softened when he let his nervous settled, a moment from the grim task to pray his assumption wasn’t just guess work. 

Slowly he edged back into the current job. His hands reached in and gently moved down the cut's path where the kidneys laid. It was only partly way into the interior examine when Joseph’s eyes widened in surprise then locked his expression to mirror Niven’s. His hands slowly lifted the smaller organs into his hand where the quilted surface took on a discolored appearance that was a clear sign of poisoning. 

“Get the Captain on the line. This wasn’t just a death, I believe we have a killer on board.” 

Niven wasted little time. His hand flew to the phone line, leaving Joseph to place the delicate and ill looking kidneys into the pan alongside the sternum. Already he was diving in again to seek any explanation of any sort of struggle or disabling blow, cutting away more soft tissue when the Captain’s voice came online. Niven spotted Joseph lost in his work, his voice still conversing with the decease. Part of his words were apologies for not seeing it sooner while the rest was questions he knew she could never answer, followed up observations. Major fractures to the Thoracic Vertebrae #3 and #4, better known as T3 and T4, and in addition the spinal cord there was also completely severed. 

[center]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[/center]
 
Joseph had finished his autopsy finally, including the photos from a complete x-ray of the corpse for more study. It was during this, he had discovered an implant within the corpse’s body that stuck out like a sore thumb. When it had shown up in the images as a white negative, both Niven and Joseph had cut it out. Currently, its purpose is unknown though he thought it would be something to effectively help hide her condition but in what way he was still trying to determine. He ended up sending it to the labs where their jack scientist of multiple sciences and likely his assistant would end up looking it over. For now, Joseph could only wait for their findings. 

Within the cold scenery of the morgue, his mind reviewed his own discoveries. Each one had become worse and worse, his suspicion of murder had been confirmed and he sensed the blood tests would only provide unarguable evidence of it. Who would ever be idiotic enough to murder a young woman onboard a ship light years away from earth? Who would hold a grudge that badly to risk being caught? There were so many questions he couldn’t answer, not excluding the oddness found within Ms. Falk herself. Afterwards he had stitched up Ylva then placed her back into her assigned unit where she laid until Mr. Williams would decide what would happened next. Now working on paperwork he was still unease about his first findings because they were completely alien in his experience. He hd a theory, his thoughts slowly trailed toward the one being who could possibly confirm it and answer his many questions. She might be able to least rule out a possibility. However… he first had confirm an alright with the Captain to send Ariadne down.