The air filtered throughout the autopsy examination room was chilly, and laced with the stale tang of recirculated air. Before me on the gurney lay the body of the murdered Weevil, looking almost peaceful cloaked in the veil of death. I pulled on a pair of rubber gloves with an echoing snap, the sound uncomfortably loud against the hushed silence that tends to follow corpses in repose. We were all new to the game back then and still retained a certain subconscious attitude towards death. Murder, autopsy, eventually all this would become second nature to us, we would grow to see corpses as part of the job. Like fleshy vessels of information, rather than ex living creatures. Frankly this sounds more callous than I intended. Merely, we had not yet grown accustomed to witnessing death, we had yet to lose our innocence, I suppose.
"I'm sorry about this." I whispered to the corpse, as I picked up one of the alien scanners Torchwood has repurposed into a medical tool. I ran it over the gunshot wound on the Weevil's chest, as the screen began to pulse and bleep. Interpreting the display, I realized that the bullet was still inside the wound. With a grimace and a sigh, I picked up a surgical pliers and probed the chest hole gingerly, half trying to look away as I dug deeper into the mangled flesh. I tried to imagine myself playing a game of some kind, trying to distract from the disgusting nature of my actions. I was always a dab hand at Operation as a child. My attempts were foiled by my brain, which at this point was practically screaming:
"Oh Jesus! Your hand is in an alien. Literally inside. Was that a lung? Does it have lungs? Of course it does, it can breathe, and anyway, YOU ARE TOUCHING THE LUNG! You're poking around in a wound and there's bits of bone everywhere. You know, this has the consistency of raw mince..."
I raised the back of my gloved wrist to my mouth as I fought to control a gag reflex, which was mostly successful. Swallowing my failure (mostly figurative, partially literal) I returned to probing the gunshot wound. Eventually, I located a small metal object and managed to free it from its meat prison.
"Here's where it gets interesting." I mused aloud to myself. The bullet was a cube, not a pointed cylinder like you'd expect. Which was odd. Bullets are so shaped to help them pierce flesh, while allowing the rifling of a gun barrel to impart a spin for added stability on the trajectory. How does a cube make sense, I wondered? It's not aerodynamic, not efficient, and harder to aim. Yet, the severity of the wound suggested it had traveled faster than the typical speed of a bullet from such a rifle.
I continued examining the Weevil, but found nothing else of interest on the body. People have done all sorts of things with Weevils in the past. Torchwood records mention fight clubs, drug testing, freak-shows, even sex trafficking. (That last one was supposedly defanged. But it was added to the database by Jack. I still don't know if that makes it more likely to be a wind up or the truth). However, the body showed no signs of recent trauma, nor any form of tag or tracer. It seemed a perfectly ordinary specimen, who happened to forage in the wrong place at the wrong time. If anything about a Weevil can be said to be ordinary, of course.
Once I had finished in the autopsy room, and cleaned myself up, I returned to the central section of the Hub where Ash was busy running several searches on the computer bank. She looked up from her dual monitors as I entered, and prepared to make some wry comment. Before she could however, she must have seen something in my eyes, and instead a soft, warm expression blossomed on her face.
"How are you coping?" She asked, gently.
"About as well as I can, given what I've been doing. It's still hard to come to terms with some aspects of the job." I sighed, as I embraced her. After a tender moment, Ash pushed herself away to arms length lightly.
"You mean like squelching around in an alien's innards?"
"Hey, at least I didn't vomit. Mostly." I said with quickly deflating bravado.
"Well, next time you can do the tedious computer stuff, and I'll get my hands dirty." Ash replied.
"No, it's fine, really. I'll get used to it."
"Don't lie to me, Arven. Not again. We're here to support each other, so if you need to talk, I'm here. Always."
She gave me a quick kiss, before continuing.
"So what did you find out from the Weevil?"
"Not much. Except, she was killed by a bizarre cube shaped bullet."
I handed the (cleaned) bullet to her, and waited for her to examine it.
"Hmm." She pondered. "This makes sense. You see, I've been researching the modifications on the man's rifle. It's hard to be sure from only the visuals, but I think it was a rail-gun."
"A-ha!" I exclaimed. A rail-gun would explain the shape of the bullet, after all. Angled projectiles would better tear the flesh of a target, and rail-guns can fire any shape of ammunition depending on design. It's a device which uses intense magnetic fields to rapidly impart kinetic energy upon an object. The projectile is accelerated rapidly along rails by electromagnetic energy, creating a gun that doesn't use any kind of explosive charge. I knew that certain militaries were trialing such weapons for use on naval carriers, but I'd never heard of a handheld version. Except for the ones in our databases of course.
"If it is, then it's alien tech. That's not good." I said, concerned.
"At least only one of them was armed. Suggests they're operating on limited resources." Ash added.
"But why a Weevil? We know they were ordered to kill the alien, so they weren't there to steal the Tech Specs."
"Maybe, they're employed by DevlinTech? Keep the stock safe from intruders? I did think that the Tech Specs seemed a little too good to be true. What if they're powered by salvaged alien technology?"
I considered Ash's point for a while. It was certainly plausible. I reached into my pocket and withdrew a pair of the glasses I'd borrowed from the warehouse.
"Well, we could always find out." I said, smirking. Ash looked like she wasn't sure whether to slap me or kiss me. Instead she remained silent. I felt like she was silently willing me not to do something. But now I was curious.
"Let's see if they live up to the hype." I smiled, as I placed them on my face.
"Oh no." Ash said to herself. I gave a cry of pain, as a sharp ringing echoed inside my head, and I felt as if something was drilling into my brain via my ears.
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