Eph was aghast. This abnormality was a fatal defect. As every anatomist knows, people look just as different on the inside as they do on the outside. But no human being could conceivably have survived to adulthood with this heart.

Nora asked, “Do you have medical records for the patient? Anything we can check this against?”

“Nothing yet. Probably not until morning. But it’s made me slow this process down. Way down. I’m stopping in a little while, shutting down for the night so I can get some more support in here tomorrow. I want to check every little thing. Such as—this.”

Bennett walked them down to a fully anatomized body, that of a midweight adult male. His neck had been dissected back to the throat, exposing the larynx and trachea, so that the vocal folds, or vocal cords, were visible just above the larynx.

Bennett said, “See the vestibular folds?”

They were also known as “false vocal cords”: thick mucous membranes whose only function is to sit above and protect the true vocal folds. They are a true anatomical oddity in that they can regenerate themselves completely, even after surgical removal.

Eph and Nora leaned in closer. Both saw the outgrowth from the vestibular folds, a pinkish, fleshy protuberance—not disruptive or malformed like a tumorous mass, but branching from and within the inner throat, below the tongue. A novel, seemingly spontaneous augmentation of the soft lower mandible.

They scrubbed up outside, more diligently than usual. Both were deeply shaken by what they had seen inside the morgue.

Eph spoke first. “I’m wondering when things are going to start making sense again.” He dried his hands completely, feeling the open air against his gloveless hands. Then he felt his own neck, over the throat, approximately where the incisions were all located. “A straight, deep puncture wound in the neck. And a virus that slows antemortem decomposition on the one hand, yet apparently causes spontaneous antemortem tissue growth on the other?”

Nora said, “This is something new.”

“Or—something very, very old.”

They started out the delivery door, to Eph’s illegally parked Explorer, his EMERGENCY BLOOD DELIVERY pass on the dash. The last streaks of daytime warmth were leaving the sky. Nora said, “We need to check out the other morgues, see if they are finding the same deviations.”

The alarm went off on Eph’s cell phone. A text message from Zack:

whre R U ???? Z

“Shit,” said Eph. “I forgot…the custody hearing…”

“Now?” Nora said, before catching herself. “Okay. You go. I’ll meet you after—”

“No, I’ll call them—it will be fine.” He looked around, feeling himself splitting in two. “We need to take another look at the pilot. Why did his puncture close up, but not the others’? We need to get on top of the physiopathology of this thing.”

“And the other survivors.”