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Murdoch rose from the corner of his desk. “Get your coat.”

“Pardon?”

He was already walking toward the door and she jumped to grab her things.

“Wait, where are we going? I have class in thirty minutes.” She followed him out into the corridor, nearly having to run to keep up with his long, purposeful strides.

“It’s my understanding that you won’t have any classes at all if this partnership doesn’t work out, so keep up.”

His choice of phrasing struck her as odd, but she supposed he was right.

Their shoes made a quick tattoo on stone steps as they descended deeper and deeper below the Medical Building. Eventually, they were spit out into the belly of it, surrounded by stone and iron, metal and cold. A veritable castle dungeon.

Atta had never partaken of hard drugs when everyone else had in the 70s and 80s, but she was nearly certain thatzingfelt very similar to the one that coursed through her as she took in the stone autopsy table standing in the middle of the room like a sacrificial slab; masonic, medieval.

She was still standing there, mouth agape, when Murdoch strode to the chill chamber wall of cadavers and pulled open a metal drawer. “Help me get it on a gurney.”

Atta pulled her attention away from the morgue of her dreams.

She appreciated that he didn’t expect her to have a delicate constitution or need to work up to handling a corpse so readily. Perhaps he actually believed her. Or maybe he was testing her.Maybehe knew she was essentially a glorified grave robber. Atta laughed inwardly at the thought, though it was short-lived. She knew she was worse than even a grave robber. They only stole replaceable, earthly things, not the corpses themselves.

For science, she reassured herself as she heaved her side of the body onto the metal gurney.

Murdoch wheeled the body over to the stone table. He did not ask her for assistance in getting the cadaver onto it from the gurney, and Atta assumed he’d only been testing her vitality rather than in need of actual assistance.

With the corpse laid out, he removed the sheet with a flourish to reveal a naked woman. Or what used to be one. Young, brunette, thin, her hip bones protruding.

Captivated as always by the personhood of the deceased, the spirit that once wielded the bones, Atta approached slowly, acutely aware of the scuff of her lace-up boots against the rough stone floor. Of Murdoch halting his movement at a set of metal drawers to watch her. Of the remaining shell of a woman, prostrate on a cold table. Who used to be a child, then a girl, then a woman whose life was cut short. By what? The Plague? No, her body would be at Achilles House or in a morgue with a quick turnaround if that were the case.

She walked slowly around the woman’s body, examining, taking it all in.

Someone had loved her once.

She had postmortem bruising around her wrists and ankles. On her cheekbone.

She’d loved someone once.

Her index fingernail was torn past the quick.

She’d laughed and enjoyed meals once.

There was antemortem bruising on the sides of her palms, her far-right metacarpal showing signs of fracture.

She’d read books, watched movies, listened to music once.

Her ring finger had an indention where a wedding band must have been.

She’d been married once.

Atta looked up at Murdoch, who was regarding her intensely, his hands in his pockets as always. “How did she die?” she asked him in a small voice. But it wasn’t fear or intimidation softening her. No, this was herworld. It was the sadness that made her feel hemmed in. Not trapped or entangled, but focused. Like the tragedy of someone else reminding her of what was truly important.

Murdoch dipped his chin toward a tray he’d laid out, laden with surgical instruments. “You tell me.”

“I’ll need a notebook,” she said, her spine straightening, her mind cooling with the process, the protocol and sanctity.

“Of course.” Murdoch moved to a desk off to the side and produced a clean, empty notepad and a pen.

Atta donned paper booties and a surgical gown, then gloves. The instruments were pristine, like new. They feltgoodin her hands and all faded away, even the looming professor as she cut into the cadaver and began her work.