The heavy zinc cutting-open table in the safe hall’s sub-basement groaned under the weight of the carcass.
Four junior cadets from the outer trench patrol stood backed against the whitewashed brick wall, their hands resting nervously on the grips of their holstered sidearms. The room smelled powerfully of cold lime, iodine, and the sharp, oily reek of decomposing chimeric tissue. They kept glancing between the ugly corpse on the zinc slab and the massive jet-black hound sleeping soundly across Arthur Vance’s boots. Grimm’s rhythmic snores rattled the empty sample jars on the steel shelving, his heavy breaths misting faintly in the damp basement chill.
Arthur pulled on a pair of elbow-length nitrile razor-sharp gloves, adjusting the heavy rubber sleeves over his forearms. He swung the triple-prism housing of his Zeiss magnifying glass down over his left eye, clicking the fine-focus bezel until the sight reticles sharpened across the dead tissue. He picked up his main 9.5-inch heavy dark metal-hardened carbon-iron body razor knife. He tested the blade’s balance against his thumb.
“Where exactly was this sample retrieved?” Arthur asked without looking up, his tone measured and level.
The lead cadet, a young nineteen-year-old with bruised knuckles, dark circles under his eyes. A patched gray guard post uniform, swallowed hard. “Two hundred meters east of Picket Post Three, sir. Caught in the concertina razor wire of the lower drainage ditch. It was thrashing like a rabid wolf when our scout team found it, snapping at its own flanks and biting the…
