The stainless-steel cutting-open tray on the lower lab deck was chilled to minus forty degrees, frosted with a thin, glistening veneer of man-made cold air rime. The cut thorax of the Void Solar-Siphon Skirmisher lay pinned beneath three silver-steel retaining clamps, its oily black hard shell emitting a faint, sour odor of frozen ammonia, scorched copper, and volatile methane.
Arthur Vance stood over the sample, clad in his green nitrile sickness apron and sterile razor-sharp sleeves. His heavy dark metal razor knife gleamed under the focused bright purple check lamps. Beside him, Chief Engineer Szabo leaned against an inner wall with his arms crossed. He watched with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. Meanwhile, Bramwell Heseltine’s digitized autopsy manual flickered on a side end-post, displaying body sketches of Year 0 pre-cataclysm rift anomalies.
Pip sat perched on the overhead lamp arm, his golden head tilted at a sharp ninety-degree angle. He watched Arthur’s hands with obsessive curiosity. Every few moments, Pip would lean down and let out a quiet, questioning chirp, as if offering his own avian opinion on which organ to dissect first. Grimm lay curled under the cutting-open table, his heavy chin resting on Arthur’s boot, snoring softly in exhausted post-combat recovery, sometimes twitching his lone scarred ear.
