The scalding white foam rose past Elena Rostov’s rubber clogs before she could reach the gurney brake.
A sickening chemical stench filled the air of Autopsy Bay 1, hitting Elena’s nostrils with the force of an ammonia capsule. It smelled of industrial chlorine bleach, boiled animal tallow, and the sharp, synthetic bite of scorched bisphenol-A receipt resin.
As an emergency trauma nurse, Elena had treated industrial chemical burns from the harbor refineries. She knew what caustic lime did to living epidermis--it saponified human fat on contact, turning healthy skin into slick, dissolving soap within ninety seconds of exposure.
The six brass drainage grates in the floor tiles had completely reversed their flow.
Instead of draining embalming fluids at the standard rate of 1.8 gallons per minute, the cast-iron sumps were geysering under furious subterranean pressure. Thick, viscous, chalk-white slurry erupted four feet into the air, churning like a boiling vat in a paper mill.
Every time the frothing white foam splashed across the dry porcelain tiles, something horrifying happened to the floor.
Elena watched in sheer disbelief as the white slurry reacted with the cold glaze of the tiles.
Lines of wet, bright red ink precipitated out of the foam. The crimson pigment didn’t smear or run with the water. It crystallized outward in jagged, geometric fractures, forming crisp, printed alphanumeric characters right on the wet floorboards like red frost forming on a winter windowpane.
