Chapter 4: This can't be happening
1758 Words
Cassie sat in the cold, sterile room beneath the hospital. She couldn't help but think—she shouldn't be here. They shouldn't be here.
The steel table gleamed under the harsh white light that buzzed overhead, illuminating the face she loved more than life.
William looked like he was only sleeping.
Her blue eyes flicked around the morgue, taking in the rows of small silver doors. Each one housed someone’s tragedy, waiting to be forgotten in the dark. Soon, William would be behind one of those doors—alone, cold, and gone.
Cassie stood up, legs trembling, and approached the body.
Oliver had left her alone, promising to keep everyone else out. She didn’t want comfort. She didn’t want empty words that offered no refuge from the storm inside her. Things wouldn’t be alright. They would never be okay again.
Once you’ve tasted real love, living without it is like drinking ash—hollow, bitter, and dry. Her heart felt barren, locked behind walls she could already feel building.
She reached out with shaking fingers, pulling William’s cold hand from beneath the sheet. His knuckles were bruised, skin torn and stained. He had fought the intruder. Of course he had. That was who he was. He would die protecting their home.
Cassie lifted his lifeless hand to her cheek, pressing it to her tear-streaked face. Her free hand tangled in his platinum-blond hair. It was still soft—like spun silk. A sad smile tugged at her lips as she remembered all the times he'd stared in the bathroom mirror, clicking his tongue in mock frustration.
He always joked he’d dye it some ridiculous color. She’d laugh and offer to help. He never went through with it. Probably for the best. The museum wouldn’t have approved.
The most he’d ever dared was experimenting with facial hair.
---
Cassie gently folded William’s hand over his still chest, then leaned down and pressed her lips to his cold, blue ones.
That was the breaking point.
She had held it in since she arrived, biting her grief into silence, but now the agony broke free.
A strangled cry tore from her throat as she fell to her knees, clutching the side of the metal table. The room felt simultaneously too hot and freezing cold, like the air itself couldn’t decide whether to smother or shatter her.
“No… no, no, no… please, no… if this is a dream, I want to wake up. Wake me up! Please, wake me up!”
The words burst out between heaving sobs. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. She doubled over on the cold concrete floor, her glasses falling from her face. Her fists pounded the ground as she sobbed, begging—pleading—for someone, anyone, even God, to make it untrue.
---
Out in the hall, Francis Boswell stared down at the tile. He’d rushed to the morgue the moment he heard what had happened. For a while, he and Oliver just stood there in heavy silence, holding hands.
William had been like a son to them. Cassie, like a daughter.
Francis understood Cassie needed time alone with the man she loved. He didn’t object when Oliver insisted they wait outside.
But when the shouting and the screams started—raw and guttural—Oliver nearly bolted. Francis didn’t wait for permission.
He shoved open the door and found Cassie collapsed on the floor, shaking and sobbing uncontrollably. Her voice was wrecked from crying, her hands bruised and bloody from pounding the floor.
Oliver was right behind him.
Francis dropped to his knees beside her, gently lifting her into his arms. She thrashed at first, lost in hysteria, but he held her close, stroking her hair and whispering softly.
Oliver knelt too, helping guide one of her arms over Francis’s shoulder. Together, they lifted her trembling form off the ground.
Francis gave Oliver a sorrowful look, then carried Cassie out into the hall.
Luke was in the middle of paperwork when the first call came through—his phone buzzing with Felicia’s name.
He let it ring.
She tended to overthink things, especially after working night shifts at the hospital. Maybe William had fallen asleep with his game controller again, or maybe he’d wandered off on one of his midnight musings and forgot to text.
But the second call came quickly. This time, she was crying so hard he could barely make out the words.
Something was wrong.
He yanked off his lab coat and called out to Randal, telling him he had to leave. Randal didn't ask questions—just grabbed his keys and said, “I’m coming with.”
Luke was surprised when Randal’s wife, Eliza, insisted on joining them too. The three of them piled into the car and sped toward the hospital.
Felicia was waiting near the back entrance. The moment she saw Luke, she ran into his arms, shaking with sobs.
“I’m so sorry,” she kept repeating. “I’m so sorry…”
Victoria followed behind, her face unusually grim. Luke blinked. No yelling, no sarcasm. That alone chilled him.
“Felicia,” he said slowly, “what happened?”
But he already didn’t want to know.
He'd stopped at Conrad's office on the way out—protocol—but the room had been empty. Dark. Conrad was rarely absent without a reason, and the silence of that room had sent a ripple down Luke’s spine. If something had happened to William… and Conrad’s twin sister, Cassie, had rushed to the morgue…
Whatever it was, it was bad.
Felicia gripped his shirt tighter, unable to say the words. She just cried harder.
“Where is William?” Luke asked, voice rising. He looked past her, to Victoria. “Is he alright?”
Victoria hardened her gaze… then dropped it to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. That was all she could manage.
Eliza clung to Randal, who silently placed a steady hand on Luke’s shoulder.
“If you follow me,” Victoria said, voice tight, “I’ll take you down there.”
They all knew what “there” meant.
---
Luke left Felicia behind with Randal and Eliza and followed Victoria into the dim corridors of the hospital’s lower levels.
Every footstep echoed against the cold floor. It felt unreal. This had to be some horrible prank—like when they were kids, and William had once pretended to lose his hand in the garbage disposal just to scare him. Luke had peed his pants, crying, until William felt so guilty he’d confessed.
It had to be a trick. A sick one.
As he neared the morgue, he spotted Cassie slumped in a chair just outside. Her hands were a bloody mess. Francis knelt beside her, cleaning her up gently, while Oliver sat nearby, rubbing her back in slow, soothing circles.
This wasn’t a prank.
This was real.
Oliver looked up and saw him, then stood. He took a breath, shoulders tense, and did his best to explain.
The words floated in and out of Luke’s ears like they were underwater.
He only said one thing in response.
“I want to see him.”
The morgue door opened with a heavy groan.
Cold air rolled over Luke’s skin as he stepped inside, slow and mechanical. The bright, sterile lights buzzed faintly overhead, but the room felt too quiet—like the world had pressed pause.
William lay on the steel table, pale and still.
There was a sheet pulled up to his chest, but it couldn’t hide the wound in his side. Someone had cleaned him up, but the damage remained—brutal, unfair. His lips were slightly parted, as if he’d been about to say something.
Luke’s knees gave out.
He gripped the edge of the table, trying to stay upright, but the grief hit like a freight train.
“No,” he whispered.
He shook his head, voice trembling. “No… this can’t be real.”
He touched William’s face. Cool. Too cool. But not yet stiff. Not yet completely gone.
“I was going to propose,” he murmured. “The ring’s in the glove box. I was going to go to take her that stupid overpriced place you love…”
His voice cracked. “You were supposed to be my best man.”
He sank to the floor beside the table, hands buried in his hair, shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
---
The door opened again—quietly this time.
Luke didn’t look up until he heard the familiar footsteps.
He turned.
Eva.
Ash-blond hair pulled into a sleek ponytail, black slacks, and her lab ID still clipped to her coat pocket. She didn’t look like she belonged in a morgue—but then again, neither did he.
Luke stood, blinking through his tears. “Eva? What are you doing here?”
She paused a few steps inside. Her eyes flicked to the table, then back to him.
“I heard,” she said gently. “Conrad told me.”
Of course she knew. Conrad always moved fast when something cracked open. Always watching for the window.
Eva walked over slowly, her expression unreadable.
“I thought you might be here,” she said.
Luke’s eyes narrowed, not out of distrust—but because he already knew what this meant. What might be coming.
“You didn’t come to check on me.”
“No,” she admitted. “I didn’t.”
They stood in the quiet together, the whir of the refrigeration units filling the silence.
“You think it’s time,” he said flatly.
“I think you have a decision to make.”
His stomach turned. “Conrad sent you.”
“I volunteered.”
She took a step closer.
“You’re not thinking clearly,” she added, softer now. “And if you wait too long…”
Her words trailed off.
They both knew the limits. The window.
He looked at her, jaw tight. “He’s not a test subject.”
“I know,” Eva said. “But you helped develop the formula, Luke. You know what it can do. What it might do.”
“Might,” he echoed. “That’s the problem.”
Silence.
They both looked at William. And for the first time since stepping into the room, Luke didn’t feel grief. He felt urgency.
The kind that made people cross lines they couldn’t uncross.
“I don’t want to lose him,” he whispered.
Eva didn’t move. “Then don’t.”
- Writer
