Chapter 8: The Hunt at the Morgue

The harbor district lay quiet under a blanket of fog, streetlights creating halos of sickly yellow that barely penetrated the marine layer. The creature that had been Elias moved through the empty streets with predatory grace, his multiple sensory systems painting the world in overlapping spectrums of perception.

Color. Direction. Meat.

The mantra had crystallized in his fragmented consciousness during the walk from his apartment, three simple concepts his transformed mind could hold onto when higher reasoning threatened to dissolve into chaos. The human part of him had constructed this primitive framework—a hunting protocol that his various animal instincts could follow without losing sight of the ultimate goal.

Color: the heat signatures of living flesh, red and pulsing with bioelectrical activity.

Direction: toward the source of restoration, toward humanity itself.

Meat: the substance that would remake him, return him to what he had been.

His electromagnetic senses detected the sleeping population of the harbor district—fishermen exhausted from long days at sea, dock workers recovering from double shifts, the few late-night wanderers making their way home from Murphy's Tavern. Each signature was a possibility, a potential solution to his predicament.

But something deeper than hunger guided his movements tonight. The predatory calculations of consumed animals were tempered by a human intelligence that still remembered right from wrong, still fought against the monstrous imperatives of his transformed body.

The living were off-limits. Not from any inability to take them—his enhanced strength and speed made him more than capable of hunting active prey—but because somewhere in his hybrid consciousness, Elias Vance still existed. Still fought for control. Still refused to cross that final line.

The dead, however, were a different matter.

Beacon Hill Cemetery occupied twelve acres on the eastern edge of the harbor district, its weathered headstones and ancient trees creating a landscape of shadows and whispered history. But it wasn't the graveyard that drew his attention—it was the low, concrete building at its heart, barely visible through the fog.

The morgue.

His compound eyes processed the structure through multiple spectrums simultaneously. Infrared revealed the building's thermal signature, warmer in some areas than others, suggesting refrigeration units running constantly to preserve their contents. Electromagnetic sensors detected the hum of electrical systems, the background radiation of fluorescent lighting, the subtle emanations of electronic security equipment.

And underneath it all, barely perceptible to his enhanced olfactory systems, was the scent he'd been tracking. The chemical cocktail of preservation fluids couldn't quite mask the underlying reality of what lay within those walls.

Human flesh. Unclaimed. Unguarded. Available.

Color. Direction. Meat.

The security system was laughably primitive compared to his evolved capabilities. His fingers—now tipped with claws that could scratch steel—made short work of the lock mechanism on the rear door. The metal yielded like butter, its molecular structure no match for his transformed strength.

Inside, the morgue was a temple of sterile functionality. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting harsh shadows that his multiple eyes perceived in wavelengths both visible and invisible. The air was thick with disinfectant and preservatives, but his enhanced senses could detect the organic reality beneath the chemical camouflage.

The examination room held two stainless steel tables, both occupied. His heat-vision confirmed what his rational mind already knew—these bodies held no warmth, no life, no consciousness that might judge him for what he was about to become.

Color: the pale yellow-white of preserved flesh, cooled but not frozen.

Direction: straight ahead, unavoidable, inevitable.

Meat: human meat, the key to reclaiming his humanity.

The first body was an elderly man, his face peaceful in death, hands folded across his chest with the dignity mortuary science could provide. A toe tag identified him as John Morrison, age 73, cause of death listed as cardiac arrest. No family had come to claim him, no one had paid for his burial, leaving him in the cold embrace of the county morgue.

The creature that contained Elias Vance stood over the body, his various eyes studying the pale flesh with the detached precision of a surgeon and the calculating hunger of a dozen different predators. His human consciousness screamed in horror at what he was contemplating, but that voice was growing fainter with each passing moment.

The transformation had taught him that consumption was integration, that to become something required digesting its essence. If he wanted to reclaim his humanity, he needed to consume the thing that made humans human.

His jaw unhinged with reptilian flexibility, revealing rows of teeth adapted for every conceivable dietary requirement. Carnivore fangs, herbivore molars, synthetic cutting edges, crystalline formations that could process inorganic matter—an evolutionary impossibility made manifest.

The first bite was smaller than expected, more surgical than savage. His transformed digestive system began its work immediately, breaking down proteins and cellular structures with an efficiency that defied biological science. But unlike his previous meals, this consumption brought immediate, dramatic changes to his system.

The human DNA began reasserting itself almost instantly.

Chitinous plates started dissolving, their alien hardness giving way to the familiar softness of human skin. Feathers retracted into follicles that remembered growing hair instead of plumage. The metallic sheens that had covered portions of his body began to fade as organic compounds overwhelmed synthetic ones.

Color: the pink flush of returning circulation, blood that was becoming human again.

Direction: toward restoration, toward the self he had lost.

Meat: working, changing him, making him human with each consumed mouthful.

He continued methodically, his predatory efficiency warring with the growing horror of his human consciousness. Each bite brought more changes—his compound eyes dissolving back into human ones, his elongated jaw restructuring itself into familiar proportions, his impossible height condensing back toward normal human dimensions.

But the transformation wasn't clean. The process that had taken days to corrupt his form was trying to reverse itself in hours, creating conflicts and contradictions in his cellular structure. He could feel systems failing and rebuilding, organs rearranging themselves, bones reshaping as his skeleton remembered its original configuration.

By the time he finished with the first body, he looked almost human again. Almost. Patches of scales still clung to his arms, and one eye remained slightly rectangular, but the overall shape was recognizably Elias Vance. The creature was retreating, humanity reasserting itself through the most inhuman act imaginable.

The second body was a woman, middle-aged, her face bearing the peaceful expression of someone who had died without pain. The consumption was faster this time, more desperate, as his human consciousness fought against what he was doing while simultaneously demanding its completion.

With each bite, more of his monstrous additions faded away. The synthetic fibers that had woven themselves through his muscle tissue dissolved. The metallic reinforcements in his bones softened back into calcium and phosphorus. The electronic components that had integrated with his nervous system went dark and were absorbed into more familiar biological processes.

When it was finished, when both bodies had been reduced to empty shells of preservation fluid and cleaned bones, the thing standing in the morgue was recognizably Elias Vance. Pale, thin, his green eyes fully human once more. His hands shook as he examined them in the fluorescent light—flesh and blood, fingernails instead of claws, skin instead of scales.

Human. He was human again.

But the cost was written in the empty examining tables, in the violated sanctity of the dead, in the knowledge of what he had done to reclaim his birthright. The taste lingered in his mouth—not the complex flavors of his previous transformations, but something simpler and infinitely more terrible.

The taste of cannibalism. The taste of damnation. The taste of a choice that could never be undone.

He cleaned himself methodically at the morgue's industrial sink, washing away the evidence of his feast. The security cameras had recorded nothing—his transformed electromagnetic abilities had disabled them during his entry. The missing bodies would be discovered eventually, but by then he would be gone, returned to his apartment and his old life.

Outside, the fog was beginning to lift, revealing the first hints of dawn over the harbor. Elias Vance walked home through empty streets, his footsteps leaving no trace of acid, his reflection in store windows showing nothing but a tired man returning from a long night.

But deep inside, in the places where memory lived, he carried the knowledge of what he had done. What he had become. What price humanity demanded when it was lost and found again.

The hunt was over. The cure had worked.

And Elias Vance would never be the same.