Chapter Text
ACT ONE : REAPER
CHAPTER ONE
AUTUMN⠀──⠀ NOV. 12, FRIDAY
GOTHAM MERCY GENERAL HOSPITAL.
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WHEN YOUNG, Delilah Morgan used to avoid funerals. A fear of cemeteries had blossomed in her mind as a child after recurring nightmares haunted her sleep. She found herself wandering through a dark and rotten land, covered in a dense fog that made everything around her either intangible or blurred.
She walked on old, half-sunken and worn-out graves, forgotten by time, with bare feet. The nightgown she wore fluttered in the wind that swept through the place, the cold being a distant memory. Delilah didn't feel it. She felt nothing.
It was almost as if she were dead. A hapless wanderer in a land that belonged to no one but those who rested there. Delilah remembered walking, walking, and walking. Until she stopped, unable to move. Not a muscle moved, her own body did not obey her. Then, upon the dark earth, the claws of death grabbed her ankles. Skeletal hands pulled her into the depths of the earth she walked on. Her mouth opened, despair consumed her, she couldn't escape and then she woke up.
She sweated cold, panting. She wanted to cry, but she couldn't produce a single tear. All Morgan could do was try to stabilize her breathing and return to the reality she was in. Her home, her room, the gentle sound of the wind shaking the trees outside. She clung to anything that could bring her clarity again and ward off the evil her mind was able to project.
Then she promised herself, as she always did when she had this nightmare, that she would never set foot in a cemetery. No matter what happened, or who died, she would never enter that place she had come to abhor.
Unfortunately, fate liked ironies, and it was ironic that she was now a criminal pathologist in the Gotham Police Department. Something that almost made Delilah smile, almost. Delilah didn't go into cemeteries, but death always seemed to pursue her wherever she went. It surrounded her and embraced her like an old friend.
Pulling the body of a 27-year-old woman, tall and thin, onto the autopsy table, she examined her calmly with her eyes. A white cloth covered her nudity, leaving only her legs and shoulders exposed, where Morgan stared at the moribund face of the corpse. The pale and cold skin, prominent purple veins in random places, and her light brown, thin hair were dirty and unkempt.
Death no longer scared her, she was familiar with it, but it still posed questions to her.
She drowned out the outside world with earphones in her ears and a low music playing on her cell phone. "Mad World" by Gary Jules filled her ears as she put her nightly playlist on shuffle and reached into her lab coat for a recorder with her hands clad in blue rubber gloves, placing it on the table while pressing the record button with her thumb.
"Starting the recording," she began, presenting a calm and neutral tone, setting aside the frustration of that long night. "It's past midnight, November 12th. The police transferred the body of a woman to the hospital. Suspected homicide. Dr. Delilah Morgan conducting the autopsy."
She removed the cloth from the body, exposing what was covered so her eyes could analyze what was hidden.
On the table beside her, there was the police report. Delilah had glanced over it a few times but hadn't retained as much information as she wished. A construction crew had found her hanging from a crane downtown hours earlier.
"Commencing the physical examination," she said aloud. Her eyes scanned the body once more, focusing on the pale skin and sunken eyes. "I am someone's victim. He, or she, chose me. Why?" The question hung in the air, and Morgan sighed. She lifted the woman's right hand, examining the nails of one hand and then the others. "There's nothing under my nails. No defense, no attack."
Delilah's methods of analysis didn't sit well with others; the way she empathized with the victims disturbed both the hospital interns and the morgue staff. Her outlet was to work after midnight, even when the police insisted she should have a companion or assistant for autopsies.
Delilah ignored all requests but didn't tend to complain when they sent her a newcomer for the job. Before the end of the first week, she'd be alone again.
"The police report said a suspect fled the scene, slim to medium build. No one saw his face or managed to follow where he went," she commented on what she remembered from Jim Gordon's report. She turned the woman's head to the left, noting the sunken area. "My killer struck me. Blunt force to the base of the skull, but not enough to kill me."
Dried blood was stuck to the corpse's dirty blonde hair, indicating a deep laceration at the base of the skull sufficient to knock someone out or cause a concussion, but not to kill. No, it definitely wasn't the cause of death.
Delilah descended upon the victim's body, moving to the waist and stomach area.
"There's a wide cut under my rib, almost... No, sharper than steel. Clean cut. This wasn't meant to kill me either," Morgan contemplated the possibilities, her slender, gloved fingers tracing the poorly contained cut. "This was the entry point to remove my organs. I was chosen, I have something special in me."
A heavy hand fell on Delilah's shoulder, causing her to abruptly turn to face the face of a demon. Her heart skipped a beat as she startled and took a step back, colliding with the autopsy table.
Morgan's eyes widened, and she almost screamed when Alistair removed the mask and began to laugh, laughing uncontrollably at the scene, even bending forward and backward with such humor and placing a hand on his stomach.
"What the hell, Alistair!" she exclaimed, clutching her chest, feeling her heart pounding rapidly against her ribs. Delilah massaged the area with a clenched fist, containing her anxiety. "What's wrong with you?!"
"You... You should've seen your face, Morgan," Alistair gasped for air, having to put a hand on the table to steady himself. "That was priceless."
"Screw you, that wasn't funny, asshole," Delilah turned her back on him, stopping the recording.
"For me, it was," wiping away a few unshed tears from his eyes, Alistair left the red devil mask on the autopsy table.
"Get that crap off my table."
"Don't be such a buzzkill, Lilah. You know I was just joking," he argued.
Delilah sighed deeply.
"This could compromise my work," she picked up the mask with her hand and handed it to Alistair, pushing the object against his chest. Carroll had a mischievous smile on his lips. "You too. You shouldn't even be here. What are you doing in the morgue this late?"
Her hands went to the cloth, covering the victim's body again. Delilah also stowed away her headphones - realizing one had fallen from her ear in the midst of all that.
She paused the music and left the phone where it was before, inside the pocket of her white coat.
"The lieutenant sent me here, wanted someone to guard the body, in case the nutjob tried to come here and erase some evidence," Alistair explained. "Also brought coffee for my favorite coroner."
Carroll turned and grabbed two hot coffee cups from the table behind him. He offered one to Delilah, who raised an eyebrow as the man just let his mischievous and somewhat arrogant smile continue to adorn his bearded face.
"It's got cinnamon, just the way you like it," the officer commented.
Morgan restrained herself from rolling her eyes and accepted the coffee gladly because she felt the lack of caffeine flowing through her veins. Working as a coroner had turned her into a coffee addict. The only way she could stay awake until four in the morning was with liters and liters of that dark drink.
She took advantage of working at the hospital to serve herself a full cup in the waiting area, but the taste of the hospital's drink was not as pleasant as those made at the café down the street. Whenever she was arriving at work or leaving it, Delilah would stop by the drive-thru and buy a cup for the road and a brie cheese and bacon sandwich.
She took a sip of the liquid in her thermos cup and closed her eyes momentarily as she felt the familiar taste on her taste buds, flooding her senses and leaving her satisfied with the flavor. Lilah leaned back on her workstation.
"Nice, isn't it?" Alistair inquired, sipping from his own container. Morgan nodded. "Knew you'd like it. You're damn addicted and you're not even 30 yet."
"Switch places with me for a day and you'll understand why I drink so much coffee, Carroll," she argued.
"I'm a cop, I get it, doll," he replied, mocking.
"I guarantee you being a coroner is worse.”
"Yeah, you gotta be pretty fucked up in the head to be chatting with corpses all night," Carroll said, casting a disgusted look at the body on the table. "But still, to put yourself in their place," a mocking smile grew on his lips. Delilah couldn't contain herself this time and rolled her eyes, leaving the half-full cup on the counter to her right. "You know this shit's weird as hell, right?"
"It helps me organize my thoughts and understand what happened," Morgan replied. "It becomes clearer when I empathize with the victim, easier to comprehend the killer's mind and what he did or what he wanted to do."
"Something a psychopath would say," Alistair retorted. Walking around the room, Carroll circled the corpse, examining the woman's body on the table. "And what have you found out? Besides the fact that you urgently need psychological counseling, of course."
Delilah rolled her eyes once again, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
"Not much. You interrupted me right when I was about to grab the scalpel to examine the rib cut," she said, shooting him a sour look. Alistair chose to ignore the comment, but there was still the ghost of a smile on his lips. "I haven't made much progress yet," she rubbed her neck. "But the night is young, I have until 4 a.m. for that."
"Need any help?"
"Are you offering to be my assistant? You? Right now?" she asked, somewhat surprised.
"I have to kill time here anyway," Alistair shrugged. "I'm swapping shifts with Jim in three hours. Then I have to pick up Casey from her mom's, she's spending the weekend with me."
"How's she doing?" Friendly, Delilah asked. The mention of Carroll's daughter made her somewhat happy, remembering the smart and sweet girl she had met.
"Causing trouble as always. Insisted her mom buy her a duck, can you believe it?"
"Like, a real duck?" Morgan asked, amused.
"Yeah, fucking real duck. The damn thing is shitting all over the house," he replied. Delilah laughed. "Liz is losing her mind, I warned her it was a bad idea."
"At least Casey was happy."
"Happy as a clam," Alistair said, leaving his empty coffee cup in the trash can near the door. "Her team is playing in a soccer tournament this weekend. I asked Commissioner for a day off to accompany the girls to this great football event in Gotham."
"That's nice. Is she excited?" Delilah moved away from where she was leaning and went to the autopsy table, standing on the opposite side from where Alistair is. The two of them alongside the corpse.
"She won't stop talking about it," he replied. It doesn't go unnoticed that, despite Carroll's attempt to pass off his usual disinterested and dull humor, there's an almost proud tone in his voice.
Delilah hadn't known him for very long, but she knew Alistair was a dedicated father. Since she joined Gotham Mercy, transferred from Star City to work as a coroner and forensic pathologist at the DPGC's behest, when they were short-staffed due to financial problems, Carroll was one of the first police officers Morgan met. He and Lieutenant Jim Gordon were recurring figures in the morgue.
Some other cops would show up from time to time, Delilah talked to all of them, she had to deal with each one - even those she didn't like - and Alistair was one of the most bearable. He didn't treat her like a stranger, much less like a crazy person - even though he complained about her methods regularly.
Delilah could almost consider him a close friend, if she knew what that meant. Her move to Gotham was still recent, and she didn't talk to anyone unless it was work-related. Carroll managed to skillfully strike up a conversation with her naturally, as if the two had known each other for years and not just a few months.
When Lilah first arrived in the city, it had been months since Alistair had divorced his wife. His life had been somewhat hectic with work, having to settle into a new place, and still having to be a present father to Casey. Carroll was still reorganizing his time, putting priorities in their proper place, and having to drag his daughter along to some jobs.
In one of them, Delilah ended up becoming the temporary babysitter for the girl for one night at the hospital, and although she expected the young one to be scared in the morgue, she ended up spending hours talking to Morgan about the work of a coroner, fascinated by the macabre things the woman did while wearing a pink tutu, holding a unicorn plush toy, and wearing a white hospital mask to imitate Delilah.
Morgan found the girl's excitement amusing, innocence overflowed from her eyes, without any trace of fear while the older one managed to entertain her.
"So, " Alistair clapped his hands together, drawing the woman's attention. "Where do we start?"
She sighed and pulled the wheeled table closer, showing the sterilized utensils on the surface. Morgan picked up a scalpel with one hand.
"I need to reopen this rib cut," she explained, pointing to the said wound. "I have to analyze what was removed. Possibly, it's the viscera. Considering where the cut was made, but that's just a guess."
"Gotham Reaper's stuff again," Alistair crossed his arms, shaking his head from side to side. "Thought this shit was over years ago."
"Do you really think it's him? Technically, the Reaper should be dead or too old by now," Delilah commented. "It could be some lunatic trying to replicate the original's work. A Reaper 2.0."
"That's the police's bet, but since we never caught the Reaper from 20 years ago and he simply disappeared, we don't rule out the first option," Carroll replied, without taking his eyes off the body.
"And what do you think it is?" the doctor asked, curious.
"I think it might just be another nutcase trying to get attention," he said. "This is only the third body, we're not sure of anything yet. The pattern should give us a clue, right?"
"Maybe," Delilah shrugged.
"You also analyzed the second body, right?" Alistair asked. Morgan nodded. The only body Delilah hadn't analyzed was the first one. She arrived in Gotham after the first one was found, the body of a 30-year-old man. She just read and reread the report and made some analyses. "Did you see any similarities?"
"Some. She also suffered a blow to the head that wasn't the cause of death, but had hand marks on her neck," Delilah informed. "The cut was made in the abdomen and not the ribs, and the body was found hanging on the sculpture of a Gotham founder in the park. He removed part of her stomach."
"Same age?"
"Close. 25 years old," she replied. "You didn't read the report? Aaron Cash wrote the first one."
"I read and write about a hundred reports a day, Morgan. I'm not going to remember them all," Alistair scoffed. "Not to mention it's been weeks since this second case happened."
"The media won't stop talking about it, the city's freaking out with so many conspiracy theories. Because when it was just 2, it could be just a random crime to be solved. But if this continues, we'll have a pattern and a possible serial killer on the streets," she replied. "Savage will go bald before the end of the month."
"If we're lucky, Batman catches him before that happens," Delilah commented, preparing to reopen the poorly made stitches on the rib.
Carroll scoffed in total displeasure.
"You're telling me you're a fan of the bat-crazy dude, Morgan?" he asked. "Who's to say he's not the one doing this shit?"
"He helps catch a lot of bad guys, Carroll. He's never killed anyone," she replied. "And Gordon seems to trust him."
"Gordon trusts everyone, I don't even know how he became a lieutenant," Alistair muttered, grumpy.
"Don't be jealous, Alistair. Maybe one day, who knows, you'll become one too? Then it'll be you they'll complain about," Delilah smiled and the man rolled his eyes, but didn't retort, just crossed his arms.
Morgan turned her attention back to her work, picking up the recorder before continuing. She turns it on again, setting it to record while she speaks. Alistair just watches her in silence, determined not to interrupt this time.
"As a modus operandi, he tends to remove an organ from his victims' bodies. Victims who, until now, have been two women and one man," the coroner comments, about to reopen the incision.
"Aren't you going to wash the body first?" Alistair asks, watching Delilah's steps.
"He already did. He washed her," Delilah replies, causing Alistair's forehead to furrow. Adjusting her posture, Delilah continues. "He washed her feet, her legs..." she points to the clean parts of the body, and Carroll approaches to see closer that she's telling the truth. "He cares about us."
"About us?" Alistair looks up at her, raising an eyebrow.
Delilah inhales deeply, still with her eyes focused on the corpse.
“The only place he didn’t clean was her hair and face. Maybe due to lack of time, maybe…” Delilah’s mind kept spinning, thinking. “I need to open her body. Starting the Y-incision.”
Morgan opens the woman’s chest with a scalpel, making a Y over the skin and exposing what’s underneath. Alistair shudders at the scene. Disturbed by the sight, he steps back a bit, disgusted.
“A small puncture over the heart. Large gauge needle,” Delilah commented. “Epinephrine injection… He kept me awake.” She continues analyzing the organs beneath the skin. “He wanted me alive for this, but I died anyway.”
Delilah’s eyes blink a few times, still staring at the woman on the table. She sighed, thoughtful. She puts the scalpel aside when she turns to Alistair.
“What I’m going to do now might not be very pleasant, Alistair. So… If you want to leave, I recommend it,” she suggested, seriously. Alistair knew Delilah wasn’t joking.
“I think I’ll stay, but I’ll watch from a distance.” Crossing his arms, he took a few steps back, almost reaching the exit of the room. “Do your job, Morgan.”
“Alright.”
Delilah turned once again to the body, bringing her hands to the cut she made.
“Separating the larynx, esophagus…” she said as she removed one of the organs from the cadaver and placed it on the sterile table to the left. “Now opening the ribs.”
The sounds echoed through the tiled room. The room was completely silent, and it was uncomfortable to hear Delilah meddling with each of those organs. Alistair cringed and looked away, even from a distance he could still glimpse the woman’s gloved hands full of blood and viscera.
On the metal table set to the side, there was a basin made of the same material, where Morgan discarded everything she removed from the dead woman’s body, going deeper into her autopsy.
“Removing organ set.” She continued, removing viscera and more internal parts of the cadaver’s body. A handful on the table as she carefully removed and placed everything on the basin. “It’s all here,” she comments. “He was interrupted. He hadn’t finished what he wanted with me.”
Her eyes scan the body on the table for answers, Delilah felt she was getting onto something. That puzzle beginning to make sense in her mind, leaving her stunned and momentarily distant.
“My killer washed me. He cares.” Murmuring, she continued. Hands slightly raised, avoiding getting dirty with the blood that stained the gloves. “He doesn’t hate me. He’s evolving with his methods. He washes us now. Could my killer be in love with me?” Morgan lets the question hang in the air. “No. It doesn’t show that he knew me. I am… I am a church. A church he walked into by chance—”
The sound of something familiar tinkling on the floor reverberates through the isolated walls of the morgue—tools perhaps, or objects on a nearby shelf. The eyes of both Alistair and Delilah turn towards the direction of the sound, beyond the double doors open of the morgue.
Involuntarily, Carroll already brings his hand to the gun holstered at his waist, lifting a part of his overcoat and holding the pistol firmly, while the two wait for a few torturous seconds. Neither of them says anything, waiting for someone to appear or the movement to return. Delilah alternates her gaze between the policeman and the door.
When the silence continues, the policeman turns to the medical examiner with a serious expression on his face. A deep furrow formed on his forehead, between his eyebrows.
“Stay here. I’ll see what that was,” Alistair instructed. Delilah just nodded, letting Carroll leave without saying anything else.
The doors remain open as he leaves, leaving her alone in the morgue. For a while, she remains still. Even restless, Delilah just waits in her place, listening to the sound of the air conditioning that cools the room and maintains the usual climate of the area.
When Alistair takes too long to return, Delilah decides to go look for him. She discards the gloves in the trash and brings her hands to the pockets of her lab coat, as she walks to the door.
“Alistair?” She calls out to him near the door frame, looking both ways in the exterior area of the room. That corridor is dark, and the other two doors near the stairs remain closed. “Is everything okay there?”
Through the glass, Delilah can see the light of the hospital corridor still on. The morgue is on the top floor, away from the other rooms and patients, and only authorized personnel could enter. Few had access, it was necessary to present at the reception to receive a card or wait for someone who had the keys to unlock the doors.
Neither Delilah nor Alistair heard anyone entering. And now, she remained without an answer from him. A worrying sensation grew on her exterior, putting Morgan on alert. Her throat closed up.
Moving away from the doors, she was about to close them when she heard footsteps and then was pushed against the empty tables in the corner of the room, feeling something pierce her skin. A knife. Delilah didn’t even have the chance to react when he stabbed her in the stomach with the sharp blade and then hit her in the ribs. He raised the knife to try to stab her in the chest, but Morgan stopped him and held him by the wrist, even grunting in pain.
He had his other hand against her neck, pinning her against the wall. Her free hand held the one around her neck, trying to push him away at all costs. He was strong, but not as tall as her. Delilah kicked him in the stomach several times, and this irritated him, making him furious.
He pulled her from the wall, discarding the knife in his hands to the floor and taking both hands to her neck so he could throw her away. Morgan’s back collided with the wheeled metal table that contained the organs. Everything fell to the floor, staining the white tiles and tinkling as it met the hard surface.
Delilah’s vision blurred from blood loss, but she still saw when the man approached. White flashes, blurring her memory with strange little fragments. She sees his legs, but when she blinks, it seems that the environment changes. She sees another place, a dark room, a carpet stained with her blood. In a matter of minutes, her assailant is on top of her.
Firm hands held her, while Delilah struggled against the man in a tangle of bodies. He had his face covered by a ski mask, and the smell emanating from him bothered her, but it was also familiar. She hit him in the face, and he laughed when his mask began to darken with blood thanks to the blow received from her clenched fist, almost as if the pain pleased him.
His hands tightened around her neck, the man trying to cut off her air circulation, while she grabbed wherever she could reach, scratching his clothes and the covered face, gasping for breath as he was on top of her body.
“I pierced the side of your body… I pierced the side and out came blood… And water.” With clenched teeth and breathing in long gasps, the man’s words sounded in Delilah’s ear, causing her disgust. “Thank you. You did a great job, doctor. But I hadn’t finished this body.”
His voice was not familiar, it was hoarse and almost melodic. He did not speak hurriedly, even as he tried to kill her, that man was slow, making every word he uttered understandable. Delilah had the feeling and the idea of appearing so fragile and at the mercy of someone.
Her head became lighter as she could not breathe properly. Delilah’s eyes began to close, and she lost her strength, with no chance of fighting him. Her hands fell limp at her side, and her heartbeat was slow, almost imperceptible. The blood loss also affected her.
Seeing that Delilah had fainted satisfied the killer, who stood up without checking if she was still alive. Morgan still half-closed her eyes a few times, listening to his sounds through the room. She could see him on top of the body before fainting, fascinated with his own work.
“I am a man… I am a man…” He repeated several times as he opened the cut made by the doctor to search inside the cadaver. “And the woman comes from my rib.”
He breathed in a few times. He sounded desperate, astonished. To Delilah’s ears, he sounded like a lunatic, frantic and uncontrolled, but methodical with his own work.
“I am a man, and a man is organs…” She heard the sound of bones breaking, viscera being stirred, the force he made to remove something he was looking for. “And the organs are heavy. They are heavy and compared to a feather, and if they are lighter, the man… Well, lighter, the man…”
He repeated those words, entering a continuous circle within them. Trapped within what only made sense inside his head, his mantra.
Delilah searched for air one last time, her chest rising and falling slowly, staring at the pale ceiling of the morgue, her eyes closing, finding the familiar darkness like an old friend, letting herself be taken to a distant land—perhaps finally meeting death.
However, before her fate was sealed, she heard him saying:
“I am a man, and you… You are the woman.” She heard a wet sound and then his murmuring, no longer muffled by the black fabric he wore on his face as he raised it to taste something he had removed from inside that body. “And I will taste your fear.”