Rui scowled at them.
“Cadet Lin, meet Dr. Kodie Tsai,” Ash said, shutting the door firmly behind him.
The doctor stubbed her cigarette out on a metal dish and pushed herself off the wall. “Rui, right? You can call me Kodie. I’d offer to shake your hand, but considering what I’ve been working on, that seems like a bad idea.”
Rui glanced at the operating table. A thin white sheet had been thrown over a large, lumpy object, and there was a putrid stench coming from it.
“Couldn’t stand looking at it, so I covered it up,” Kodie explained, pushing her spectacles up on top of her head. There were faint shadows under her deep-set eyes. “And I’m pretty sure I have the strongest stomach in this room.”
Feeling preemptively sick, Rui said, “Thanks for the warning.”
Kodie put on a pair of disposable gloves and approached the operating table. “Brace yourself.”
With a swift move, she pulled off the sheet.
Rui’s brain had already been thinking up all sorts of gross stuff, but nothing could have prepared her for the mangled mess ofhumanon the table. She wasn’t sure where one limb ended and the next started, though she was certainthatwas a nose andthosewere fingers, even though neither really looked like it. Either way, she was glad to have missed dinner.
Her voice cracked when she tried to speak. “What happened?”
“We’re not exactly sure,” Ash said, looking a little ill himself. “One of the senior cadets discovered this corpse during our mission tonight.”
“Who was the cadet?”
“Teshin Mak.”
Rui nodded, slightly relieved. Teshin was unflappable; they would be fine.Almostunflappable, she amended, remembering how flustered they’d become when talking about Yiran.
“Cadet Lang caught a glimpse as well when she went to aid Cadet Mak,” Ash added.
“Mai doesn’t know Hybrids are real.”
“She does now. I’ve spoken to the two of them. They’re okay.”
Kodie peered closely at the body. She caught Rui scrunching up her nose. “You get used to bad smells in this job,” she said.
Rui gave her a weak smile.
“Other Exorcists would’ve assumed this was a cut-and-dried case. The Blight attacked an unsuspecting person at random, the transformation went wrong, the person died, and so on. But Ash brought it to me. He has an instinct about such things.”
Ash grinned. “A compliment from you, Koko? That’s a rarity I shall cherish.”
“Are you flirting?” Rui frowned at him. “In a morgue?”
“Technically, this isn’t a morgue. It’s a research lab,” Kodie pointed out.
“There’s a dead person right in front of us!”
“Well, I’m spoken for.” Kodie glanced at Ash. “This one’s a good kid. Unfortunate.”
“What do you mean?” Rui said, glaring at the doctor. “And I’m not a child.”
“Doesn’t matter what she meant,” Ash said. “I brought you here because Kodie discovered something strange about this corpse. It wasn’t transformed by the Blight.”
“What do you mean?” Rui repeated, shakier this time.
Kodie brought her glasses back down onto her nose. “An attempt was made to change this man into a Hybrid Revenant by messing with his spiritual energy, but the pattern of qi deviation isn’t what you normally see in an infection from the Blight. This attempt was carried out withmagic.”
Rui gasped. “That’s impossible.”
