Sven Widahn had never liked this place. Too many dead had passed through here already—victims, perpetrators, the lost and the forgotten. And he himself had almost been one of them. Some places never lose their shadow.
For Sven, the institute of forensic medicine in Greifswald was such a place. The mere thought of the corridor between its bare walls was enough to bring a weight to his chest. And with it came memory, whether he wanted it or not.
The shot.
That split second when the world held its breath. Katja’s eyes, full of love, disbelief, naked panic. The searing tear inside him, as if someone had split him open from within. Katja’s trembling hands in his hair as he struggled to say one more thing.
The ambulance, the harsh flash of blue lights, Katja’s face above him, her tears falling onto his skin. And the thought that he would never open his eyes again.
And yet, against all odds, he had come back.
Limping, his left leg stiff as an old plank of wood, he stepped over the threshold of the forensic institute in Greifswald. The door closed heavily behind him. The smell hit at once: sharp disinfectant, cold iron, and beneath it that faint, sweet trace of finality.
The corridor was narrow and bare, the white walls like blank paper no one had dared to write on. Neon tubes hummed overhead, their harsh artificial light glinting on the flawless gray floor. One door bore its simple, detached label:
Autopsy.
Sven moved forward. The steady click of his cane on the tiles was the only sound. It echoed from wall to wall, louder with every step, a warning with each strike.
The path through this wing was familiar, yet each entrance felt like a crossing over, between life and death, between certainty and the abyss.
The autopsy room smelled even more concentrated of what had already greeted him in the hall: sterile, metallic, unyielding. On the table lay the body.
“You look like a man who’d rather have a cup of coffee than a corpse in front of him,” said Dr. Ulrich Majonika in greeting, without looking up from his work.
“I don’t drink coffee anymore.” Sven’s voice was rough, frayed. “Since the hospital. Can’t stand the taste.”
“Ah. The body remembers what it can’t endure. Same goes for the mind.”
Majonika lifted his head, glasses sliding down his nose. “Come closer. Not pleasant, but interesting.”
Sven limped forward, the sound of his cane now muffled by the padded flooring. The dead lay still, like all here. Male, mid-forties, slender build. His face at rest, as if in deep, peaceful sleep.
“Any sign of violence?” Sven asked quietly.
“No external injuries,” Majonika replied. “No fractures, no bruising. But…”
He pointed with his scalpel at a tiny mark just above the solar plexus, directly over the vagus nerve. “A fine puncture.”
Sven leaned closer, hand tightening around his cane. “So an injection. And what was administered?”
“Unclear. No traceable substances. No residues, no markers like with sedatives or biopharmaceuticals.“
“So nothing at all?”
“I suspect something we don’t yet recognize.”
Majonika walked to the coffee machine in the corner. The quiet gurgle of brewing seemed out of place here. He poured himself a cup, and the scent of fresh coffee spread into the cold room without making it any warmer.
“There are systems that leave no trace. They act directly in the tissue and vanish afterward, molecularly gone.”
He took a sip, eyeing Sven over the rim of the cup.
“We’re not talking about something cooked up in a backroom lab. This is high-end technology. Military research, black labs, maybe even space medicine. NASA, ESA, who knows. Some intelligence services test such compounds, MI6, Mossad, GRU… all possible. Counterintelligence, silent elimination, controlled paralysis. The range is wide.”
Sven grimaced. “And you really think one of them would leave his test subject naked on a cemetery lawn?”
“I only say the possibility exists. And the possibilities I don’t know are likely worse.”
The door opened softly. A young assistant entered, hesitant. Pale, pimpled skin, eyes downcast. In his hands a stack of forms. He murmured a barely audible “Sorry,” placed the papers on the side table, and did his best not to look at the body on the slab.
“And what kind of effect are we talking about?” Sven asked.
“No idea.” Majonika scribbled his signature and handed the papers back to the assistant. “Something was injected, that much is certain. But what it was, why, and to what end, that remains a complete mystery.”
“And about the man himself?”
“If he’s a victim, and I emphasize if, he has no known identity. No papers, no match in the database. No registered fingerprints or DNA. I’d estimate Middle Eastern descent.”
“So a ghost.”
“A once-living man.” Majonika set down his cup. “And there’s something else.”
Reluctantly Sven stepped closer. The bright light above the table glared on the scrubbed skin of the corpse. Majonika lifted the left leg, bent it slightly. “Here, inner thigh. At first I thought it was a birthmark.” He handed Sven a magnifying glass.
Sven bent down, the lens close to his eye. “That’s no birthmark.”
“Exactly.”
Barely visible on the pale skin was a tiny burned-in tattoo: a circle no larger than a dime. At its center an eye, beneath it a stylized tree root, fine runes etched around, above them a shooting star.
Something tightened inside Sven. He straightened slowly.
“I thought you should see it.” Majonika took another sip of coffee. “Care for one yourself?”
“Your coffee? Hell will freeze first.”
Sven moved to the window. Outside the trees stood still, their leaves barely stirring. Everything seemed hushed, too hushed.
“Cause of death?”
“Pancreatic cancer. Terminal stage.”
Sven turned back slowly. “Which means…”
“…most likely natural causes.”
For a moment only the hum of the neon lights filled the room.
“And time of death?”
“Difficult to say,” Majonika answered. “The body was unnaturally cold. Far too cold for a discovery outdoors in seventy-degree weather. No insects, no sign of decay. Yet clear traces of cold damage on the skin.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
“I think he was kept for several days in an industrial freezer. Or in a mortician’s cold chamber. Probably below zero, maybe negative eighteen degrees. Then he was taken out and left in the cemetery during the night.”
Sven shook his head. “Who does something like that?”
“Are you the detective or am I?” Majonika lifted a brow. “Strange enough, in any case.”
“So maybe it wasn’t murder at all?”
The pathologist pulled the sheet back over the body. “I would say no.”