“The time is… three thirty-three a.m.,” a tired voice rumbles into a recorder-- the only tether keeping him vaguely connected to the outside world anymore. A personal diary. A real-time log of his progress. The raved ramblings of a man who’d lost it all and is trying to claw it back; screaming into the void in hopes for an answer back.

“I am in the basement of the-- hah, wouldn’t the authorities like to know-- a hospital. Recently shut down from mismanagement.”

The man in question is one Doctor O’Hara; thirty-five years old, feeling much older. Once a respected scientist for a biotechnology company. Two PhDs in biology and engineering. Generally a caustic, dour, closed-off pile of human wreckage held together by spite, grief, and booze, only exacerbated the last couple years.

He wasn’t always like this. He was a loving, caring father.

Operating word being was.

But he’ll fix that. He will. The last two years have been nothing but obsessive, back-breaking, soul-crushing work, losing his job, flying in the face of God, of morality, of natural order itself to do just that.

Miguel chews the inside of his cheek, taking stock of the room. Temperature kept low. Dingy white tiles. A single lamp lit above his head, casting a harsh, pale glow. Drawers upon drawers. Ramshackle supplies both brought in and already here. Jars of formaldehyde. Medical electrodes. A small corpse covered by a shroud sat on a metal table.

“The… the procedure… it goes like this,” he continues, as if the act of bringing a soul back from the beyond, desecrating his daughter’s grave, her body, her very memory in the process, quite literally attempting to play God, were all some rote act. Perhaps it is, after two years of singleminded obsession. “Keep the cadaver well-preserved; mending the life-ending injuries it sustained. Isolate the closest living relative’s DNA. Create a solution of--“

A clatter in the yawning shadows surrounding the unholy scene startles Miguel out of his explanation.

Hijo de puta, he curses. Pensé que estaba solo.

With an apologetic smile to the corpse’s direction, he sets down the recorder, replacing it with the gun in his concealed holster.

“Who’s there?” He demands, voice sharp like a whip's crack through the eerie silence. “Get out, if you know what’s good for you.”