Victoria Hawthorne’s body lay cold on the steel table.

Dr. Beckett Shaw recognized her immediately. She was the heiress of some oil tycoon and had recently been in the news for her new controversial pipeline project that was set to be completed next to a Conservation. Environmentalist were currently fighting her about it- if that pipeline ever burst, it would devastate miles of protected wilderness. She’d been suing the enviornmentalists that opposed her and that made her a lot of enemies.

Well, _had _made her a lot of enemies, he supposed. Considering she was dead now and currently laying on the steel table in his morgue ready for him to begin the autopsy.

Foul play was definitely suspected because she’d collapsed at a gala. One minute she had been standing among a group of elite and laughing about the kind of things rich people laughed about, and the next she was dead. By the time the paramedics had arrived, her heart had given out.

The news was already suspecting the environmentalist, social media was exploding with conspiracy theories, and the tox screen had already come back negative for anything except a low blood alcohol level consistent with the witness statements that said she’d consumed some champagne and benzodiazepines he’d already confirmed were from a script written for her.

Beckett wasn’t paid to speculate; he was paid to find answers. He removed the sheet and began the Y-incision/

Autopsies were nothing like what Hollywood portrayed. They were painstaking, methodical, and thorough. He combed over every square inch, weighing organs, taking samples, and noting the ordinary: old surgical pins from a childhood fracture, multiple cosmetic surgeries, and a third kidney from a transplant.

Everything seemed normal until he stained the tissue and it lit up like wildfire with amyloid deposits everywhere in every organ.

It was Familial Amyloidosis. She’d been dying for years while the proteins gradually accumulated in her tissue and organs until she went into abrupt multi-organ failure. Not murder, just shit luck.

Beckett typed up his report, sent it off to the detective, and washed his hands of it.

Until next week when Maxwell Ambrose wound up on his table.

Ambrose was the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and had kneeled over at a dinner with his mistress in some Manhattan restaurant Beckett would never be able to afford, dead before he’d hit the floor. The wife was suspected since she was found at the scene, but she maintained her innocence- that she was just there to get pictures so she could get everything in the divorce- and Beckett was starting to believe her when Ambrose’s tox screen came back negative for everything but routine medications.

The autopsy continued and nothing obvious jumped out at first. Plastic surgeries, fatty liver from his diet of rich foods and alcohol, and a heart transplant.

Normal. Everything was normal.

Right up until he stained the tissue samples and it lit up with amyloids just like Hawthorne’s last week had.

“What the-,” Beckett muttered to himself, double checking and even triple checking he was correct.

Familial Amyloidosis.

Beckett sat down in his chair. The disease was rare- about one in a million. Most doctors never see a case in their careers, and yet, within a week from each other, two affluential people had dropped dead suddenly from the disease. It was statistically improbable.

Unless…

Both Ambrose and Hawthorne had had organ transplants.

Beckett grabbed the kidney tissue from Hawthorne and the heart tissue from Ambrose and ran a rapid DNA test. A couple hours later, they came back with the results that Beckett had suspected but needed confirmation on: they had received organs from the same donor.

“Shit,” Beckett said, staring at the results. Familiar Amyloidosis was rare enough that it wouldn’t have been on a typical transplant screening. That meant that anyone else who had received transplants from the same donor was at risk of dying suddenly.

Beckett cross-checked the organ donor database but the surgeries were handled by a private medical facility with an unnamed donor.

“Of course they were,” he sighed in frustration.

Beckett could have stopped there, but he wasn’t that much of a dick to let an unknown amount of recipients just die. So ran the DNA through CODIS. Maybe, just maybe, he could get a hit. It would take a while but if Beckett could save just one life, it would be worth it.

By the third day, several things happened at once:

One, the President collapsed and died in the middle of a summit, sending shockwaves across the globe. The news reported that the President had had problems with his health in the past, even going as far as to get a lung transplant nearly five years prior.

Two, the results of the DNA test came back to a match: Maria Ruiz, who’s DNA was only in CODIS because family members provided the sample after she had been reported missing five years ago after security cameras at a nearby bodega showed her literally being dragged into a van- right around the time Hawthorne, Ambrose, and the President had all had their transplants.

And three, the elevator on the far side of the lab opened up and government agents stepped inside, one of them motioning for the other two to fan out into the lab, their presence a clear sign that they were about to bury the truth.

Oh.

_Oh…_

The implication sank in. This wasn’t a coincidence. Maria Ruiz had Familial Amyloidosis and she’d been snatched off the streets by traffickers where she was killed and her organs were harvested. The wealthy had stolen lives to extend their own, and in a twist of karma, had condemned themselves in the process.

If they were willing to kill and innocent person, then Beckett could only guess what they were going to do to him after having discovered this.

He moved without thinking, grabbing the data drive, and shoving it into his pocket before calmly walking to the stairs as to not draw attention to himself.

He burst into the back alleyway, pulse racing, adrenaline pounding. Voices echoes behind him, heavy boots, and clipped commands.

Beckett ran, mind spinning with names, faces, and secrets the world needed to hear. He was a forensic scientist, not a fighter, but he knew how to hide evidence and how to piece together truths from shattered fragments.

They had silenced victims, stolen lives, but Beckett would ensure the truth survived.

Even if it meant running forever.