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He set the vials in the rack and turned to the centrifuge. The machine hummed as it spun. Petra watched it with a flat stare, too tired to be scared.

“I need to look at your cells,” Marcus said. “Multiple magnifications. It’ll take time.”

“I’ve got time.”

He prepared the first slide and placed it under the microscope. Forty times magnification showed the same degradation pattern he’d seen in Cole’s blood. The cell membranes thinning. Hemoglobin leaching. He moved to one hundred times. The damage was clearer. The membranes weren’t just thinning; they were coming apart in sections, like something was dissolving them from the inside.

He tried two hundred times. The cells covered the field, massive and wrong. The degradation had a pattern, and it wasn’t random: something targeted the shifter cells specifically.

Marcus sat back. The lamplight flickered across the workbench.

“I need a tissue sample,” he said.

Petra held out her forearm. “Where?”

“Here.” He marked a spot two inches below her elbow with a pen. “Local anesthetic. Small incision. You’ll feel pressure, not pain.”

She nodded. Marcus drew the anesthetic into a syringe and injected it. The skin raised. He waited thirty seconds, then made a quick incision with a scalpel. The blade was sharp. The cut was clean. A small piece of tissue, no larger than a pencil eraser, came free. He placed it in a sterile container.

Petra didn’t flinch. She watched the blood well along the cut and said nothing.

Marcus applied a bandage. “Hold pressure.”

She pressed her thumb to the gauze. Marcus carried the tissue sample to the second microscope, the older one he used for histology. He prepared a slide and stained it with hematoxylin and eosin. The tissue took the stain unevenly.

Under the scope, the pattern was clear. Human tissue cells: normal structure, intact membranes, healthy nuclei. Right beside them, shifter cells with the same degradation he’d seen in the blood. The border between healthy and degrading was sharp. There was no gradient and no transition zone.

Something was targeting shifter cells specifically and leaving human cells alone.

Marcus lined up the samples on a steel tray: blood from Petra, blood from Cole drawn two nights ago and stored, and the tissue sample. He ran reagent screens on all of them. Venom markers came back negative. Injury response markers were inconsistent with trauma. Environmental toxin panels showed nothing.

He opened his logbook. The leather cover was warm from the lamp. He wrote the date and Petra’s name, then the symptoms: coordination loss, fatigue, fever, rib pain. He wrote “blood panels inconclusive” and then “tissue biopsy shows selective degradation of shifter cells.” He underlined selective.

The next entry was shorter. “Ruled out venom. Ruled out injury. Ruled out environmental toxins.”

The entry after that was three words: “Pattern suggests targeting.”

He set the pen down. Petra had slumped against the wall, her eyes half-closed. The bandage on her forearm was spotted with blood.

“You should lie down,” Marcus said.

“Can’t drive like this.”

“I’ll call someone.”

She shook her head. “I’ll manage.”

Marcus didn’t argue. He helped her to her feet. She leaned against him, her weight substantial and unsteady. He walked her to the door and held it open. The cold hit them both.

“Two days,” he said. “Same as Cole.”

Petra nodded. She made it to her truck without falling. She fumbled with the keys, got the door open, and pulled herself inside. The engine started. The headlights cut two yellow paths across the gravel. She drove away slowly, the truck weaving slightly before it straightened on the main road.

Marcus closed the door. The carriage house was quiet. The samples waited on the steel tray. The logbook lay open, his handwriting growing tighter with each entry.

He picked up the tissue slide and held it to the lamp. The border between healthy and degraded cells was perfect, almost surgical, the work of something that knew the difference.

He’d never seen anything like it.