Sartasus stood within the small cluttered room he had claimed as his place of study and work. It's shelves lined with bottles and Jars containing various specimens he had collected over the previous weeks from the prone figure upon the operating table.

"Now Jack..." He muttered as he donned his clean gear. "I know we have been working together for a few weeks now and that you have proven to be invaluable to me but..." He paused as he tightened a loose strap of one of his arm covers. "I think it's time we called it off..."

Finally securing his surgical mask Sartasus moved over to the figure draped with an ugly puce shade of linen cloth he could make out the vague humanoid shape beneath. Taking hold with both hands he whipped off the cover revealing the figure beneath.

Jack lay strapped to the table his right arm long ago removed a preserved. His chest carefully split open to reveal the marvelous machinery that was the human body. Sartasus had sadly had to preserve much of Jack through chemical means and was restricted now to only studying the way he was put together. A fact of life he was beginning to understand for a man such as himself in Brunhold...

"Now, Jack" He started once more taking a scalpel with a long fingered hand. "I do believe you died from a growth within your lungs. But, everyone who had looked at you prior said it was simply the flu or pneumonia due to your coughing fits and wheezing as well as that nasty glop that you seemed to have become congested with."

As he spoke Sartasus with a quick steady cut severed the right bronchi from the lung causing a mucus build up that now stunk from bacterial growth and pure and simply rot to leak forth in a greenish trickle. Hardly phased Sartasus proceeded to lift the man's lung to get a better look.

A mass of graying tissue, it reeked from its slow decay and glistened in the light. It's normally spongy form now deflated and more like poor quality rubber. Most notable however was the faint bulge that Sartasus' discerning eye could just make out. Eagerly he set it down upon the table next to its owners dissected arm. Blood vessels and muscles oxidizing as free radicals tore them down from their once beautiful forms.

Scalpel poised he noted that mucus had seeped from the entry in the lung and that most likely it's source was buried within.

The realization made him mildly giddy with excitement...

Carefully he made the standard Y incision as if the lung itself was a small separate body unto itself. Mucus poured out with a vile green-yellow coloration and bulging off of the inside of the cavity was a mass of sickly flesh...His breathing getting a little faster, catching within his throat every now and then from the horrid odor he cut away the mass. No larger than a chicken's egg it reeked of a diseased nature and covered in the decaying slime of Jack could only be a source of pain for the poor man on the table.

A tumor like this would make breathing next to unbearable for the poor man. He would have been wheezing and hacking most of the time and even a mild cold could prove devastating as his body fighting off the infection with a natural coating of mucus found itself working with little to no lung power...Jack it had seemed had drowned in himself...

"Well...."Sartasus started as he cleaned away the mucus and moved to a nearby jar of preservative; an alcohol solution that stung the nose. "I think it's safe to say I have found your murderer my friend. It makes me a little sad though...I have found your killer and learnt all I can from you...which sadly means I will be in need of a new partner in these endeavors..."