Chapter 2: Inheritance
The laptop had no password.
Cole sat at the small desk in the corner of the living room, scrolling through a dead man's digital footprint. Bank statements showed $47,000 in savings, no debt, and deposits that had stopped three months ago. Email contained nothing but spam. Browser history: cleared. Documents folder: empty.
The original Cole Ashford had been a ghost.
[QUERY DETECTED. PROVIDING RELEVANT INFORMATION.]
[ORIGINAL HOST: DECEASED 72 HOURS PRIOR TO TRANSFER]
[CAUSE OF DEATH: CEREBRAL ANEURYSM]
[BODY PRESERVATION: SYSTEM-INITIATED]
[RECOVERY STATUS: NO MISSING PERSONS REPORT FILED]
Cole leaned back in the chair. Seventy-two hours. The body had been dead for three days before he woke up in it, and nobody had noticed. No family calling. No employer wondering where their worker was. No friends checking in.
You were alone.
The apartment confirmed it. No second toothbrush. No expired food in the fridge—just condiments and a six-pack of beer that predated the death date. The closet held clothes for one person, practical and unremarkable.
He opened the nightstand drawer. Nothing. Under the mattress. Nothing. Behind the bookshelf that contained exactly zero books.
Nothing.
"Why me?" he asked the empty room.
The system didn't answer.
Maybe that's not the right question.
He made coffee with the ancient machine on the kitchen counter. The beans were stale, but caffeine was caffeine. The mug warmed his hands as he stood by the window, watching rain streak down glass.
Portland spread out below him—streets glistening, trees bowing under the weight of water, the distant smudge of mountains hidden by gray clouds. Somewhere out there, Nick Burkhardt was probably just discovering he could see monsters. Somewhere out there, the fairy tales were waking up.
And somewhere out there, something was waiting to be hunted.
[TARGET IDENTIFIED]
The notification burned across his vision without warning. Cole nearly dropped the coffee.
[CLASS C THREAT: SKALENZAHNE]
[LOCATION: WATERFRONT DISTRICT, ABANDONED FISH PROCESSING FACILITY]
[CRIME: SERIAL MURDER — 7 CONFIRMED VICTIMS (HOMELESS POPULATION)]
[VALIDATION STATUS: CONFIRMED EVIL — VALID TARGET]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: ELIMINATION]
A map overlay appeared, highlighting a section of industrial waterfront. An information panel opened beside it.
[SKALENZAHNE: CROCODILIAN WESEN. ENHANCED STRENGTH. ARMORED SCALES. AQUATIC ADAPTATION. POWERFUL JAWS. TYPICALLY SOLITARY. AMBUSH PREDATORS.]
Cole set the coffee down carefully.
Seven homeless people. Drowned, if the pattern held—Skalenzahne were water creatures. The police had probably ruled them accidents or suicides. No one investigated when the homeless disappeared.
And I'm supposed to kill the thing responsible.
He closed the notification window with a thought. The system hummed acknowledgment.
[TARGET DATA STORED. MISSION REMAINS ACTIVE.]
The coffee had gone cold. He drank it anyway, staring at nothing.
I've never killed anything bigger than a spider.
The thought was almost funny. Cole Ashford, defense attorney, had spent a decade keeping killers out of prison. He knew the law regarding self-defense, justifiable homicide, the thin lines between murder and survival. But knowing the theory and putting a knife into a living creature were different things entirely.
Except it's not a creature. It's a monster. A thing that kills homeless people for sport or food or whatever drives a walking crocodile to hunt in Portland.
He pulled up news archives on the laptop. Waterfront deaths, homeless population, three-month window.
The articles were buried deep—single paragraphs in the local section, no photos, no follow-up. Seven dead. Causes of death listed as drowning. No connection drawn between incidents.
Nobody cared.
Cole mapped the death locations. All within half a mile of the fish processing plant. All near water access. The pattern was obvious once you knew what to look for.
[ANALYSIS CONFIRMS: TERRITORIAL HUNTING BEHAVIOR. TARGET MAINTAINS LAIR IN PROXIMITY TO KILL SITES.]
So I know where it lives. That's step one.
Step two was significantly more complicated.
He didn't know how to fight. He didn't have weapons. He didn't have any supernatural abilities yet—the whole point was that he had to kill something to get them. And his target was an armored, superhumanly strong predator that had already murdered seven people without getting caught.
This is insane.
Cole walked to the window again. The rain had stopped, but clouds still hung low and heavy over the city. In the distance, a siren wailed.
I could ignore it. The system gave me a target, not an order. I could just... not.
[ADVISORY: TARGETS REMAIN ACTIVE UNTIL ELIMINATED. CONTINUED VALID TARGET ACTIVITY WILL GENERATE ADDITIONAL MISSIONS.]
Seven dead. More will follow.
He pressed his forehead against the cold glass.
The man he'd been—the attorney, the pragmatist, the guy who'd defended murderers because everyone deserved representation—would have walked away. Called the cops with an anonymous tip. Let someone else handle it.
But that man was dead. Crushed against a steering wheel in another world.
I'm not him anymore.
Cole turned away from the window.
"Tomorrow," he said to the empty apartment. "I'll figure this out tomorrow."
He set an alarm for noon and collapsed into bed. The Skalenzahne notification pulsed softly in the dark.
Sleep came slowly.
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