Chapter 10: Cover Story
[TARGET: MARCUS VOLK]
[SPECIES: BLUTBAD]
[CLASSIFICATION: CLASS C THREAT]
[CRIME: ILLEGAL FIGHTING OPERATION — FORCED COMBAT, WESEN SLAVERY, MULTIPLE DEATHS]
[LOCATION: EAST PORTLAND INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT]
[VALIDATION STATUS: CONFIRMED EVIL — VALID TARGET]
Cole read the notification twice, then dismissed it. A Blutbad running forced fights—making Wesen tear each other apart for entertainment. The system wasn't asking him to hunt a random predator. It was asking him to dismantle something monstrous.
One problem at a time.
The basement gym was empty at this hour. He racked the weights—315 pounds moved like nothing now—and headed for the showers. Tomorrow he'd start building his cover identity for real. Tonight, he had planning to do.
The office space cost $800 a month.
It was barely larger than a walk-in closet, tucked into the third floor of a building on SW Morrison that housed accountants, a massage therapy practice, and what Cole suspected was an unlicensed immigration consultant. The walls were thin. The radiator clanked. The window overlooked a parking garage.
It was perfect.
"Ashford Investigations" went on the door in vinyl letters he'd ordered online. Business cards arrived two days later—clean design, minimal information, nothing memorable. He set up a landline that forwarded to his cell, created a simple website with stock photos and vague service descriptions, and registered with the state as a sole proprietorship.
By October 10th, he had a functioning business.
His first client was a woman named Patricia Holbrook, forty-three, convinced her husband was sleeping with his secretary. She sat across from Cole's secondhand desk and cried while explaining her suspicions, and Cole found himself actually listening—not just performing attentiveness, but genuinely interested in her pain.
The emotional dampening isn't total. Good to know.
He took her case. Three days of surveillance confirmed the affair—photos of the husband leaving a motel with a woman half his age, receipts for jewelry his wife had never received, the usual sad evidence of a marriage dying by inches. Mrs. Holbrook paid his invoice without complaint and left with documentation for her divorce attorney.
Cole deposited the check and felt something that might have been satisfaction.
The nights belonged to training.
He found a stretch of the Willamette where the banks were steep and the current was strong—far from the waterfront district where he'd killed the Skalenzahne, but similar enough to test his limits. At 2 AM, with no witnesses, he stripped to shorts and dove into water cold enough to kill.
Seven minutes.
That's how long he could hold his breath now. Seven minutes of complete submersion, moving through currents that would have dragged a normal human to their death, seeing in darkness that should have been absolute. The aquatic adaptation was stronger than he'd expected—not just tolerance, but affinity. The water felt like home.
He swam until his muscles burned, then swam longer. The Skalenzahne had been an ambush predator, patient and efficient, and those instincts were bleeding through. Cole found himself thinking in terms of territory, of hunting grounds, of optimal positioning for strikes.
I'm becoming something. The question is whether I'm becoming something useful or something dangerous.
The answer was probably both.
October 12th. Cole sat in a diner near Forest Park, eating eggs and bacon and reading the Oregonian's coverage of what they were calling the "Forest Park Mauling."
Body torn apart. No animal attack matching the pattern. Police consulting experts.
Nick Burkhardt's first case. The Postman, if Cole's memory of the show was accurate—a Blutbad killing women who reminded him of Little Red Riding Hood. Fairy tales turned flesh and blood.
He drove to the crime scene after breakfast. Yellow tape still cordoned off the hiking trail. News vans clustered near the parking lot. Uniformed officers kept the curious at a distance.
And there, talking to a detective in a rumpled suit, was Nick Burkhardt.
Cole watched from his car, fifty yards away. The man looked tired—probably hadn't slept since his aunt arrived, since his world started falling apart. He moved with the careful precision of someone trying very hard to appear normal while everything inside was screaming.
I know that feeling.
A woman approached Nick—blonde, beautiful, carrying herself with the predatory grace that marked her as something other than human. Adalind Schade. Cole's hands tightened on the steering wheel.
She smiled at Nick. Said something that made him uncomfortable. Walked away with a phone pressed to her ear.
Renard's operative. Already in play.
Cole forced himself to breathe. He hadn't expected to see her so soon, hadn't prepared for the way his pulse quickened at the sight of her. She was a Hexenbiest, dangerous and manipulative and working for people who would kill Cole without hesitation if they knew what he was.
She was also, according to his memories of the show, going to suffer tremendously before the story was done.
Not my problem. Not yet.
He drove away before anyone could notice him watching.
The Volk operation required patience.
Cole spent three days gathering information through legitimate channels—property records, business filings, news archives. Marcus Volk didn't officially exist, but his operation left traces. The warehouse in East Portland was owned by a shell company that paid its utilities in cash. Noise complaints from nearby businesses had been filed and mysteriously dismissed. Two missing person reports from the area mentioned "underground entertainment" as the last known destination.
The system provided additional data: Volk was a non-practicing Blutbad—he hadn't reformed like Monroe, but he'd found ways to channel his predatory instincts that didn't involve direct hunting. Forcing others to fight while he watched and profited was his version of sublimation.
[TARGET ASSESSMENT: MARCUS VOLK OPERATES SIGNIFICANT CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE. ESTIMATED 30-50 REGULAR ATTENDEES. SECURITY FORCE: 8-12 PERSONNEL. WESEN SLAVES: UNKNOWN NUMBER. RECOMMENDED APPROACH: INFILTRATION BEFORE ELIMINATION.]
Infiltration. Right.
Cole wasn't going to assault a fortified position defended by a dozen guards and a full-grown Blutbad. He wasn't stupid enough to think his enhanced strength made him invincible. The Skalenzahne had nearly killed him, and that fight had been one-on-one with the advantage of surprise.
This required finesse.
He found a gym in Southeast Portland that catered to a rough crowd—ex-cons, bouncers, people who needed to know how to hurt others professionally. He paid for private lessons with a retired MMA fighter named Decker, a massive Samoan who didn't ask questions about why a man in his thirties suddenly wanted to learn how to fight dirty.
"You've got the strength," Decker said after their first session. "But you move like a lawyer. Too much thinking."
"I was a lawyer."
"That explains it. We need to make you move like an animal. Stop planning. Start reacting."
Cole learned. His enhanced physiology made the training easier—he recovered faster, hit harder, absorbed punishment that would have sidelined a normal student. But the technique had to be earned the old-fashioned way: repetition, failure, adjustment, repetition again.
By October 14th, he was moving better. Not great, but better.
The office phone rang at 5:47 PM on a Thursday.
"Ashford Investigations."
"Mr. Ashford? This is Gerald Whitmore. I'd like to hire you for a background check."
Cole took the details—Whitmore was a small business owner looking into a potential partner. Standard work. Good money. Another layer of legitimacy.
As he hung up, the system pulsed.
[ADVISORY: TARGET VOLK HOSTING EVENT TOMORROW NIGHT. RECOMMEND ATTENDANCE FOR RECONNAISSANCE.]
Two jobs now. One paid money. One paid power.
Cole locked the office and headed home to prepare.
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