Chapter 1: Cold Open
Rain hit concrete somewhere above. The smell of garbage and wet asphalt filled lungs that shouldn't be working.
Cole gasped awake.
His back pressed against cold brick. Water soaked through clothes he didn't recognize—jeans, a leather jacket, a t-shirt that clung to skin that wasn't his. His hands shot up in front of his face. Wrong hands. Wrong calluses. Wrong everything.
The last thing he remembered was headlights. The screech of tires. The Mercedes spinning across the intersection. Then nothing but the crushing certainty of death.
This isn't right.
He scrambled upright. His body moved differently—lighter, younger, more responsive than his thirty-two-year-old frame had any right to be. The alley stretched in both directions, dumpsters and fire escapes and the orange glow of a distant streetlight painting everything in shadows.
A puddle reflected a stranger's face. Early thirties, maybe. Sharp jaw, dark hair plastered to his forehead, brown eyes that should have been hazel. He touched his cheek. The reflection did the same.
Cold crept through his skull like ice water.
[APEX PREDATOR SYSTEM INITIALIZING]
The words burned across his vision—bright white text floating in his peripheral sight. He stumbled backward, nearly tripping over a cardboard box.
"What the—"
[HOST TRANSFER COMPLETE. CONSCIOUSNESS INTEGRATION: 100%]
More text. Different font. Clinical, mechanical, completely impossible.
[WELCOME, HUNTER. THIS SYSTEM WILL GUIDE YOUR EVOLUTION. PLEASE ATTEND TO THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION.]
Cole pressed his palms against his eyes. The text remained, burning through the darkness.
"This isn't real." His voice came out wrong. Different timbre. Different throat. "This isn't—"
[CORE FUNCTION: WESEN ABILITY ABSORPTION]
[VALID TARGETS: WESEN WHO HAVE COMMITTED ACTS OF EVIL, VIOLATED WESEN CODE, OR ACTIVELY THREATEN YOUR LIFE]
[PROTECTED INDIVIDUALS: CERTAIN ENTITIES ARE MARKED AS PROTECTED AND CANNOT BE HARMED]
[DETECTION MATRIX: INACTIVE — REQUIRES FIELD DATA]
[PREDATOR ESSENCE: DORMANT]
[HUMANITY: 100%]
Wesen. The word triggered something buried deep—late-night TV, a show he'd half-watched while reviewing case files, something about fairy tales and monsters living in Portland...
Portland.
He looked around with new eyes. The architecture. The particular shade of urban decay. The smell of pine mixing with exhaust and rain.
Grimm. This is the Grimm universe.
The thought should have been absurd. He was a defense attorney in Seattle—had been a defense attorney—not a character in a television show. Dead people didn't wake up in fictional worlds with supernatural power systems downloaded into their brains.
Except here he was.
Cold water ran down his neck. His teeth started chattering.
Think. Think like a lawyer.
He searched his pockets with numb fingers. Wallet. No phone. The leather was worn but quality, the kind of thing a man with money but no taste would buy. Inside: two hundred dollars in twenties, a debit card, a driver's license.
Cole Ashford. 31 years old. Address in Northwest Portland. The face on the license matched the one in the puddle.
That's my name now.
The system pulsed at the edge of his awareness, patient and silent.
[WOULD YOU LIKE A DETAILED EXPLANATION OF SYSTEM FUNCTIONS?]
"Yes," he said to the empty alley.
[ABSORPTION PROTOCOL: UPON KILLING A VALID WESEN TARGET, YOU WILL ABSORB ASPECTS OF THEIR SUPERNATURAL ABILITIES. INTEGRATION TIME VARIES BY ABILITY COMPLEXITY. ABSORBED POWERS BECOME PERMANENT.]
[TARGETING RESTRICTIONS: THE SYSTEM ENFORCES MORAL TARGETING. INVALID TARGETS CANNOT BE HARMED — ATTEMPTING TO DO SO WILL RESULT IN ABILITY LOCKOUT AND PAIN RESPONSE.]
[DETECTION MATRIX: PASSIVE THREAT ASSESSMENT AND LIE DETECTION. REQUIRES EXPOSURE TO WESEN TO CALIBRATE.]
[EVOLUTION TRACKING: YOUR HUMANITY WILL DECREASE WITH EACH ABSORPTION. PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CHANGES OCCUR AS HUMANITY DROPS.]
Cole leaned against the brick wall and let the rain wash over his face. His heart hammered against ribs that belonged to a dead man.
A dead man who wasn't him.
Who were you, Cole Ashford?
The wallet offered no answers. No photos of family. No emergency contact card. No receipts or business cards or any of the debris a real life accumulated. Just money, ID, and an apartment key with a tag that matched the address on the license.
The rain intensified. His body—this body—shivered violently.
[ADVISORY: CORE TEMPERATURE DROPPING. SEEK SHELTER.]
Thanks for the tip.
Cole memorized the apartment address. 2847 NW Quimby Street, Unit 4B. Fifteen blocks, maybe. Twenty minutes if he walked fast.
He started walking.
The streets of Portland lay empty at this hour—4:03 AM according to a clock in a darkened storefront. His feet squelched in wet shoes. His jacket was soaked through, providing no insulation at all. Every breath came out as white mist.
The system remained silent, waiting.
I was dead. I hit that Mercedes at forty miles per hour and I died, and somehow I ended up here, in the body of a man named Cole Ashford, in a world where fairy tales are real and I can apparently absorb supernatural powers by killing monsters.
He should have been in shock. He should have been curled up in that alley, screaming into the void.
Instead, he kept walking.
Fourteen blocks. Thirteen. Twelve.
The rain let up slightly. A car passed, headlights cutting through the darkness. Cole didn't flinch.
This is my life now. Whatever this is.
The thought settled into his bones like the cold. His old life—the law firm, the corner office, the ex-wife who'd taken the house, the mountain of student loans he'd finally paid off—gone. All of it. Erased by a drunk driver running a red light.
But he wasn't gone.
I'm still here.
His hands stopped shaking. Not from warmth—he was still freezing—but from something else. Certainty, maybe. Acceptance. He'd spent twenty years arguing cases, defending the indefensible, finding angles where none existed. Adapting to impossible situations was literally his job.
This was just another impossible situation.
The apartment building loomed ahead. Old brick, fire escapes, a green awning over the entrance that had seen better decades. He fished the key from his pocket.
The lock turned smoothly.
Inside, the lobby smelled like dust and old carpet. No doorman. No security cameras that he could see. He climbed three flights of stairs, his legs aching with borrowed exhaustion, and found Unit 4B at the end of a narrow hallway.
The key worked here too.
Cole stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
The apartment was dark. He found a light switch by feel.
Empty. Clean. Sparse furnishings that looked like they'd been ordered from a catalog and never used. A couch, a coffee table, a TV mounted on the wall. Kitchen to the right, bathroom straight ahead, bedroom through a door on the left.
No photos. No art. No evidence that anyone had actually lived here.
Cole dripped water onto the hardwood floor. The system hummed quietly at the edge of his awareness.
[SHELTER ACHIEVED. RECOMMEND RAISING CORE TEMPERATURE BEFORE FURTHER ORIENTATION.]
Hot shower. Dry clothes. Then figure out what the hell he was supposed to do next.
He peeled off the soaked jacket and moved toward the bathroom.
The face in the mirror still belonged to a stranger, but it was his face now. Cole Ashford, transplanted attorney, supernatural predator-in-waiting.
One thing at a time.
The water ran hot within seconds. He stood under the spray until his muscles unclenched and the shaking finally stopped. Steam filled the small bathroom.
When he stepped out, wrapping a towel around his waist, the bedroom yielded clothes that fit perfectly. Jeans. A gray henley. Wool socks.
He sat on the edge of the bed.
[ORIENTATION COMPLETE. FULL SYSTEM ACCESS UNLOCKED.]
[FIRST TARGET LOCATION WILL BE PROVIDED WITHIN 24 HOURS.]
They want me to kill something.
The thought should have horrified him. Instead, he felt the first real warmth since waking up in that alley—not from the shower, but from somewhere deeper. Something inside him that had always existed, perhaps. The part that had chosen criminal defense not out of idealism but out of fascination with the darkness people carried.
He lay back on the bed.
Sleep came faster than it should have.
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