Chapter 7: The First Hunt — Part Two
Dawn crept through the blinds in pale gray strips. Cole sat on the edge of his bed, hands braced against his knees, and waited for the shaking to stop.
It didn't stop.
The phantom sensation of scales rippling beneath his skin had faded sometime in the last hour, replaced by something worse—a fever building behind his eyes, a crawling heat spreading through his muscles like infection. The system had warned him about integration sickness. He'd assumed it meant discomfort, maybe some bad dreams.
This felt like dying.
[INTEGRATION STATUS: 3%. ESTIMATED COMPLETION: 48-72 HOURS. SYMPTOMS EXPECTED: FEVER, DISORIENTATION, MEMORY TRANSFER, PHYSICAL SENSITIVITY.]
Memory transfer. That's a nice way to put it.
He'd dreamed during the brief moments of unconsciousness—not his dreams, but the Skalenzahne's. Cold water. The taste of fear-sweat on drowning skin. The satisfaction of a full belly. Eleven faces looking up from beneath the Willamette, mouths open in final screams.
Cole lunged for the bathroom and vomited until his ribs screamed.
The toilet bowl showed blood in the bile. Internal bleeding, maybe. Or just the abuse his body had taken during the fight. He didn't have the energy to care which.
His shoulder wound had stopped bleeding at some point during the night, the claw marks crusted over with dark scabs that looked older than they should. The cracked ribs still hurt with every breath, but the sharp edge of the pain had dulled to a persistent ache. Healing faster than normal.
The absorption. It's already changing me.
He flushed the toilet and crawled to the sink. The face in the mirror was his—Cole Ashford's face, the stranger he was learning to be—but the eyes looked wrong. Too dark. Too still. The eyes of something that had killed and would kill again.
[ADVISORY: HOST REQUIRES HYDRATION AND REST. RECOMMEND MINIMAL ACTIVITY FOR NEXT 48 HOURS.]
No argument here.
Cole filled a glass with tap water and drank it in three long swallows. His stomach protested. He drank another glass anyway.
The apartment was quiet except for the radiator's occasional tick. Outside, Portland was waking up—he could hear traffic on the street below, the distant wail of a siren, the mundane sounds of a city that didn't know a monster had died last night.
The fire. They'll find the plant.
The thought cut through the fever fog. He'd set the Skalenzahne on fire to kill it. The flames had spread to the building's interior—dry wood, old equipment, decades of accumulated debris. By the time he'd escaped, smoke was billowing from every window.
Someone will investigate. Fire department. Police. They'll find...
What would they find? A burned building. Charred equipment. Maybe bones, if the fire hadn't been hot enough to destroy everything. The Skalenzahne had been fully transformed when it died—would the remains look human or something else?
Cole's hands started shaking again.
He needed information. He needed to know what they'd found, what they were saying, whether anyone was looking for an unknown arsonist with blood on his clothes and a knife in his bag.
The laptop sat on the desk where he'd left it three days ago, back when his biggest problem was figuring out how to kill a crocodile monster. He stumbled toward it, legs unsteady, and collapsed into the chair.
Local news. Portland fire department. Waterfront.
The search results loaded slowly. Cole's vision blurred, cleared, blurred again.
SUSPICIOUS FIRE DESTROYS ABANDONED WATERFRONT BUILDING
The article was from six hours ago. He clicked through with trembling fingers.
Portland Fire Bureau responded to a structure fire at an abandoned fish processing plant in the waterfront district early this morning. The building, which has been vacant for approximately eight years, was fully engulfed when firefighters arrived on scene. No injuries were reported. Fire investigators have not yet determined the cause, but arson has not been ruled out.
"We've had problems with this property before," said Portland Fire Bureau spokesperson Lt. James Chen. "Homeless individuals have been known to shelter there. We're treating this as suspicious until we can complete our investigation."
The building was owned by Coastal Processing LLC, a company that filed for bankruptcy in 2003. Representatives could not be reached for comment.
Cole read the article twice. No mention of human remains. No mention of anything unusual found inside. Either the fire had been thorough, or investigators hadn't finished examining the scene yet.
Give it time. They'll find something.
He closed the laptop and pressed his palms against his eyes. The fever was getting worse. His skin felt like it was cooking from the inside out.
[INTEGRATION STATUS: 7%. HOST TEMPERATURE ELEVATED. THIS IS NORMAL.]
Normal. Right.
The phone on the desk—his phone, technically, though he'd barely used it since waking up in this body—vibrated with a notification. Cole picked it up with numb fingers.
Oregon State Licensing Board: Your application for a Private Investigator license has been approved. Your license number is PI-2011-47832. Documentation will be mailed to your address within 5-7 business days.
He stared at the message for a long moment.
Five days ago, he'd been dead. Four days ago, he'd filed paperwork to become a licensed PI. Three days ago, he'd watched a monster eat people. Last night, he'd killed that monster with fire and stolen its power.
Now he had a business license.
Progress.
The laugh that escaped his throat sounded wrong—too high, too thin, bordering on hysteria. He clamped his jaw shut and forced himself to breathe.
You're not falling apart. You're integrating. There's a difference.
He wasn't sure if that was true.
The bed called to him. Every muscle ached. Every breath hurt. The fever was climbing toward something dangerous, and the system's reassurances meant nothing against the very real possibility that his body was rejecting the absorbed essence like a bad organ transplant.
Cole made it to the bed. He didn't remember lying down.
The dreams came immediately.
Cold water. The Willamette at midnight, black and patient. A woman's face beneath the surface—gray hair floating, eyes wide, mouth open around a scream that would never finish. Margaret Chen. He'd watched her drown. He'd held her down until the bubbling stopped. He'd felt her struggles weaken and end. He'd—
Cole woke screaming.
The apartment was dark. Hours had passed—afternoon had become evening had become night. His sheets were soaked with sweat. His throat burned from shouting.
[INTEGRATION STATUS: 23%. MEMORY TRANSFER IN PROGRESS. HOST MAY EXPERIENCE TARGET'S EXPERIENCES AS THEIR OWN.]
Those weren't my memories.
The thought didn't help. He could still feel her hair tangled around his fingers. Could still taste the river water. Could still remember the satisfaction of watching the light leave her eyes.
I didn't do that. The Skalenzahne did that. I killed the thing that did that.
But the distinction felt academic. The memories were his now. The creature's victims would haunt him forever, not as abstract numbers but as faces, names, final moments. Eleven people he hadn't saved. Eleven people whose deaths he would remember from the killer's perspective.
Cole pulled himself upright. The fever had plateaued somewhere around "extremely unpleasant" without quite reaching "call an ambulance." His wounds ached but didn't throb. The shaking had subsided to a persistent tremor in his hands.
He needed water. He needed food. He needed to not be alone in this apartment with another man's memories trying to eat his mind.
The kitchen was ten feet away. It might as well have been ten miles.
Cole made it anyway.
The refrigerator held nothing but condiments and the beer from three days ago. He drank two bottles of water from the tap, ate a sleeve of crackers he found in a cabinet, and sat on the kitchen floor with his back against the dishwasher.
Two more days. Maybe more. The system said 48-72 hours.
He could survive two days. He'd survived worse—a car crash that should have killed him, a fight with a supernatural predator, the fundamental violation of waking up in a stranger's body. Two days of fever and bad dreams was nothing compared to that.
Keep telling yourself that.
The phone vibrated again. Another notification.
Email from Oregon licensing board. Standard welcome letter, information about continuing education requirements, links to resources for new investigators. He scrolled past it without really reading.
Another email. News alert—he'd set one up for waterfront district coverage before the hunt.
FIRE INVESTIGATORS FIND UNUSUAL REMAINS AT WATERFRONT SITE
Cole's blood went cold.
He clicked the link with fingers that wouldn't stop shaking.
Portland Fire Bureau investigators have discovered what appears to be human remains at the site of yesterday's suspicious fire at an abandoned fish processing plant. The remains, described by one source as "unusual," have been sent to the Medical Examiner's office for analysis.
"We can't comment on an ongoing investigation," said Lt. James Chen. "But we are treating this as a potential crime scene and have asked Portland Police Bureau to assist."
Anyone with information about the fire is asked to contact...
Cole stopped reading.
Unusual remains. They found the Skalenzahne's body.
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