Chapter 1 : The Man Who Wasn't
Rain hammered Portland like it had a grudge.
The first thing I registered was cold. Bone-deep, seeping cold that made my fingers twitch against wet concrete. The second thing was pain—a white-hot spike behind my eyes that made my vision swim.
The third thing was blood. Not my blood. Someone else's.
I pushed myself up on shaking arms. My palms slid through something warm and sticky. A body lay three feet away, crumpled against a dumpster like garbage waiting for pickup. Male. Late twenties. Face frozen in an expression of absolute terror.
And scales. Emerald-green scales rippling across what should have been human skin.
"What the—"
The scales flickered. Vanished. The corpse looked human again.
My stomach lurched. I scrambled backward, spine hitting the alley wall hard enough to rattle my teeth. Something metal clattered—a knife falling from fingers I didn't recognize as mine.
Not my fingers. Not my hands.
The realization hit like ice water. These weren't my hands. Too calloused. Wrong scars. A ring of pale skin around the left ring finger where a wedding band used to live.
I looked down at a body that wasn't mine.
"No. No, no, no—"
Memories slammed into me. Not mine. Fragments. Flashes. A woman's laugh. The smell of formaldehyde. The weight of a badge. Names and faces I'd never known but somehow recognized.
Daniel Cross. PI. Forensic consultant. Single. No family. Portland native.
The original owner of this skin.
And underneath those borrowed memories, my own death played on repeat: the screech of tires, the impossible brightness of headlights, the crunch of metal meeting bone. I'd been walking home from the library. Thursday night. October. A drunk driver ran a red light and—
Gone. Just like that.
Until I woke up here. In an alley. In a stranger's body. With a corpse at my feet.
"Okay. Okay. Think."
The dead man's face flickered again. Scales. Fangs. Human. Scales. Like a bad signal struggling to hold. Whatever he was, he wasn't natural. And somehow, I could see that.
Something cold pulsed behind my eyes.
[BESTIARY SYSTEM — INITIALIZING]
The words hung in my vision like a neon sign. Blue light. Sharp edges. Definitely not a hallucination.
[HOST COMPATIBILITY: CONFIRMED]
[GRIMM BLOODLINE: DETECTED]
[EMERGENCY TRANSFER: SUCCESSFUL]
"What the hell is—"
[SYSTEM EXPLANATION: The Bestiary System is a knowledge preservation and enhancement framework designed for Grimm-lineage hosts. Primary functions include Wesen species cataloguing, ability extraction and synthesis, and Pack formation protocols. Current host level: 1. Current abilities: 0. Current Pack members: 0.]
More text scrolled past. I couldn't process half of it. Something about experience points, threat rankings, cooldowns. It read like a video game interface transplanted directly into my skull.
"I'm losing my mind."
[MENTAL STABILITY: WITHIN NORMAL PARAMETERS]
"That's not reassuring."
[SPECIES DETECTED: SKALENGECK (LIZARD WESEN)]
The corpse. The scales made sense now, in the worst possible way. A Skalengeck. Some kind of lizard-person. The word dredged up fragmented knowledge—not from Daniel Cross's memories, but from somewhere deeper. Older. Like instinct hardwired into bone.
[CATALOGUING COMPLETE]
[BESTIARY: 1/200 - SKALENGECK]
[+50 XP - FIRST ENCOUNTER BONUS]
[+25 BP - SPECIES CATALOGUED]
Numbers ticked upward in the corner of my vision. A progress bar I hadn't asked for, measuring a life I didn't understand.
Sirens. Distant, but getting closer.
"Move."
The word cut through the shock like a blade. Whatever existential crisis I was having could wait. Right now, I was standing over a dead body with blood on my hands. Hands that belonged to someone the police might actually recognize.
Daniel Cross's wallet sat heavy in my jacket pocket. I dug it out. Oregon driver's license. PI credentials. A key ring with three keys and a worn leather tab stamped with an apartment number.
The address was fifteen minutes away. I'd never been there, but Daniel's memories painted a picture: third floor walkup, exposed brick, the smell of old coffee.
The sirens grew louder.
The Skalengeck's body couldn't stay here. Whatever killed him—whatever I killed, in a fight I didn't remember—would raise questions I couldn't answer. Questions about scales that appeared and disappeared. Questions about how a forensic consultant wound up in an alley with a knife and a corpse.
My ribs ached with every breath. Something grated wrong on my left side—bruised, maybe cracked. A cut on my forearm had clotted to a sticky mess. The original Daniel Cross took damage before I arrived.
Before he died.
"Sorry."
I didn't know who I was apologizing to. Daniel? The Skalengeck? Myself?
The dumpster lid groaned when I lifted it. The body was heavier than expected—dead weight in the most literal sense. I rolled it over the edge. It landed with a wet thump. Bags of garbage shifted to cover it.
Not perfect. Not even good. But better than leaving it in the open.
I grabbed the knife. Wiped it on my jacket. Tucked it into my belt. The metal was cold against my hip.
Then I walked.
Portland's rain didn't care about transmigrated souls or impossible systems. It just fell, washing blood from the concrete, turning the alley into a mirror of gray sky and darker shadows.
[QUEST GENERATED]
[SURVIVE THE NIGHT]
[OBJECTIVE: Reach safe location without police contact]
[REWARD: Temporary stabilization of host consciousness]
"Even the system thinks I'm about to fall apart."
I kept walking.
Daniel Cross's Apartment
The key stuck in the lock. I jiggled it twice before the mechanism clicked. The door swung open to reveal a life I'd inherited without permission.
Small. Clean. Functional. The kind of place that belonged to someone who spent more time working than living. A desk dominated one corner, piled with case files and forensic textbooks. A coffee maker sat on the kitchen counter, three days of grounds crusted in the filter.
Three days. That's how long the original Daniel had been gone before I arrived. The System's "emergency transfer" must have used his dying brain as a landing pad.
"You poor bastard."
I didn't know if the Skalengeck killed him or if he'd already been dead when it found him. The memories were too fragmented, too jumbled with trauma and violence. All I knew was that Daniel Cross no longer existed, and I was wearing his face.
The bathroom mirror confirmed it. Sharp features. Dark hair plastered to my forehead. One eye normal brown, the other shot through with silver-gray veins that pulsed faintly in the fluorescent light.
[GRIMM SIGHT: PARTIALLY ACTIVATED]
[FULL MANIFESTATION PENDING]
"Great. Mystery eye mutation. That won't cause problems."
I stripped off the bloody jacket and shoved it into a garbage bag. The cut on my forearm needed stitches, but I settled for butterfly bandages and a prayer. The ribs would have to heal on their own.
Sleep pulled at me like a physical weight. Every muscle screamed for rest. But closing my eyes meant dreaming, and I wasn't ready to face what waited in the dark.
Instead, I sat at Daniel's desk. Opened his laptop. The password came automatically—muscle memory from a brain that no longer held its original occupant.
Case files. Police contacts. A consulting contract with Portland PD. Notes on crime scenes and forensic analysis.
Daniel Cross had been useful. Connected. Embedded in a system that gave him access to information most people never saw.
"I can work with this."
The thought surprised me. Practical. Cold. Not the reaction of someone who'd just died and woken up in a stranger's body.
But then again, I'd already processed my death. The library, the headlights, the impact. That life was gone. Grieving wouldn't bring it back.
This life, though—this borrowed existence with its floating blue text and monster-seeing eyes—this I could use. This I could understand.
[QUEST COMPLETE: SURVIVE THE NIGHT]
[+100 XP]
[HOST CONSCIOUSNESS: STABILIZED]
[NEW STATUS]
[LEVEL: 1]
[BESTIARY: 1/200 - SKALENGECK]
[ABILITIES: 0]
[PACK: 0/3]
[NEXT LEVEL: 150 XP]
The interface settled into the corner of my vision, a permanent reminder that nothing about this was normal. But normal had died on a Thursday night in October, crushed between a sedan and a drunk driver's poor decisions.
I closed the laptop. Leaned back. Let the rain tap morse code against the window.
Tomorrow I'd have to be Daniel Cross. I'd have to learn his voice, his habits, his relationships. I'd have to figure out who sent the Skalengeck and why. I'd have to survive in a world where monsters wore human faces and the only people who could see them had been killing them for centuries.
But that was tomorrow's problem.
Tonight, I just needed to remember how to breathe.
The phone buzzed at six in the morning.
I hadn't slept. The ceiling had become intimately familiar over the past four hours—every crack, every water stain, every shadow that might have been something else.
The text was from an unknown number: Crime scene in Forest Park. Your expertise requested. Arrive by 8 AM.
Underneath Daniel's memories, I felt the pull of information. Police contacts. Forensic work. A reputation for noticing things others missed.
And underneath that, the System pulsed with something that felt almost like hunger.
[OPPORTUNITY DETECTED: WESEN-RELATED CRIME SCENE]
[RECOMMENDATION: INVESTIGATE]
"You don't have to tell me twice."
I showered. Dressed in clothes that fit a body I was still learning. Practiced Daniel's signature until my hand stopped shaking.
The face in the mirror still belonged to a stranger. But it was my face now.
The keys felt right in my pocket. The rain had stopped. Portland spread before me, gray and waiting.
I walked out the door and became someone I'd never been.
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