October rain lashed the alley, washing the mud from Kai's face but failing to cut the sewer stench.
He slumped against the damp brickwork. The agony in his shattered right ankle had faded to a creeping numbness. He was freezing to death.
A shadow detached from the gloom.
Kai forced his head up. A cloaked man stood a few paces away, his face lit only by the glare of a smartphone.
"You're Kai." He turned the screen around. A police bulletin showed Kai's bruised face. "Right?"
Kai's eyes dropped to the man's hands. "What do you want?"
The man pocketed the phone and stepped closer. "Do you want to live? Do you want revenge?"
Kai let out a short, wet laugh that turned into a cough. Blood flecked his lip. "What, here to collect the bounty?"
"No."
He reached into his coat and produced a glass vial. Black liquid caught the pale light of a distant streetlamp.
Kai stared at it but didn't reach out.
The man crouched down to his level. "There's nothing worse than this moment. You know that." He tilted the vial slightly. "Even if it's poison — you'd still drink it."
Kai said nothing for a long moment. Rain hammered the concrete. Somewhere above, a gutter overflowed.
His hand moved before the rest of him caught up. Fingers closed around the glass, unsteady, unsure. He bit off the cork and spat it into the puddle, and the smell hit him. Blood and rot, something raw and animal that had no business being in a vial. His stomach turned.
He drank it anyway.
It coated his tongue like wet earth and rancid meat, thick and clinging, and he forced it down before the taste could change his mind.
Fire hit his stomach.
Kai collapsed into the puddles. The scream that tore from his throat didn't sound like his own. His body seized — every muscle pulling taut at once, stretching, filling with something that had no name. The skin across his back split the seams of his shirt. His hands spread against the concrete, fingers digging in as the rest of him kept going, kept growing, kept becoming something else.
He pushed himself up. His knees steadied under new weight. He stood there breathing hard, rain running down his face, the rusted dumpster was at his waist now, the faded graffiti somewhere below his chest. He kept rising until the lower rung of the fire escape sat level with his collarbone.
Everything around him was sitting lower than it should.
He looked down at his hands, turned them over, and flexed his fingers. He pressed a palm against his chest, then wiped his face slowly, jaw, cheekbone, brow.
Then he remembered his ankle. He shifted his weight onto it and braced. Nothing. He stomped once, then again harder. The pain that had owned him for hours was simply gone.
He stood there in the rain for a moment, staring at nothing in particular. "What the hell am I now?" he murmured, his voice coming out lower than he remembered, rougher around the edges.
He turned. The cloaked man was gone. No footsteps leading away, no trace of him at all, just empty puddles and the rain filling the silence he had left behind. Kai had questions and nowhere to put them.
A tattered black raincoat lay draped over the dumpster. He grabbed it and shoved his arms through the sleeves.
Then the wind shifted.
Something cut through the sewer stench, faint, distant, but impossible to ignore. He didn't have a word for it. He just knew he needed to find where it was coming from. Everything else dropped away. The alley, the puddles, the man who had been standing there moments ago, none of it mattered anymore.
He turned and walked into the storm.
High above the alley, the cloaked man stood on a rusted fire escape. He raised his left arm.
A shadow dropped from the brickwork above, sharp talons gripping his leather sleeve. The raven matched the size of an eagle. Three distinct eyes sat on its skull, glowing red.
"Hugo. Stay close. Don't lose the feed."
The giant bird tilted its head. "I'll take care of it. You can rest easy, David," it rasped, its voice rough and low, like gravel dragged across stone. "You know, talking like that doesn't make you sound cooler. And dragging you up here isn't getting any easier."
David snorted. "Yeah? Maybe if you'd stop—"
The raven didn't wait. It spread its wings and launched into the downpour.
David watched it go, exhaling through his nose. "…Right."
He reached into his coat and pulled out his phone, thumb opening a voice memo.
"K-01. Wolf olfactory bulb, hagfish notochord extract, Komodo flexor tissue. Formula's holding. No signs of feral deviation." He lowered the phone, then added, "Greyman. That works."