Shore woke slowly. For several seconds, he simply stared upward at the apartnt ceiling while his mind clawed its way back toward full awareness.
Soft morning light filtered through the curtains.
The faint hum of Mountain Glenn traffic drifted in through the window alongside distant voices from pedestrians several floors below.
Shore blinked in confusion.
His body felt... good.
Not sore or exhausted and ntally frayed from sleepless nights and constant surveillance work.
Actually...
He felt relatively well rested. That realization alone imdiately made him suspicious. Shore pushed himself upright carefully and sat on the edge of the bed. His hand moved instinctively toward his neck.
The bruising from the chokehold remained faintly tender beneath his fingers. Not serious, but enough to remind him exactly how badly last night's encounter had gone.
He clicked his tongue quietly.
"That was embarrassing."
His voice sounded rough from sleep. Shore rolled his shoulders before glancing downward.
He was wearing pants, plain black lounge pants that belonged to him.
His Multi Function Gauntlet still rested securely around his wrist. Shore imdiately activated a quick diagnostic scan through the device interface.
No tampering, tracking or foreign access attempts.
Interesting.
Shore stood afterward and stretched lightly. His spine cracked softly while lingering stiffness left his muscles. A glance toward the clock showed the current ti.
10:03 AM.
So he had been unconscious for hours. Or rather, the unconsciousness had transford into sleep. That thought alone irritated him all over again. Shore rarely lost control of situations so thoroughly.
Last night had been a very humbling experience. His eyes drifted across the apartnt carefully afterward.
Everything appeared normal.
Mostly.
The damaged floorboards and cracked wall from their fight remained visible. Wood splinters still littered sections of the living room floor while one of the kitchen chairs had been partially broken during the struggle.
Shore sighed quietly.
Then he noticed the note resting beside the bed. He picked it up carefully.
I'll et you at Erald Street at the bakery/coffee parlor called Presso at 12 AM.
No signature, threatening ssage or hidden code.
Just a eting place and a ti.
Shore rubbed lightly at his neck again while rereading the note. It appeared the mysterious blonde woman had not only spared him...
But dressed him afterward too. That was an oddly intimate detail considering she had nearly decapitated him several hours earlier.
Shore wasn't entirely sure how to process that.
He had been thoroughly beaten. That much was undeniable.
Technically speaking, he still held the advantage in combat fundantals. His hand to hand technique, tactical decision making and operational discipline all surpassed hers.
But skill only mattered so much when your opponent could casually overpower you physically.
And that woman...
She was definitely superhuman.
But not at the level of an awakened.
At least not fully.
In any case, it was clear that sothing about her strength and speed clearly exceeded natural human limits. Which brought Shore back toward the most concerning detail from last night.
Different versions of Aetherion.
V1.
That terminology bothered him imnsely.
LUCID had only identified and categorized the current street version within recent months. Yet according to her, multiple iterations already existed.
That implied ongoing refinent and that the organization behind Aetherion was larger and more organized than LUCID initially suspected.
Shore leaned back slightly against the kitchen counter while thinking. Part of him considered reporting everything imdiately.
But another part of him hesitated. Because he still lacked context. And more importantly... he still did not understand the mysterious woman's role in any of this.
Ally?
Defector?
Enhanced test subject?
Independent infiltrator?
Shore hated incomplete intelligence.
Eventually he exhaled slowly.
"I'll hear her out first."
The decision settled naturally afterward. If she wanted him dead, she already had multiple opportunities. Which ant her goals likely aligned against the manufacturers at least partially.
That alone made her valuable.
Shore spent the next half hour carefully sweeping the apartnt for hidden surveillance devices. Every vent, electrical outlet and piece of furniture was checked thoroughly.
Nothing.
No bugs, trackers or hidden optics. Either she genuinely had not planted anything... or she was skilled enough that even Shore could not detect it.
He honestly wasn't sure which possibility annoyed him more.
Eventually Shore cleaned the apartnt damage as best he could. Broken wood was swept aside and cracked debris discarded quietly into trash bags.
Afterward he cleaned his operative gear thoroughly.
The sewer sll from last night still lingered faintly across sections of the fabric and Shore refused to walk into public slling like industrial death water.
Once finished, he changed clothes.
The lightweight tactical bodysuit remained underneath as usual but this ti he layered more civilian clothing over it. Jacket and casual boots.
His mask remained tucked away inside a pouch. The gauntlet disappeared beneath his sleeve afterward.
By the ti Shore finally left the apartnt, he looked mostly normal again.
Mostly.
The drive toward Erald Street remained uneventful.
Mountain Glenn's midday traffic flowed steadily beneath cloudy skies while neon advertisents flickered endlessly on buildings overhead.
Presso turned out to be smaller than Shore expected.
A hybrid bakery and coffee parlor was tucked between a bookstore and an old electronic repair shop.
Warm yellow lighting spilled through large glass windows while the scent of baked bread and coffee drifted faintly onto the sidewalk.
Shore did not enter imdiately. Instead he spent several minutes scouting the surrounding streets carefully.
Entrances, exit routes, roof access points and possible sniper angles.
These were all old habits.
By the ti he finally entered the café, he still had fifteen minutes remaining before the arranged eting ti.
A small bell chid overhead as he stepped inside and the atmosphere was quiet. Soft music played through hidden speakers while several civilians chatted idly over drinks near the front windows.
Shore imdiately selected a booth near the back corner. Good visibility of the entire café. Minimal blind spots.
He ordered hot tea first then sat down carefully while allowing his gaze to drift casually across the room.
There was no blonde woman, suspicious movent or obvious surveillance.
Still...
Shore remained cautious. He lifted the tea slowly and took a sip. Then a voice suddenly spoke directly across from him.
"Glad you could make it."
Shore nearly reacted on instinct to throw the hot tea at the sound. His muscles tensed imdiately while his eyes snapped upward.
Soone sat across from him now.
The mysterious woman.
Blonde, beautiful and very real.
Shore stared for half a second because he knew with absolute certainty the seat had been empty monts ago.
She held a warm coffee cup casually between both hands while sipping from it calmly. She didn't have any combat gear this ti or tactical clothing nor was she wearing a mask
Instead she wore a dark sweater beneath a light jacket and fitted jeans. Simple civilian clothing that allowed her to blend naturally into the café atmosphere.
Her katana was also nowhere visible. Which sohow made her feel even more dangerous.
Shore's eyes narrowed slightly.
Invisibility?
Or sothing extrely close to it? Suddenly several things clicked together all at once.
The tailing and infiltration.
How she moved through his surveillance blind spots so easily. Shore leaned back slowly.
"That's..." he started carefully.
"Surprising?" she offered.
"Indeed."
A faint smirk tugged at the corner of her lips. "Fair."
Shore studied her openly now that he could actually see her face properly. She had sharp red eyes and fair skin with a confident posture.
She was young, probably around his age in her early twenties. Though, maybe she was slightly older.
She was... definitely attractive. But unfortunately, Shore's current trust level toward her remained sowhere beneath sewer bacteria.
Before he could speak again, the blonde woman rested her drink down gently.
"Earlier today, our introductions could have gone better."
"That's one way to describe that fiasco. Why did you choose to break into my apartnt? If your skills at infiltration were as refined as this, you could have waited longer before making sure I was soone you could trust, rather than confronting straight away."
She paused thoughtfully.
"…I could have, but... I'm running out of ti. There are certain reasons in which I had to rush my plans."
Then she extended one hand slightly across the table.
"But... before all that. My na is Raye," she said.
Shore stared at her for a second. A brief pause followed. Then for the first ti since eting her... so of the coldness left her expression.
"And, I need your help."
Shore studied her quietly for another mont before finally reaching forward. His fingers lightly grasped her palm.
"Shore," he said simply. "Now tell as much as you can."
Raye nodded once and slowly withdrew her hand back toward her cup. "It's a little difficult to explain properly. A lot of this started before I even knew what Aetherion was."
Shore leaned back slightly against the booth.
"Start from the beginning then."
Raye exhaled softly through her nose before speaking.
"I used to work contract jobs," she said. "Construction work, deliveries, warehouse hauling, equipnt transport. Stuff like that."
Her fingers tapped lightly against the side of her coffee cup. "My parents had young. They passed away a few years later."
Shore said nothing and simply listened.
"There wasn't exactly so secret inheritance waiting for afterward, so I worked."
A faint smile crossed her lips.
"Turns out surviving is expensive."
Shore took another sip of tea.
"That it is."
Raye continued.
"I got into university for a while but eventually I couldn't keep up with the costs anymore. Rent, food, transportation. I dropped out."
There was no self pity in her voice, just facts.
About a year ago, I got offered a special transport contract."
Shore's attention sharpened slightly.
"It paid well?"
"Very well, actually and at the ti I was behind on rent."
Fair enough.
Raye leaned back slightly before continuing. "The deliveries went to a facility in Ironview. A bioengineering company called Eclipse Industries."
That na imdiately registered in Shore's mind.
Eclipse Industries. He knew the company. Not intimately, but enough.
They were a moderately powerful conglorate operating throughout Vale. Pharmaceutical research, biological engineering, synthetic materials and dical technology.
On paper, they were clean.
But apparently, they might have been too clean. At least, according to this girl, Raye. Shore quietly stored the information away.
Raye continued speaking.
"At first the work seed normal. Sealed cargo containers, scheduled delivery routes and private loading bays. I kept doing deliveries for about a month then eventually I realized the shipnts weren't products. They were people."
Shore's eyes narrowed.
"Holess people mostly and drifters too. The kind nobody notices disappearing."
The café suddenly felt colder despite the warm lighting around them. Shore rested his tea down quietly.
"How did you find that out?"
Raye looked toward the café window for a mont before answering. "The subjects were usually sedated before transport," she explained. "Drugged heavily."
Her expression darkened slightly. "But one of them resisted it sohow. He started making noise inside the truck during transport. Banging around and yelling."
A pause followed.
"Usually I never checked the cargo personally. Sobody else always handled unloading."
"But this ti you did?"
Raye nodded.
"When I arrived at the facility, I heard the noise again from the trailer. I thought maybe sobody had been sealed inside accidentally."
Her jaw tightened faintly.
"So I opened it."
Shore already knew where this was going. "There were people inside, cuffed, sedated and terrified. One of them, the one who was making noise begged for help."
The booth went silent briefly. Shore watched her expression carefully.
Not performative anger or dramatics. Just old disgust buried deep.
"I called the police imdiately afterward," she continued.
"And?"
Raye laughed softly but there was absolutely no humor in it. "The guards restrained before the police even arrived."
"And the police?"
"One of the facility managers talked to them privately. Then suddenly the whole thing disappeared."
Shore already knew the answer before she said it.
"Covered up?"
"Completely."
Raye looked down at the coffee briefly.
"Apparently Eclipse Industries owned enough people in Ironview that nobody cared about missing holess civilians."
Shore's expression remained calm externally but internally his thoughts had beco significantly darker. Corporate influence over local enforcent was unfortunately nothing new.
Still...
Human experintation. That crossed into territory LUCID would absolutely erase people over. Especially when it ca into the purview of Grimm.
"They decided I knew too much, however, instead of killing , they used as a test subject instead." Raye explained. "They took deeper into the facility and... that place wasn't normal, Shore."
Sothing about the way she said that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise slightly.
"I saw things there."
"What kind of things?"
Raye stared at him carefully for a second before answering.
"Monsters. Creatures covered in black fur. So looked like bipedal wolves... or werewolves except twisted and dark."
Her expression tightened.
"They had bone plating growing from their bodies."
'Grimm.' Shore thought. 'There must have been an amalgamation that they controlled to produce the creatures of grimm.'
Very problematic.
Raye continued.
"There were others too. Bear-like things and so smaller ones moving on walls. All inside their own separate testing chambers.
A faint shudder passed through her shoulders.
"I didn't even know monsters like that existed."
Shore stayed silent. Because explaining Grimm to civilians was... complicated. Especially civilians who had apparently survived human experintation involving them.
"They injected afterward, with sothing called Aetherion V3."
Shore imdiately focused again. The implication was that there was Aetherion V1 and V2, now. "And the other test subjects? What happened to them?"
Her eyes lowered slightly.
"They died. All of them except ."
The café noise continued softly around them while Shore processed that information.
"One of the researchers, the leader involved in the research, called a masterpiece afterward."
Shore frowned slightly.
"The lead scientist? Male or Female."
"Male, but I don't think he was just the lead scientist. I think he was the leader of the entire Aetherion project or sothing."
Shore filed that information away for later. "What was him na?"
Raye shook her head.
"I never learned it fully. But I heard one of the researchers call him Doctor M."
Doctor M.
Another piece added to the growing nightmare puzzle. Shore gestured lightly for her to continue.
"I was only inside the facility for around two weeks," she explained. "But after the injection... things changed quickly."
"How so?"
"My body beca stronger almost imdiately."
Her red eyes lifted toward his.
"Faster too and the day after the injection, I was able to escape, with my invisibility... and several other abilities."
Shore leaned slightly forward.
"Explain them."
"My strength, speed, reflexes and proprioception are enhanced beyond normal human limits," she said. "My durability improved too."
That much he had already experienced personally against his living room floor.
"I can also sense nearby humans."
Interesting, just like grimm.
"And invisibility?"
Raye nodded once.
"I can sort of bend light around myself. Works on thermal vision and other such forms of vision based technology as well."
Shore imdiately began ntally categorizing possibilities.
Aetherion essentially transferred Grimm characteristics into human hosts through unstable biological integration. Which ant her abilities likely originated from a specific Grimm type.
Versepellis.
A chaleon-type Grimm species capable of camouflage and ambush predation, native to Vacuoo. At Rank 0 they were manageable but at Rank 1 and beyond, they beca horrific to fight against.
Shore filed the thought away silently.
"I escaped Ironview afterward and eventually I made it to Vale City."
"And you never contacted authorities again?"
Raye gave him a look.
"I watched police officers cover up human trafficking."
Fair point.
"So instead, I disappeared." Her voice hardened slightly. "I trained myself. Learned infiltration, surveillance and combat."
Shore believed that imdiately. "Then eventually I infiltrated Eclipse Industries again."
That surprised him slightly.
"You went back?"
"I wanted answers."
Madness. But understandable madness.
"And?"
Raye's eyes narrowed faintly. "I discovered they planned to begin large scale distribution of V1 Aetherion here in Mountain Glenn."
Hence why she ca.
"But there's another problem," she said quietly afterward.
Shore already suspected it.
"My body is getting worse."
There it was.
"These abilities are degenerating slowly," she admitted. "I found research logs ntioning instability progression of the other successful subjects of V3."
Her fingers curled lightly against the table.
"Eventually... I'll beco one of those monsters."
Shore remained silent. Not because he lacked sympathy. But because he genuinely did not know what to say.
"I found references to V4," she continued. "Apparently it's more stable."
"And you think it can save you?"
"I don't know," Raye admitted honestly. "But it's the only lead I have."
Shore thought quietly for several monts.
Then finally:
"You said it's being manufactured here."
Raye nodded.
"Yes."
"But you haven't located the facility?"
"No."
Interesting. Very interesting. Shore folded his arms afterward.
"What does Thomas Baldwin have to do with all this?"
Raye answered imdiately.
"He's one of the major distributors for V1 throughout Mountain Glenn."
"So he's higher than the sewer supplier."
"Much higher."
Shore asked several more questions afterward regarding Thomas's routines, contacts and movents.
Raye answered everything she knew. Eventually silence settled briefly between them. Then Shore exhaled quietly and finished the last of his tea.
"Alright," he said calmly, "then it looks like we're going shopping."
Raye raised an eyebrow slightly.
"The Bazaar?"
Shore nodded once.
"It's ti we found the source."
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