Chapter 2

Rough Night

It was the middle of the night in Grand Lake City, but it was anything but silent. While most people went to bed in order to rest up for the next day, there were still a lot of people awake even during these late hours. Whether it was people working late shifts in their jobs, people going to clubs or other nightly activities, there were all types of people completely awake and active.

One of these people was a woman sitting at a desk inside her personal office that also worked as her apartment. The place was a complete mess, as all sorts of papers were littered all over the floor and the desk. Dust and other filth covered a good amount of the surfaces, showing the lack of care that went into the apartment’s upkeep. Several empty bottles of liquor and beer could be found all around the place, and an ash tray full of used cigarettes was on the desk.

This was the office of Dana Colt, a private detective in Grand Lake City. She had a messy mop of blonde hair, blue eyes and a rather good, tall figure. At the moment, she was on her computer, looking through her email for any new jobs with no luck.

The life of a private detective isn’t as glamorous as pop culture might make it seem like. Unless you manage to make a name for yourself through a string of big cases, you might not see any work for a long time. This was unfortunately the situation with Dana.

The problem wasn’t that she had a lack of requests sent her way. She did have a small amount of them. However, the blonde detective couldn’t just take up any case that came her way, as there were many factors that needed to be taken into consideration before accepting anything.

“Let’s see now… What do we have here?” Dana said to herself as she started to look at her messages. “Junk mail… junk mail… a notification from the electric company about my late payments… a notification from my landlord… Are there any actual cases here!?”

Just as she was about to give up hope, the detective saw messages with titles that were related to her job.

“Ah! There we go!” Dana said excitedly, hoping to receive something good. “Too low of a payment for my job… This one is obviously a prank… This is from some lunatic that wants me to spy on his neighbor… And this is from the son of a bitch that hasn’t paid me for the last case I did for him!”

Seeing as there wasn’t really anything worth further attention, the blonde woman closed her computer with a frustrated sigh. It seemed like she was forced to wait another day for work. Yet again.

Dana leaned back on her chair and lit another cigarette. She thought about her current situation and how things weren’t going as well as she had planned.

The thing is that the blonde lady hadn’t desired to be a private detective. Rather, she had hoped to be a detective in the actual police force instead, which was somewhat of a family legacy for her, as a good amount of her family had been part of the police force in one way or another. You could say that upholding the law ran in the family.

However, Dana’s career hadn’t gone exactly in a perfect manner. Her biggest issue had been her rather explosive temper, which when coupled together with her rather reckless attitude made a volatile combination. Throughout her career in the police force, she had destroyed over a dozen police cars, had caused countless publicity scandals and had received more complaints regarding her conduct in a month than the rest of the police force did in a year.

One would wonder why such a person ever got into the police, let alone was allowed to stay. The simple reason for this was that regardless of her downright destructive actions, Dana had still been a great asset to the police and a big help for the city itself. Not only did she succeed in arresting numerous criminals during her career, but her prioritizing the safety of civilians even at the risk of her own life had earned herself the respect of most of the other cops and a good amount of the public as well.

Unfortunately, the reason Dana had been able to continue her reckless behavior was due to the police chief at the time. The old chief had been a friend of her father and knew her very well, which led to him trusting the blonde woman. They did argue often, but both knew that at the end of the day they had each other’s backing.

This relationship ended when the chief was forced to retire and a new one took his place. The new police chief cared more about what the media said about the police force, instead of getting their work done. She began by making large cuts and restrictions on her officers, which led to many of them quitting right away. This allowed the new chief to bring in and promote new people that were basically her loyal lapdogs and nothing more. Because of this, the crime in the city skyrocketed soon afterwards.

While one would think that such an obvious case of terrible leadership would lead to the new chief losing her position, no such thing ever seemed to happen. There was obviously criticism towards the new chief’s policies, but this didn’t seem to matter. The problem was that she had managed to make friends with some rather wealthy and powerful people, who helped her keep her job. Thanks to these allies, any criticism was either buried, ignored or made look insignificant.

Dana herself had tried to work under the new chief, but couldn’t take it for long. Her new superior was constantly breathing down her neck and berating her in front of everyone, all in an effort to tear down the blonde’s accomplishments and success. The new chief had made it very clear that Dana’s help was not appreciated at all and that she needed to leave.

The final nail in the coffin came to Dana when a sexual predator that she had arrested had been released under the orders from the new chief. The chief had even gone so far as to say that the man had been arrested due to prejudiced views, completely ignoring all the evidence against him that clearly showed he was responsible for horrid actions towards children.

After that incident, Dana left the force in fury. It was one thing to make the work of good cops impossible, but it was on a whole other level to release a monster and call the cop that arrested him racist with no proof. She was done with the new chief and her way of doing things, as they were clearly not meant to help the people they were supposed to help.

Once she was out of the force, Dana started her own private detective agency. Unfortunately, work came in slowly and didn’t pay well when it did come. This had led to her current predicament of living in her office while hoping to get some work.

“What the hell… Don’t people have any problems in this crime-infested hellhole anymore!?” Dana said angrily as she put out her cigarette. “I mean, besides in their heads that is. No way I’m fixing that in any other way than a bullet to the skull… Screw this! I’m going to bed!”

With nothing better to do, the private detective walked up to her couch and laid down on it. She had placed a blanket and a pillow on the piece of furniture as well in order to make it into her bed, as she had nothing better to sleep on. It didn’t take long until Dana felt her eyes begin to close, as sleep was beginning to take over.

Just as the blonde was about to fall asleep, she heard something that caused her to fall down from her couch. It was the sound of a speeding truck coming to a screeching halt in a nearby alleyway. This was followed by the sound of something large and heavy getting thrown on the ground, before the truck sped away.

Having been prevented from falling asleep, Dana grabbed her gun and ran to the window just in time to see the truck drive away. The detective cursed, as she could do nothing to get back at the person that had caused the noise.

“Son of a bitch! What the hell is wrong with these people!?” Dana cursed as she walked away from the window and headed back to the couch. “Who the hell is speeding like that in the middle of the freaking night!? Don’t they know that good citizens are supposed to be sleeping during this time!?”

The detective went to lay on her “bed” again, hoping to get some sleep finally. Unfortunately, the whole ordeal with the driver, along with everything else that was going wrong with her life at the moment, had left her angered and frustrated, which prevented her from falling asleep. Dana tossed and turned on the couch for some time, before finally kicking off her blanket and walking up to her computer.

“Goddammit! There’s no way I’m falling asleep like this! I’m too pissed off!” the detective cursed as she turned on her computer. She opened up her internet browser and a somewhat disturbing grin appeared on her face. “Luckily for me, I know just the right medicine. Some good old internet porn should fix me right away!”

While Dana went on to enjoy her “medicine”, someone was walking down the alley that was between the building her office was located in and the building next to it. This creature had just been dropped off by the truck that had just sped away not too long ago.

What the detective had failed to notice when the truck had driven off, was that a large crate had been dropped out of the speeding vehicle. This crate was soon broken from the inside and now the thing within was walking the streets.

Normally, a person like Dana would have spotted strange things like this. Unfortunately, being as tired as she was, her focus had been solely on the truck and nothing else, causing her to miss the crate completely. Not only that, but the last few years had not been all that kind to the detective, causing her to grow bitter and uncaring towards things that weren’t connected to herself. Because of this, she wouldn’t have most likely cared, even if she had noticed the crate.

However, the creature was not concerned whether it was being observed at the time or not. What it wanted was located in the alley it had walked into. The fuse box for the building Dana’s office was a part of.

With inhuman strength, the mysterious being tore the fuse box open, before grabbing the wires inside with its hands. Electricity sparked everywhere, lighting up the whole alley, as the creature took in the massive amounts of energy erupting at once. While this would normally kill a human being, the creature was far from human, as it wasn’t damaged by what was happening to it at all. In fact, it seemed to be enjoying it.

As this was happening, the electricity to the building was cut off, leaving its occupants in the dark. This included Dana, who saw her computer monitor suddenly go dark. While at first she had been annoyed by this sudden interruption to her activity, she quickly noticed that something was happening outside. The detective rushed to the window to see what was going on, before grabbing her gun and running outside.

It didn’t take long for the creature to finish its business with the fuse box, as all electricity seemed to have been drained from it. It let out what sounded like a satisfied growl before starting to walk away.

“HEY! FREEZE!” a voice suddenly yelled from behind the creature, causing it to stop in its tracks and look behind it. Dana was standing there, pointing a gun at it. “What the hell did you just do, asshole!? Do you have any idea of how badly you just ruined my freaking night!?”

As far as Dana knew, the thing she was currently aiming at wasn’t anything special. Just some crazy homeless person. Due to the alley being completely dark in the night, she couldn’t make out any details of what she was staring at, just the bare outline of a human figure. All the blonde could tell so far was that it was a man of average height, wearing a long coat.

However, the person in Dana’s sights was far from anything ordinary and she was now in the biggest danger of her life. This began to dawn on her as she watched the creature in front of her eyes suddenly light up with crackling electricity surrounding its body. Because of the shock caused by the sight before her, the detective froze up long enough for the electrified being to shoot a ball of energy straight at her, sending her flying backwards and tumble to the ground.

With the threat seemingly neutralized, the creature resumed its departure. It didn’t take long for it to disappear into the shadows of the large city, leaving behind only the destruction it had caused as the only proof of its existence.

Almost as soon as it had left, Dana began to slowly get up. While the attack she had received had been painful and possibly deadly for some people, the blonde was luckily tougher than your average citizen. Still, the electrical shock that had hit her wasn’t something to take lightly, as it was most likely only due to the creature underestimating its opponent that Dana was still breathing at all.

“Well, that certainly sucked… I’m gonna feel that in the morning,” Dana muttered to herself as she barely managed to stand up. Her legs were still shaking from the hit she took and her vision was blurry. “What in the hell even was that thing?”

Just before she had been hit, the detective had managed to see her attacker’s real face for just a second, but the image had been burned into her mind. Whatever had shot her, it didn’t have any hair on its head or its face. What it did have was scales covering its whole head and most likely its whole body as well. Its eyes were bright red, like rubies, and it had what seemed like fins in place for it ears. There had also been sharp fangs in its mouth, instead of the regular teeth one would expect to see.

“When the hell did this world turn into a freaking comic book?” Dana wondered as she limped back to her home. “Whatever that thing was, I have a feeling I haven’t seen the last of it.”