Chapter 2 : Inheritance
Morning light filtered through the hospital blinds. My sixth night in Harrison Griffin's body, and I still wasn't used to the face in the bathroom mirror.
Stronger jaw than my original. Broader shoulders. A nose that had been broken at least once. Late twenties, maybe twenty-eight. Brown hair cropped short in a practical cut. The eyes were wrong—hazel instead of blue—but they tracked normally when I moved my head.
Dr. Chen's cognitive tests hadn't found anything alarming. Memory gaps, yes, but those made convenient excuses. A nine-month coma would explain any slip-ups about my "past life."
The past life of a man I knew nothing about.
I'd spent every waking hour since the system activated doing research on the hospital's ancient WiFi. Central City news archives. Social media feeds. Any mention of STAR Labs, the Flash, or metahuman activity.
The timeline matched my expectations. Barry Allen had been operating as the Flash for roughly two months. The Reverse-Flash was still secretly posing as Harrison Wells. Caitlin Snow and Cisco Ramon were helping Barry from the STAR Labs cortex. The metahuman of the week cycle was in full swing.
Outside my window, a city full of powers waited.
[TUTORIAL QUEST: FIRST EXTRACTION] [TIME REMAINING: 5 DAYS, 11 HOURS, 32 MINUTES]
"Mr. Griffin?" A knock preceded Martinez's entrance. "Dr. Chen wants to do your final evaluation this morning. If everything looks good, we can start your discharge paperwork."
"I'm ready."
The tests took three hours. Memory exercises. Motor function assessments. Reaction time measurements. I performed carefully—competent but not perfect. The kind of results you'd expect from someone recovering from extended unconsciousness.
By noon, I had a stack of discharge papers and a prescription for two weeks of physical therapy exercises.
The hospital's storage department produced a box of personal effects. Harrison Griffin's personal effects. I opened it in my room while Martinez processed the final paperwork.
A wallet. California driver's license with Harrison Griffin's face—my face now—and an address in Central City. Two credit cards. A hundred and twenty-seven dollars in cash.
A set of keys. Apartment, car, what looked like a storage unit.
A phone, dead after nine months without charge.
No photos. No personal items. Whoever Harrison Griffin was, he traveled light.
The taxi ride from Central City General to the address on my license took twenty minutes. I spent most of it staring out the window at a world I'd only ever seen on television.
The city looked... normal. Office buildings and coffee shops and pedestrians going about their lives. No obvious signs that metahumans walked among them, that a speedster in red leather protected their streets, that interdimensional threats loomed in their future.
Just a city. Living its life. Oblivious to the chaos coming.
The apartment building was a modest mid-rise in a decent neighborhood. Fifth floor, corner unit. The key fit smoothly in the lock.
I stepped inside and found my inheritance.
Clean lines. Minimal furniture. A leather couch facing a wall-mounted television. Kitchen with stainless steel appliances and empty counters. No decorations, no photographs, no signs that anyone with a personality had ever lived here.
But organized. Everything in its place. Military neat.
I found the files in the second bedroom, which had been converted into an office. A solid desk. A laptop. And three filing cabinets full of documentation.
Harrison Griffin, according to his paperwork, was a freelance security consultant. Former military—the discharge papers showed eight years of service, including deployments I recognized from news coverage of real-world conflicts. After leaving the Army, he'd built a consulting practice. Risk assessments. Vulnerability analyses. Physical security evaluations.
His client list included a dozen Central City businesses. His bank statements showed $34,000 in savings and regular income from consulting fees.
No wife. No children. Parents deceased according to a brief note in what appeared to be legal documents. No emergency contact listed on any form.
Harrison Griffin had been a ghost even before he fell into that coma.
Perfect.
I plugged his phone into a charger and opened his laptop. Password protected, but the sticky note on the desk drawer gave me access. More organization inside—folders for each client, meticulous records of every engagement, templates for every document type he produced.
The email inbox had nine months of unread messages. Most were automated notifications or spam. A few clients checking in early, then giving up when they received no response. Nobody had come looking for Harrison Griffin. Nobody had noticed he was gone.
This wasn't just a cover identity. It was a ready-made life.
My phone buzzed. Battery finally holding a charge. A reminder notification from before the coma—"CC Shipping threat assessment, reschedule." One of his clients. Someone who'd been worried about metahuman threats before the explosion that created them.
I set the phone aside and walked through the apartment. The shower in the bathroom had actual water pressure. Hot water that stayed hot. Soap that smelled like sandalwood instead of industrial antiseptic.
I stood under the spray for twenty minutes.
The body I inhabited had a scar on the left shoulder—circular, puckered, clearly a bullet wound. Old and fully healed. I traced it with fingers that still felt foreign.
Harrison Griffin had been shot at some point. Had survived. Had kept going.
What else had this body survived? What other stories were written in its scars?
I dressed in clothes from the bedroom closet—dark jeans, a gray henley, boots that fit like they'd been worn for years. Harrison Griffin's style was practical. Professional without being corporate. The kind of outfit you could fight in if you had to.
And I might have to.
The system interface flickered at the edge of my vision.
[TUTORIAL QUEST: FIRST EXTRACTION] [TIME REMAINING: 5 DAYS, 8 HOURS, 14 MINUTES]
Five days to find a metahuman and steal their power. In a city where the only known metahuman hunter was the Flash, who captured villains rather than... harvesting them.
I needed targets. Criminal metahumans who wouldn't be missed. Who deserved what I planned to do.
The laptop held Harrison Griffin's research files—client assessments, local crime statistics, security vulnerabilities. I opened a new document and started compiling information.
Central City news archives listed forty-seven confirmed metahuman incidents since the particle accelerator explosion. Most involved the Flash appearing to save the day. A few mentioned metahumans escaping. Others were just sightings—unexplained phenomena that the press attributed to "possible metahuman activity."
Somewhere in that list was my target.
The system's detection range was only ten meters. I'd need to get close. Which meant knowing where to look, when to look, how to approach without triggering a fight I couldn't win yet.
Harrison Griffin's client files included security assessments for businesses across the city. Warehouses. Shipping companies. Industrial facilities. The kind of places where criminal elements might operate.
One file caught my attention. CC Shipping—the reminder I'd seen earlier. Marcus Webb, operations manager, had requested a metahuman threat assessment three months before the explosion. He'd been worried about powered criminals targeting his warehouses even before such creatures existed.
Either remarkably prescient or remarkably paranoid.
I reached for my phone and scrolled through the contacts. Marcus Webb's number was still there.
Tomorrow, I would call him. Reconnect under the guise of recovery. See what he knew about the current threat landscape.
Tonight, I had research to do.
The hours blurred together. News articles. Police blotters. Online forums where Central City residents discussed "that meta stuff." Slowly, patterns emerged. Criminal metahumans operating in specific territories. Protection rackets. Smuggling operations. The kind of low-level predators who preyed on normal people and stayed off the Flash's radar.
By midnight, I had three potential targets.
By two in the morning, I had a plan.
I closed the laptop and walked to the window. Central City spread out below, lights twinkling against the darkness. Somewhere out there, Barry Allen was probably running patrols, saving people, believing himself the only hero this city needed.
He was wrong.
I opened Harrison Griffin's client files one more time. The CC Shipping folder contained a security assessment from ten months ago. Comprehensive analysis of warehouse vulnerabilities, access points, surveillance gaps.
And a handwritten note in the margin: "Metahuman threat assessment requested - CC Shipping."
Someone had been worried about powered criminals before they existed. That same someone might know where they operated now.
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