Jeff Martinez poured coffee into three mugs and slid two of them across the table.
"You didn't drive ten hours just to wake me up before sunrise," he said. "So tell me what's going on."
Marco didn't sit right away. He set a worn leather folder on the table instead.
"We think something connected to Fenrir might be happening again."
Jeff's eyes narrowed.
"Fenrir was buried years ago."
"That's what everyone thought."
Jeff crossed his arms.
"Start talking."
Marco nodded once.
"It started with one of Kidd's wolves. A pack in Eugene, where we live. A kid named Thiago. Still learning how to control. Everything seemed normal at first." Marco hesitated briefly. "Then one day he just snapped."
"How? He attacked someone?"
"He attacked Kidd."
Jeff straightened.
"He went after his own alpha?"
Marco nodded.
"Kidd had to bite him in just to shut him down. Then a few days later another wolf shifted. The transformation was wrong," Marco said. "Too fast. Too violent."
"How fast?"
"Fast enough that even the older wolves couldn't keep up with him at first."
Jeff's expression darkened.
"And you stabilized him?"
"Eventually," Marco said. "But the whole thing didn't make sense."
Jeff leaned forward slightly.
"So you ran tests."
Marco opened the folder. Inside were several printed lab reports.
"Blood analysis," he said.
Jeff didn't touch the papers yet.
"What did you find?"
Marco turned one of the sheets toward him.
"Take a look at the protein markers."
Jeff adjusted his glasses and scanned the page. For a moment nothing changed in his expression.
Then he froze. His finger stopped halfway down the report.
"You're telling me this is real?"
Marco nodded once.
"The Fenrir protein is present in both samples."
Jeff sat back heavily in his chair.
"That's impossible."
"Apparently not."
Silence settled over the room. After a moment Jeff rubbed his temples.
"And the third case?"
"I went to Mount Hood. I needed a few days away from everything." Ithilien looked at Jeff straight in the eye. The times when she was afraid of him, was long gone. "Tauriel spotted something moving in the trees," Ithilien continued. "At first we thought it was just a large wolf."
Jeff leaned forward.
"What did you see?"
"A creature that looked like a werewolf," she said calmly. "But the anatomy was wrong. The limbs were too long. The muscles were overdeveloped. Its spine looked partially deformed, like its body couldn't stabilize the transformation."
Jeff's jaw tightened.
"And it attacked you."
"Yes."
Marco spoke quietly.
"She barely walked away from it."
Ithilien ignored him.
"It was faster than a normal werewolf. Stronger too."
"So let me summarize." He tapped the reports on the table. "First a kid attacks his own alpha during a shift. Then another wolf transforms faster and stronger than biology allows. And now you're telling me there's a mutated werewolf wandering around Mount Hood." He looked at the blood test again. "With Fenrir proteins in circulation."
Marco met his gaze.
"Yes."
Jeff Martinez remained seated for a long moment after the last words left his mouth, his gaze fixed on the blood report lying on the table as if the page itself might suddenly contradict what it clearly said. The pale winter light creeping through the window slowly filled the room, pushing the darkness toward the corners, but it did nothing to ease the tension that had settled over them.
Finally, he exhaled slowly and pushed his chair back.
"Alright," he said quietly. "If Fenrir is really showing up in blood samples again, then speculation isn't going to help us much."
He stood and walked to the far wall where several old metal cabinets stood side by side, their surfaces scratched and dulled by years of use. Marco watched him in silence, already knowing what Jeff was about to do.
Jeff opened the bottom drawer and reached inside. For a moment there was only the faint sound of metal sliding against metal. Then he pulled out a heavy rectangular case and carried it back to the table.
The case landed with a dull, solid thud. Dust lifted into the air.
Marco leaned forward slightly, recognizing the familiar red lettering stenciled across the lid.
FENRIR — ARCHIVE MATERIAL
Jeff unclipped the metal latches and lifted the lid.
Inside were thick folders, sealed envelopes, stacks of printed reports, and several labeled data drives carefully packed into foam compartments. Everything looked meticulously organized, the kind of order that came from someone who never truly trusted official explanations.
"Everything I managed to keep before the project was shut down," Jeff said. "Official reports, internal correspondence, experimental logs. Not the whole archive—but enough."
Marco pulled one of the folders closer.
Ithilien sat opposite him, resting her elbows lightly on the table as she began scanning the first set of documents. Her mind slipped easily into the familiar rhythm of investigation: absorb information, connect patterns, eliminate noise.
For a while the only sounds in the room were the quiet turning of pages and the occasional scrape of a chair shifting on the wooden floor.
The early reports described the structure of the project—research divisions, funding channels, classified facilities scattered across several states. Marco read quickly, his eyes moving over lines of dense technical language while his thoughts worked in the background, sorting names and dates.
A list of lead researchers appeared several pages in.
Dr. Victor Halberg — genetic engineeringDr. Elena Kovacs — viral adaptationDr. Samuel Ortega — bioinformaticsDr. Mei Tanaka — environmental stability modelsDr. Alaric Voss — genomic integration
Marco tapped the paper lightly.
"Seven lead researchers," he murmured. "Each responsible for a different stage of the virus."
Jeff nodded from the other side of the table.
"Fenrir wasn't one experiment," he said. "It was a full research program."
Ithilien continued reading, her expression thoughtful.
Most of the files focused on early development phases—laboratory trials, controlled testing on wolves, simulations predicting viral spread within wild populations. The language was clinical, detached, almost sterile in its precision.
But beneath the scientific terminology she could sense the same underlying ambition she had seen in too many classified projects before.
They weren't just studying wolves.
They were trying to redesign them.
Hours passed almost without anyone noticing.
The gray winter morning slowly brightened into late morning light, casting long pale beams across the table as the sun climbed behind the cloud cover. Empty coffee mugs accumulated near the edge of the table. Occasionally one of them would pause to stretch stiff shoulders before returning to the documents.
Marco had begun compiling a short list of names in a small notebook.
Halberg.Kovacs.Ortega.Tanaka.Voss.
Each name carried a trail of old reports and archived communications. Some had transferred to universities after the program closed. Others had vanished into private research institutions or government contracts that no longer appeared in public records.
None of them yet stood out.
Which, Marco thought grimly, might have been the most worrying sign of all.
Across the table, Ithilien was reading a report describing viral stability trials when something tugged faintly at the edge of her awareness.
At first she ignored it.
The house was quiet except for the rustle of paper and the faint ticking of the wall clock. Outside, a car drove past somewhere down the street, its engine briefly audible through the windows.
But a moment later she paused.
Her head lifted slightly.
Marco noticed immediately.
"What is it?" he asked quietly.
She didn't answer right away.
Instead she inhaled slowly, letting the scent settle properly in her senses.
Under the smells of coffee, old paper, and wood smoke drifting through the house there was something else now—something sharper, unmistakably familiar.
A wolf's scent.
Her eyes narrowed slightly as recognition clicked into place.
Ace.