[center][h2][color=pink]Christopher Francis Hurk[/color][/h2][/center]

[indent][i][color=dodgerblue]Once you get that file, things'll get clearer. It's kept in my place, inside a safe locked by a key. To get the key, first get to my PO box at Santa Somabra Central Post, it's 3267. Say you're a relative, they'll know. Inside the box is a slip of paper that contains specific instructions. Take that paper and head to First Grand Bank, ask for my safety deposit box. Repeat the instructions to the letter. Follow that trail, and in my box you'll get the safe key.

Avenge me, Hurk. Go get the fucker that wanted me dead.[/color][/i]

[i]Several hours later...[/i]

I stood outside the city's biggest post office. Somabra Central Post. Funny how a city this shitty still had infrastructure. Sometimes I forgot I was even in America, with how fucked up this place was.

I hadn't gotten a good night's sleep. Dag's...raising last night had, for lack of a better word, fucked me. It was jarring, knowing that life was so fragile and wispy. One could be pulled back from the black, like Andy and Benji, but who knew when they'd feel the pull that brought them back to the abyss? I couldn't imagine Dag suffering in the black like that. Or, for that matter, Alonzo. 

Fuck...had it really been three years? Lost two people dear to me in the blink of an eye. Alonzo... I'd loved the guy. If there was a way to take him back from the hands of the werewolves that had torn him to shreds, I would've done so in a heartbeat. But I knew it was impossible. Just like my hope that, somehow, through some wild twist of fate, that that Valorie chick had the juice to pull Dag up and make him stay there. Dashed in the blink of an eye. 

But today. Today was the day I sought my revenge. I didn't have to spin in circles any more, chasing my own tail. I had a path to follow. And it started here.

The post office itself was kinda archaic looking, like someone had plucked it straight from Greece or something. Big stone steps, tall pillars. I strode past all of those and pushed in past the big revolving door. The inside was neat enough; you had a delivery counter for those that were expecting post from overseas or cross state, mailboxes for outgoing local and international mail, info counter, so on and so forth. I guessed the PO boxes were somewhere inside. I walked my way up to the counter and the young lady there smiled at me.

"May I help you, sir?"

[color=pink][i]"Yeah, I'm looking for a PO box? 3267. Relative of the owner."[/i][/color]

She nodded and gestured for me to follow her, so I did. She led me into a big back room, walls lined with rows and rows of PO boxes. Must've been for the entire city block! From a box of keys, she withdrew one and passed it to me.

"Here's the key sir. I'll be outside when you're done."

[i][color=pink]"Thanks."[/color][/i]

The lady went back outside and I breathed a sigh of relief. So far so good. Dag's instructions were holding up just fine. I searched the wall of boxes until I found 3267, fitted the key inside and opened it up. Inside the box was an envelope. Fitting, really. I had to make doubly sure that no one else was around me before I opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper, printed. 

I read it carefully.

It was written by Dag, obviously, in the event of his untimely demise by the Hunters. Something last minute. I knew it from the way he typed without the usual composure of his written notes. It detailed his contingency plan for the information that he had stolen from the Hunters. Five different locations in the city held five different dead drops. Each dead drop had a tiny lockbox containing one fifth of a keypad combination. Once all five pieces of the puzzle were together, I was to take it to First Grand, ask for his safety deposit box, and use it there.

[i][color=dodgerblue]An awning in the market at Chinatown.

The corner of a fence at Twilight Park.

Underneath an old bed frame in an abandoned apartment complex in the Slums.

The bottom of a metal trash can in Dawnpeak Heights.

Under the very last plank of wood at Pier 61, Butcher Bay Dock.[/color][/i]

By the time I had everything, I was dog tired, sweaty, and kinda stinky from digging around that trash can. I took a break at my apartment to clean up, then headed downtown towards First Grand.

The building itself was massive, kinda like Town Hall in a way. But unlike our Greco-Roman central post office, First Grand Bank was very prominently Victorian. It felt like a huge mansion, which it kinda was in a way.

It was lunch time when I arrived there, so there weren't much people. I jogged in and caught one of the tellers as he was coming back from his meal.

[color=pink][i]"Hey man- "[/i][/color]

The guy sat back in his seat and looked up at me. I could feel him judging my scruffy sweater and ripped jeans as he spoke.

"May I help you, sir?"

[color=pink][i]"Yeah, um, I'm looking to access a safe deposit box?"[/i][/color]

The man slowly cocked an eyebrow.

"Which one, sir?"

[color=pink][i]"Um, uh."[/i][/color]

I quickly consulted the scrap of paper I'd found in the first lockbox.

[color=pink][i]"Box number four twenty five A three? I'm, uh, the owner's nephew. Ben."[/i][/color]

Whether or not the lie held, I wasn't sure, but it was part of the contingency instructions he'd written down. The man merely consulted the computer screen on his desk for a few seconds, nodded and motioned for me to follow him.

[i][color=dodgerblue]When you get to First Grand, look for a teller. Tell him that you want my safe deposit box, specify the number, and tell the teller that you're my nephew, Ben. Those specific instructions are part of my death plan for my box. They'll know.[/color][/i]

"This way please, sir."

I followed the man into a hallway, which led to a bigger room containing a vault door. He entered a simple combination and the door slowly swung open. I followed him in and he led me to a particular wall of boxes and handed me a key.

"Your key, sir. Your box is on the wall. If you want to access its contents privately, we have several rooms in the back. Once you are ready to return outside, simply replace the box and press the buzzer on the wall."

[color=pink][i]"Alright. Thanks."[/i][/color]

He nodded and disappeared without a word. I got to searching the wall of boxes, and found his box at the front column. The key I had fit perfectly, and the box slid out without a noise.

The rooms at the back had no windows, only a single door. I got into one, locked the door, and set the box down on the table. The key was still in the box, so I turned again and the lid popped open. Inside was a safe as big as the box was inside, protected by a keypad. I had the five scraps of paper from Dag's dead drops, and I pulled them from my pocket and laid them on the table.

[color=dodgerblue][i]Once you have all five pieces of the password, arrange them in this order: Docks, Awning, Trash Can, Bed, Fence. That's the code for the safe in my deposit box and the very last piece of protection I have.

If you're reading this and intent on avenging me, take the contents of the safe and get them to whoever's taken over my cafe. He or she will help you figure everything out.[/i][/color]

With the papers arranged in that order, I entered the six digit password and heard a lock disengage. I flipped the lip of the safe up, and found a single thumbdrive. It was black, indiscreet.

I picked it up and held it in my hands. This was the rest of Dag's legacy, all the information he had on the Hunters, perhaps even more than that. But I couldn't tell by just looking at it.

I had to get this to Louie.
[hr]
[center][h3]At Louie's cafe, two hours later...[/h3][/center]

"Well I can say one thing for certain, Hurky: your pal Dagmar was really, really good at his job."

[color=pink][i]"Yeah no shit, Louie. Dag was the best at what he did."[/i][/color]

I sat in Louie's living room, idly thumbing through a magazine while I ate a sandwich. Andy was here too, but without his partner in crime. He said that Benji was off doing a little business. Busy. Couldn't join up. But Andy was curious as to how the Hunters had known that [i]that[/i] night three years ago had been their moment to strike. After all, he'd been in the thick of it.

"Alright, well that thumbdrive of yours was the motherlode. I knew a lot of Dag's material here was incomplete; holes everywhere. I didn't know where to find the missing pieces, I looked god damn everywhere. And now you've got 'em in this little drive. It includes all the shit he has on the Hunters."

His printer was whirring away, and he grabbed a sheaf of papers and handed them to me.

"Here, have a look."

I took the stack and thumbed through the pages. Each was a single page profile: picture, age, biography, name and alias, stuff like that. There were loads of 'em, and more kept coming.

"This is a list of every single Hunter that's set foot in Santa Somabra. I don't know how he managed to make all these connections, but there's shit in here that goes all the way back to three years ago, maybe even further."

I found proof of that in one of the bio pages. Abigail Ames. Hunter alias: Amelikas. Known associates: Brunkas, Christakas, the list went on.

The big cheese and her cronies.

[color=pink][i]"Andy. Take a look."[/i][/color]

I handed him the sheet and he mulled it over as I kept digging.

[i]"Huh. So that's who the bitch was. Couldja believe that white wolf was a fuckin' lawyer? Cause I sure can't."[/i]

[color=pink][i]"And she had something against the entire city."[/i][/color]

[i]"Big fuckin' megalomaniac if I ever saw one. For a werewolf."[/i]

I quickly found sheets for her cronies, including Brunkas, the werewolf we'd taken down together three years ago. The night I'd lost Alonzo.

[color=pink][i]"Robert "Bobby" Singer. Alias: Brunkas. Mechanic. Owned a junkyard just outside town."[/i][/color]

[i]"Seriously? That big, fast fucker was a mechanic? No fuckin' wonder he could hit like a truck, he goddamn fixes those things."[/i]

[color=pink][i]"I know, right?"[/i][/color]

I sorted out the rest of Amelikas' cronies and laid their sheets on a separate table. I saw all of her big named cronies, the ones that had torn up the city and subsequently met their ends by one way or another. Then I saw other associates, ones that I hadn't seen before obviously. On some of them, Dag had plastered a big red "Deceased" stamp, and listed the reason why. But most were untouched. Still active.

All of them were listed relations to Amelikas. By blood. Somehow.

I knew that one of these assholes was the wolf that had bit me, cursed me into this thing. And another had ordered the hit on Dag when he was getting too close to their secret.

But who? And what if they were the same person?

I gathered all the papers that were cronies under Amelikas and not, y'know, dead, and handed them to Louie.

[color=pink][i]"Hey Louie, d'you think you could help me do background checks on all these folks? Where they're from, what they do, any criminal ties, everything."[/i][/color]

He took the stack, looked briefly over them and nodded.

"Sure. What d'you want me to look for?"

[color=pink][i]"Any connections to the mob, or some other criminal element. Include mentions of George Chin, and maybe the Chemical Fiends too."[/i][/color]

Louie nodded again.

"Easy enough. I'll have the results to you in maybe a day or two. I'll contact you when I'm done."

[color=pink][i]"Thanks."[/i][/color]

I took my sandwich and left Louie to his own devices. Andy followed me right after.

[i]"So, after you do get all your crap together, what're you gonna do?"[/i]

I gave Andy a glance as we stepped outside.

[color=pink][i]"First, I'm gonna find who killed Dag and kill the fucker. Then I'm gonna find who cursed me and kill him too."[/i][/color][/indent]