Transformation

The Ford Crown Victoria patrol car slowly pulled up outside a construction site where work had stopped. Nick scanned the surroundings, and a white Kia Rio caught his eye. It did not even have a rear windshield, just a sheet of plastic stuck over the opening.

Could this car be stolen? Sure, prices in America were already showing signs of soaring, and replacing a rear windshield really wasn't cheap, but simply sticking a sheet of clear plastic over it was a little too slapdash.

Looking at the very new Kia Rio with its missing rear windshield, Nick grew suspicious and picked up the radio again.

"Dispatch, Burkhart-78 calling."

"Burkhart-78, go ahead." The female dispatcher, Leila, had resumed her professional tone, with no trace of her earlier sultriness.

"I'm on scene. The vehicle is indeed illegally parked on private property. The rear window is damaged, and I suspect it may be stolen. Please run the plate."

"Copy, checking T-X-Y-5-8-4."

A moment later, the radio crackled again. "Burkhart-78, plate confirmed. The vehicle is registered to Joshua Coffey, registered address in Beaverton. No theft reports or violations showing."

"Copy, thank you. Please update my status to 10-7, handling the scene." After reporting in, Nick did not hurry out of the car. Instead, he reached for the bulletproof vest on the passenger seat and put it on.

Although public safety in Portland was still fairly good and shootings were rare, he remained very conscious of being an American police officer and did not dare let his guard down in the slightest.

"Copy, Burkhart-78, status 10-7. Do you need additional backup?" Leila asked.

"Negative. Everything is normal for now. No backup needed. I'll handle it." Nick reached out and opened the door. He had already spotted someone who appeared to be the owner hanging around nearby.

It was a slightly balding middle-aged man, squatting not far from the Kia and smoking.

"Hey, buddy, is this yours? What are you doing here?" Nick called out to him from a distance.

The man's clothes gave Nick an odd sense of incongruity. In Portland's late-summer heat of nearly thirty degrees, he wore a down vest on top and filthy baggy pants below, a standard homeless man's outfit.

After noticing the hand-rolled cigarette in his hand, already more than half smoked, and the distinctive stink of "American herbal medicine" hanging in the air, Nick's cheek twitched. His left hand went straight to the Taser gun on his belt and removed it.

The man had actually noticed Nick's patrol car long before, but only when he saw Nick get out did he lazily stand and answer, "It's my car. Nothing much, just wandering around. Is that a problem, buddy?"

As he spoke, the balding man took a hard drag on his cigarette, somewhat reluctant to part with it, then dropped the butt at his feet and crushed it under his toe.

The corner of Nick's eye twitched at the blatantly provocative gesture. Most of his original inclination to let things slide had already vanished.

Today was his last day on duty, and he had intended to avoid getting involved in anything he did not have to.

These days, smoking a little "American herbal medicine" did not even count as a misdemeanor. Arresting someone for it only meant a fine of a hundred dollars or so, and he would still have to go through the entire conviction process. It was a royal pain.

If he failed to find any other contraband on the man or in his car, the fellow might even turn around and file a complaint against him.

But openly provoking a police officer was another matter. A trip to the detention center was a must.

This was not ten years in the future, after all. Patrol officers did not even have body cameras when they went out, and Apple had only released its first phone last year.

Americans had not yet developed that awful habit of filming everything. Of course, even once they did in the future, cops still would not care when they decided someone needed a beating. YouTube had never lacked videos like that.

Nick did not care either. And because he was white on the outside and Chinese on the inside, he had absolutely no racial bias. He would not go easier on the man just because he was white.

He walked to the rear of the Kia Rio and asked casually, "Do you have any identification on you?"

"No." The balding man brushed off his backside and walked toward his car.

"No?" A cold smile touched Nick's lips as he discreetly touched a rear taillight.

He was not checking whether the trunk was properly closed. It was a routine tactical move to leave fingerprint evidence, a little trick passed by word of mouth among American cops.

"Maybe I left it in the car." The balding man suddenly changed his answer. He first walked to the Kia's passenger door, his gaze sweeping over Nick at the rear of the car as if by chance.

Seeing that Nick had already drawn his Taser gun with his left hand and rested his right on his holster, he hurriedly circled around the front of the car toward the driver's door, acting as though nothing had happened.

Nick took two steps sideways, his eyes fixed on the man's every move.

The balding man deliberately rattled the keys in his pocket, making a show of preparing to open the door, then turned his head as if casually to glance at the ever-watchful patrol officer and flashed a sly grin.

Something unexpected happened the instant he turned his head.

Before Nick's eyes, the man's merely ugly, odd-looking face suddenly began to distort grotesquely. His messy hair instantly became something like a beast's mane, his mouth and nose abruptly protruded, and the corners of his mouth split all the way back behind his ears, exposing two rows of sharp, closely packed teeth.

Their eyes met, and Nick felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He froze in shock, but before he could get a clear look, the man's distorted face instantly returned to normal.

"You're a Grimm!"

Compared with Nick's shock, the look and expression the balding man, who seemed to be a street drug dealer, directed at him were more like those of an ordinary person confronted with a malevolent ghost. He let out a heart-rending scream and took off running.

"Hey!" In the blink of an eye, the man had already run more than twenty meters down the road. Nick instinctively gave chase.

Despite his shock, he still remembered to notify dispatch. "I'm pursuing a suspect on foot, heading south."

"Help! Don't kill me!" The balding man screamed shrilly as he ran, as though Nick chasing behind him were the monster.

"Stop, or I'll use my Taser gun."

Nick chased him, keeping a distance of about fifteen meters. He still held the Taser gun in his left hand, but his right had already unsnapped the holster of the Glock 22 at his waist.

As a "veteran" transmigrator who had experienced two trips into movies, fought a xenomorph-not actually-and killed over a hundred zombies, he had only been briefly stunned by what he had just seen. Once he recovered, he actually felt a little curious.

They continued like that, one chasing and the other fleeing. Before they had gone two hundred meters, the balding man stopped in a small patch of wasteland beside the road, gasping for breath.

"P-please, I'm begging you, p-please don't kill me." Looking scared out of his wits, the man turned and pleaded desperately with Nick while struggling to keep his distance.

It was as though the one who had turned into a monster just now had not been him, but the police officer before him.

Nick hurried another couple of steps and stopped about seven or eight meters away. His left hand gripped the Taser gun tightly, aiming it at the man, while the Glock 22 in his right was already halfway out of its holster.

"Nobody's going to kill you. Answer me. What exactly are you?"