Chapter 1: N. Trough of the Storm

The Los Angeles downpour lashed against the rock faces of the Santa Monica Mountains like a hundred dull knives. Rainwater poured into the collar of Alice Colman’s rain jacket, biting cold. She huddled against the half-open iron gate of a homeless shelter, soaked through and caked in mud, her waterproof boots long since worn through. Her phone screen flickered in the curtain of rain; the battery icon read five percent. Just moments ago, the on-duty shelter staffer had tossed her ID badge back, the metal tag clinking sharply in the storm.

The man’s voice carried through the rain, dripping with a detached, “I-don’t-care” indifference. “Ms. Colman, your archive access was frozen after the Blood Moon Case re-review. No new biometric code, no entry. It’s cold out there, so don’t stand in the rain.”

Alice didn’t argue back. In Los Angeles, an archivist was just the graveyard keeper of history, and right now, someone had poured concrete over her tomb. The official testimony insisted that during the 2004 attack, The Colman Family’s archive room had been left completely untouched. But her grandfather, the former family archivist, had vanished that same night and was later branded a suspect. Twenty years of wrongful suspicion, reduced to a string of locked digital code. Despair washed over her like a tide. She closed her eyes, rain dripping from her lashes, blurring her vision.

Then, a hard object got flushed from a puddle to her feet. It was a piece of film, swollen from soaking in the rain, still attached to half of its cassette. Alice crouched down, her fingers trembling as she picked it up. The rain washed over the surface of the film, the black emulsion layer gleaming with a cold, faint light under the dim streetlamp. It was a vintage Kodak Tri-X 400 Film. The production date on the packaging was clearly visible: 2004.

But the official testimony claimed that the surveillance footage from back then had been destroyed during a server migration in 2010; every visual record had been wiped clean. If this film was from 2004, it should have been burned in the archive fire, or at least sealed in a fireproof bag. How was it lying in the muddy water outside a homeless shelter on a stormy night?

Alice pressed the film against her chest. Through her soaked clothes, she could feel the chill of it. This wasn't trash; it was a clue. Her scattered gaze sharpened, focus returning. Rain ran down her cheeks, dripping onto the edge of the film. A tiny scorch mark was barely visible at the end of the strip—a mark from intense heat, not natural aging.

At that moment, a black SUV pulled up to the curb, its wipers swinging in a steady rhythm. The window rolled down halfway, revealing Judy Whitman’s face, half-hidden by a mask. Judy was a forensic archivist and the only person who still bothered to contact Alice.

“Alice, you look like a ghost that just got scrubbed with a brush.” Judy’s voice came through the car’s speakers, slightly distorted by static. “I checked your login records. Your last successful access was three hours ago. After that, every request was intercepted by Nora Colman.”

Alice opened the car door and slid into the passenger seat. The interior smelled of cheap cologne mixed with wet rain. Her hands shook as she placed the soaked film into Judy’s palm.

“I found this in the mud. Look at the date,” Alice’s voice was hoarse, every word scraped out of her throat. “2004. If the official destruction logs are true, this film shouldn't be here. Definitely not now.”

Judy took the film, putting on a magnifying glass to examine the scorch mark on the edge. Her fingers were long and her nails were neatly trimmed, but they had gone pale from tension.

“This scorch is weird,” Judy said, gently tracing the burn mark with her finger. “This isn't the uniform charring you get from a fire. It looks like someone deliberately branded it with a lighter or a small candle. See here, the emulsion is slightly curled—that’s from rapid cooling after heating. Basically, this film was taken out and processed individually at some point after 2004.”

“Why?” Alice asked, rain dripping from her hair onto the car seat.

“Because someone wanted it to look like natural damage,” Judy looked up, her eyes sharp. “But if it was deliberately branded, that means it originally had content on it, and that person didn't want us to see it clearly. Or, they wanted us to believe it was ruined so we’d lower our guard and look somewhere else.”

Alice felt a wave of dizziness. If the film had been intentionally destroyed, who was pulling the strings behind the scenes? Nora Colman, the family’s legal counsel who was loyal on the surface but ambitious underneath, had always claimed she was protecting the family’s reputation. But if she was covering up the truth, why leave behind a piece of evidence that looked damaged but was actually crucial?

“What about Helen?” Alice asked, her voice low.

Judy was silent for a moment, the rain drumming a rapid, pattering rhythm on the car roof.

“Helen Brooks was spotted at City Hall this afternoon, leaving with Nora,” Judy said. “They spent forty minutes in a conference room. Helen loves you, Alice. I don’t doubt that. But she’s the head of The Brooks Family. She knows better than anyone that if the truth comes out, not only The Colman Family but the status of the entire werewolf group will be shaken. She chose to cover it up because that’s ‘stability’ in her book.”

“Stability is just a lie,” Alice said coldly, her fingers gripping the edge of the steering wheel tightly, even though the car wasn’t moving.

Judy sighed and carefully placed the film into an evidence bag.

“Listen, Alice. I suggest you leave Los Angeles for tonight. Nora’s people have been monitoring your residence. That phone of yours can only make one more call. Use it wisely.” Judy pulled a backup phone out of her pocket and tossed it to Alice. “This is a personal line, off the family network. When you call me, just say the code word ‘Gray Wolf.’ Don’t say anything else.”

Alice held the phone, feeling its warmth. The rain outside intensified, lightning illuminating the Los Angeles night sky, purple bolts tearing through the clouds.

“I’m going to the archive room,” Alice said. “Even if the key doesn’t work, I can find a backup. My grandfather was an old-school guy. He always kept a card up his sleeve in the old places.”

Judy frowned. “The archive room is on the third sub-level of City Hall. The security system was just upgraded. Without a biometric code, you can’t even get into the lobby. And Nora is controlling all access permissions right now.”

“Then I’ll find another way,” a cold calm flashed in Alice’s eyes. “I know the building’s layout. There’s a decommissioned ventilation shaft that leads to the old archive section used before 2004. That area hasn’t been digitized, and it wasn’t burned.”

Judy looked at her, her expression complex—concern mixed with a hint of respect.

“You are crazy,” Judy said. “But sometimes, crazy people see paths that normal people can’t. Remember, leave no trace. Nora’s people are meticulous. They’ll be looking for any anomaly in the surveillance footage.”

The car engine restarted, and it merged into the rainy night. Alice stared at the streaks of rain on the windshield, the scorch mark on the film’s edge floating in her mind. It wasn’t an accident; it was a warning, or a marker that hadn’t been fully erased. She remembered what her grandfather used to say: archives are alive. They will speak when the time is right.

The vehicle jolted through the slick streets, rain blurring the road signs ahead. Alice pulled out the photo of the film that she had taken before handing it to Judy. She zoomed in, her finger swiping across the screen, trying to make out the details under the scorch mark.

In the digital noise of the image, she spotted a set of tiny indentations. It wasn’t text; it was numbers. A six-digit code, blurred by the heat but still discernible at high contrast: 1998-04-12.

Alice’s breath hitched. April 12, 1998. That was three days before her grandfather disappeared. On that day, a minor fire had broken out in the archive room, officially recorded as an “electrical fault,” which had damaged some early film. But according to her expertise, electrical faults usually start from the end of the circuit line. The scorch marks on this film were concentrated on the edges and radiated outward—characteristic of a localized high-heat burn for a short duration, not a wire fire.

This meant that during the 1998 fire, someone had deliberately treated this batch of film a second time, trying to destroy specific evidence. And the 2004 “Blood Moon Case” was just a smokescreen to cover up that old crime.

“Judy,” Alice whispered into the backup phone. “Check the power records for the archive room on April 12, 1998. Specifically, the fuse replacement logs for Zone B. I need to know who signed off on it.”

There was the sound of typing on the other end, followed by Judy’s quick, sharp breathing.

“Fuse replacement log... it’s marked as ‘routine maintenance’ in the system, and the operator’s signature has been wiped. But...” Judy paused. “I found an anomaly in the backup logs. That same morning, someone manually cut the independent power supply to Zone B for exactly three minutes. That doesn’t match any standard outage procedure. And the operational permission level belongs to a Senior Archivist.”

Alice’s heart hammered. Senior Archivist. In 1998, only three people held that title. One had long since retired, and another had died in 2010. The remaining one...

“Raymond Colman,” Alice murmured, the word echoing in the car.

Her father, the current matriarch of the family—the man who had desperately tried to keep her out of the core archive zones, a man weighed down by guilt over the past. So he wasn’t just being conservative. What was he protecting? Or what was he destroying?

The wipers frantically slashed through the curtain of water on the windshield. Alice felt a chill seep to her bones, colder than the storm outside. She remembered how, when she was a child, Raymond would always sit by the fireplace in his study, holding an old-fashioned magnifying glass, staring blankly at yellowed papers. Back then, she thought he was just admiring history. Now she understood: he was searching for the erased truth.

The car stopped at a red light. Judy’s voice came through the phone again, trembling with restraint.

“Alice, I just pulled some metadata from a surveillance video. Right now, at the spot where you picked up the film, there was a shadow figure five minutes ago. He was wearing a dark raincoat and holding a small blowtorch. He stood there for ten seconds, then disappeared into an alley.”

Alice snapped her gaze to the window. The downpour was violent, the street empty, only ripples in the water on the pavement. Who was that shadow? Was it someone Nora sent to retrieve the film, or Raymond making another move to cover it up?

“I’m fine,” Alice said into the phone, her voice terrifyingly calm. “That film is in my hands. I already got the key details.”

“Are you out of your mind? If they find out, you’ll be silenced. Helen won’t save you. She’ll just lock you up until Nora is satisfied.” Anxiety was palpable in Judy’s voice.

“Helen loves me,” Alice said, her fingers tracing the digital code on the phone screen. “But she loves the family’s honor more. And family honor is built on lies. I’m going to tear that lie apart.”

The car moved forward again, diving into the complex web of Los Angeles streets. Alice set her phone on the dashboard; the number on the screen flickered in the dim light of the rainy night. She began calculating distances and planning routes, every movement precise and mechanical. Her logic was a cold surgical knife, cutting through the fog of emotion.

Suddenly, the phone screen blinked, then lit up again. A new message popped up from an “Unknown Number.”

It was just one line: “You picked up something you shouldn't have. Now, put the film back, or you’ll never leave Los Angeles.”

Alice looked at the text. No smile touched her lips, but her eyes went darker, deeper. She dialed Judy’s number.

“Judy, I just received a threat. Sender unknown, but the signal is traced to somewhere near the city center.”

The secrets of 1998 were finally waking up. And this storm was just the prologue.