The Fall of Kruhl | Ch 3 Pt 3

Official Report
Tondzaosha Regional Airport
Tondzaosha, Idaho

Amelia van den Broeke shuddered and peered about her eyes roving the parking lot outside of the airport her face a mask of casual disinterest. On the inside, however, a tide of emotions washed over her. Her stomach was roiling, and in her mind she’d reverted to that young child who’d fought so hard to come to terms with her gender identity. She was angry and more than a little frightened and wanted nothing more than to turn right back around and take the next flight out of town. She had a job to do, however, and she would not back away.

It was this very airport she’d flown out of when she’d first left Tondzaosha and it had changed little in the intervening years. She felt much the same as she had then, but her current apprehension was of a different sort. Before she had worried over the prospect of going to live with an aunt she barely knew, but now it was over the possibility of running into people who had known her before her transition, most prominent among them her parents, that dominated her thinking.

Shanderly led them to a squad car parked along the outermost edge of the parking lot away from any of the other vehicles. “She’s a beaut, ain’t she?” He asked grinning from ear to ear and patted the roof. “The city finally started replacing some of the older cars. Since mine was the oldest, they swapped mine out first.”

Amelia eyed the vehicle without a word, and aside from the city logo on the side she’d seen dozens just like it and wasn’t impressed. Rathdrum, on the other hand, moved past his superior and leaned in to get a better look. “I drove an old Sovereign Rosalia when I was with the LAPD, the thing was a clunker, but somehow it kept chugging along. I tell you if I’d been cruising around in one of these, I’d have given some serious thought to staying on the force.”

Amelia sighed and rolled her eyes. Boys and their toys. Even before her transition she’d never understood the male fascination with cars, but since she worked in such a male-dominated profession, she’d become accustomed to it. Rathdrum, having either sensed her discomfort, or he’d heard her sigh, glanced back at Amy and cleared his throat. “I’d love to talk cars but, um… that’s not why we’re here. We’ve had a long flight and Van den Broeke and I have a long day ahead of us tomorrow—”

“Say no more.” Shanderly waved his hands back and forth in front of his chest. “Jet lag’s a real killer. Hop in and we can get underway,” he said swinging the rear driver’s side door open and moving around back to pop the trunk. He retrieved their luggage and tossed it inside.

Rathdrum moved forward, into the open door and closed it behind him. Amelia sighed and slipped around the car. As the subordinate agent, Carter had taken the back seat, as expected of him, but she wished it was she who’d taken up residency in the back. Other agents might have opened the passenger side door for her, but Rathdrum knew better. Shanderly attempted to step in to do just that, but Amelia waved him off.

When they were all seated inside the squad car, Shanderly retrieved a stack of file folders stuffed between the seats and passed them over to Van den Broeke. “This is everything on the case, and those other files you requested.”

Amelia accepted them, muttered a quick thanks and set them in her lap. She would take time to look over them after when she was a little more clear headed.

“I know a few Van den Broekes,” Shanderly said, glancing at her before turning the ignition. “You have any relatives in these parts?”

And there it was… Amy bowed her head and clenched her eyes shut. She considered lying, but discarded the idea. Though she’d long distanced herself from her past, she would not hide from it. “A few,” she answered, turning to regard him with a set of brilliant green eyes. “But I haven’t spoken to them in years.”

The deputy made eye contact with her, pressed his lips together then returned his attention to the road. Amy didn’t know if he’d seen something in her face or if he’d picked up on some cue from her tone of voice, but he didn’t bring it up again.

“So…” Rathdrum said speaking up from the back seat. “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“I’d like to see that sword, then speak with the girl and the witness mentioned in the report and see where that leads us,” Amelia craned her neck back and nodded at her subordinate grateful for the change in subject. The question and her answer was more for Shanderly’s benefit, they’d already discussed their plans at length.

She paused wondering if she should ask the deputy about the inked-out name, but pressed her lips. She had the strangest feeling that she didn’t want to know who the woman was who’d found the girl, but why would that be?

“Well the chief has put me at your disposal,” Shanderly added oblivious to Amelia’s ruminations. “I’m here to assist you in whatever way I can.”

Amy peered at him, swallowed, and let the matter drop. Tomorrow she’d inquire about it. There would be time enough to get to the bottom of it then. It wasn’t like her to procrastinate and it disturbed her more than she’d let on.

“Have there been any unusual occurrences in town since the girl first appeared?” Rathdrum peered forward leaning close to the barrier separating the front seat from the back. Snapped out of her reverie, Amy craned her neck back and glanced at him.

“Nothing, that we’ve been able to connect to the girl or the sword.” The young deputy frowned and sighed as the light ahead turned red.

That raised Amy’s eyebrows and she peered back at the young man. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned while working for AEGIS, is that when you investigate strange happenings, events that might seem unrelated have a way of connecting. If there is anything unusual, it may be worth investigating.”

The car came to a stop and Shanderly eyed her, before nodding and turning his attention back to the road. “The night the girl turned up, we received a tip about a fire in Ammon Park. There were reports of some weird flashes of light and a cloaked figure lurking about. We investigated it, but didn’t turn up anything. All that being said, I gotta admit it looked a little strange.”

“What do you mean?” Rathdrum asked from the back seat.

“Well…” He trailed off glancing at each of them before continuing. “The scorch marks on the ground formed an almost perfect circle, about seven-feet around. The weird thing is, there was no damage to any of the trees or playground equipment in the circle, just the grass.”

“Did you run any grass or soil samples through the lab? Maybe there was a—” Van den Broeke started, but the deputy waved her off.

“You guys probably do things differently in the big city, but here in a small town like Tondzaosha we don’t make a big fuss over what so far has been an isolated incident. The damage to the park was minimal and the cost of investigating is just a /tad/ more than the price of a little sod. It was probably the work of some dumb teenagers in any case.”

Amelia nodded, and bit the inside of her cheek. What Shanderly said made a fair bit of sense, but if there was any connection with either the girl or the sword to what had happened in the park, they would have missed an important clue. Regardless of the deputies thoughts on the matter she would take a visit to Ammon Park soon.

They spent the rest of the car ride trading inane chatter, and the deputy soon dropped them off at their hotel. They traded phone numbers, and Shanderly sped away his squad car disappearing down the roadway in seconds.

Amelia watch him depart, her green eyes lingering long after he’d departed. She experienced a a vague sense of uneasiness. She kept telling herself it was because she’d returned to the hell of her early childhood, but that wasn’t it at all. Her instinct told her that something was very wrong. Only time would tell what that might be.
 

Amelia sighed, closing the hotel room door behind her and slipped her blazer off, tossing it on the dresser beside the case files. Slipping her shoes off, she dropped onto the bed, spread eagle and closed her eyes emitting a contented breath of air. She began to slip into the dark realm of slumber, but she forced her eyes open. Slowly, lazily they complied and she found herself looking up at the ceiling. She would have liked to get some sleep, but it was not a luxury she could afford to indulge in just yet. The agent had a promise to keep.

She reached out with her mind, a familiar presence touching her consciousness. “Liv,” she whispered her pet name for Sapphira out loud. For a brief time Sapphira Olivia Scott and Amy had shared an empathic bond. Though it had faded away after their short-lived joining of body and mind, a connection lingered. All it took was for one of them to reach out and their minds would again connect. When that happened the bond was stronger than it ever had been before. They could share more than emotions, but thoughts and impressions. They could even project images into each other’s minds.

“Amy,” the other’s voice rang through her mind and the agent lurched to her feet so she could stand face to face with the phantom of her life partner.

Sapphira was tall and dark, a beautiful woman by any standard, but the one feature which Amelia found most mesmerizing were her sapphire-blue eyes which stood out in stark contrast to her chocolate brown skin. She hadn’t always looked that way, when they’d first met she had been an old man, living in the past and angry at the world. The power which she inherited from a being known as Ashtar transformed her into the woman whose image stood before her and helped her overcome her hatreds and create a new life for herself.

Sapphira was infatuated with Amelia from the start, but the agent, knowing who she was and the prejudices she held, was repulsed. It had been quite the shock to Sapphira when she learned Amy was a transwoman, and it had seemed, for a time, that the agent would no longer have to fend off the other’s unwanted advances.

Eventually they joined forces to overcome Chemosh, an ancient and powerful alien entity, merging into a single form and gaining an insight into one another’s minds they could have never achieved before. When they split back to their individual forms, Amy was transformed and the pair, as a result of the connection, fell in love.

Upon seeing Sapphira, Amy sprang forward embracing the other and locked lips with her. Though she was hundreds of miles away and the form that stood before her was an illusion, the kiss and her illusory body seemed as real as if she were flesh and blood. She swore she could even taste the raspberry lip gloss her lover wore.

“How’s it going?” Sapphira asked placing a hand on her shoulder.

“Fine,” she lied, resting her head on Sapphira’s shoulder, surprised that it supported her weight, but glad that it did. She closed her eyes letting out a contented sigh.

“You’re lying,” her partner said and Amy’s eyes snapped back open.

A gentle smile touched the corner of Sapphira’s lips, as she slid her arms out to cup the other’s face in her hands. Amy pulled away, sprawling back first onto the bed.

“I hate being back here, Liv,” she said, propping herself up with her shoulder peering back up at her. “I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying to put my life here behind me, and now I feel like I’m fifteen again, still trying to come to grips with my gender identity.”

Sapphira slipped beside Amelia, wrapped her arm around the other woman and sighed. “They should have never asked you to go back.”

Amy almost laughed, but when she turned to look in her lover’s eyes and saw the concern mirrored in them she stopped herself.

“Just hold me.” She slipped her head into Sapphira’s lap and closed her eyes, just letting herself drift away…