ISIS vs Fey

Chapter Two: Occult Boogaloo

The sky was an ominous hue of misty gray, the brisk wind howling. The almost two meters tall, 42-year-old Swedish-Syrian Rima Amari grounded her teeth together as she walked from her car, wincing as a particularly strong gust of wind caressed her large nose, the spirit of father frost whipping her straight brown hair into her eyes. The password to her Gmail was Proverbs_21:15†, you wouldn't have guessed it — no one could remember seeing her wear a cross or manifest any sign of faith publicly.

She turned a corner and walked down the abandoned alleyway. There was a cat playing with an injured crow smack in the middle of the alley. The stray was torturing its prey as cats usually do. Rima intentionally drove the cat away (almost gaining a few scratches as a reward for her kindness). The crow was dying, both wings were torn off. Pleading to be saved, Rima stepped on its head with her heavy winter boot. Crushing its skull, making sure that it didn't suffer more than necessary. It was far beyond saving, this was the best she could do for it. She continued her brisk walk, her frock-coat billowing behind her. The cat returned to feast on the corps, annoyed it had been denied its fun.

When she turned another corner, a towering, old-fashioned building faced her. Rima stood there for a couple of minutes, wondering whether the investigators would reach a logical conclusion about the mysterious murders anytime soon. She had to draw out a rational explanation and take the case in some direction. Taking a bracing sigh, detective Rima Amari approached the crime scene.

***

Rima scraped the remains of the bird's brain from her shoe before she continued, then clad her footwear in plastic protection as well as took on disposable gloves — so as to not contaminate the crime scene. "Do you have to arrive at work stinking of dead animals, or do you simply choose to do so to brighten our day, Rima?" Malcolm Anderson didn't need to say the word, his customary sneer spoke to them loud and clear on his behalf. He tried to look friendly as he said hello, and Rima tried to convey comradery as she responded —but for both actors, the performance was on that half-hearted level that polite people use to secretly communicate disdain under the mantle of plausible deniability.

Anderson was a ridiculously thin police officer who for reasons unknown demonstrated passionate disapproval of everything Amari did, and made no effort to keep his feelings for the senior detective particularly well hidden. In fact, he rarely missed out on a chance to showcase the fact that her presence was irksome to him — this was all done passive-aggressively, of course, never leaving anything concrete to be remarked upon or disciplined for. The password to his Hotmail was 13-Kill-Me-Now-37 — if you knew him then you wouldn't have guessed it, but you wouldn't have been surprised by hearing it either.

Rima's feelings towards him could be mistaken for tough love, which made their relationship come off as worse than it actually was — in actuality she hated him.

"One would think two decades as a police officer ought to teach you something about showing colleagues respect, Anderson," she said, ice lacing her words — or at least that is what she wanted to say. In actuality, all she did was glare.

Saad, a dark-skinned twenty-five-year-old junior niqab-wearing detective, came forward, holding out a cup of coffee. Rima thanked her and wished everyone there a good morning. The password to Saad's Yahoomail was 1Love2Is3A4Verb — if you knew her for more than a month you would probably have guessed something along those lines.

"We ran a brief survey on the victim," said Saad. "His name was Michael, twenty years old, hailed from Syria, and recently returned to Sweden after a long absence. Mostly kept to himself. The data we've acquired shows that he was not enrolled in any form of higher education, and didn't have a proper job either. He was suspected of having connections to a group of petty criminals." Saad summarized for Rima, as she bent over the dead body, studying the gash on the back of his head. Saad uttered something about files and tried not to look at the corpse, holding a hand to her heart. Rima didn't blame her.