Chasing Fate (Sentinel & Guide)

Chapter 60

[[Here's a hint that's not quite a hint. I rarely edit chapters but I have always been very careful about how i capitalize certain words.]]

The local NOGS ambulance was dispatched immediately for the police station. It was only moments before Fate was outfitted in a temporary dampening helmet and carted into the back of the trailer, Jack climbing in with her.  

Anton stood slack jawed in the doorway. Behind him, a petty criminal vomited from the extreme emotional surge Fate had just thrust upon the station. He had been so confused until the helmet was placed back on Fate's head. 

She WAS Little Bird, the guide Jane Doe he'd met once five years ago. She'd been emaciated, and bald where the surgeons had shaved her head, with sunken eyes and scars covering her body. The dampening helmet had been on her 24/7 until she was physically strong enough for chemical dampeners. When he'd interviewed her for the report, she wasn't even able to sit up in bed. 

She was one of his last cases as the Lithica guide liason. He was a guide, and therefore able to get a truthful police report from a traumatized victim. It was one of the worst cases he'd ever handled, and it had only strengthened his resolve to become a detective. 

Most of the report had been dismissed as the ramblings of an abused guide. She'd sworn that she burned down a house with no address, and killed her sentinel for his crimes against her.  

 She'd come in after dragging herself into a rural gas station, singed and smelling of smoke, with a collarbone and shattered ankle. After fainting from the pain there had been no way to identify her. She had no identifying documents with her in the little backpack she'd carried, and no one recognized her face. Lithica was a small town off of a scenic and underutilized highway.Everyone knew everyone, and random strangers or tourists weren't common. For her to just show up in the night, bloodied and burnt like a ghost, didn't make sense. It was talk for weeks but no one could figure out who she was. 

 All attempts at identification, from blood samples to dental records turned up blank.  There had been some hope that she'd be able to identify herself when she came off of dampeners, but she had a severe reaction to even being asked her own name. The nurses referred to her as Miss instead of how she referred to herself in the third person as 'Little Bird'. 

It had been the hardest interview Anton had ever conducted. 

Her story was consistent, when he could get her to tell it. On good days she was disoriented and forgetful, rehashing the same events over and over as if she was forgetting something. On bad days she was incoherent, screaming about names and locations at random. Those days she was placed back into isolation, her formidable power tilting the entire hospital's emotions on edge.  

After three separate attempts to get a more cohesive timeline, Anton filed the report. At the time  he had been sure if her tale was true or a fabrication she made to protect her fragile mind. The doctors made a conjecture that her sentinel had died in the house fire and she blamed herself. Either way, a guide with a dead sentinel wasn't long for this world. 

No charges had been brought against her. She was clearly abused until she lost her rightful mind, and whatever short time she had left may as well be spent in hospice instead of prison. 

 A body was found at the site she'd described, but there were no signs of struggle that corroborated with her description of the murder. Instead of a mutilated corpse, the body was mostly intact and  had all the signs of a woodsman in his cabin who misrouted the propane for the furnace, causing a leak and blowing himself to bits. No struggle, no wounds. It matched the story of the sound of explosion reported by neighbors on a distant acreage. Photos of the body were a moot point. There were no knife gouges or broken bones, and the face was unrecognizable. The most was done to identify the body, but they also came up blank. Bad teeth, no records.