While the military coordinated closely with Mrs. Steelblight, an arrangement that, in Hudson’s opinion, felt less like a partnership and more like an uneasy truce, Detective Hudson had occupied himself with something far more grounded and familiar. Paperwork, digging through records, and finding patterns. Things that could be verified and filed and understood.
He had been digging through every available trace of the woman’s supposed former identity: Genevieve Forscythe.
If Mrs. Steelblight was to be believed, that had once been her name.
Ordinarily, Hudson would have approached such a claim with heavy skepticism, but Officer Sally Olsen’s report complicated matters. Sally was not prone to flights of imagination. She was intelligent, methodical, and not easily impressed. Yet she had described, in precise detail, how the armored giant had navigated the missing woman’s home with effortless familiarity. She had known which room was the missing woman’s, she knew exactly where the documents were held, and she was able to fetch and unlock the phone with no mistakes. It wasn’t exactly hard proof, but it was convincing enough.
Combined with the rest of it, Hudson found himself reluctantly convinced that the woman in plate armour and the quiet programmer were, impossibly, the same person.
The records showed that Genevieve Forscythe had legally changed her name from James Palmer in 2020. Prior to that, she had lived in Christchurch for most of her life before relocating to Wellington. There was no criminal history, no outstanding complaints, there was nothing even remotely violent in her record..
The people who knew her described her in similarly sparse terms. Solitary and polite, if somewhat distant, she worked freelance as a programmer, taking contracts from companies overseas. Most of her income came from encrypted transfers tied to legitimate firms. She appeared to spend the bulk of her free time reading, judging by her purchase history and the number of delivery boxes that had arrived at her address over the years. There was nothing in her history to suggest martial training.
She did not own firearms. she did not hold a firearms license, she rarely left the house except for the occasional walk. In fact, she had groceries delivered weekly with near-clockwork consistency.
Genevieve Forscythe, by all available evidence, had been a quiet and unassuming woman. Which made the current situation all the more maddening.
Sally had returned the following morning visibly shaken. She had sat in her cubicle for hours without speaking, staring at nothing in particular as if her mind were attempting to reconcile incompatible realities. When she finally did speak, it had not been to file a complaint or to demand action… It had been to urge, almost a plead, that everyone remain firmly on Mrs. Steelblight’s good side.
Hudson had initially assumed that the towering woman had threatened her. The idea would have been comforting in its simplicity. A threat could be both understood and addressed, in that there was room for movement.
But Sally had immediately and vehemently dismissed that notion and insisted her life had been saved. She had spoken with something bordering on reverence.
She had also reported, in a tone that suggested she fully understood how absurd it sounded, that Mrs. Steelblight could run faster than a car at maximum speed.
Under normal circumstances, Hudson would have dismissed that as shock-induced exaggeration.
However, normal circumstances had ceased to apply the moment a nearly three-metre-tall armored figure fell from the sky, was struck by a bus, and walked away without so much as a visible bruise.
In that context, extraordinary speed felt almost mundane.
Hudson did not know what he was meant to do with any of it. He felt as though he were collecting puzzle pieces without knowing what picture they formed. There was no clear objective, no arrest to make, and no crime to charge.
What could they realistically do?
By all appearances, Mrs. Steelblight meant no harm to the people of this world. If anything, current reports suggested the opposite. There were already whispers of missing persons and strange creatures in the surrounding woods. He knew some sort of operation was underway, especially with the public evacuation around Mount Kaukau, but details were scarce, and much of it had been sealed under classifications he did not have clearance to access.
If the armored woman was telling the truth, then an existential threat loomed over the nation.
Possibly over the entire world.
They had tentatively taken her at her word, because the alternative felt irresponsible.She was a magical creature who was capable of magical feats while warning of a magical threat. The first two parts made the last feel more real.
But what if she was truly right?
What then? Pray to God? Hope this woman ends the threat before it really begins?
Hudson pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned back in his chair, staring up at the stained ceiling tiles as if answers might be hidden there.
There was another file sitting on his desk, one he had not yet had time to examine. He had been too preoccupied with the Umbra case to deal with routine absurdities.
Perhaps he needed a brief mental reprieve.
With a sigh, he reached for the folder and flipped it open, already bracing himself for bureaucratic nonsense. As his eyes scanned the first page, his expression shifted from mild irritation to a slow, deepening frown.
An angel had fallen from the sky and been hit by a bus.
Under any other circumstances, he would have closed the file and passed it off as a hoax, a prank, or an unfortunate psychiatric episode. But recent events made that impossible.
Hudson lowered the page slightly, staring at it in silence. Hadn’t Mrs. Steelblight mentioned she was married to an angel?
Detective Hudson was beginning to feel like he might need to cash in some paid leave.