The lead detective arrived twenty minutes after the arrests, a grizzled veteran with thirty years on the force and eyes that had seen everything humanity had to offer. He reviewed the surveillance footage one more time, standing in the security office, watching the monitors with growing disbelief. Watching that infant dissolve into jade radiance. Watching the stone appear and then vanish. Watching reality itself seem to bend and break.
"What the hell am I looking at?" he muttered, rubbing his eyes as if that might change what the footage showed.
No one had an answer. The security chief shook his head mutely. The technician could only shrug helplessly. Because the truth, that the baby had been an ancient guardian spirit who'd transformed and traveled across the city to find her queen, was too impossible to believe. Too far outside the boundaries of what reality was supposed to allow.
