The car ride was only twenty minutes but Nalda felt like she had gone through twenty years of brain power. Seriously, how often hasn't she asked the weird letters if it was trying to steal her soul and didn't receive an answer? It only said that the deal it was trying to make should be a win-win when Nalda began thinking in the direction of saying no.
But that gave her even more clues. It said that it should be a win-win so it probably wasn't that certain of the future.
In the end she did manage to come to a decent conclusion by the end of the car ride.
'...I'll switch positions…'
The letters didn't appear until she got out of the car. They went back to being smoke.
'It will take a certain amount of time for me to be able to fully support you, which is why you were asked to make the decision as soon as possible. The support that can be given to you is mostly information. Keep in mind to not overdo it however. Everything comes with a price.'
Nalda could only stare. "Is it just me or did it suddenly become a lot more talkative…?" She muttered under her breath.
Well it wasn't the sudden increase in word length that worried her though. It was that last line about consequences. That just sounded ominous.
Surely nothing too bad will happen to her, right? It's not like the murderer will suddenly show up to kill her, right?
She looked around nervously before following the two 'police officers' in front of her.
Another thing she contemplated was whether these people were actually officers or not and she came to the conclusion that there was a chance that they weren't. Nalda might be a little crazy for thinking this but she believed that they might be a special department or something.
She wasn't exactly sure what for thought. Maybe for supernatural beings like ghosts or something.
The reason why she believed that it might be ghosts is because she was quite literally held down by an invisible being. What else could it be if not a ghost?
At that the letters popped up again on their backs. This time the letters 'police' were rearranged to make different letters.
'These people are not normal police officers. They work for another organisation that cooperates with the police to handle special cases like this one.'
Nalda stared at the letters with a raised eyebrow. She was expecting more because clearly it wanted Nalda to survive for it to gain its benefit and for her to survive she'd probably need this information.
Sure enough the words disappeared and new ones replaced them. It probably just stopped because there wasn't enough space to give the full explanation in one go.
'These special cases are cases where gifts or curses are involved. You might find the word 'superpower' more familiar however.'
The letters disappeared again and new ones came.
'The two in front of you have gifts. The woman is more experienced while the young man is new. The murderer also has a gift.'
Nalda almost froze then and there. She looked at the two officers in front of her with a new perspective.
The idea of superpowers existing was rather exciting. If all this happened then surely there was a chance that she could get a superpower too!
She was already fantasising about flying through the sky or teleporting around the city when her bubble was burst by the cruel letters.
'You do not and will never have a gift or curse. Your body cannot handle that.'
Nalda's mood immediately soured. What great was there in knowing that superpowers existed but never being able to use them?
However the letters didn't seem to regard her feelings at all as they continued to feed her with information.
'Gifts or curses, as mentioned, are basically superpowers, however depending on how the owner is affected it could be a gift or a curse.'
That probably meant that superpowers that negatively affected the owner were cursed and anything else was a gift. Even the neutral superpowers.
That made sense. Nalda highly doubted that she'd like it if people continuously told her that a very curse-like ability was a gift. If she were in that situation she might actually end up punching something.
Not somebody because they'd probably end up beating her up or something. She was smart enough not to go around throwing punches at people first.
'It is sometimes difficult to tell whether something is a curse or a gift as at times the line is blurred. To simplify it people just call it a superpower or ability.'
And that was the end of the explanation because the letters rearranged themselves and the word 'police' was back on full display on the officer's back.
The officers stopped in front of a cell. They both shared glances for a few moments before turning towards Nalda.
Now, Nalda wasn't an idiot. It was pretty clear what they wanted her to do but she denied it. If it wasn't said out loud then there was still a chance that she was just making things up in her head.
The male officer took it upon himself to talk as gently as possible. "You'll have to stay in here for the night. We don't really have any other accommodations for situations like these." He looked sheepish despite his gentle tone.
Nalda looked at him with an expressionless face. Her brain was cursing them for their cruelty.
She had just been traumatised by seeing a dead person and learning that there was a murderer that was targeting her and yet instead of trying to give her some peace of mind, they were expecting her to stay in a cell meant for criminals. It didn't help that it didn't look comfortable at all.
The female officer seemed to actually feel bad for once and spoke up as well. "It's easier to protect and not drag anyone else in this if you stay here. There's nothing much we can do besides this." It sounded like she was trying to sound less stern. She was kind of successful.
Nalda wouldn't mind turning around and sleeping in the car instead. Actually, she was convinced that the door mat was more comfortable than a cold cell.
The only thing that stopped her were those weird letters again. This time they twisted the cell door into letters.
'Stay. That room is protected and you will gain more information.'
After a few seconds of accepting her fate, Nalda slowly nodded.
The two officers sighed in relief and then quickly ushered her inside, however before they could leave Nalda called out. "Can I contact my family or not? You promised!" And after a few seconds she also added something else. "And could you maybe also bring me some food?"
The two officers paused at that and the male officer came back. "Can you hand over your phone? We'll bring you some food in a minute."
Nalda really didn't want to but she was sure that if she refused that the letters would show up again and tell her to just do it.
She just handed it over quietly and watched as the two officers left.
She sat down on the bed that was as hard as a rock and waited hungrily for her food. She just hoped that they'd arrive before she starved to death.
Strange how she still had an appetite after everything that happened.
***
Paige took it upon herself to look through the information of the teen her and Himi had brought back to the police station. Thanks to her special status she was easily able to access all the information she needed such as family, home address, school and so on.
While they hadn't told the teen, Nalda, they had actually pinned her as a suspect. In the world of gifts and curses there was no such a thing as an innocent person. It was important to throughoutly look at every single detail.
The teen could've had a gift that made her look innocent or erased evidence.
They'll have to wait until someone with the gift of memory viewing to come by and check Nalda's memories to draw a conclusion on whether she was innocent or not. Of course, it was also possible that the memories were altered but there weren't a lot of people who could do that.
Paige's gift was nothing spectacular. It simply allowed her to look at things from many different perspectives both physically and mentally. Not spectacular but certainly useful for research.
Many would argue that the ability to see things from different perspectives mentally wasn't really an ability until she told them exactly how they were thinking and why they thought that way. That part of her ability was similar to mind reading but it only worked on understanding other people's perspectives.
So she wasn't really complaining, after all the more powerful you are the greater the dangers you have to face.
She shivered at the thought of what the powerful people had to deal with.
She quickly pushed those thoughts out of her mind and looked at the information in front of her.
The teen's full name is Nalda Solace. She was 17, turning 18 in a few months. She had one elder sister and both her parents were alive. She lived a normal life and was doing good at school.
Nothing seemed to hint at a potential murderer so far.
Paige looked through the information of Nalda's parents and found that they worked far away from the city. In fact it looked like they hadn't been in the city for a month or two.
There was a high chance that these parents were neglecting their children then. This could be a motivation to commit a serious crime.
Someone could've tricked her when she was at her lowest and was using her to commit crimes in their stead.
Paige continued to look at the information on this family but for some strange reason she didn't have access to the usual amount of information. She couldn't look at the more detailed information.
It made her uneasy.
As an investigator, Paige had very high clearance and could access quite a bit of information however she was blocked from looking too throughoutly at the information of this family.
That could only mean one thing, HQ was purposely hiding this information.
Paige frowned. Was this family already on some sort of watch list before?
She thought as she continued looking for any kind of information.
She then opened the files for Nalda's older sister, Mave Solace, and immediately understood why she couldn't find a lot of information.
'Ah! It's Akili, isn't it?'
Paige was happy that she found the source that troubled her but then immediately she felt conflicted and stressed.
'...There were a lot of rumours going around about her… temper… She wouldn't attack me for putting her little sister in a cell, right? I'm just doing my job…'
She had a strong feeling that Mave wouldn't care at all about her situation.
'I'll have to tell Himi to stay quiet and sweep this under the rug after that memory reviewing gift user comes by.'
She just hoped that nothing strange would happen in the meantime.
***
Nalda was happily eating away when the letters appeared before her again and asked her to do the impossible.
'Try solving this case.'
The gas in front of her said while she was eating her chicken sandwich. A tomato fell out of it while she stared at the letters in disbelief.
She was mindful of the police officers nearby as she spoke in a low quiet tone to express her frustrations. "You're asking the powerless nobody to solve a problem that has been plaguing people with superpowers for months!?"
Yes, that was information she learned from those letters. Apparently, the superpowered individuals have been chasing around the murderer for months now but couldn't find anything yet.
'Somebody will come to check your memories. Try catching the clues you can.'
Nalda was startled by that piece of information because what the hell? That's a very important piece of information.
First of all, what about all the embarrassing things she did? Would they be shown to this stranger? And what about these floating letters? Wouldn't they think she was either the murderer, took part in it or made a deal with the devil?
The letters quickly showed up again to clear up her confusion.
'No information about this can be viewed by other people. People who do not know about this will not be able to find anything out with normal methods.'
So they can find out with abnormal methods? In what world was seeing other people's memories normal? And the letters didn't say anything about her embarrassing memories!
She felt like a headache was going to come up. She felt like the letters had a bad habit of info dumping.
Well that's saying that a bunch of flying letters can have habits…
She sighed loudly, causing a few nearby officers to look at her with pity. They probably had no clue about what was going on through her head.
'Are the flying letters trying to play murder mystery?'