The Cult of Korunathep: A Shattered Past Story

3 - Victim

 As more police units traveled to the small house that Korena and Nathan had been investigating, the two stepped outside and back into the Copperhead. Korena looked up at the ceiling for a moment and let out a huff. "Well, at least we have two things that we can look into." Nathan said looking back toward the windshield resting his elbow on the armrest. "One, he's an Organic Supremacist. Two, the killer used a Fusion Rifle to take him out." The human remarked. Korena stopped looking at the ceiling and looked out the window as he spoke, trying to think her way through this one. How she saw it was that this old man was murdered after he got into his chair to investigate the sound of a broken window. What happened after this was the killer emerged from the kitchen and found his target in his room. Upon smashing the wheel of his chair his target was unable to move, then he unleashed a barrage of Fusion rifle rounds. If it were a higher impact fusion rifle like they had been assuming, then the blast cone should have been rather small. If that was the case, then why was there so much more damage than the amount that would have been necessary to atomize him?

"Phelps?" She asked looking over at him again after she put her police cap on the dashboard. Nathan jumped as if he wasn't expecting his name to be called.

"Oh, uh..yeah?"

"You looked through the old man's journal right?"

"I read enough, his name was Russell Iverson," Nathan replied pulling the book out and looking through it with his gloves still on. "He was coming up on his four-hundred-fiftieth birthday, adamant anti-Exo, has a significant hatred for senior living," Nathan continued for a few minutes before Korena spoke up again.

"Does it say anything about a girl, a daughter or close friend?"

"Oh...yeah...a lot actually," Nathan replied with his eyes darting across the pages as he quickly flipped through them. Korena waited for him to keep looking, but she noticed that he was being quite meticulous through the whole thing in spite of him reading quite fast. A few minutes later he flipped to another page. "And I think we may have our suspect too." He said as Korena pulled out her own digital notepad. "That girl who you saw in the picture is named Rebecca Iverson, and from what I can tell her relationship with her dad was...less than ideal," Nathan said bobbing his head from the right to the left.

"Define less than ideal," Korena said starting to make notes of Rebecca's appearance from the photo of her she had seen.

"Well, her opinion on the Exo's was a lot more loving than her Dad's," Nathan replied handing the notebook to her as she worked off her pad that projected off her gauntlet. Korena took the small notebook and felt it around her hands. It clearly had been alive for way longer than she had, the leather was rough and crinkled in several places. The paper inside of it had been crammed with writing, as if all of he was trying to conserve it. The pieces themselves were all rough and stiff unlike other pieces of paper she'd felt, it was like cardstock. Each word was written in a flurry, almost quickly written script. A few seconds later he passed the book over to Korena who took it from him eagerly. She started to scan through the pages and one of the passages stuck out to her.

"...I can't believe that she decided that a MACHINE was a suitable choice for a son in law! Who in God's name would make such an idiotic decision, what about an Awoken? An Elik or better yet a Human?! But no! She had decided to run off with that bloody machine! Ugh, I love her tremendously...but I can't let her marry an Exo...it's just..wrong.."

"Well...we have ourselves a possible suspect..the daughter may have something to do with it," Nathan said as he pulled something out of his pocket, it was a small black tube with a blue light on the end of it. The human put the device up to his mouth and inhaled it putting it in his mouth before blowing a puff of smoke out.