Elizabeth held open Sigyn's eyelid to shine a light at her pupils, which were bigger than normal and did not shrink under the light like normal. "Is she on any medications?"
Jon shook his head. "Is there anything that could even cause this?"
"Some people are born with poor blood flow, or they have conditions that lower their body temperature," she answered as she put her flashlight back into her medical bag.
Jon argued that this was far more than poor blood flow, so Elizabeth took out her electric thermometer and pointed it at Sigyn's forehead. When the machine beeped, she brought it closer to read the screen, and then frowned. She took another temperature, but got the same results.
"Dad, come here."
Jon knelt beside her so she could aim the thermometer at his head. This time, the screen read the numbers for a normal body temperature. She tried Sigyn again, but the numbers went back to 5 degree's Celsius.
"What's wrong?" Jon asked.
Elizabeth wasn't sure how to answer, so she stuck with what she knew. "I don't think she's suffering from hypothermia. Is there a bathtub nearby you can fill with cold water?"
"No, but the evidence locker is empty at the moment," officer Dahl offered. "It's basically a large refrigerator."
Elizabeth grabbed Sigyn's shoulders and asked her father to grab the legs to carry her too the locker. Dahl held the doors opened for them with a confused look on her face.
"Shouldn't she be warmed up instead?" she asked.
As she gently laid Sigyn on the floor of the locker, she answered: "The symptoms you described - sweating, fainting, fatigue - those are all signs of excessive heat. A late-stage hypothermic victim would have rigid muscles and a slow heartbeat."
In the soothing cold of the locker room, Sigyn began to stir. Elizabeth took out her thermometer again. This time, it was a solid 0 degrees Celsius, but her eyes were dilating under direct light and her rapid pulse was returning to normal.
"Can I talk to you outside?" she asked her dad. Once they were alone in the hallway, she explained the strange readings from her thermometer. "I thought it was malfunctioning, but then it worked on you just fine!"
Jon's eyebrows knit together. "How could a living person have a zero-degree body temperature?"
"They can't," Elizabeth pressed. "It's not possible. Something's really wrong here."
"Are you suggesting it's something supernatural?"
"All I know is it's not physically possible for someone to be hypothermic and hyperthermic at the some time. Even if it was - a person with a body temperature at 0 should be a block of ice!"
Dahl opened the door and peaked her head into the hallway to alert the others that Sigyn was now fully conscious. Elizabeth stormed in with a refreshed vigor, ready to put down the questions gnawing inside her brain.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
Sigyn took one look at her and wrinkled her nose. "Until you walked in - fine."
Elizabeth bit back her retort, but she couldn't hide the venom in her voice when she asked: "What are you on?"
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Sigyn frowned at her. She looked down at her body, then up at Elizabeth again. "...The floor?"
"Medication." She drew out the words as if speaking to a child. "Drugs. Meth. Anything! Because the readings I'm getting from you are not normal."
Sigyn cracked a playful smile. "Well maybe you just can't read as well as you thought."
Sensing the rage billowing in Elizabeth, Jon put a hand on his daughter's shoulder and stood infront of her to keep her from making any regretful decisions. "Maybe you should head out. We got this handled from here."
She had to pry her eyes away with the strength of a handler prying apart the jaws of an angry dog. Once she left, Jon turned his attention back to the girl sitting cross-legged on the freezing cement floor. While he and Dahl kept their bare hands tucked under their arms, Sigyn pressed her back and arms against the cold surface as if it were a relaxing hot tub.
She cleared her throat. "So, you had questions for me?"
Before anyone could speak, the bell on the front desk dinged. Dahl offered to go and see who it was while Jon stayed with Sigyn, who had perked up even more.
"You know," she said to the Chief, "my throat is parched. Could you go and get me some water, be you kind?"
"I'm afraid I can't leave you unsupervised in this room."
"Ah yes." She looked around at the empty shelves. "Can't have me tampering in all your hard work."
She was right - there was nothing in the room she could tamper with, but Jon was uneasy. He didn't want to take his eyes off her for a moment. "You can wait."
Sigyn huffed. "Chief, where am I gonna go? What could I possibly do? There is no way the toughest criminal could get out of this room - let alone this building - unnoticed. One little cup of water. There's a fountain right outside."
Without a good enough reason not to, Jon agreed, and left the room to fill a paper cup of water from the fountain. The entire minute he was in the hall, he was insight of the door, which certainly did not move. He was about to return to the locker when Dahl called him, escorting a young man in beige uniform with a colorful patch on his sleave.
"Did you call a game warden about an eagle?" Dahl asked.
Jon blinked. "An eagle?"
As if on que, a screech came from the evidence locker. The officers ran back inside.
Sigyn was gone.
But the weirdest part, by far, was the appearance of a large golden eagle, perched on the highest shelf. It's head fidgeted in different directions as it's bright yellow eyes took them all in.
Jon walked around the room, but there was no place Sigyn could have hide. "Did you see anything outside?"
Dahl, as shocked as Jon, numbly shook her head. "Nothing. What..."
So dumbfounded by Sigyn's miraculous disappearance, neither of the officers noticed how unphased the young game warden was. "It looks like you folks are busy, so I'll take this bird off your hands." He walked closer to the shelf and held out his arm. Like a well-trained pet, the eagle accepted him as her perch. The warden winced under the pinch of the eagle's talons, but otherwise walked the bird outside to his car without issue.
He worked quickly to get her into the backseat, prepped with coolers of ice and a blanket chilled in ice water from outside the lodge. Once the bird was situated, he jumped into the drivers seat and sped back up the mountain.
Out of view of other people, Kark turned back to his usual appearance, and Sigyn did the same. She scooped handfuls of ice into her lap to keep herself satiated until they returned to the colder elevations.
"Hang in there, my lady. We're almost there," Kark said.
Sigyn moaned in the backseat, the movements of the car violently swishing the contents of her stomach. Her recent heat episode wasn't helping either. "Can you stop turning?"
"No, Sigyn, I have to stay on the road. The road curves. Otherwise, we'd drive off the mountain."
"How do humans drive everywhere?" Sigyn looked out the side window, but that made her nausea worse, so she looked directly ahead, over Kark's shoulder. "There's a car coming."
"Yes, I know, I see it. It'll stay on the other side of the line."
"... But what if it doesn't?"
"It will. I promise."
As the car got closer, Sigyn's grip on Kark's headrest tightened until she almost tore through the leather. She scooted to the far side of the seat as the other car zoomed past. That was a close one. "Do you think you could slow down a little?"
"I'm already going 5 under the limit."
"Ymir. It's like they're trying to crash."
A tailgating car honked behind them. Sigyn whipped around in her seat to glare through the window. "Fuck off! I'm trying not to die!" She turned around every once in a while to check if the car was still behind them. It was. "Can you open any of these windows? Maybe the fresh air will help."
Kark obliged, and Sigyn stuck her head out of the car. There was the screech of breaks.
"I feel much better now," she said, returning to her seat.
Kark looked wide-eyed between the rearview mirror and the road, searching for the car behind them. "What did you do?"
Sigyn shrugged. "It's not my fault they can't drive on ice."