"What are you talking about?" Prescott demanded, looking irritated at his partner's sudden loss of nerve. "It's a fake. You think a guy standing in an overflow parking lot at a neighborhood church is a four-star general? Don't be an idiot."

"Prescott, look at the hologram!" Ross hissed, his hands shaking as he grabbed the edge of the wallet from Prescott’s hand. "That's an active DOD smart-card seal! It's not fake! Oh God... Prescott, it's not fake!"

At that exact moment, Lieutenant Colonel Maya Reeves arrived. She did not stop two feet away; she stepped directly between Officer Prescott and General Cole, her posture rigid, her eyes burning with cold, dangerous authority.

"Take those handcuffs off him immediately," Maya commanded, her voice striking like a crack of thunder across the quiet parking lot.

Prescott sneered, stepping back half an inch and reaching instinctively for his belt. "Ma'am, stay back! This is an active police investigation, and you are interfering with an officer!"

Maya did not flinch. She ignored Prescott entirely, turned to General Cole, and snapped her heels together, coming to a flawless, crisp military attention.

"General Cole, sir," Maya said, her voice resonant and unyielding. "Are you injured?"

"I am fine, Colonel Reeves," Adrian replied quietly, his jaw firm despite the dark bruise already forming along his left cheekbone. "Officer Prescott was simply explaining his procedures to me."

Prescott stood frozen, his hand hovering over his holster, his eyes darting between Maya’s furious expression and the calm, unblinking eyes of the man he had just thrown to the pavement.

"General?" Prescott muttered, a faint drop of sweat breaking out on his forehead. "What... what kind of joke is this?"

"It is no joke, Officer," Maya said, turning her head back toward Prescott, her eyes narrowing into slits. "You have just physically assaulted and unlawfully detained General Adrian Cole, Commander of United States Army Materiel Command. And if you do not remove those cuffs from his wrists in the next five seconds, I assure you that your police badge will be the absolute smallest thing you lose today."

The silence in the parking lot of St. Matthew’s Chapel became suffocating. The distance between Officer Daniel Prescott’s arrogant assumptions and the terrifying reality of his situation closed in a matter of heartbeats.

Officer Nathan Ross did not wait for his partner to act. Trembling, Ross reached into his duty belt, pulled out his cuff key, and stepped forward. "Permit me, sir," Ross said, his voice cracked with deep embarrassment and fear. He hastily unlocked the steel bracelets from General Adrian Cole’s wrists.

As the cuffs clicked open, Adrian slowly brought his arms forward. He rubbed his reddened wrists, feeling the deep indentations left by the tight steel. He reached down, picked up his crooked glasses from the pavement, wiped the dust off the lenses with his handkerchief, and put them back on his face. He then reached down to pick up his brother Malcolm’s folded funeral program, carefully smoothing out the creases against his thigh.

Prescott stood frozen, his face shifting from flushed anger to a pale, sallow ash. "Look," Prescott stuttered, his voice losing every trace of its previous authority. "We... we got a call. A suspicious male walking between cars in the overflow lot. You weren't answering my questions fast enough, and..."

"I answered every question you asked, Officer Prescott," Adrian said softly. His voice was not raised in anger; it possessed the weight of absolute, unflinching truth. "I informed you that my brother’s funeral was beginning. I informed you that my family was inside. You called me 'trash,' you struck me across the face, and you shoved me to the ground."

"I... I misinterpreted your movements," Prescott stammered, stepping back toward his cruiser as if trying to find shelter near the vehicle. "It was a standard tactical reaction to a potential threat."

"A tactical reaction to a fifty-nine-year-old man standing still in a charcoal suit?" Maya interjected, stepping directly into Prescott's path. "You struck a flag officer of the United States military without provocation, on public property, while he was attending a memorial service. Do you have any idea what you have done?"