I was working in my office, planning the eventual creation of the city that Kyouka and Carrie had decided would be called Elysium. I thought it was a bit much, but Carrie had pointed out that Kyouka wanted it to be the name and if she was stuck here for a while she should have a say in what to name the Nephilim capital on Earth. Kyouka just said that she'd wait until I was gone before renaming it if I tried to shut it down, so I was forced to cave.
While I worked, I was waiting for Roberts to send me a message that what I had asked her to do was finished. I'd gotten that message a few minutes ago, but I was dragging my feet. This was something that even now hurt in a way I couldn't understand. I hadn't left things with my dad on good terms and it had been nearly four years since I spoke to him or my mother because of it; and that was before I was off-planet for a year without anyway to tell them I was alive. Now I was about to go see the both of them for the first time since then. This was going to be difficult at best and an emotional cluster bomb at worst.
"Rickshaw, Carrie has asked me to remind you that your family is waiting for you," Cai said. "She wishes to know if you will arrive soon or if you will continue to stall."
No more stalling I guess. It's just making it all worse.
"Tell her I'm on the way," I told him. "And ask her if she's gotten her sister onboard yet."
"Carrie has sent Wing Parham and his squad to escort her from the planet," Cai informed me.
"Why would she do that? She's spent the last year planning what to do when she sees her sister again, and I know she finally settled on something and has it ready to go."
"She chose to do so so that she might be closer to you if you feel that you need to speak to someone after you've reconnected with your family," Cai said. When had Carrie become the mature one in our relationship?
"She doesn't need to worry about me," I said. "Tell her that she can wait for her sister in the hangar or take a shuttle down and meet her planetside. She doesn't need to be on standby for my feelings."
"Very well," Cai said before waiting a moment. "I have been informed that you are an 'asshole.'"
Of course.
I walked in silence to the room that had been set aside for this reunion. I nearly turned and bolted when I stood outside the door, but I took a breath and firmed my resolve; which is just a fancier way of saying that Carrie opened the door before I could run off.
"There you are," she said. "It's about time. I was about to come drag you here myself."
"I said I'd be here so I'm going to be here," I told her. No need to tell her that I nearly ran away.
"Yeah, and I bet you spent a few minutes longer in you office hoping that something would come up and you'd be able to put this off," Carrie said. "Plus, I'm sure the scenic route was lovely and conveniently longer than you needed to take with those stilts you walk around on."
She was good. I needed to be more careful going forward.
"Anyway come on in," Carrie said. "I'm going to get some ice cream from the cafeteria. You can stay here."
Before I could say anything, Carrie had moved around me and given me a shove that sent me into the room while trying to keep my balance. The room was like any other larger room on the Phoenix, large enough for a conference table and its chairs or maybe to use as a lab or an office. This one had a table and chairs in it rather than the crates of supplies that I'd ordered us to stock up on before leaving Rallypoint.
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The people in the room were where my eyes were drawn most, even if I didn't want to see them right now. The first one I saw was my sister, Jennifer. She had gone to school and decided to take over my mother's accounting company eventually. Her hair was naturally colored and kept to just past her shoulders, though she most often kept it in a more professional braid. Her eyes matched mine, and our mother's, dark brown; Jen had always had an almost sharp light to hers though that I always found frightening in a girl three years younger than me. She used it to great effect at seeing through any lies you tried to tell her. A bundle rested in her arms, a tiny fist waving and demanding attention.
Her husband, Harry, was beside her in one of his suits that he wore to court whenever he was defending someone too rich to go to jail for my father's law firm. Strong jawed and tall, Harry was the perfect image of a son-in-law to my parents and had already made them proud with his declaration that he planned to go into politics and become a senator. Wonder what he was going to do now.
My mother, Margaret, stood near them and looked as though she had been playing with the baby in my sister's arms. She and my sister were the same height and shared the same eyes, but there the similarities stopped. My mother's hair was colored in a lighter brown with streaks of blonde professionally spaced throughout it; probably to hide any gray, she'd always been worried about that.
My father was where my eyes finally stopped. He'd always been tall, I got most of my own height from him, though my mother had tempered it a bit and left him taller by at least four inches. His hair had shaded into a steel gray that he kept short and manicured perfectly no matter the day or what he was doing. My father's eyes had always been sharp and piercing, which my sister had gotten, and they were a darker hazel than was typical. His career as a lawyer and founder of his firm had left him stern and almost unforgiving.
I stood there, taking them all in and wondering what to say before Jen stepped forward.
"Rick, is that really you?" she asked quietly, afraid of what the answer might be.
"Yeah, Jen. It's really me," I answered. "Good to see you and Harry. Glad you made it through the Scourge."
I really was. Strained as my relationship with my family was, I had kept in a small amount of touch with Jen and she'd been updating me on anything major as it came up.
"Do you want to meet him?" she asked, noticing that I was looking at the bundle in her arms. I hadn't been told about this before waking up on Rallypoint.
"I'd love to," I told her. She smiled and walked closer to me, the baby held close and when she was closer, I bent down so that I wasn't looming over her quite so much.
"I named him after you," she told me. "You were gone and we thought you were dead. I missed you." The baby, my nephew, was awake. His eyes were the same color as his mother's and his hair was the same light shade of brown that Harry's was.
"He's beautiful," I told her. "Congratulations. You and Harry are going to be great parents."
"Thank you," Jen smiled at me. "Little Rick's kept us awake all night since he was born, but I can't imagine what it would be like if he wasn't here."
"How old is he?" I asked, reaching a finger out for him to grab onto.
"Jen had him nearly four months ago. Just before the monsters showed up," Harry answered. "It's great to see you Rickshaw. I'd like to hear whatever story you've got for what's happened to you. I feel like it's a big one."
"You have no idea," I told him. "If I hadn't been there and have the proof, I don't think I'd believe it all."
"And you will tell us soon," my father said. "I've got questions of my own."
"Alan," my mother tried to head him off from starting another argument.
"No, Maggie, I've been patient. I've allowed you whatever time you asked and I've given him all the room he wants. But things are different now. Our home is gone; our city is gone; everything we've spent our lives working toward is gone. Rickshaw looks as though he has answers and you can't tell me otherwise. Look at him. He's not wearing the same colors that the rest of them are. He's bigger than he's ever been and don't forget those two young women and the soldiers that escorted us here. They called him 'demigod' and 'commander;' whatever's going on, he has answers and I want them now."
"Of course you do," I said. "Fine. Everyone sit down. I'll start at the beginning and explain it all. Just please don't interrupt and save your questions until I'm done."