Chương 70: Chapter 32: Found Family

Emily was on one knee as I hugged her, my face pressed into her shoulder as I wrapped her in a warm embrace.

"Tess" she said, sounding a little short of breath.

"Oh shoot" I said as I let her go, realizing I was squeezing a bit too tight.

"I can't believe you've been gone for less than a year" Oliver's voice called out from beside us. I had been so preoccupied with the house and Emily that I didn't even notice Oliver sitting right next to us.

"Oliver!" I exclaimed. I didn't know what else to say, nothing came to mind. My head was swimming with thoughts, emotions, thinking about what had happened since I left earth, thinking about how much I missed my friends and how happy I was to be back, there was too much, too many thoughts. She laughed, putting her hand on my shoulder "It's good to see you too Tess! For a while there we didn't think we'd ever see you again. Well, especially after that first scare."

"Sorry, what?" I asked. Oliver sighed, "After everything happened with you leaving, we heard there was… Uh… Well…" Emily interjected "We heard there was a dead alien up on the mountain. They wouldn't let us see it and the next day they sent a transporter to pick it up. We kind of assumed it was…" she said as her voice got caught in her throat.

"We thought it was you" came a third voice from behind us.

"Gav" I said, turning around to see him "Oh gosh I haven't seen you since the satellites." He smiled, nodding to me. Oliver spoke up again "Well, we thought it was you. They only let us see a few pictures afterward but, I dunno, we thought that person had caught up to you or something."

"Oh, she did," I said.

"She did?!" all three exclaimed. I heard the sound of a distant vehicle in the driveway, making us all turn to see a police car driving in backwards, perching on top of the hill leading up to the house as they presumably were blocking off access to let the roadway re-open.

"Can we talk inside?" I asked, not feeling like being watched.

"Oh, of course. Actually, I made pizza for everyone" Gav said, clapping his hands. As we started making our way inside something crossed my mind.

"So what's the deal with all this?" I asked, gesturing out toward the driveway. Oliver decided to speak up "Well, when they knew you were coming back this way we decided to all come back here to your place" he said. It sounded almost strange for him to be referring to it as 'my place' but I remembered what happened with the paperwork with Emily and how the whole thing was transferred over to me.

"Since you left" he continued, "We've had a lot of talks with various government people, Emily had to give away all her files she had on you and we ended up being a pretty big focus during the past few months." Gav cut in, "The first time I was on the news it was really exciting! The hundredth time I was on the news I was tired and just wanted to be left alone." Oliver and Emily both nodded in agreement.

"Anyway" Oliver continued, "They told us they were okay with the three of us being here to meet you but they'd have to close everything off so random people can't just wander in and try to talk to you. Trust me, we've run into some pretty crazy people throughout this whole thing. It's better to have them just close everything off for now." An overwhelming weirdness went through me as I stepped on the threshold of the house.

It was like million memories were flooding back to me from all the times I'd come home from the treehouse or working outside. I was in a place that felt so incredibly familiar yet completely strange. As if I wasn't supposed to be there. I shook my head, deciding to ignore those feelings and press on as I walked through the open door to find my living room, exactly how I remembered it. The living room where I sat with John and Emily for every Christmas, every birthday, all those stormy nights.

The kitchen table was exactly how I remembered it, all the way down to the placement of the chairs. I could see where John sat as we spoke for the last time, after he gave me the artifacts from my past. I could hear them. The argument with the strange man, the fight, the front door slamming open as John yelled for me to run, the bullet holes in the ceiling were gone, but I could see the vent I had been listening through as I heard him yell out to me.

My eyes darted over to the stairs as I pictured what had happened. The overwhelming fire billowing up the stairs, setting everything around it on fire in an instant as Sloan leapt up the stairway. I ran. I could have stopped it. I could have fought. I could have saved him. But I ran. I was a coward. He didn't deserve to die. I didn't deserve to be alive. I felt an intense heat all around me as John reached out, the beam falling on top of him just before the second floor collapsed. I had time.

I could have saved him. A pain shot through my head as I fell back against the concrete of the threshold, my mind going a little hazy but thankfully it at least gave me something to focus on.

"Tess! Are you okay?" Emily asked as she entered my field of view. I shook my head.

"I… I'm sorry I…" I stammered as I stood up, backing away from the house before I turned and started running. I didn't have anywhere to go, I just needed to leave. I couldn't process what was going on. The house was exactly how it was. As if nothing had happened. As if John hadn't died. As if it hadn't burned to the ground. As if everything was normal. I suddenly found myself at the base of my treehouse. I hadn't planned on going up to it, but through my panic I'd just taken the path I was most familiar with.

My hearts were still beating fast as I tried to catch my breath. Not from exhaustion, but from feeling overwhelmed by everything. Nothing seemed right. I didn't belong there. Unlike the last time I was at the treehouse, the bottom rungs of the ladder were in place. The awkward feeling washing over me only got worse as the intensity of the moment wore off. My friends. They were so happy to see me. Yet the very first thing I did after meeting them was to have a flashback that made me look like a crazy person.

I sighed, looking up at the tree house. The silence of the woods was at least calming as I took in the familiar sound of the gentle wind through the evergreen trees. Before I knew it I was already climbing up the ladder and pulling open the latch, bringing me to a familiar sight. It was cold, dark, but I could see the outline of the instruments surrounding me. I spent my entire life collecting those instruments, each one had a story to tell, each one was special to me.

I could recall when I got each one, how I felt in that moment, the joy of learning its personality. My eye caught something different. The husk of the ukulele sitting on the floor next to the trap door. Shattered. Broken. Barely having a chance at life before I destroyed it in a fit of rage. I remembered how I felt in that moment. The betrayal. The anger. The confusion I'd felt over not being told about who I was. It felt so strange.

In that moment it felt like my entire world had crashed around me, yet after everything that happened in the aftermath, it felt so small. I wished I could go back to being that person who had so few worries in life. I wished I could go back to who I was before. I frowned. Even in my treehouse I couldn't be safe from my past memories. There was another place though. With a small grin I opened the window, leaning out as I grabbed the ladder on the side of the tree, bringing me up to the rooftop.

I sighed, laying flat against the roof of my little treehouse as I looked up at the trees and the stars starting to come into view as the sun continued to set. The roof was always one of my favorite places. It was my special place where I'd sing to the forest, usually with the guitar in my hand. The stars started getting blurry, my eyes filling with tears as I remembered who I was the last time I sat atop the treehouse roof. My life had been so simple, so easy. And I was happy.

I curled up, crying into my arm as I tried to think about anything else, but the thoughts wouldn't stop swimming through my head. Everything that happened with John, the melodians, Flint, Nori. It felt like it was just too much. It had to have been at least an hour since I'd gotten onto the rooftop when a heard a voice through the quiet sobbing.

"Tess? Are you up there?" I heard Emily's voice. I lifted my head for a moment, the tears on my face starting to freeze into my fur in the night air. I tried to speak, but noise wouldn't come out. With a deep breath I decided to just bring my hand down on the roof, causing an audible knock to ring out. A few moments later Emily called out again.

"Is it okay if I join you up there?" she asked. I thought for a moment, then lifted my hand and knocked once more. Thankfully she understood as I could hear her starting to climb up the ladder, the light she carried shining over the rooftop as she reached out the window and climbed up onto the roof with me. I sat up, putting my back to the tree as she did the same. With my sleeve I tried wiping the tears from my face the best I could. She moved next to me, wrapping her arm around me as we both sat in silence.

Her warmth was welcome as I leaned against her. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"I'm sorry about all that" I said quietly, my voice barely escaping me.

"It's our fault. We should have warned you. We thought it might be a nice gesture to put the house back to where it was before but we didn't even think about how you would feel about coming back to it like that. We don't need to keep it that way. We can tear it down and start fresh, it's fine, we can…"

"No" I said a little louder than before "No no, keep it. I guess… I just wasn't expecting it. I was surprised. When I walked in there I just… I saw that night. I remembered everything that happened and it just…" I was starting to stammer as I started to get those feelings coming back to me again.

"Shh sh, it's okay" Emily said, squeezing me a little tighter.

"I… I need to think about something else" I said, trying to get the thoughts out of my head.

"I can tell you about what happened here on earth if you want" Emily said. I nodded.

"Yes, I'd like that" I replied, closing my eyes and sinking into her a little. She cleared her throat "Well, like we said, we thought something bad had happened to you. We didn't know what to do, but I ended up giving those government folks all the information I had. They didn't want us talking to the public until they'd figured out what was going on. We told them about our discoveries, how we reached out to the lifeboats and everything else we knew about them.

"It took months and they asked a lot of the same questions over and over. They weren't too pleased with our little visit to the satellites but in the grand scheme of things that stuff ended up getting swept under the rug.

"The first few weeks of the lifeboats being here was crazy. Everyone wanted answers, they wanted to know what was going on. But when communication just… Didn't happen, the government decided to let us start talking to the public about it. There were a lot of parts we weren't supposed to mention, but that was okay. People wanted to know SOMETHING, you know?

"It had been called a lot of things at first but the name that stuck was 'The Boring Invasion' which… I mean, I was never a huge fan of that name but that's what everyone was calling it.

"We all ended up on all the news channels talking about our experiences and how you got here. Everyone was hungry for whatever information we could give them.

"Then that recording came out and that was a huge deal" she said.

"Recording?" I asked, looking up at her.

"The gravity games!" she exclaimed, "Oh that was so exciting, I can't tell you how I felt when we saw you in the recording. Nori even referred to you by name! It gave us a new wind! As far as we knew though, we figured you hadn't outed yourself to them.

Up until that point the translators were working hard to understand their language while they were trying to learn ours, which seemed strange since they had a melodian on board that could already speak both, so we figured you hadn't told them about yourself, so we didn't say anything about it and kept up the lie that you were the one that… Well…" Just hearing her say Nori's name brought a few emotions up from deep inside me but I tried to ignore them.

"Yeah that was a surprise to me. I had no idea what the gravity games were but seeing them like that… Wow" I said, trying to focus on a positive memory from my experience on the lifeboats.

"Yeah! We had started sending a whole bunch of artifacts back and forth and pretty soon after the games we started seeing a lot of requests for instruments, so we knew you had something to do with that. I bet you taught them all kinds of things" she said.

"I…" my mind froze for a moment, trying to think of what to say.

"We were told you could bring some things from there if you wanted, I bet they have all kinds of crazy instruments we'd never even dreamed of down here on earth. I've always wondered what an instrument designed for seven fingers would look like" she said with a giddy smile in her voice. It was the same hope I'd felt before I left for the lifeboats, before I learned about what was actually waiting there for me.

"Oh and the mechara!" she continued as I felt a shiver run through me, "they're incredible! I had no idea there would be a whole other species on the ships! We've been trading a lot of things back and forth. I was surprised by how much they love their tiny contraptions. We even sent up a bunch of our fancier watches which they were extremely impressed by" she said with a bit of pride in her voice.

"Uh… Yeah I remember talking to her about it…" I said softly. My hearts sank a little, remembering the conversation with Nori. The mechara didn't think much of the humans and they were disappointed by their lack of understanding around small mechanisms. It was clear Nori had to lie to them about it to be diplomatic.

"It's incredible how the mechara were able to build those ships," she said. I sat up, looking at her.

"The melodians built those ships" I said sternly. Emily tilted her head, looking a little confused "That's… Not what they told us. They said…"

"They're liars." I interjected. Emily went quiet, her eyes wide as she noticed my change in tone.

"S-sorry, I must have misunderstood something…" she said softly. I sighed, standing up and steeping out toward the center of the rooftop, looking out into the woods.

"Were you wondering why I decided to come back?" I asked. I kept my gaze toward the trees. I couldn't look at her.

"We… Were gonna ask, yeah" she said quietly. She told me her story, so it was only fair I told her mine.

"When I left Oliver" I said, "I had a run-in with this robot thing. It used the crystal to show me that last memory on the shard. It was about my dad and the final moments of lifeboat seven. I never got a clear answer about what exactly happened, but Sloan seemed to be the one responsible for its destruction."

"Who's Sloan?" Emily asked. I bit my lip, thinking for a moment, "She's the woman who'd been chasing me. She was at the house the night it burned down. She's the one that shot me on Sheep's Nose. She's the one that blew up those propane tanks. She also met up with me when the ship landed. Another melodian was in the ship. The two of them talked for a while, things got heated, she shot him, but in the moment of confusion I was able to get onto the ship as it was taking off.

Sloan stayed behind, but she showed up again yesterday and… Well, you saw what happened…" I said.

"Why didn't you tell the mechara about it?" Emily asked. My hands clenched into a fist for a moment.

"The mechara…" I said slowly as I gathered my thoughts, "Aren't what you think. They're monsters. All of them." I paused for a moment, my thoughts wondering to Lampro.

"Most of them." I said, correcting myself.

"What did they do?" she asked in a concerned tone.

"They invented this machine. The one we scrounged together from the ship. It's called the Assembler. It makes it so the melodians can experience past memories. But it's horrible. The melodians learn to rely on it. They forget to live their lives outside of it because the only thing they want to do is to get back in. They can experience the happiest memories they have as often as they like and in return they give their lives to the mechara like willing slaves."

I said, the last word coming out of my mouth with a bite to it.

"Is that… The glowing eye thing?" Emily asked. I nodded, still looking out toward the trees.

"They took our culture away. They took everything from us. I tried to help but…" I shivered as I thought about everything that happened.

"But?" Emily asked.

"I'd… Rather not get into that right now…" I said as I sat on the edge of the roof, letting my feet dangle over the side as I slumped down.

"I'm sorry… We had no idea…" Emily said as she sat next to me, putting a hand on my shoulder. I nodded.

"I know" I said, "I had no idea that would be waiting for me either." We sat in silence for a few minutes as we both gathered our thoughts. In that moment, sitting on the treehouse looking out at the woods I'd grown up in my entire life, it almost felt like I could pretend the past year had never happened. It was a nice feeling, but one that never lasted long enough to enjoy.

"Maybe we can still do something about it. Who knows?" Emily said, trying to cheer me up. I shook my head.

"I don't think so… There's so much that… I just… I don't know" I said again.

"I mean, they need a lot of resources from us in order to get Lifeboat Seven back in order, maybe we could get some public support behind it, make them stop using the Assembler in exchange for that stuff. They were gonna ask for your help with translating between them, maybe you could work something out" she said. I nodded.

"That's not a terrible idea" I said as I looked up at the stars." And you teach better Mecharan to me" Emily said in a very broken mecharan accent. I smiled, looking up at her " You've been learning Mecharan?" I asked in Mecharan back to her.

"Uh… a little slower…" she said. I giggled, switching back to English "You've been learning Mecharan?"

"I've been trying!" she said. I nodded, smiling again as I looked out at the trees.

"It must sound strange hearing me speak that again" I said. Emily didn't respond immediately, but her confusion was obvious.

"Again?" she asked.

"Uh, yeah I mean, I was speaking it when I first landed, right?" I asked. Emily shook her head.

"No no, the language you were speaking was entirely different. It sounded nothing like Mecharan" she said. I tilted my head, furling my brows as she said that.

"W-what? But, when I first arrived on the ships I started picking it up again. I remembered speaking that language" I said.

"Hmm… Well, it's entirely possible you learned two languages while you were there. Didn't you encounter a more…" she said, lifting a hand and twisting it as she tried to think of what to say "A more… Melodian style language?" I shook my head.

"No, I only encountered the one language" I said.

"Huh… We'll have to ask them about that then" Emily said as she leaned back. I looked up to the stars once more, wondering what Emily was talking about. Before either of us said anything else we saw a streak running through the sky off in the distance, leaving a large red trail behind it as it barrelled through the atmosphere.

"What the…" I started to say as a loud crack rang through the woods. I leapt up from where I was sitting, standing over the edge as I recognized the sound of the engines coming toward us. It was the ship. The same type Sloan took in New York. She knew I'd returned home. She didn't know that Oliver and Gav were in the house, not me.

"E-Emily I-I need you to stay here" I said as I frantically grabbed her shoulders, looking into her eyes.

"Tess w-what is it?" she asked.

"It's Sloan, I need to get down to the house, I need to… I need to… I can't let it happen again. Emily promise me you'll stay here, promise me you won't go to the house" I pleaded with her.

"I- I promise, but Tess isn't she after…" Emily started to ask. It was too late. I leapt off the side, giving a hard thud against the forest flor as I tumbled forward and ran as fast as I could toward the house, doing my best to navigate by memory, as the light was almost nonexistent. Ahead of me I saw the ship pulling up to the house stopping overhead just as it started moving down for a landing.

"No! Stop! I'm out here!" I screamed. I knew she was here to hurt me. I knew she could overpower me. I knew she'd win. But I couldn't stand the thought of it all happening again. I wouldn't let it happen again. The ship landed, the engines turning off, the small amount of light coming from the ship turning off as I lost focus, running into a tree and falling on my back.

"AAAAAAh!" I screamed as I got up, my head spinning as I continued toward the house on two legs, one hand on my forehead as I tried to get to the house as quickly as I could. The front door slammed shut. She was inside. Gav and Oliver didn't know she was coming. They didn't know they needed to run. I reached the door, throwing it open and stumbling into the living room.

"Stop! I'm here! Don't hurt them! Please!" I screamed as my vision slowly stopped swirling. The I saw the melodian standing in front of me, looking at Gav and Oliver as they looked at the two of us with stunned faces. The melodian wasn't saying anything, wasn't doing anything. She just stood there, her hands behind her back as the looked at my friends. As my focus came back to me I realized she didn't have the fur pattern of Sloan. Their fur was a dark brown all the way through, no split between black and white.

The one exception being the white mark on the melodian's left shoulder. I sighed, knowing only one melodian with that fur pattern.

"Flint" I said quietly as I switched to Mecharan, "Oh Flint you scared me. I thought… I thought you were Sloan. I thought you were here to hurt us." He didn't respond, his gaze was forward, staring at the two humans in the room as he kept his composure. I thought back to our previous conversations and about what I'd told him.

"Y-you're here for the MP3 players, right? I know you probably can't stay, but I can give you all the ones I have, I can always get others." The silence was deafening as the seconds passed by. Something felt off. It didn't feel right.

"I'm not here for those" he said. To my horror, he responded in perfect English. A monotone nature to his voice. It was his voice, his vocal chords, but it wasn't him. I froze in place, a chill going through my body as he turned to look at me, his eyes glowing bright white.

"I'm here for you"