PREPARE YOURSELVES FOR INFORMATION OVERLOAD OF BACKSTORY AND FOR TWO PHI's. Enjoy! ;)
Chapter 11
In which Phi, Sigma, and Diana discover the identity and learn about the past of the old woman who raised Phi, and Delta speaks of how he caught the attention of Lord Gordain in their childhood.
Sophia gasps at the sound and turns her head around to her younger self in the open doorway of the facility, as a man and a woman follow from behind her — are these two people her parents? She looks at them in awe for a moment, until she sees Phi approach her. "Phi!" she cries out in surprise, running towards her.
"Gran!" Phi shouts back again, sighing in relief as she feels the old woman's arms around her. There is a sense of comfort she feels that she only felt once when Diana hugged her back in DCOM, before the Decision Game.
"Oh, Phi, I'm so glad you are safe!" she murmurs in her ear, which makes Phi feels as if she is already home.
Phi frowns. "I remembered you said you were going to the research center where you found me, and I was so worried for you, Gran. I thought . . . I thought, he — " Phi breaks off with an exhale of breath, as she grips her tighter. She is showing vulnerability in front Sigma and Diana — who are currently approaching from behind her — but fuck it, they are her parents. They've seen her cry and suffer from diaper rashes in other timelines, so why does it matter if they see her like this? The woman who raised her and was her mother/grandmother figure in Diana's absence could have been in danger, dammit.
"You'd thought what, Phi?" Sophia asks coaxingly, as she rubs her back soothingly.
"I thought . . ." She shakes her head. "Forget it."
"You thought that I'd hurt her, Phi."
Phi looks up from her Gran's embrace, and Diana and Sigma look towards the source of the voice, startled.
His clothing is the same as Phi last saw him, only with the addition of a white scarf tied around his neck — if it weren't for that scarf, or for the course on the Evolution of Fashion taken as an elective last semester, Phi wouldn't have realized that his attire comes straight out the early 1930s, most likely spring fashion.
"You," she growls menacingly, clutching onto Sophia's shoulders tighter and beginning to move in front of her, protecting her from the redhead man. "How the fuck are you even here?"
"Delta . . . ?" Diana gasps.
"Mom," the young man whispers, and then turns to Sigma, "and Dad." He smiles.
"You are Delta, then." Sigma nods, protectively curling an arm around Diana's body, and placing his other hand on Phi's shoulder. "So, you did SHIFT when Carlos shot you, after all . . . and then, you must have used the transporter to come here, right?"
Delta grins. "Yes, it is I." He ignores Sigma's last words as his eyes flits to Phi. "Phi, after Carlos told you all that the next destination would be the Grand Canyon, you immediately thought of Sophia, who you knew would be spending her New Years in Flagstaff. After all, the Grand Canyon and Flagstaff are not so far from each other."
Phi shouldn't be surprised that he hasn't mispronounced her Gran's name like everyone else does — normally, people say the 'phi' part of her name with a 'fi' pronunciation, when it is actually pronounced 'fy,' like Phi's name; it was an uncanny similarity, Phi admits, but she had shrugged it off as mere chance. But now, hearing Delta say it makes her believe that it has been no coincidence at all.
"You . . . you bastard, get away from her! Get away from us! Haven't you done enough to us?" she screams, trying to rip out of Sophia's hug to attack Delta, but Sophia holds her back, noticing how Delta's cunning face slightly falls.
"Phi, wait! Believe me, I know better than anyone that Delta is a bit of an asshole, but please, don't attack him!"
She whips her head towards Sophia, stunned. "Gran, you know who he is!?"
"And you know him," she states back tonelessly, her eyes suddenly stare into Phi as if she is peering into her soul.
"The fuck I do. This goddamn old" — well, now young — "man threw us into a death game!"
Sophia turns to glare at her brother. "Are you fucking kidding me? I knew you were going to eventually try to find Phi and use her for SHIFTing purposes, or something along those lines, but this?"
Delta sighs dejectedly. "I didn't ask for this to happen either, Phi, but this it was all part of an elaborate cycle necessary for our birth. In the conditions of the Decision Games were Mom and Dad able — "
"Don't you fucking call them Mom and Dad!" Phi snarls at him. "You have no right to! What kind of son are you, anyway? You've haunted poor Diana because of some of the decisions she had to make and that you probably Mind Hacked her to make!"
Sigma and Phi both feel satisfaction as Delta's shoulders slump in regret — he seems genuinely sorry for hurting his mother. "I . . . I'm sorry, Mom — Diana. It was not my intention to scar you like this, at all. This was all necessary to ensure our birth, in which I'd be able to Mind Hack, and Phi would be able to SHIFT. And without those abilities, I couldn't warn you all about the religious fanatic who would destroy all of mankind, right?"
Diana gives a small, but curt nod, while Sigma feels as if he is reading this off a script, or something of that nature, at least, since he keeps repeating the same words again and again about the fanatic.
"What?!" Sophia exclaims in shock. "Religious fanatic?! Why have you been hiding this stuff from me, Delta!? I could have helped you!"
"Phi — well, Sophia — you did help me. You raised little Phi, and that's all I think I could ask of you." Phi, Sigma, and Diana seemed puzzled. "Now, I think the time has come for you to explain everything to our family, since they have been in the dark for so long about your identity."
Phi raises an eyebrow. "Our family?"
Diana, too, is confused, but Sigma feels his jaw beginning to drop. "P-Phi!?" he cries out in astonishment.
Phi, however, is utterly confused, as she shakes Sigma's hand off of her shoulder. "What, Sigma?"
Upon hearing Sigma's words, Diana begins to realize the truth, too. "No, that can't be!" Diana is in shock as well. She loosens herself from Sigma's hold on her and immediately runs over to Sophia, pulling her into an embrace. Sigma, too, takes a step towards Sophia, placing a hand on her shoulder.
"Hey, am I missing something? What's going on!?"
"Tu fui, ego eris," Delta simply whispers, his eyes meeting Sophia's, who looks up from Diana's grip on her and nods back at him.
"You were right. Quite literally." She then returns Diana's hug with equal fervor. "Mother," she whispers. She turns her body around to smile gently at Sigma as well, placing her hand atop of his hand that rests on his shoulders. "And you're my father."
And suddenly, Phi begins to understand. "You have got to be fucking with me."
Sophia turns back to Phi and grasps her hands. "Phi, my dear, this might be a little difficult to swallow, but . . . when . . . Sigma and Diana?" She looks questioningly to make sure she has gotten their names right, she continues. "After they sent their twin children, Phi and Delta to the transporter, their atomic data was sent to 1904, and then Phi's was again sent to the future, to 2008."
"I'm the Phi whose atomic data was sent to 2008, and you are the Phi from 1904." The words fall easily from Phi's lips, no hesitance or shock behind them.
Sophia grins wryly. "I knew I raised a smart girl. Now, let me explain from the beginning.
"We were both transported to 1904, where we were adopted and raised by a researcher in Germany. His wife was assumed to be barren, which is why he was easily able to get away with it. Originally, the researcher was going to take only Delta, and I would be kept in the facility, so that the researchers could send multiple copies of me to different futures and pasts, but the researcher taking Delta didn't feel it was right to separate us and leave me to be a part of experiments for the transporter. So, they only decided to send my atomic data to 2008, and then the researcher brought us both to his home.
"After a few years, the researcher and his wife were eventually able to have a child, a child they named Left. Regardless of his birth, Left, Delta, and I were loved equally. Our parents never hid from us that we were adopted and found in the transporter, but they never made us feel like we were adopted. The three of us children loved each other as well. Delta doted on Left, and was always so protective of the both of us. He didn't hide his power of mind reading to the both of us, even though I didn't feel right to tell Left about the feeling and dreams I had that revealed to me that I had the power to SHIFT. We soon moved to Chicago for our adoptive father to continue his research and were all happy together.
That all changed when Left was found dead. Our parents, though completely shattered, did their best to always keep us happy. Delta, on the other hand" — she looks at the redhead boy with sad eyes — " was completely shattered by Left's death. He became so despondent, so silent. I would be the one who had to force him to eat, since he would only eat by my hand. One day, though, something in him changed. He had come to me and angrily told me that Left's killers paid off the police. We then vowed to find Left's killers and the officers on the case. I only agreed to it because I wanted my brother to come back from his depression.
We did some investigating for a few years, trying to gather evidence, but we couldn't come up with much — all we could say for sure was that Left's killer had to have been the brother of one of his girl friends, and though we had our suspicions on a man, we had no proof to incriminate him. Then, one day, Delta tried to throw himself in front of a train." Sophia squeezes her eyes shut. "At first, I thought that perhaps he was still distressed by Left's death . . . but, you were trying to SHIFT, weren't you, Delta? . . . Did you get to SHIFT, or was it a failed attempt?"
Delta looks away, his sunglasses masking the indescribable emotion in his eyes. "That was in the past, Phi. There's no point trying to remember it. All that matters is that you saved me from the train."
She sighs in defeat. "Later that night was when you showed me you could Mind Hack, and I had asked you to not misuse it." She glowers crossly at her brother. "You asshole, you never responded back to me."
"Phi, I promise you, that since then, I have not misused my power," he vows, his face sincere.
Sigma furrows his brows in confusion at his genuineness, while Phi scoffs, which causes Sophia to cross her arms over her chest and further glare at Delta, and then shake her head and continues.
"The next day after that, Delta disappeared and returned home late in the night. I went to his room to ask him where he had been, but he had all of the evidence we had gathered splayed across the table and spewed some bullshit about purifying the human race," she mutters scornfully to herself. "By then, I already had started to follow in father's footsteps, and Delta had decided to be educated somewhere out of state. He barely came to visit after that — maybe once a year."
Sigma, Diana, and Phi give each other looks. "So, that's when the bastard was trying to develop Free the Soul, the Myrmidons, and Radical-6?"
Sophia shakes her head in confusion. "I'm not sure about those."
Delta shakes his head. "No, I found Free the Soul of Y was in 1921. It was just before I had discovered the police's involvement in Left's murder case. I had saved a young woman from having her honor snatched away by some seedy, but rich man, who had cornered her in some ally. After that, I had found myself a benefactor of sorts for my vigilance. I still don't know if the woman I saved was his daughter, or if he was truly impressed by my actions. He immediately recognized my capabilities as an esper, and had asked for my help. In exchange, he would provide me money, aid, and information. I only trusted his information because he was a very affluent man — he called himself Lord Dashiell Gordain from Europe."