Off to his right was Russell Campbell’s office, where the Major General himself sat with his back turned to Richard and looking at something in his hands. But Richard was only able to make out this much detail because the glass surrounding Russell’s office had its tinted setting deactivated. Taking in a slow and soft breath, Richard rapped on the edge of the surprisingly open door frame.
“Johnson. Come in,” Russell authorized with a somber tone.
The Major General rotated his seat, revealing the object he was holding as a classic, human-made picture frame. It contrasted with a small holographic projector on the table that showed pictures of one person in particular: Russell’s now thirty-year-old—and temporarily deceased—daughter Vanessa. But what caught Richard’s attention: Russell was wearing a blueish-black A.T.X.D. tactical uniform instead of his greenish-black Commander suit jacket.
“I…I haven’t seen you in a tactical uniform before, sir,” Richard commented as politely as he could.
“Yeah. Been twenty years since I wore my old operative uniform.” Russell stood up and walked around in the suit and tactical boots. “Frankly, I’m surprised it still fits my aging ass.” He then paused when he looked at another holographic projection of his daughter, taking in another saddened breath that had traces of a sniffle. “But I’m guessing you didn’t come by to marvel at my uniform, Johnson.”
It was then that Richard switched his focus to the picture frame Russell had put on the desk. Carefully, he picked it up and looked to see that it was of Vanessa as a teenager. She gleamed with the blue and gold colors of her graduation outfit, standing between her relatively younger father and mother—UN ENC Emissary Abigail Mayward Campbell—whilst holding a diploma from Calgary’s Notre Dame High School. But the scenery in the background was wrong: it was the Utah Desert given the arch-like mountains and rocks far in the distance.
“After Douglas transferred my family and I to Salty Springs Extraterrestrial Community,” Russell explained, “he arranged with the Calgary Catholic School District to allow my daughter to finish up her classes online. That way, she’d still get her diploma. He covered up our move as a reassignment on my part by my military contractor employer, which at the time was the cover for my work with the force so that Abby and Vanessa wouldn’t know. Not that it did much good hiding the truth from them.”
“Right, Vanessa saved you from an ambush during a scene back home. I remember.”
“Can you cut to the chase and explain your reason for being in my office, Johnson?” Russell wasn’t trying to force Richard out, but he didn’t like socializing unless he had at least a rough idea where the conversation would go and for how long.
“Honestly, I just wanted to check in. Let you know…” Richard fumbled the last words.
“Are you reciting a speech that needs my approval? Or just here to chat?” Russell locked his relaxed, stony eyes on Richard and folded his arms.
Richard exhaled with embarrassment. I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. Umm. “The latter, I guess. Would that be okay, sir?”
“You could’ve just said that the moment you came in, Johnson. Unless you say something offensive or stand like a silent statue, I don’t currently have a reason for throwing you out of my office. So speak your mind.”
“I just wanted to say that we’ll get your daughter back, sir.” Richard gritted his teeth, not sure if that was sufficient consolation.
“I know you will.” Russell sounded firm rather than encouraging. “That’s why I’m suited up. Because I’m joining you in the fight to free the revenants.”
Richard was pleasantly surprised at this, but said nothing as he continued to glance at the photos Russell had set up of his daughter. First was Vanessa when she was maybe in fifth grade: the little black-haired, cream-white girl was safely held between the hands of her mom and dad on an outdoor ice rink in Downtown Calgary. The ice was illuminated by a series of Christmas-colored bulbs strung overhead. The relatively younger Russell on the left—little Vanessa’s right—was clothed in a Calgary Flames hockey jacket. And the streams of a CTrain’s tail lights could be seen passing by in the background.
Another photo showed a middle school-aged Vanessa in a Taekwondo gi: her fists clenched in front of her chest as she pivoted a bare foot high over her head.
“Is that…is that Olympic National Park?” Richard questioned at another photo showing a high school-aged Vanessa splashing with her mother in an immensely large lake. Richard recognized the glimmering surface of Crescent Lake and the mountains that dwarfed the majestic scene.
“How’d you know, Johnson?” Russell’s bearded lips perked up in an intrigued smile.
“My dad was stationed as a Park Ranger there once.” Richard jerked his thumb back up at the photo. “It’s where he and Mom had their honeymoon. They would take me there—as well as Jack and…and James—and we would play in the lake too.” Richard huffed with some remorse as he recalled the loss of his Ranger brother James Matthews once more.
“Yeah, Vanessa loved nature. Next to motorcycles, ice skating, and shopping, my little Vanessa was big on the outdoors.”
To prove Russell’s point, Richard saw three more pictures. One showed Vanessa as an adult wearing a red and white dress on the Salty Springs Ice Rink as she gracefully shaved the ice with a skid on her Jackson skates: evidenced by the small jet of snowy particles floating away from her blades in the shot. Another showed Vanessa and Russell on a boat with fishing lines extended into Tony Grove Lake here in Utah. A third showed Vanessa in full on biker attire but standing next to a Suzuki-style hover bike given the horizontal shape of the wheels.
And finally, the fourth shot once again showed Vanessa in her mid-teens: she was clutching a tree branch and holding her feet against its trunk. Upon grabbing the outer frame area, Richard’s thumb also touched the picture itself and accidentally triggered—to his amazement—a recorded video.
Rubbing her hands together, high school Vanessa ran towards a Lodgepole Shore Pine in what Richard could assume was the backyard of the Campbells’ former house given the suburban-looking backyard. Gripping the trunk firmly with her hands and feet, the young Vanessa ascended the Pine with eager determination. Russell came over to watch the scene on the holographic frame and activate some audio, revealing it to be an enhanced format of an old video camera recording. Briefly taking the frame from Richard, the Major General gripped it and flipped it forward, thrusting the projection into a full-color, three-dimensional display that almost filled the room.
As soon as she made it to a decently thick branch, Vanessa secured her footing and raised her arms out gracefully. Putting one shiny Saucony Grid trainer ahead of the other, the Major General’s daughter gracefully walked along the branch: only once did she teeter when her old school running shoe scraped off a small sheet of bark. When she finally reached a fork in the branch, the teenage Vanessa carefully turned around, secured her knees around each branch, then leaned backwards and hung upside down with a whooping laugh.
“We got her a small backyard gymnast set for her 16th birthday,” Russell commented. “But she always loved that Shore Pine. It was her natural playground. And it was the only thing she truly cried about leaving behind when we had to move down here.”
As Russell recalled the projection back into the Kawolaski picture frame, he locked eyes with Richard and reinforced his earlier statement.
“I was away a lot when I worked for the force back in those days: balancing family with my career here was extremely difficult given all the secrecy. Frankly, I was worried I wasn’t spending enough time with my family…with my little girl. That she’d grow up not having a connection with me because I wasn’t in her life that often. So whenever I got a chance to be with her,” Russell gestured broadly to all the pictures in the office, “I really tried to make it count.”
“I imagine her being at base made it easier to communicate with her, though. Right, sir?”
“Hardly,” Russell admitted with frustrated disappointment. “We waved to each other, we said hello, we exchanged simple conversation here and there. But, real family talk? Jesus, we haven’t had a proper heart-to-heart—my little girl and I—since she became an officer with Alpha Team and then the Stealth Angels. Even after the Senturi Invasion, I didn’t spend enough time with her during recovery in the Infirmary because I was too goddamn busy helping Douglas deal with the ENC and the global public.”
“So you want to make sure she knows that you’re still there for her?” Richard maintained a relaxed and reassured face and added an approving nod.
“All I want is a little more time with my…who am I kidding, my big girl. She’s the most important thing in my life, Johnson. And when Kaurus took her away, I came this close,” Russell pinched his fingers within an inch of each other in front of his face, “to eating my Guardian.”
Richard’s heart stopped and he gently slapped a palm to his adams apple to make sure his pulse was still there. Jesus Christ. He almost shot himself.
“But now that I know my big girl has a chance of returning to her real self, I am not going to squander another chance to be near her. So I am joining the fight to get her back, Johnson.” Russell poked a finger in the air next to Richard and then made a sharp dash motion with it. “And that is final.”
With his own respectful and humble smile returning to the surface, Richard replied, “We appreciate the support, sir. Frankly, starting tonight,” the ex-Ranger’s gaze drifted diagonally towards the floor in a soft pause before returning to face his Commander, “we’re gonna need all the help we can get.”