Phoenix

Family is Everything

I walked into the conference room and was greeted with the fresh smell of coffee. Harry was sitting in the front of the room, and was looking at a laptop that sat in front of him. Jager was sitting next to him. He was looking at something on his phone, and Hibana sat right across from him. I sat next to Hibana, the woman looked over at me and smiled. I returned the smile and glanced over at Harry. He took a sip of his coffee and didn't look away from his laptop.

After sitting around for a few minutes I decided to double check all of my gear. I knew that I had everything that I needed, but deep down I knew I was forgetting something. Quikly I looked through my backpack making sure that everything was in its place. Everything was in its place in my bag so I checked everything on my person.

"Did you forget something?" Hibana asked.

I glanced over at her. "Uh I don't think I did." I said as I looked down at my belt where my knife should be. "Actually I take that back. I forgot my knife."

"Well how about we go get your knife." She said as she stood up and walked towards the door.

We left the room and walked to my room. I walked into my room and quickly looked for my knife. Where did I put it? I thought to myself as I dug through all the drawers in my desk. Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see Hibana looking over my shoulder. At first I felt a little uncomfortable but I tried to ignore her.

"Are you sure you didn't leave it in your locker?" The woman behind me asked.

I glanced over at the woman and shut the drawer I was looking through. "You might be right."

Hibana walked over to the door and opened it, "I have an extra knife you can borrow."

"No it's okay, you can keep your knife. If you want to you can go back to the conference room."

I pushed open the door to the locker room and walked inside. Quickly I walked over to my locker and opened it. After a few minutes I finally found my knife and strapped it to my belt. I looked down at the knife for a few seconds, and sighed.

"You know that's a really nice knife, where did you get it?" Hibana asked.

I looked over at her. "It was a gift from my father." A frown formed on my face as I spoke, "He gave it to me on my twentieth birthday." I took the knife out of its sheath and showed it to the woman.

She looked at the knife for a few seconds and said, "It's a really nice knife. I can see why you keep it on you." Hibana looked up at me then glanced back at the knife. "I think that's the first time I've heard you talk about your parents."

"Well that's because it is." I paused and shut my locker. "We should probably get back to the conference room."

"Right." She said as she started to leave the locker room.

I followed the woman out of the locker room. Hibana and I didn't know very much about each other, but I would have liked to know a little more about the woman. I could also tell that the woman would like to get to know me as well. "Um you know that I don't talk about my parents that much."

Hibana looked over at me and nodded. "Yeah I do. I wanted to ask you why you don't talk about them, but I didn't want to be rude."

"I can understand that." I paused, "One of the only reasons why I don't talk about my parents is because I kinda pushed them away. Especially when I was in high school." I could tell that Hibana could hear the sadness in my voice as I spoke. "My parents worked for this massive billion dollar company and because of that we were forced to move every couple of months."

"Is that how you got your love for different cultures and languages?"

"Yeah it was. Then after traveling from country to country I realized that I didn't like constantly moving to a new house every couple of months. So I tried to convince my parents to move to a house where we could live permanently. They said that their job wouldn't allow that, and then I kinda just started to push my parents and brother away."

"And your parents didn't try to make you happy while still being able to keep their jobs?" Hibana asked.

"They did, but I just pushed them away more and more. Then it got to the point where I just stopped talking to them." I sighed. "Looking back at what I did when I was younger, I really do regret it now."

Both Hibana and I stayed quiet as we walked up to the door to the conference room. There were so many feelings going through me all at once. I wanted to break down but I also wanted to smile. Deep down the feeling of regret stirred within me, and there was nothing I could do.

Hibana opened the door to the conference room and quickly spoke in Japanese, "Maybe you can get into contact with them after all of this is over."

I replied in the same language, "Maybe I can."

We both walked into the room and sat down at the almost completely empty table. The whole team was now in the room, and was ready to head out into the field. Everyone was quiet and forced their attention on Harry. The man kept his attention on the laptop in front of him. I knew that the man was reading an email or something of the sort. The way he looked at the laptop made it look like he was consumed by whatever was on the screen. I started to get curious about what Harry was looking at, but I knew that I wouldn't be getting an answer.

A few long silent minutes went by as I sat at the large table in the room. I was starting to get inpatient, so was everyone else in the room. The only sound that filled the room was the ticking clock that hung on the wall. I started to count every second that went by, hoping that something interesting would happen. The sound of Harry closing his laptop and clearing his throat snapped me out of my thoughts.

"I have been informed that the Politiets Aktionsstyrke will be assisting us with this investigation. They will be keeping an eye out for any activity in the mall and while we clear out the gas station and the sewers. Once we are positive that we have the location of the base we will move in for extraction." He paused and looked at the five operators that sat in front of him. "Hibana you will be in charge of this team. There's a plane waiting for you all, and when you land in Denmark there will be a car waiting for you all."

We all stood up from our seats and were ready to leave the room. I knew that we didn't know everything we needed to know just yet, but Harry would most likely fill us in on what we missed in Denmark. Before we left the room Harry reminded us to always stay in touch and keep him up to date. I couldn't help but feel a little excited and scared as I felt the room with my group. This was the first time I got to go out into the field. I felt like I was ready to go out into the field, but part of me still felt like I was a rookie. The feelings were strong but I was able to push them aside and keep my cool. I was ready for this mission, and I knew my team was as well.