Lex trudged down the stairs and into the kitchen.
Around the old lime-green dining table sat her family: Brackus, Maggie, Mike, Kai, Ruby and Mel, all digging into their dinner. Even though Mel and Kai were younger than Lex, both towered over her, the full Empyrean height fully unleashed. Meanwhile, Lex was the size of half an Empyrean. Another thing her illness had stolen from her.
Her stomach growled again, drawing the attention of her grandmother. Maggie's hair was smoke white, her little wrinkled hands holding her spoon as carefully as her surgeon's scalpel, and her white smock stained even after constant washing. She was short, like Lex, due to also having Deployment Damage syndrome.
"There you are, mio caro," Maggie said in musical Western Empyrean.
Lex switched to Empyrean too. "Avia—"
"Don't 'Avia' me, you puer stultum," Maggie snapped back. "You're late to dinner, and after Melissa so graciously cooked for us too."
Nodding glumly, Lex dragged her feet to her usual spot between Brackus and Ruby. She prayed they didn't ask her about her day. She didn't want to talk about the interview.
Brackus's hair was the dull red of a wilting rose, with whisps of silver-grey along the sides of his head. Unlike his wife, Brackus was a bulky man, even in his old age, with thick arms, thicker shoulders and tall enough to reach the top shelf unaided. He had a mechanical left hand; the bronze plate popped open as he fiddled at the wires with a Maketonian screwdriver. While the maintenance continued, he read an old book made of real paper beside his bowl of green algae stew.
Across from them, Mike, Lex's older brother, was the spitting image of their late father, from his burly arms to the ever-present 'thinking frown'. Crimson roots bled into his recently bleached hair; a decision that he claimed, time and again, had nothing to do with his breakup with Bell. Tired from more than heartache, his long days helping Brackus in the forge had Mike acting like he was ready to retire at nineteen.
"What are you reading, Grandpa?" Lex said and tore into the stew. It was lukewarm but Lex had a hole inside that stew filled up just fine—unlike the salty protein brick born from Mel's last attempt at housewifery.
"Call him Avus, not 'Grandpa', mio caro," Maggie grimaced. "Use your Empyrean, especially in front of little Rubia. She has problems already; best to be a proper role model for her. Rubia! Elbows down and keep at least arm's length from your soror; being so indecently close is not Empyre true."
"Alex, talk with your sister," Brackus said, so distracted the words tumbled out in plain Graexian. "And consider a shower, eh? You smell like Mike after a maintenance call."
"I don't—"
"Don't worry so much, Alex," Brackus said, a little spring bouncing free of his arm and into his stew. He peered aside at her. "Is there something more than stinking pits we should be talking about?" He meant her interview.
"No, there's nothing," Lex said, finding it hard to keep a straight face as Brackus fished his spring from the algae, licked it clean and popped it back in his arm.
Lex turned to Ruby, the scrawny ten-year-old with the largest, reddest eyes Lex had ever seen. She sat with her little grey toga all in a mess, and Tooth's neon blue eyes poking out from her cloud of tangled red hair. Tooth had ears resembling the cats of Old Earth, and if Lex listened, she could hear a soft purr.
"Brackus, your mother tongue, for Rubia's sake," Maggie said. "If we do not hold ourselves to the Empyre true way of things, then we will have become Graexian barbarians! And Rubia, that better not be that beast of yours, is it?"
Sensing danger, Tooth's blue eyes vanished deeper into her hair. Ruby squirmed as she tried to maintain her innocent smile. "No? Tooth is a good boy, all locked up in his cage." Her lips teetered between giggling and a firm smile.
"Ruby," Lex said, trying to save her smallest sister from Maggie's questioning. "Your hair is lovely today."
"It is a bride's braid, Lexie, Mel taught it to me!" Ruby said, grabbing Lex's hand to sweep her fingers across the messily woven clump. "Empyre true, this means I will be married!" Ruby was so excited she forgot to speak Empyrean. A tiny, purple-furred tail swished out from Ruby's back.
Maggie's scowl eased into a smile.
"Yes, good, dear, it is the Empyrean way to look forward to your matrimony. But what about you, Michael? Has a nice Empyrean girl caught your eye, hmm?" The old woman had a hunger in her gaze and Mike shrank before her. "What of that lovely Bellatrix Straza you used to go on about, when is she next coming for dinner?"
Mike looked like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole.
"What about you, Alexandra, has a strapping young uomo caught your eye? Can I be expecting little babes waddling around anytime soon?" Maggie's beacon-bright eyes seared into Lex's soul. "You'll soon be of marrying age, but then again, perhaps waiting for an Upstairs uomo would be best before starting your own familia?"
Lex smiled, and turned back to Ruby, Mike forced to suffer the interrogation alone.
"Are you learning lots in school, little squib?"
"SQUIB?" Ruby's eyes widened with outrage. "I am not! Also, do we have to eat this?" Ruby peered shrewdly across the table, then leaned closer to Lex's waiting ear. "Grandma keeps the crackers on the top shelf."
Lex patted her shoulder. "I understand, agent Ruby—"
"—I slaved away for an hour to make that stew, the least you can do is eat it," Mel scowled. Melissa, while only fifteen years old, had the frazzled nerves of a divorcee. Dolled up with the latest Viol Vex skin softeners, brown hair dye and matching contact lenses, she could almost pass for a Graexian. "Eat what I made or go back to your room."
Mel's own bowl was almost overflowing, this being her third unsuccessful cycle of her UltraGain diet that she swore Viol Vex used to get her own thick curves.
"Melissa, watch your manners. It is not Empyrean proper to act like an ebrius nauta fresh from the barge," Maggie said, lancing her middle granddaughter with an evil eye. Lex slowly translated ebrius nauta into 'drunken sailor', then laughed. "You two are soror, and you will act like familia for as long as you live under my roof, breathe my air and eat my food."
The air was indeed lacking dust or fumes; a vent blew from the ceiling, the faded red sticker beside it reading: Perseus 18% O is the people's choice for affordability and quality! Lex wished Maggie would give them the same pure stuff she gave her patients. Medical-grade air always left Lex buzzing.
To think entire buildings Upstairs were full of such sweet oxygen. As a child, she had never appreciated what it was like to have as much sweet air as she could breathe.
"Oh please," Melissa sneered. "We might be sisters, but you don't need to pretend to be our parents. They could have afforded higher-calorie food!"
"You watch your tone, Melissa Vulcan, or it'll be to the shower then bed," Maggie said, with her cybernetics clicking warningly overhead. "Now apologise."
"Speaking of showers," Lex cut in. "If we're all here, why is the bathroom engaged?" Lex peered in everyone's eye, save Kai who hid behind his red curtain of hair at his most distant corner of the table.
"I reserved it," Mel said imperiously. "So that I can have a nice long bath after cooking all day." She still spoke in Graexian and poor Maggie looked lost for words.
"All day cooking this?" Lex downed a spoonful of her vanishing green sludge and wrinkled her brows. Gritty. But despite the taste, Lex was hungry enough for three bowls at least. "This is one of those instant recipes. Couldn't have taken more than ten minutes, less if you had let Mike cook."
"Alexandra," Maggie sighed. "Mel wanted to try making enough food for her diet. Leave your soror be. And Melissa, mio caro, to speak our language is to keep our culture alive—"
"Yeah, Alexandra," Mel sneered. "You're giving me a bad name at school. People think I'm weird because you can't even dye your hair. How'd your interview go, by the way? Did they smell the stink of scaeg—"
"MELISSA VULCAN, APOLOGISE THIS INSTANT!" Maggie roared, then coughed, and pressed a hand to her chest. The old woman deflated like a burst balloon.
"I'm not a Vulcan," Mel said and threw her bowl to smash against the wall. "I never asked to be!" She ran through the kitchen and up the stairs, Maggie wheezing soft words as she followed on her spider legs.
Lex grimaced. She hoped Mel would be okay; she knew she would, but her words still pained her and made her defective heart twinge.
"Kai, how have you been?" Lex said in careful Empyrean.
Kai shrugged; he was only thirteen, and already taller than Lex. If Lex had the credits, she would bet they had another mountain like Mike and Brackus on their hands. Although, a very quiet, reserved and soulful mountain. Maggie always said Mike and their dead father, Axel, had both been the exact same way at Kai's age.
As Lex would have been if she wasn't born with a defective heart.
Finishing her meal, Lex marched around the table to stand beside Mike. Facing the darkglass that hung on the wall, she watched an animated hololoop of a waving Axel and pregnant Aesara standing before a massive Spectre-class battle droid—the droid House Vulcan had driven to war for a hundred years.
These days, the Emperor let his jackals pilot their new 'Imperial Knights' without the proper rites, care, code nor sense of duty to the ordinary people of the land. The warcaste had been the guards at the door, keeping the chimorah, the bandits and the corrupt at bay. And now their noble Spectres were used to protect corruption—despicable.
Other hololoops held Lex's—mostly dead—family as they wore their finest red togas and smiled for the optic. Bundles of red-haired children swaddled in red cloth, Lex, Mel and Kai included. Lex smirked at a child-sized Mike picking his nose.
But the hololoop with Brackus in his centurion steel was her favourite. His glinting fists would have put Manny Grave in his place, the ream of medals would have dazzled the interviewers into submission. That red shard key around his neck, the same key hidden in the wall of Lex's room, would have amazed and delighted everyone at school.
If only things had remained as they should, and House Vulcan still protected the caverns surrounding the Great Engine of Caesium. If only their family, their people, their way of life hadn't been shattered like Mel's plate—their broken remnants swept up and dumped into this dustbin of an enginestate.
Lex closed her eyes and smiled; her mind filled with what life could have been. In a world where she knew exactly who she was and what to do. The dream was perfect.
Lex opened her eyes, her family around her, the reverberation in the floor indicating the auto-factory next door had begun the next order. Lex could still make this work; she could get Upstairs and brush that matter with Manny Grave under the carpet and be everything her grandparents hoped she would be.
She could fulfil her duty to serve the family: she just had to try harder.
"Kai, can you help me with my homework?" Ruby slouched in her seat. "It's hard. I have to know all the dumb animals that don't exist anymore." A smile crept onto her face. "Although I like the cats, they remind me of Tooth! I tried finding Tooth a squib to chase, and feeding him vatmilk, but Tooth only eats plasma."
Tooth's eyes flared within the folds of Ruby's toga as the creature's bright purple tail swished expectantly.
"No, Tooth," Ruby whispered down her toga. "Not food time yet." The tail sagged and the bright blue eyes dimmed.
"Okay," Kai said, a smile peeking out from behind his mop of crimson hair. "Are you ready now?"
Ruby beamed as she ran upstairs. Kai collected the empty plates, including the broken pieces of Mel's, and brought them to the kitchen. Lex dropped a key to a storage locker into Mike's waiting hand, then made for her room.
"Hey," Mike said, and Lex paused in the kitchen. "I have to take a service call. I'll be taking the truck. Can I meet you there?" Lex cocked her head. Was her brother really going to make her head to Third alone? She doubted her heart could take the strain.
"Meet you where?" Brackus said and turned a page. "Tonight's a Red Night."
"The library," Lex said evenly. Brackus didn't comment; he trusted her, he always had, which only made it so much harder to nod at Mike. Not only was she going to fight a real droid in Third for the first time, but she would also catch her first hovertrain downcity.
"And yeah, I'll see you there," Lex said and slipped upstairs to get changed.