STF

Zorell's Quarters- Seeking Truth

Posted Sept. 17, 2022, 10:58 p.m. by Lieutenant Junior Grade Vora Zorell (Scientist) (Lindsay B)

Vora sat at the desk in her quarters after leaving Johann’s and stared at her blank screen.

And stared.

It was just a call. Or maybe she should send a message in return? No. He had left it up to her and she had gone through the trouble of verifying his identity, so all she had to do was take the next step so they could find out if he was in fact her father.

Her father. Her father.

She had every reason to be hopeful about the outcome and yet she couldn’t quite bring herself to open the channel. It wasn’t even about Kiero Roden. Her hesitation came from opening herself up to Tenra again. Admittedly the part of that place that had tried so many times to destroy her was relatively small and wasn’t an accurate representation of an entire planet.

But try telling her subconscious that.

Turning on her console, she brought up the message and re-read it.

Dear Imrei Zorell,

There has been quite a bit of talk recently about posts that were made on a forum from a woman who had grown up in The District. At first I thought nothing of it until some colleagues were discussing them and one read a passage discussing a yellow topaz ring. It was a random detail, it could mean anything. But in that passage the author mentions that after investigating the ring seems to have been custom made. I knew right then. See, I know about the ring because I had one made just like it for a Jaisa Hass, the love of my life. Jaisa, like the ring, were lost to me but that is a long story not fit for a message like this.

It took a bit of digging, but I already knew the answer to my question: Jaisa had a child not long after she disappeared. If she kept the ring and it is indeed the one that I gave her, then you must by all logic be her daughter. I don’t know for sure if that makes you my daughter, but I highly suspect it does. With this in mind, I read the posts on that forum for myself, desperate to know more about the author, and about Jaisa.

Jaisa Torya Hass, or Torya Zorell as I learned she had changed her name too, had had a rough life. A woman from privilege she had gotten into trouble through some friends of hers. We met during a good patch of hers. I had mistakenly thought I could save her, help her move past her addiction. A few years after she disappeared, after every lead I followed dried up, I had this deep sinking suspicion one day that was she dead. I stopped looking, and it is a regret I’ve had ever since. That time coincides with you being five, of her dying.

I can’t change not being there, or the fact that I didn’t know about her child, but I know now. And what I’ve learned about you so far tells me that you have done incredible things with your life, feats unheard of for those raised in The District. I don’t want to force myself into your life if you don’t me there, but I think we owe it to ourselves to check to see if it is indeed possible that I am your father. I am happy to arrange that however you like. The simplest would be for me to send my medical record with DNA scan to compare to yours. All you have to do is ask.

Vora, I can’t change anything, except for this one thing: if I am indeed your father, then that means you are not an orphan anymore. You are not alone- you have family.

With deepest curiosity,
Kiero Roden

She read the letter again examining each word for anything that would tell her something she didn’t already know. But there was no hope for it but to simply call the man and find out for sure.

Vora initiated the call. And waited.

Fifteen minutes later, there was a beep that told her the connection had been made and her screen shifted. He was just like the images he had seen, but there was something else there that was hard to see in those photographs: delight.

“Vora, you called.”

She could tell he was trying to tamp down on his emotions, but they were written all over his face in those eyes that were so like hers. “I honestly kept trying to find a reason not to, to think it a trap or a scheme of some kind. But the story you gave was… compelling.”

“So you think it’s true then.”

Vora nodded. “I want to confirm by DNA analysis, but yes, I think it’s very likely that you are my father.”

[To be continued…]

~Vora Zorell, Sciences


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