Separian - Book 1

Chapter 44

There wasn't a sound in the house, bar the rare opening and closing of doors. Everyone must have been asleep, but that was only an assumption. That was all I had left. Assumptions. Assumptions as to what people were thinking when I was and wasn't around.

I had been broken. I didn't know when it had happened or how. Quinn says it was after they found me, lying an inch from death in the heart of a valley one mountain over. I can only take her word for it, but she claims the field was as black as her hair and cratered as heavily as a war zone. My memory of how I ended up there, to waking up one week later, was gone.

I had been broken. My connection to Samuel had been severed as had my connection to the minds of every other Separian in this house. The moment I awoke, I knew something was wrong. Quinn and the others had entered the room as soon as my eyes opened, but I jumped when I saw how many people had suddenly gathered around me. Their movements were all invisible to me. Their thoughts inaudible. Nobody else knew how it had happened either. The fact was, I was now just an ordinary human. No hidden abilities, no heightened sense of thought processing, just a plain, run-of-the-mill human. Even my sleeping habits had been broken. When the sky grew dark, it wasn't long before I grew tired, and as the sun began to rise, I found myself waking with it.

Few people spoke to me, now that I had been stripped of my Separian status. I spent most of my hours awake in bed, recovering from the severe beating I took during our fight. Any opportunity people had to avoid walking by the room, they took. I wasn't as alert as I was before all of this, but I could hear the opening and closing of windows on my floor as day by day the number of footsteps passing by my door diminished until they stopped altogether. Now, the few I still spoke to were the ones who came to check on me. Mike, Marissa, Quinn, Nelson, as well as their other halves. Eight. Out of nearly two hundred fifty individual entities of a household, I had retained communication with eight of them. And Tacks. But she didn't speak. My demotion to plain human had shifted more than just my own views about myself, including where I ranked on the power-scale of the house. Quinn was back in charge and Mike and Marissa had resumed their positions as her first and second in command.

Mike had also taken the liberty of issuing me a suicide-watch-detail. He didn't call it that, but someone was always designated to watch over me and make sure I had everything I needed in addition to general company. Then at night, someone always stayed awake just in case I woke up and needed something. It got under my skin. I'll admit, I could not move more than a muscle on my own the first three days, but these past four I have been able to stand and walk, even if I had to use the wall as a crutch. Still, they made sure I never wanted for anything and went above the call of duty to see to it that I was beyond cared for.

Today was Marissa's and Mike's day to watch over me. It wasn't quite evening yet, so Marissa was still in the room. She would trade off with Mike at around six o'clock and then catch up on her own exercises to rehabilitate the recovering bones and muscles that had been injured during the battle. If anything, she and Mike should have been the last people watching over me. If I was the worst in the house, Mike was undoubtedly second in line. He had a full cast around his left leg that had been removed just yesterday and replaced with a splint for the next three days. Marissa came in right behind him, her arm no longer in a cast but just this morning removed and placed in a sling that she would need to wear for as long as the doctor deemed necessary.

Then, there was the doctor. Quinn and Mike made sure I understood that he, Leviathan, was Armanai. But also made sure I understood that he would not answer any questions I had about his race. That it "wasn't his place to say".

His appearance was no charade. The hang of the mansion's ceiling seemed to nearly crush him. His hair was a deep, almost grey-brown color, his eyes a light shade of brown and his skin was like polished clay against mine. Nobody bar the newer additions to the house seemed at all fascinated with him. But he couldn't have been the full package. I wasn't expecting flashing lights whenever he walked or a set of wings to sprout from his back, but other than his height, and exceptionally blemish-free skin, he looked entirely too normal to be Armanai.