Separian - Book 1

Chapter 13

After wandering around the edges of the town for a few hours, I eventually made my way to the roof of a building near the station and checked the damage. The building across the street had a roof low enough that I could hear everything going on below me and high enough that I didn't draw any suspicion.

Luke's body was no longer there. The body of Jen's other half had mysteriously vanished along with Steve's. To top it off, Jen and Steve were now missing too. But I didn't spend much time looking for them. After I'd told them to disappear, I assumed they had either taken my advice or run off to find the other Deseparian and regroup with them. Either way, it appeared that I had time to myself for now. Steve, unlike Jen, refused to take in a single word I'd spoken, and it showed with every action he took. His concern for Jen conflicted with his duty as a Deseparian and that wasn't something he'd had to balance before. When I left the station, he was just glad he wasn't forced to choose anymore.

Bar the two I'd killed, to be honest I wasn't even sure I'd done that, anymore, nobody had been seriously injured. One man had a twisted ankle and a bruised wrist; probably from when I'd been knocked backwards. Other than him, everyone else was in perfect condition. Once I'd gathered everything I could about what had happened, I turned my attention to their efforts in finding me.

Apparently somebody had removed the security camera's tapes and replaced them all with blanks. Nobody knew when it had happened. The camera's had been turned back on just after I'd left and had been recording everything since, but the tapes from seven to nine o'clock were gone. Any data on the six Deseparian had also been removed from the system. Their identities, their past work experience, everything they'd fabricated to get to where they were had disappeared with them. The technicians in charge of restoring the information had been working on it since before I came to check on them and hadn't turned up a shred of evidence.

But even more than all of that, Casey's body was no longer in the morgue. Her blood work, her prints, any physical record or evidence including her body was gone, just like the six others.

I'd spent the better half of these last few hours trying to piece together what might have happened, but all I had were theories and speculation. On the one hand, I had readily killed two people of my own volition. I hadn't wanted to do it, and looking back, I probably had other options available to me, but I did it. And now, I had to live with that. Whether or not they were actually dead, I didn't know. But I'd made the choice to do it, regardless of the outcome. And it made me sick.

I was sixteen, for crying out loud. I'd barely started my sophomore year of high school and this life seemed to take over like a virus, infecting not only my reality but my ability to adequately react to the new changes. Like murder. I assumed it would affect me even worse than waking up to a half dead woman or a completely dead one. But in the moment, I'd chosen not to think about it. Even now, I was confused about how readily I'd moved beyond it. It bothered me that it didn't bother me.

But then there was the matter of how so many bodies had disappeared. One even while I was fighting them. Luke, I was sure now, had been the one I'd injured after eliminating Jen's other half. When he dropped unconscious, the disappearance of his second half followed and re-merged with the host immediately. But when I'd killed Jen and Steve's other halves, Jen and Steve were virtually unfazed by their deaths. They had grown slower, I'd noticed that, but the same action Luke's second half took to protect the host didn't apply to Jen and Steve. Luke mentioned something about being older. Maybe the bond between host and symbiote needs longer to develop. This is all just speculation and theories, I might add. Now that all of them were gone, I had no one to ask my questions to.

When I grew bored of the never ending list, I left the rooftop and tracked down John. His safety and well-being was the only thing I cared about given everything I'd put him through tonight. Dispatch had been checking in with him every fifteen minutes or so, making sure he was still alright to work. When I finally found him, I kept a distance no less than thirty yards at all times. The clouds only grew darker, making it easy for something like me to cling to the shadows.