Separian - Book 1

Chapter 27

Mike had an overly smug look on his face. I didn't like it. Just because I'd lost and was doing what everybody else wanted me to do, including him.

He made it out as if he'd known me my whole life and what had just happened was a storybook moment that had been in the making since before Amy and I first met.

Blake was quiet, but I could feel the mutual agreement he shared with Mike's thoughts.

Samuel didn't say a word, at least not to the other two. He made sure I knew that he didn't care what I did, regardless of how Amy made me feel, but on some level I could tell he was lying. Nobody was that cold. Not even him.

Mike's eyes continued to push into me, waiting for me to react to what just happened. As we ran, I learned how comfortable he now was with me. Apparently he and I had a lot in common with one another, and that was all the reason he needed to trust me. That, and he could tell if I lied to him even before the words left me or entered my mind.

WHAT? I finally screamed, no longer able to take his growing smile. We were moving too fast for spoken words at this point.

You LOVE her? He laughed to himself and continued to lead the way. You're only sixteen, mate.

We ran for nearly twenty minutes before he stopped at a small rest-stop diner along the highway. It was barely nine thirty now.

"Why are we stopping?" I asked. "I thought you wanted to get back as soon as possible?"

"I've already informed Quinn of our whereabouts." He held up a cellphone to me and shook it. "Retro, huh? This is what they used before telepathy was around," he said, moving toward the diner. "Come on. My shout."

"I'm sorry?" I didn't understand. Not just his accent but even his choice of words were hard to follow. Was he Australian?

He sighed and entered the diner, "I'm buying."

Good thing, too. John hadn't given me two pennies to rub together before I left. I was flat broke after returning his change from last night. Where were we, anyway?

"Boonesville," Mike filled in for my curiosity. "We're roughly ten minutes worth of running from our final destination."

"Which is where, exactly?" I asked.

"You'll see when we get there." He was doing an incredible job at keeping me from figuring out our final destination. His thoughts were bouncing back and forth between his own mind and Blake's. It was a trick I very much wanted to learn. And fast. Unfortunately, Samuel didn't seem nearly as keen as I was. Not that I wanted to share my thoughts with him, given the new developments Blake and Mike had shared with me. Still, being able to shield my thoughts from nearly ninety Separian would have been nice for whenever we got to where we were going.

"Ninety-two," he corrected. His unprompted responses to my questions were getting on my nerves. "Sorry, I really don't mean to do it." So were his apologies. "It's not a conscious decision," he went on. "When you've lived with so many of our kind for as long as I have, you learn that a personal life doesn't really exist anymore. Neither do personal thoughts. Every experience you have and any experience you have ever had is on display for anyone else."

I didn't particularly want to know the answer to my next question, but I felt a compelling need to ask. "So, when you go to the bathroom..."

"Every experience," Mike said, shaking his head. "I won't lie to you. I miss the days when I could do that without an audience." Terrific. "To be honest with you, nobody takes notice of it anymore. Trust me. When you openly share the life you've had prior to meeting another Separian, after an hour or two, most things like that become a bit obsolete. But, we play music throughout the place. It helps with drowning out the unnecessary details for the new people."