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Chapter 16

Life in Totality

When Sara came to she was surrounded by bright lights and noises the likes of which she had never heard before. Silence, an eerie and penetrating silence. There were white walls, but she could see the outlines of panels, dark crevices biting into the flesh of the structure and making neat squares out of the...

"Ah!" she screamed, sitting bolt upright on the bed, light white sheets fluttering to her lap. She was in a cold sweat, and her eyes were blurry, the bright white light making her head throb and her consciousness fight her body for her senses back. She couldn't remember what happened, couldn't remember why she was here, or where here was in the first place. She braced her head as a wracking pain seized her brain and she collapsed back onto the bed.

Suddenly there was the sound of a door opening and soft footfalls of something approaching.

Sara braced herself as she opened her stinging eyes and saw a cup in front of her, along with two green pills on a tray. She didn't know what made her take them, but she swallowed the pills dry and then swigged the water until the cup was dry as well.

Within seconds the pain was gone and she could think clearly again, her eyes beginning to fade into focus as the room stopped moving and shifting and swaying.

Then a voice spoke, an old but calm and gentle voice, "So you are his saviour, eh?" It said, "I would have expected someone older, but it is all the same in the end."

What was the voice talking about? Thought Sara, who blinked and opened her eyes wide as she sat back up. Her voice came dry and cracking when she tried to ask, and the old someone produced another cup of water from somewhere. She still wasn't sure she was awake or still dreaming. At least the pain was gone.

"What are you talking about?" she asked, turning her whole body to face the old someone, seeing a pale hand resting on one knee and then the other on another knee. Skin, she noted, and frail. The person was sitting down on a wooden chair right beside the bed.

"Oh?" said the voice calmly again, "You were my son's saviour so many months ago were you not?"

"I don't know your son. I know a human?" she asked, swaying a little, her words slightly slurred.

"Come now, surely you remember Varian? You're the only thing he's been talking about for the past month."

"Var... Vari... month?" she asked, not being able to focus.

"Yes, you've been asleep for a whole month. Down to the minute in fact. I do believe it's a new record for-"

"-Varian!" she yelled, "Where is he? Is Varian all right?" Sara became panicked and her sweat broke out again. Her muscles were stiff with lack of use and she tried with great effort to swing her leaden body off the bed, only to collapse in a heap on the floor.

"Come now, this will not do. I am too old to lift someone your size anymore." There was a snapping of fingers and then Sara felt some cold hands grasp under her arms and hoist her back into the bed, laying her out flat, and then leaving. If her mind had been working fully she would have noticed that they were not the old man's hands, even though he was the only other person in the room.

"Please... I need to see Varian... please let me see him..." she begged, reaching out to grasp the old man's jacket. She clutched tightly on him and pulled him down closer to her. She finally got a good look at his face. Nothing remarkable, not even a very handsome or distinguished look for an old man, but she could tell he was old, if the deep wrinkles on his cheek and around his forehead were any indication. Come to think of it, she had never seen anyone quite so... old... or bald... or...

The light faded from her eyes and the last thing she heard was "Well, I suppose there's no harm in it. Better he wakes you than me anyway."

"Sara? Sara! Please wake up... please." She could here a familiar sound, like... words. And her name... her name was in there somewhere. Please? Her mind failed to respond, but she could feel her body waking up, eyes closed, and darkness still consuming her brain. She was sitting up, she knew from the way her weight shifted.

"Sara! You're... awake?" came the familiar voice again, troubled. Where had she heard the voice before? There was a name for that voice... and it started with an upside-down A... without the middle connecting section... a V. And then if you connect the dots it rhymed with Var... but that wasn't all of it. She was lying down again, she knew from the way her weight shifted, and from the comfy pillow around her head. Her ears twitched and she felt warm breath on her cheek as the voice begged Please to not fall asleep again; to wake up.

"Varian?" she said. "Varian. Varian. Varian. Varian. Varian. Varian! Varian..." her body shuddered and convulsed, her back arching off the bed and her arms thrashing out to either side. Her fist bit down on something hard and recoiled thrashing out a little lower instead as though sentient. Her eyes opened and were blinded by the lights again, closing instantly and taking in nothing.

"Sara! Sara can you hear me? Please, snap out of it! Sara!"

An old voice joined in, "Hold her down boy the straps on the side of the bed will work. That's it." She couldn't feel her legs, but she could... they were struggling. And her arms, they were struggling too. She wasn't breathing, her lungs burned for air and she struggled some more and then felt something tugging down at her chest and holding her in place, then her head too. Her convulsions stopped and she felt a soft hand on her face. She tried to recoil but couldn't.

"Please wants to stop playing now papa... please wants to go home! Make the touches stop. The dark and the light are scary! Make the world stop being light and dark and please will stop being... good night... can't sleep! Warm milk is healthy and makes please sleep." She was crying and sweating and struggling against her bonds. Then she felt something prick her neck and she struggled again. She could feel the air returning to her lungs and her muscles stop shaking. She was relaxing again. "Please Sara... Varian wants to go home... Varian can save... please Sara... Varian wants to go home..." and she continued like that for a long time. Her mind was blank but racing, filled with thoughts and clear, viscous images. She was cold and wet and could see home. An oasis in the desert with ice cream and chocolate but it tasted grainy and course, like sand. She couldn't eat her desert oasis. "Varian loves please Sara wants to go home. Home, where..." her body shuddered, her voice dry but calm, "Sara wants to go home with Varian. Sara loves Varian, wants Varian to love her again, wants to go home."

Her body was crying and there was nothing that Varian could do at all but watch. He cried too, as he regarded her calm body, asleep, in a dream perhaps, but saying such things when he was right there.

"She's saying what's on her mind, what she's bottled up or never said. Her mind needs to filter out what it can't hold," said an old voice from behind him.

Varian stifled a tear, wiped it away with his paw and nearly recoiled from his father's hand placed gently on his shoulder. That human hand. All the truths he had learned in the past month, the things he would have been better off not knowing. And now Sara. He waited in agony all those weeks, watching her sleeping calmly and finally on the verge of waking she falls back like this, slipping away from him, farther and farther away. He slipped out, leaving his father, the old man, and turning into an enormous room full of experiments and test tubes and strange coloured liquids. His father... his creator, built everything, and him, his second greatest achievement. He needed to see the first again.

The lab was truly great; hundreds of sleeping, unaware experiments lined one wall far behind a massive machine, cylindrical, used to move things from one place to another. It had yet to be tested... at least successfully. There were still traces of blood on the steps from where the top half of a rat had tried to crawl its way to freedom. Varian looked at it in disgust and then passed through the lab entirely, into a smaller corridor and through a small set of doors on his right. Carved right out of the stone he entered a room with a single light and a great metallic wall on the far side. This was where his first greatest creation resided, and Varian looked up to his sister, pinned to the wall with her arms stretched out and her glowing white eyes perpetually staring off into the far distance, as though they could see everything beyond the thick stone walls of the underground chamber. Varian knew that that was exactly what she was doing.

"Sara is in trouble," said Varian looking up with pity at his sister.

"A negative response from close proximity with beings of higher consciousness and greater power," responded the golden haired female mechanically.

"I want to help her." He said.

"Original purpose: see the world, experience all things, live life to totality. Purpose yet unfulfilled, she will not wake in presence of beings of higher consciousness and greater power."

"Then you're saying I'm to blame?" he screamed at her, the doll of his sister on the wall.

"Incorrect. Test subject Varian is not of higher consciousness or greater power. His mind acts positively to visitor Sara, being of lower consciousness and lesser power. Test subject Varian knows said fact."

"What can I do?" he said desperately.

"Test subject Varian can do what he intended all along. Father Karsus knows how to cure visitor Sara, but will not. Blind pride and success in greatest creations will destroy visitor Sara if not wakened."

This burnt Varian to the core and he made to dash off, turning quickly to regard his sister, his father's first and greatest creation. He turned again and was suddenly stopped by an immense power tugging back at him. It was his sister, reaching out for him as he might have done with his powers. Then she spoke, something that had never happened as far as Varian knew without provocation. Her voice was sad, soft, and beautiful. It was like listening to an angel speak, and Varian turned to her once more, listening intently.

"I have missed my brother Varian," she said, "Please do not be so hasty to go. I want..." her eyes deepened and the glow dissipated, her body taking on more of an earthly look. "I know what you must do to save her, but it is not my place to say it. I want..." her voice became more mechanical again, her body having trouble suppressing the emotionless task of seeing future events before they happen. She was blushing though, Varian noted. "I want... my brother Varian... I want... I want," her eyes flickered white and then back to their normal blue. "I don't want... don't want... I don't want to be here anymore... anymore... please, when she wakes... take me with you. But don't go... I want... I want to feel my brother's hand." Her voice was cracking, Varian had little time before she became overwhelmed again, and so moved quickly, hoisting himself up on hands of mental energy to her height, looking her in the eyes and leaning forward. His hand grazed her cheek and she sighed, leaning into it. Then she craned her head forward as much as she could and kissed him, smiling happily before the bonds on her wrists and ankles snapped tighter, holding her to the wall again.

"I promise not to leave you here. I'll come for you when she wakes, I swear it," said Varian, his intent and purpose spelt clearly on his face.

"I know you will." Was the last thing she said as the wall glowed white again and her eyes dulled over with light. He left the room a little more sober.

His father, many years ago, had created them, Varian reminded himself. First his sister, whom could see far into the past and the future. Her power had been too much for the girl to handle and so before she destroyed herself he had built that wall, a kind of limiter, feeding her visions at a pace she could handle and respond to, though still do nothing about. She had seen everything from the start of creation to the end of it and could recall nothing. Visions blurred together in her mind and though she was his first and greatest experiment, she was also his least useful. Then Varian came, with the power to see into the immediate present, react instantly to anything and everything around him. His mental power was not nearly on the level of his sister and his body was able to handle the stress, though it had made him easily influenced by outside sources. His father had explained when Varian asked why only he had transformed, that his body took on the characteristics of the ones closest to him as a means to control his abilities. In his case, the one he became most close to was Sara, which is why he took on his form. "It's not permanent, I can change you back into a human if you like," his father had told him. "No," replied Varian, "I want to stay like this for Sara." Varian stopped in the dark hallway, leaning up against the wall and looked at the door next to him. He pushed it open and went inside, regarding his brother.

His brother, the third creation and final of his siblings. He was given the power to see the future, but what he had gained in mental prowess, he had lacked in the ability to interpret it. All the images he saw were of almost no use to him. He could see great disaster but lacked the mental command to filter it for meaning or context. All his visions were out of order and were of destruction, pain, and suffering. His brother had become twisted, delighting in the pain of others, relished in it. When he had realized that Varian was the only one who could control his mind's thoughts, he had ambushed him and sent him off to the farthest reaches of the world, whatever happened to him would be of no consequence, and in any case, with Varian gone, he would be his father's favourite son.

Varian looked at his brother's body. It had been separated into pieces. How easily it was done, with such precision, Varian noted. His brother was still alive though, simply unable to harness his mental powers. His brother leered at Varian as he entered, cold and calculating eyes digging into Varian's every step. His arms were on opposite sides of the room, and his legs... well, he wasn't sure where those were. There was a gaping hole in his chest where a tube was pumping in his vital fluids, keeping him alive.

"Was it worth it?" asked Varian, taking a moment to recall why it was that his brother had been punished like this in the first place. The fight in the entrance hall nearly killing him. Had it not been for the intervention of their father both he and Sara would have surely been killed.

His brother chuckled with a grave and excited voice, all the twisted ambitions coming from his lips were just the tip of the iceberg, as Varian had said after speaking with him the first time. "I have a room all to myself. I'm alive and well, and in a little while my father will come back and put me back together again. I'm not even in any pain!" his voice became shrill with laughter. "This is a vacation Varian. I'll see you destroyed, just like that little panther bitch. I'll be sure to send you to the farthest reaches of space and time. But it'll be in the future, so I can see it, watch you squirm in agony as the world's destruction rains down upon you in torrents of fire and ice and blistering pain! This is wonderful. I can even see it now."

"Your powers are gone," said Varian simply.

His brother sneered and barked out angrily, "So what? Once I'm whole again my powers will come back. I promise you Varian; I will see you and everything you hold dear destroyed. For my father, I will be his favourite... and I can't have you here to do that!"

"Your powers won't come back. They won't because I'm going to reverse the process. I'm going to make all our powers go away... it doesn't work on just one... it has to be on all of us."

His brother was silent. Suddenly scared, filled with a quake of fear that even his separated limbs could feel. "But, wait. You'll kill me... I need my powers. It's all I am. Please, don't take them away! I hate you! I'll kill you for this! No!" his disposition went from scared to intense in a matter of moments and for a brief second Varian wondered if it was really himself that attracted all the schizophrenics. Birds of a feather after all.

"Goodbye Darius." Varian finally used his brother's name and the boy stopped speaking at once, beginning to cry.

"You've never used my name before... My brother knows my name. I've wanted so long to hear it from you... I want to hear it again."

"I'm going to reverse the process Darius. None of us will have our powers any longer."

"My name, my name, say it again, please, brother. Say it..."

"Darius..." said Varian softly, pitying his brother, turning to leave. As he was almost out the door he heard his brother say something under his breath. "I hate you brother Varian, but I love you." As the doors closed Varian could hear the sobs of his brother coming from inside and a tug at his heart pulled him in the direction of the lab, where he knew he could stop everything all at once.

The lab was dimly lit, and his father was diligently working away at some other experiment, probably causing some other innocent creature immense pain in the name of science. Varian loathed his father but paid him no heed. He made for the door in the direction of Sara's room again, turning suddenly as he approached and then following a brief walkway to a machine against the wall. It wasn't labelled, and it was out of the way, surrounded on all sides by an impenetrable barrier, operable only by a punch code, which Varian knew already. One thing his father did not know about him was his other ability, to adapt and grow his powers. He didn't only see the immediate future, but the thoughts of those around him as well. And as soon as he had found the device in his father's mind, he had found the pass code as well. Varian input the code and breathed hard as a flashing light began to blink, casting its yellow light all around him, alerting his father. He had only to pull the switch in the back and the means by which the three siblings remained the way they were would be destroyed, quickly draining them of all their powers. Varian lifted his hand to the switch, grasping hold of it when he heard two words in a language he didn't know and froze up, his entire body seized by an uncontrollable force.

"I thought you would try something like this Varian. You pity your brother and sister, their powers, and yours. You think that they create suffering." His father approached slowly, stopping beside Varian and looking gravely at him, his old eyes and wrinkled skin digging into him.

"They do create suffering... only suffering." The force binding Varian became tighter. "You do not even speak to my sister, you do not show my brother what he wants most... they only see what it is you make them see, and you have ignored the results. We are not your greatest creations... we are your greatest failures. You can't even stand the sight of us... we were only created so that you could say you succeeded for once."

His father looked at him sternly, his gaze never faltering. "You are a disappointment Varian. And I thought after you had come home after so long you would be happy to learn the truth of your invention. This is how you repay your creator? You want to destroy what he has created?"

His voice was almost sarcastic. Varian sensed it in his mind that the old man wasn't really hearing what he said. "Please let us go... we have been your ornaments and your disappointments and your failures for so long... we don't want to be here anymore..." It was the first time Varian had referred to he and his siblings as a group and not individually. Varian was choking for breath as the bindings tightened.

"Varian, you don't see, you are not my failures. You are my greatest creations."

"You have fooled yourself into believing that. Yet you don't speak to us... you hang us on walls, you carve up our bodies like meat and hang them up... why? Because you can... we are nothing to you. You didn't even come looking for me... I was so close to you for so long and yet you remained here... you are a frightened old man... and..." Varian's voice was cut off.

"I won't tell you again Varian. You are disappointing me greatly. You don't want to do that to me? Your father, do you?" he asked.

The bindings loosened somewhat and Varian took in a great heaving breath. "I have grown out of the need for your approval father. I no longer wish to be here and..." he paused a moment, "It's over." During the talk Varian had been moving himself so slowly that his father hadn't even noticed. The switch clicked down and the yellow light stopped flickering. The bindings around Varian dissipated and he stood up, looking over himself. He could feel his powers waning and smiled. Then something unexpected happened. He could see. Not just see with his mind, he could see with his eyes. Both of them. As his power fell away from him so did his inabilities. He flexed his right arm, the sensations running through it incredible... pain and... his leg as well. He swallowed hard, tasting his own saliva. He took a step and didn't limp... it was the first time he had ever done that. He was on the verge of crying as he regarded his hands and then he felt a sharp stinging pain running over his back. His father struck him again.

"No! No! No! No! No! How dare you! How dare you Varian!" he raised the steel pipe high in the air above Varian's back, meaning to break him once and for all, but Varian rose and caught the pipe and wrenched it from his father's hands. Luckily his father couldn't swing very hard. Varian regarded his father with contempt and for a moment contemplated breaking him instead. "You fool...." said his father from the floor, "This place is powered by the energies your sister creates... without it..." suddenly there was a shattering scream coming from the direction he had just come from. His brother's room.

He rushed in that direction as the scream faded to silence. Varian burst through the doors and was greeted with a sight he would never have been prepared for. Without the powers of his sister feeding energy to the structure, the machines holding Darius together had been unravelled. The boy was strapped to the wall, limbless and lifeless, every ounce of blood in a pool around his body. Varian fought back the urge to vomit and backed away. He had killed his brother...

"No..." he whispered, staring at the gory mess around him. He fled from the room and burst through the doors to his sister. There she was, lying face down on the floor, her braces having come undone and letting her fall to the cold hard stone below. Varian held his sister in his lap. She was still breathing and he stroked her cheek softly.

"Varian," she smiled, opening her beautiful eyes and speaking in a weak and yet no less lovely voice. "I knew you would do this... I cannot see it anymore Varian... all the images are gone... I do not know what is ahead of you anymore... or behind... I..." her voice was growing weaker and Varian looked suddenly panicked, cradling her closer to him.

"Please don't go," he said to her, "Please don't leave me..."

She managed a weak chuckle. "Do not be sad Varian. I knew you were going to do this... that is why I could not, did not tell you. Our powers were the only things keeping us alive all this time, but they brought us so much pain. But you are different. You are the only one who could adapt to life without your powers, you do not need them." She gasped and he held her tighter, bracing her against his chest as his eyes began to tear up.

"I'm sorry Iris. I never would have... if I only knew..."

"That is why I did not tell you, silly," she replied. "Please forgive your brother, and tell him goodbye for me, okay?" She couldn't have been any older than 15. He had killed his sister as well.

He took her hand and squeezed it, felt her squeeze back. "I will, don't worry." His tears began slipping onto her face, down her pale and flawless skin.

"Do not be sad Varian. I missed you so much all this time, so did your brother. I am glad to have seen you again." Her grip was loosening.

"Iris... Iris, I'm sorry, please... I'm sorry." Varian begged, his tears falling freely now as he watched the life dry up from his sister's eyes.

Her hand lost its grip completely and she was gone, leaving him to cradle her body in his lap as he cried and cried.

"Varian?" came a voice from behind him. He didn't look up. The black furred form of Sara crouched down beside him and looked over the body in his lap. She didn't know what was happening, but she wrapped her arms around him anyway. "It's all right Varian. I won't leave you alone anymore."