Chapter Twenty Five - Part One: Thralls
Leta woke early the next morning after a blessedly uneventful night, well rested and feeling great thanks to the recent healing.
She tested her wrist, shaking it and experimenting with the new bones but found it just as functional as before.
Satisfied with the update, she got dressed and readied herself for a day of training and work at the museum. Unfortunately, this task ended up being a bit more difficult than expected. She'd gone from an American pant size twelve to a loose size eight in less than 48 hours, rendering nearly all of her clothes too big to be fashionable.
She was able to use shoelaces from a pair she wasn't using to tighten the sides of her pants and resigned herself to wearing the only long-sleeved shirt she'd brought with her. It was a decidedly less dignified outfit than she would have liked, but at least it was presentable for a museum intern.
Koa and Hayato were already at the apartment, sitting with her team at the kitchen table discussing history subjects and eating pancakes.
She could hear the usually quiet Chandi excitedly conversing with Hayato about Indian weapons such as the Katar and the Chakram. Hayato, for his part, seemed just as interested in the topic and was excitedly outlining a comparison between the Indian Trishul and the Japanese Bishamon Yari when Leta arrived.
'Of course, the Assassin is a subject expert on weapons.' She mused.
Vigo, who was once more in charge of cooking, looked up from flipping a pancake when she entered the room. His initial smile fell as he took in her thinner cheeks and baggy clothes.
"Are you sick?"
His question had everyone's heads turning in her direction, even Hayoto and Koa's eyes going wide at her appearance.
Leta knew she'd get a reaction at how changed her appearance was after last night's upgrade, but she didn't think it would elicit such a response.
"I'm fine, I promise. Not a dent in the fender, as my dad would say." She tried to brush off the comment with humor, but it wasn't sticking.
"You've lost a lot of weight," Chandi stated the obvious for everyone.
Dr. Galloise frowned, putting her fork down, "Too much weight."
"I'm fine." Leta repeated firmly, but her mentor wasn't having any of it.
"No, you're not. A kilogram a week is a healthy weight loss. You've obviously lost a lot more than that in the last 24 hours."
"When did you last eat?" Vigo chimed in.
"You were literally sitting right next to me last night during dinner." She shot back, getting annoyed and defensive as everyone seemed to gang up on her.
"Maybe it's an after-effect of the coral's poison?" Chandi suggested.
Leta had never used Persuasion on her team to get them to ignore her weird actions recently, but she was sorely tempted right then.
"Look, guys!" Leta's voice came out an octave higher than she would have liked, strained with trying to fight an approaching migraine. "I'm really fine. If it was the coral toxins, I would have a lot of other symptoms like fever and vomiting, right? But I don't have any of that."
She could see the group really taking a look at her, seeing the healthy flush in her cheeks and glowing clear skin. Her eyes were bright and her posture was strong and confident.
She didn't look sick. Quite the opposite, in fact. She looked like a young woman bursting at the seams with potential.
"I feel great." Leta continued, "I appreciate you're concern, but you don't have to worry. I promise if I start feeling bad, I'll let you guys know. Just trust in me to be able to tell whether I'm sick or not."
Dr. Galloise sighed in resignation, leaning back in her chair. "Okay, fine. I can't say I'm not concerned about this sudden weight loss, but we'll just monitor it for now. If you so much as go to the bathroom wrong, you will tell me, capesh?"
Leta wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Gross, but okay."
Koa pulled out a chair for her to take a seat at the table. "Coral toxins?" He asked innocently, feigning ignorance of her situation.
That pulled the team into a retelling of the accident that brought Leta into the world of the Arisen from their point of view. For their part, Koa and Hayoto acted concerned and relieved at all the correct times, Hayoto's actually being realistic as he had not heard the full story yet.
Vigo put a plate stacked high with pancakes in front of her, and it would be a lie if Leta didn't admit that she'd been very unladylike in consuming her breakfast.
She chalked it up to needing an extra boost of energy after last night's updates, but in all honesty, the pancakes were phenomenal.
Over orange juice, Koa informed the team that he and Hayoto would be picking Leta up for the foreseeable future as they lived 'relatively close by' and their rental flat was on the way to the museum.
'If by relatively close by you mean three floors above us…' She mused, dabbing up maple syrup with the last bite of pancake.
As she was listening to Koa talk about logistics with Dr. Annika, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as the sensation of being watched overcame her.
Leta turned to look out the kitchen window and saw someone standing on the balcony of the apartment complex across the road.
A typical thing to see, except that the middle-aged woman was staring right at their building, unblinking eyes fixed on their building.
A cold feeling of dread started in her chest and sent chills down her body as she watched the woman standing there. She wasn't moving around, just staring slack-jawed like a zombie at their building.
Leta took her dish to the sink, trying to act casual as she moved to get a better look.
In the apartment to her right, an older man in his seventies was standing at his balcony like a sentinel with vacant.
To her left a girl who looked to be in her teens, staring out from her balcony wearing her pajamas.
Leta stifled a gasp when she saw that there was someone on every balcony on that side of the building, all watching, waiting.
When she stepped up to the sink, all heads turned to her, vacant eyes boring into their window as if they had been waiting for her.
She jumped in shock, her fingers losing grip on her plate which shattered on the laminate kitchen floor.
The conversation behind her stopped at the sudden jarring noise, words of concern floating to her but Leta was too transfixed on the dead eyes watching her from across the road.
"I-I'm okay. Just slipped." She responded, pulling herself down as quickly as she could to get out of their line of sight.
Koa saw the look in her eyes as she pretended to pick up the pieces, eyes going to the window and seeing what was beyond.
"On that lovely note, I think we're done with breakfast." He said with a jovial tone, but with his back to the team, only Leta saw his eyes narrow on their watchers. "Leta, why don't you grab your bag? I'll get this cleaned up."
Leta crab walked out of the line of sight, picking up pieces of broken ceramic with as normal of a "Yeah, sure, of course." as she did.
Out of view of the window, she straightened and hurried to her room with a brisk walk, grabbing her messenger bag and slipping into a hoodie. She'd watched enough true crime shows to try and change her outfit enough so she wouldn't be completely recognizable from a distance.
Dr. Galloise frowned, "You know it's going to get to be thirty-five degrees Celsius today, right?"
"The museum gets cold."
"Look at that, we're going to miss our bus." Hayoto said almost robotically as he tried to act nonchalant. "Let's get going, Leta. It was great meeting you all. Chandi, great talk!"
Dr. Galloise and Vigo both looked confused by their brisk exit but Leta and her escorts were already out the front door.
"What the hell was that?" Leta huffed as they rounded the corner and headed for the stairwell."
"Thralls." Koa bit out, "and a lot of them."
"What the hell is a thrall?"
"Blessed victims, probably the vampire." Hayoto retorted, "They're like a sleeper agent, totally normal until something triggers them to follow a set order."
"You're mentor, Dr. Galloise, was a thrall until Ismene removed her beguiling."
Leta gulped at Koa's words, flashes of vacant eyes and fingers digging into her throat reminding her of what a thrall was capable of.
"What do we do?"
"Run!" Hayoto shouted as they reached the street level, sprinting down the street into the rising sunlight, menacing echos of what sounded like the hiss of snakes on their heels.