“How did I get here? Is this real?” She gazed around. It felt real enough. Not like being in a memory or a dream. Perhaps she was wrong. “Or am I in the Cimerian’s head?”
“We are not in the Cimerian’s head,” Clay said fiercely.
Maggie raised an eyebrow at his fierceness, and Clay moderated his tone. “This isn’t evil, Maggie.” His voice held such desperation, his beautiful, dark blue eyes pleading for her to understand, that she wanted to hug him again.
“Then what is it?” she asked, her voice quivering. She fought the tears down again. They didn’t come for any particular reason, other than that Clay obviously fought his own.
“Please, Clay,” she put a hand on his shoulder. “Tell me something. Anything. I don’t understand this.”
He hesitated. “You’re here…because you have to be. Because you were here before.”
Maggie stared at him. “What?”
Clay sighed. “You’re the Executioner, and I know it scares you. It always did. Maggie, your powers, your mind, is greater than you can imagine. You have everything you need to bring the collectives down. You must stop being afraid of who you are.”
Maggie swallowed. “Meaning what?”
Clay smiled. A soft, sad smile. “Strong emotions, strong connections, leave an energy signature. It draws us to those same emotions and connections, those same people over and over again. We’re never the same.”
Maggie didn’t answer. She wanted to internalize what he said. Should she apply it to her own life? To the war with the collectives? To the orb?
“The human heart is the most fragile thing in the universe, Maggie. It’s also the strongest. You have the ability to change hearts.”
Maggie barked a laugh and Clay raised an eyebrow.
“I’m sorry Clay, but I doubt that. I can’t even get Marcus and David to forgive one another.”
Worry creased Clay’s face. “You must, Maggie.”
His voice didn’t sound fierce, as before. Quiet steel filled it making Maggie’s heart beat faster. “What do you mean?”
“You have to find some way to make Marcus and his brother reconcile. It’s essential. If David doesn’t find some way to fix what he broke,” Clay’s voice dropped to a whisper, “all is lost.”
Maggie should have felt validation—she’d known Marcus and David making up was important, and for more reasons than only their personal happiness—yet the heaviness of Clay’s statement felt crushing. Tears scurried down Maggie’s cheeks and she heaved a sob.
“There’s something else, Maggie,” Clay said gravely. “Be wary of the newest member of Interchron. Something is terribly wrong with them.”
Maggie wiped her tears away, frowning. The newest member of Interchron? That would be…Tristan, wouldn’t it?
“Wrong with them? What?”
Clay shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m only supposed to tell you.”
“Who told you to tell me—”
Something scraped across the inside of her brain, sounding like metal on metal, and Maggie screamed, grabbing her head and falling to her knees. She might have fallen onto her belly if Clay hadn’t lunged forward and caught her, gently lowering her to the ground, cupping her weight against his chest.
“The…Cimerian…” she gasped. It must be him. She remembered the long, sharp poker he’d fashioned to try and Drill Doc. He must be trying to do the same to her.
The poker drove deeply into her head again. Metal squealed against metal behind her eyes and in the base of her neck.
A flash of purple light.
“The purple light,” she gasped. “Keep seeing…my flashback.”
Clay took her face in his hands and stared down into her eyes. Her head pulsed with the pain and Clay’s face tunneled in and out with her vision.
“The purple light has to do with the Cimerian, Maggie. It’s your free will. He’s trying to take it. Don’t. Let him. Take it. Don’t ever give up your choices to anyone. Ever.”
“I…won’t,” she managed through gritted teeth.
He smiled his sad smile again. “I know.”
The pain came, worse than ever and Maggie cried out again.
“Figure out the dark matter, Maggie. It’s the only way to beat the Cimerian. Dark matter is easier than light because it doesn’t burn. That’s why these creatures use it. The light energy hurts them too much, and they aren’t willing to bear the pain. They take the easy path.”
Clay hugged Maggie to him. His voice now came near her ear. “I love you, Maggie. Tell the team I love them. Tell Kara…I’m so sorry I’ll have to leave her. I have faith in all of you.” He pulled back and peered fiercely down into her eyes. “Never give up. Never. Family is forever. Freedom is forever. Remember, they can’t take it.”
The pain flared again. Maggie felt it all the way down to the bottom of her spinal cord.
Gasp.
Chapter 24: The Dark Lands
“Maggie!” Marcus screamed from his vantage point in the meadow. She’d gone down, alongside Doc. The Cimerian loomed above them.
“Marcus, where are you going?” Joan yelled. She grabbed his arm from behind. Normally, Joan’s small stature wouldn’t have stopped him, but he hadn’t recovered from using his ability by a long shot. Every muscle in his body felt like jelly. He barely had the stamina to stay standing, much less run forward. Joan pulled him back easily.
He turned angry eyes on her. “He’s going to kill them all, Joan. If Maggie dies, we’re all lost. Either help me, or let me go.”
Joan’s mouth pressed into a straight line, eyes flashing with fear. She gave a single nod of her head. “Okay.” She lifted Marcus’s arm and lodged herself beneath it. Turning her head, she called over her shoulder to Lila and Jonah. “You two stay here.”
Marcus barely registered Jonah lodging himself under his other arm, with Lila standing on his other side.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Joan,” Jonah said. “But no way in hell.”
Minutes stretched as they made their way into the meadow, hobbling over bodies and around mounds of earth thrown up in the explosions. One explosion hit directly behind them, hurtling all four of them forward, onto their faces. Marcus pushed weakly up onto his hands and knees before Jonah and Joan hauled him to his feet again.
Look forward, keeping his eyes on Maggie’s unconscious form, Marcus saw the Cimerian turn toward them. Its emotionless face didn’t change, but Marcus felt sure the Cimerian registered them coming. Abruptly, a dark vapor rose up from the ground, encasing Maggie, Doc, Nat, and the Cimerian inside a gray, transparent dome. Karl still fought a battalion of Arachnimen near the perimeter of the meadow. He remained outside the dome.
Marcus’s group reached the dome as David also appeared from somewhere, sprinting toward where Maggie lay. He and Marcus’s group reached the same spot, outside the dome looking in, at the same moment. Sparing a glance for his brother, Marcus reached out and put a hand to the dark vapor. Except it wasn’t vapor. Not anymore. It had become solid. He pushed harder against it and it gave. A little. Like flexible plastic that always snapped back.
It grew upward, morphing into a cylinder that reached heavenward.
The others pushed against it as well. David and Lila hurled neurochemical energy of different kinds at it. The impacts jarred the cylinder, but not enough to break it or let them through.
Pain, like a red-hot poker, lanced through Marcus’s head. With a gasp, he grabbed his forehead.
“Marcus,” Joan’s hands rested on his arm. “What is it?”
“Not me,” he gasped. “It’s Maggie. She’s in pain. The Cimerian…Drilling her.”
Joan and Lila gasped together. Jonah threw his shoulder into the dark cylinder. It produced far less impact than neurochemical energy did.
“What do we do?” Lila shrieked.
More pain lanced through Marcus’s head. And across his heart. Maggie was in agony. “David,” he yelled. “Do something!” He didn’t know why he reache
d out to his brother, and didn’t care. The pain and desperate fear for Maggie’s safety pushed everything else out.
“I can do it,” David said calmly from Marcus’s side. “I’ll have to link with you. The way we did on the Pacific island.”
“Do it!” Marcus practically screamed. “Save her!”
David nodded. Using neurochemical energy, he reached toward Marcus’s brain. They’d done this before, and it hurt like hell. This time felt different. Still raw, like rubbing an exposed wound, but the pain wasn’t as sharp as before. David used energy to feel along the small hole he’d made in Marcus’s brain on the Pacific island. He linked their two minds as one would tie two tethers together with a long rope. A soft zinging sound began in Marcus’s head, as though someone rubbed metal against metal between his ears. If he concentrated hard, he could ignore it.
Once they were linked, Marcus sensed David’s presence in a way he hadn’t before. He couldn’t have described how. He simply knew David stood next to him. Not because he could see or hear David. Rather, he felt David. Sensed his presence.
Marcus expected David to do what he’d done on the island: use Marcus’s abilities to punch through the dark cylinder. David did do that.
Rather, he followed the energy linking Marcus to Maggie, moved along their quantum bond. Marcus registered mild shock. As David moved along that bond, Marcus could see it. For the first time, he observed a cord made of energy. Normally he could only feel it, but he knew it was his bond to Maggie because he could feel David moving along it. His brother’s determination was now thrown into the mix with Maggie’s pain.
Though the dark cylinder separated Marcus from Maggie it hadn’t severed the cord of energy. Their connection stretched through the dark cylinder, completely uninhibited by it.
“What are you doing, David?” Marcus asked.
“Saving Maggie.”
“You can affect Maggie using our connection, but not the Cimerian. How will that save her?”
David didn’t answer. Once he’d reached Maggie’s end of the connection, he used constructive energy to drill a hole into the energy of her brain. Not unlike the one he’d drilled into Marcus’s on the Pacific island through which they’d forged this connection now.
“What are you doing?” Marcus grabbed his brother by the shirt. “You’re Drilling her! Stop!”
“It’s the only way to save her,” David said calmly.
“You’ll get her enslaved. You were supposed to save her!” If Marcus had possessed more strength, he’d have wrapped his fingers around his brother’s neck. Joan and Lila grabbed hold of his arms, trying to drag him backward. They weren’t terribly successful, but with their help, David held Marcus at bay with one hand.
Jonah, still standing on David’s other side, glanced from him to Marcus warily.
His eyes rested on David. “Will it save her?”
“Yes.”
Jonah’s jaw hardened. “Do it.”
“I’m trying.” Frustration entered David’s voice for the first time. “I can’t get through.”
“Why not?” Jonah asked.
“The orb, I think. It’s protecting her brain.”
Inside the cylinder, Marcus saw movement. Doc regained consciousness. He and Nat had both risen to their knees. Pale faces and bloodshot eyes shifted from Maggie on the ground, to Marcus and the others outside the barrier, to the Cimerian standing over them. The Cimerian didn’t pay any of them any heed. He remained too focused on hurting Maggie.
“Doc,” David yelled. “The orb. Take it out of Maggie’s hand. Now!”
Doc frowned, still looking vaguely disoriented. Finally, understanding came into his eyes. He lunged toward Maggie.
“Wait,” Marcus said, fear seizing his chest. “If the orb is protecting Maggie’s brain from you, maybe it’s protecting her from the Cimerian as well.”
David shook his head. “No. He started Drilling her before we arrived. I saw it. I think him Drilling activated the orb to protect her against any other Drilling. He’s already in her head. I need to get in to help her.”
Doc, still unheeded by the Cimerian, snatched the orb from Maggie’s hand.
Marcus watched with desperate horror as his brother Drilled into Maggie’s brain.
Gasp.
The landscape around Maggie looked bare and dark. Rolling hills were mostly hard-packed, barren dirt, with a few tufts of grass she thought were black rather than green. She stood halfway up the slope of one such hill, scanning the landscape around her. The sky looked twilight-dark, but Maggie somehow thought this was midday. No sun hung in the sky, with no moon anywhere to be seen. Yet the darkness seemed thick and tangible. Even the sun was dim, as though covered with a thick, dark veil.
How had she gotten here? Where had Clay gone? His final words still echoed in her ears, making her disorientation worse.
Looking down at herself—her clothing, her arms—she appeared…lighter than the rest of the landscape. As though a light existed somewhere that shone exclusively on her, but nothing else in this place. No, that wasn’t it. Perhaps she herself emanated the light.
A sound, like metal sliding against metal, rang somewhere inside her head. It caused her head to ache and made it difficult to focus on anything around her. She fought through it, trying to understand where she was.
People moved around her. Dark figures walked to her right and left, though they stood too far away for her to see them clearly. She thought they were humans, yet nothing about this place felt human. The dark figures dotted the landscape, all moving wordlessly, soundlessly, thoughtlessly in the same direction. Maggie saw their movement, but sensed no human presence around her.
To her left, one of the figures—she couldn’t tell whether male or female—moved at a slightly different gait than the others. Noticing the difference in his walk made her realize that all the other figures walked the same way and at the same pace. Left foot, right foot, together, in perfect sync. The figure on her left with the different walk didn’t feel human, either, but at least he made some individual movement.
Purple lightning lanced down jaggedly from the sky and struck the figure on her left. The purple light illuminated the figure enough for her to identify it as a human man. Human, except for one thing. His eyes and mouth were sewn shut. He flew up, two feet off the ground when the purple lightning hit him, and landed hard on his back.
He didn’t move for several seconds, and Maggie wondered if the lightning had killed him. Then, he rose mechanically to his feet. His gait had become exactly the same as all the others.
The purple light has to do with the Cimerian, Maggie. It’s your free will. He’s trying to take it.
How did she get here? The more she studied the people around her, the less she could see. As if some kind of darkness swathed them, hiding their true features from her view.
She needed to get out of here. Now.
Purple lightning struck the ground in the distance. She couldn’t tell if it struck other figures, or just the ground. Each time it reached down out of the sky, it left an afterimage on her retinas. A flash of purple light.
Maggie gazed out into the distance, feeling a pull toward that dark horizon. She felt something strange beyond her line of vision. An energy she’d never felt before. Closing her eyes, she sent her mind out, trying to identify the energy she couldn’t see. The energy moved rapidly. Violently, even. Like a vortex or a geyser perhaps. Only the geyser didn’t come from the earth. It came from the air, the ether of the sky. The energy didn’t feel like any energy Maggie had ever manipulated before. It felt dim and cool, rather than hot and intense. Maggie used her neurochemical abilities to explore the source of the energy. It felt like a hole in the sky. A bore to another plane of existence.
Maggie opened her eyes.
The lightning was strikingly beautiful. A thump below her feet made her look down. She’d stepped off a tuft of black grass and onto hard-packed dirt. She hadn’t even realized she’d begun descending the hill.<
br />
Another bolt of lightning lit up the distant sky. So lovely. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to explore a bit further.
“Maggie!”
She whirled at the familiar voice. David stood at the top of the hill, waving his arms at her. Like her, he looked lighter than the rest of the landscape, as though he emanated a light of his own.
“Maggie! I can’t get to you. You have to come to me.” He stretched his arms out toward her.
Maggie wanted to go to him. Truly she did. The world around her lit up with purple light as another bolt of lightning struck somewhere behind her. She felt the electric energy of it, as well as seeing its light.
She wanted to see it. One last time. Something told her not to look over her shoulder. She turned slowly anyway. The lightning struck everywhere, now. Bolts hit the ground in different places each second. Some struck near her, others miles away. It reminded her of a fireworks display. Fireworks of purple lightning. Her feet moved down the hill of their own accord.
“Maggie!”
His voice stopped her progress. She didn’t turn immediately. The sound of David’s voice compelled her less than a moment before.
“It’s the Cimerian!” he called. “He’s trying to seduce you. You have to come or he’ll get the orb. Everything is falling apart. The team is under attack. Marcus is hurt!”
The orb. The team? Marcus!
With a cry, Maggie whirled and bulled her way up the hill.
Ten feet from the top, a bolt of lightning hit the ground behind her, so close its heat seared the back of her legs. Its energy knocked her forward, onto hands and knees.
Her hair stood out behind her. She knew it was the electricity, but it felt as if tangible fingers ran through it, pulling it backward from her scalp.
The Cimerian’s voice whispered in her ear. “Come to me, Executioner. All your worries will melt away.”
Maggie’s breathing became ragged. Perhaps from running. Perhaps from something else.
“No more wars,” the voice said. “No more stress. No more sadness. No more pain.”
Dark Matter (Interchron Book 3) Page 33