Persistence of Vision

by Liesel K. Hill

  Three sets of lights lined the ceiling above them. The row in the middle was large and looked to Maggie like the white, fluorescent lights of her own century. They were probably the main light source, but they were not on—probably turned off when most people were asleep. The other two rows on the outside gave off a soft, orange glow, making the corridor cozily dim.

  Once inside, Doc turned to Maggie. He took one of her hands in his and then one of Marcus’s in his other. He gave them each an encouraging smile. Marcus returned it, and Maggie hoped she did as well, but she couldn’t be sure whether she was smiling or grimacing. Doc and Nat also exchanged glances.

  Karl did the same thing, taking each of their hands. Maggie wondered if it was a ritual, a way to connect and tell each other good luck even when they weren’t allowed to speak.

  Then Doc and Karl disappeared down the corridor to the left. Marcus took Maggie’s hand and went right. Nat followed.

  Well, Maggie thought, here we go.

  Chapter 29: The Problem with a Neurological Sedative

  Marcus led the way through the silent corridors. He held tight to Maggie’s hand, which was just fine with her.

  Maggie’s heart pounded in her ears, and she had trouble controlling her breathing. More than once Marcus and Nat would hurry into a shadowy corner or dark, intersecting passageway and stand silently for a time. She never saw what they were hiding from, but she knew they were sensing things she could not, so she did what they told her—or rather motioned for her—to do.

  Marcus paused in front of a pair of double doors. He turned and raised an eyebrow at Nat. Nat nodded, held up two fingers, pointed at the doors, and nodded again. The two individuals they were looking for, including the Traveler, were behind those doors. Maggie’s heart pounded harder.

  Marcus gave her hand a reassuring squeeze then guided her back behind him and let go. He and Nat went to the doors. Eyes on each other so they were moving at the same time, they swung the doors silently inward. For two or three seconds, Maggie was left alone in the corridor before she followed them in, but it was enough to make her heart lurch with a terrifying loneliness.

  Something flashed before her eyes. Memory was stirring.

  She was in a well-lit corridor, crouched against the wall, trembling. She was disoriented.

  She knew this place, but it seemed so long since she’d been here.

  The ground hummed beneath her feet.

  The ship. Yes, she was on the ship.

  She looked down. Her hands were covered with blood. Blood on her hands. She knew what she had to do. She also knew it would hurt everyone she’d come to love, but she had no choice.

  They were looking for her, looking for what she had buried down deep in the cortex of her brain. She didn’t have the ability to keep them from it, not yet. She didn’t know that she ever would, but for now she had to get rid of it, or this war would be lost.

  Her eyes wandered down the corridor. Marcus and the rest of the team were here somewhere. She wished she could see them—especially him—again before she did this. She wished she could explain, but she couldn’t risk it. She didn’t have time. Her vision blurring with tears, she got shakily to her feet.

  She had to find a way off this ship.

  Maggie shook her head, trying to clear it. Another time she would welcome a memory, would try to stay in it as long as possible. But there were more important things going on right now.

  The entire thing had taken only a few seconds. Marcus and Nat had passed through the doors, leaving them open, and taken a few steps beyond. Maggie hastened to follow.

  Marcus half turned, though his gaze stayed ahead of him, and held out his hand. She hurried forward and took it. Nat was on her left, and the three of them moved forward as one.

  The room was large and bare, easily the size of one of the cargo bays at Interchron. It had a high ceiling and was cavernous. There was no furniture, but on the far side three circular indentations, equal in size, were carved into the floor. Maggie wondered what they were for.

  The room was empty. Maggie glanced at Nat. He looked confused. He’d motioned that he was sensing two people inside this room. So where were they?

  Nat moved off to the left, eyes scanning the walls and crannies of the room. Marcus was doing the same thing on the right. Maggie wanted to help, but she had no idea how.

  Something pinched the back of her neck, like a needle going in. She hunched her shoulders, leaning her head forward to get away from it, but the instant she felt it, her voice left her. She wanted to scream at Marcus for help but couldn’t.

  The ground hit her knees, and a raspy voice puffed air against her ear.

  “Hello, Maggie. Nice to see you again.”

  Darkness filled her vision.

  ***

  Doc and Karl made their way through the dim corridors. Other than having to dodge a few patrols, which hadn’t been difficult, they’d encountered no resistance at all.

  An itch at the back of Doc’s neck kept him looking over his shoulder.

  Finally, Doc and Karl reached their destination.

  Signaling to Karl that this was the place, Doc put a hand on the door. Karl placed a hand on Doc’s shoulder. When Doc turned to him, he motioned that he wanted to go first. Doc acquiesced.

  The door swung silently inward. Inside it was utterly dark. The dim light from the corridor showed them the first four feet of the hallway; the rest was inky blackness.

  Doc shivered. Six individuals made decisions here for hundreds of thousands of people. This was where the decision was made to forcibly assimilate individuals, to send Arachnimen and Trepids to do murder.

  The room was cold, and fittingly so; there was no warmth or inspiration here. There were only those who held almost absolute power and their glee at wielding it.

  Doc and Karl had decided beforehand to split up. Facing one of the Council members alone was daunting, but if they both entered a single room and were overpowered, they would have utterly failed. Splitting up gave them a better chance to get more done.

  Karl started around the left side of the conference table, so Doc turned to the right. Just then, he felt the hot whisper of a mouth near his ear.

  “Hello, Johann.” White-hot pain exploded in his brain. He hadn’t been prepared for it, and he screamed. “Did you really think,” the voice hissed, “that we didn’t know you were coming?”

  ***

  Voices, heard from the end of a long tunnel, were the first thing Maggie was aware of. Then a collage of blurry colors swam in front of her eyes, and the voices were closer. What they were saying still wasn’t clear, but two of them sounded familiar.

  Maggie turned her head, and a wave of paralyzing nausea swept through her. It was so intense she was afraid she’d vomit, but there wasn’t anything in her stomach to get rid of. No matter how still she lay, she couldn’t bring the world to a standstill; it spun continually before her eyes.

  She focused on what the voices were saying, and that helped. After a few minutes the voices became clear, and the world stopped gyrating, though it was still on a slant.

  “I don’t understand.” It was Marcus. He was right above her. “How can this be? How can you be here?”

  “Of course you don’t understand, Marcus,” an unfamiliar voice sneered. “You individuals think you know enough to save yourselves, but you don’t. Your understanding doesn’t come close to ours. This is why you fail at every turn.”

  Maggie found the will to turn her torso toward the second voice. It was dripping with disdain. Not until she rotated her shoulder back did she realize there was a weight on it. It was Marcus’s hand. When she moved, he looked down at her.

  “How are you, Maggie? Are you okay?”

  “Take it slowly, now.” It was Nat’s voice. He was leaning over her too.

  The two men helped Maggie into a sitting position. She was having a hard time holding her head up. It felt like her neck was asleep. She let her head fall back to rest against Marcus’s
arm. Her eyes, however, had no problem moving.

  They were still in the spacious room. The three of them were sitting against the wall opposite the door. The three circular rings she’d noticed earlier were beneath them. Two other people were in the room.

  The man, tall and dark of hair and eye, was standing with his feet planted and his arms crossed. He was the one talking to Marcus.

  A woman with dark, crew-cut hair, a plain face, and blasé, shapeless garb, was pacing back and forth behind him. Her eyes swept all corners of the room and the door in succession, like a human watchdog waiting for something to happen.

  It took several minutes for sensation to return to all parts of Maggie’s body. In the meantime, she tried to focus on what was being said.

  “Answer the question!” Marcus was yelling at the other man, and it was hurting Maggie’s head. “How are you here? What happened?”

  “Oh come, Marcus, let’s not be absurd. Surely you know most of it. The only obvious difference is that I wasn’t as deceased as you thought me to be.”

  “You were…playing dead?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Why?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I wanted to be left behind.”

  There was silence for a few seconds, and Maggie took the opportunity to try to sit up. Marcus helped her shakily to her feet. She still felt groggy, like she’d just come out of a long, deep sleep, but things were getting clearer by the second.

  “You okay, Maggie?” Marcus’s mouth was very close to her ear.

  “What happened?” Her tongue felt thick and sluggish in her mouth. She sounded like she’d thrown back a few too many shots of something heavy.

  “They injected us with a neurological sedative.”

  It was like he was speaking Russian. Maggie couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. Her eyes fell to her hand where her conduit stone was still strapped. Instinctively, she tried to pull through it. A wave of vertigo washed over her, heaving her stomach. The sickly sensation of vomit tickled the back of her throat, and she almost collapsed, but Marcus caught her and kept her upright.

  When she recovered, the first thing she saw was the other man looking at her quizzically. He glanced at Nat, seeming mystified.

  “Why did she do that?”

  Nat kept a level gaze on the man, his mouth set in a hard line.

  Marcus’s lips were on her ear. “Don’t pull through the stone, Maggie. The sedative affects our neurological abilities. The physical sedative is wearing off, but the other will stay in place so we can’t use our abilities to escape. If you try, you’ll only make yourself sick.”

  His whisper had an air of desperation to it. Something was going on. There was a connection that she should be making. Why was he whispering? What didn’t he want the other man to know?

  The man in front of them clasped his hands together in mock delight, plastering a sickly-sweet smile on his face.

  “Maggie, how wonderful to see you conscious again. I had quite hoped we’d killed you last time, but you outsmarted everyone, didn’t you?”

  Maggie could feel the rage rolling off Marcus as he glared in the other man’s direction. She thought about all she’d heard in the last few minutes, and there seemed to be only one conclusion. She didn’t know how she came to it; she’d have to figure out her own line of reasoning later, but somehow she still understood.

  She looked up at the man standing in front of them. “Are you Colin?”

  His smile faded into a blank line then went in the opposite direction, ending in a frown. Marcus was still at Maggie’s back, his hands resting on her upper arms. His grip tightened as the man’s expression changed.

  “What do you mean, am I…” His expression swept over the three of them and an astonished understanding came into his face. He looked delighted over what he’d just realized, and that worried Maggie.

  He turned to the woman behind him. “She has no memory.” Then he looked back at her. “How extraordinary.” He paced in front of them, gawking at Maggie as though she was the newest exhibit at the local zoo. “But she didn’t know what the neurological sedative was either, so she’s lost not only her memory of me, but all of it? What did you do, Marcus, put her in hibernation for a year? Or did you actually send her back to her own time and then grow desperate and bring her back again?”

  The mocking tone of his voice made the question rhetorical, and Maggie wished she hadn’t said anything.

  “So I’m not the only one confused about what happened on that ship. Do you remember what happened the last time we saw each other?” He tilted his head inward, showing that he was speaking to Maggie.

  The cat was out of the bag, so why not get more information? She just had to be careful not to reveal anymore.

  “So you are Colin.”

  Putting one foot in front of the other and bending at the waist, he gave her a bow worthy of the medieval courts of Europe. “Colin Demigog at your service. You and I have much to discuss. It seems I’m not the only one confused about what happened that day. But we’ll worry about that later. Now—” He turned to the woman and nodded. She turned her full attention to Colin’s three prisoners and stared hard.

  Nat and Marcus fell to their knees, holding their heads and gasping in pain.

  “Stop!” Maggie screamed. “Leave them alone!” She turned to Marcus, but before she could touch him a hand closed around her wrist and dragged her away.

  Colin pulled her six feet from where Marcus was writhing on the floor and threw her down. She rolled, stopped only by the hard wall of the bay. The wind was knocked soundly from her lungs, and then she was gasping for air.

  When she raised her head, he smirked at her.

  Marcus and Nat had stopped squirming. They were breathing hard, the breath of relief. Marcus turned to where Maggie was laying against the wall, trying to catch her breath as well. He moved toward her.

  “Stay where you are, Marcus. If any of you tries to move toward one another, there will be more pain for both you and her next time.”

  Marcus glared lightning bolts at Colin, but he stayed where he was. Maggie put her hand up to show him she was okay, but she hadn’t totally recovered yet, so she remained on the floor, sitting.

  “Now.” Colin steepled his fingers like a teacher about to start class. “First things first. Maggie, stand up.”

  Maggie looked up in surprise. Marcus and Nat were still on their knees. Why was he singling her out? Her back hurt from where she’d struck the wall, and she could take deep breaths now, but they were painful.

  “What?”

  “I said, get up.” His face and voice had gone hard.

  Maggie struggled shakily to her feet. Despite how pathetic she knew she must look, she put her shoulders back and raised her chin a few centimeters.

  Colin walked aggressively toward her until he was standing so close that she had to tilt her head far back to look up at him. Even from six feet away she could feel Marcus tense up. Maggie didn’t blame him. It almost seemed like Colin was preparing to kiss her.

  Then he did.

  He lowered his lips to hers. She gasped, turned her face away, and tried to step back, but he reached out and grabbed her chin, his fingers digging into the flesh of cheeks. She struggled but was no match for his strong hands. He forced his lips down over hers for several seconds.

  His kiss was slimy and smelled foul, and she supposed she ought to be glad he didn’t try to get inside her mouth. Still, when Colin shoved her backward so she fell against the wall, she wanted to spit.

  The instant he leaned in, Marcus lunged for him, but the creepy woman was still watching them like a hawk. Marcus covered all of six inches before collapsing to the floor, holding his head in his hands again and groaning in agony.

  Nat didn’t move at all. He struck Maggie as being a lot like Doc—too wise to be hasty. He didn’t try to defend Maggie because he knew he couldn’t. Yet his stance was like a hunting panther, poised to pounce at the first opportunit
y.

  “I’ve always wanted to do that.” Colin smirked, wiping his mouth theatrically. “You always were a little too possessive of her, Marcus.”

  “Stop it!” Maggie screamed as she struggled to her feet. “Stop hurting him!”

  The woman must have stopped, because Marcus sunk with relief to the ground, his chest heaving, but Colin turned to Maggie.

  “His pain will continue unless you do what I say.”

  Maggie regarded him warily. “Which is?”

  “First, you’d better give me a better kiss than that.”

  Sheer annoyance bubbled up in her. He was like a teenage trust-fund baby with a perverse streak. She’d had enough. “Really? Really? You have us utterly at your mercy, and this is what you decide to do with that kind of power?”

  Colin’s grin went from lascivious to genuine. “Still the same old Maggie, I see. You always did manage to make the rest of us feel like bumbling idiots. And no, this is not what I have planned for you.”

  “Then what?” It was Marcus’s rough voice. He was dragging himself to his feet again.

  Maggie could tell the pain the woman was inflicting was wiping him out. Much more and he wouldn’t be able to stand on his own.

  “Oh, Marcus, you’ve made this so easy for us.”

  Marcus’s eyes took on a dangerous cast. “What does that mean?”

  “You’ve walked blindly into our domain, put the key to our prophecy’s demise” —he indicated Maggie—“into my lap, and brought your entire team under our control. And you did it all of your own accord.”

  Marcus’s chest was heaving, but Maggie didn’t think it was a side effect of the pain he’d been in earlier.

  “Tell me what you’re getting at, Colin. How did you get us here? Was David sent to trap us?”

  Colin smirked but made no reply.

  “Answer me, Colin. Gloat all you want, but tell me the truth. After all this, you owe me at least that much.”

  Colin bowed his head a bit as though he were showing supreme magnanimity. “I suppose you’re right.”