Persistence of Vision

by Liesel K. Hill

  Maggie hadn’t thought about Joan and Clay since she’d become conscious again. Now, as she focused on them, their energies felt strained. They were both exhausted and expending more energy than their bodies could replace. Based on the types of energy they were pulling to them, Maggie could tell they were fighting off an assault, using everything they had to defend themselves.

  David sounded annoyed. “If we go out into the courtyard, we’ll all get caught.”

  “They’re under attack.” Marcus snapped. “We have to help them.”

  “How? Maggie’s unconscious and Nat is still under the influence of the neurological sedative. I have power, but I’m not skilled enough to take out an onslaught of drones all at once.”

  “I am,” Marcus said, “but they gave me the sedative, too. I can’t touch my abilities.”

  “Then what?” David asked.

  “I don’t know,” Marcus said, “but we aren’t leaving without them. We have to figure something out and fast.”

  There were several seconds of silence before David spoke again.

  “Okay. I’ll help you, but there’s no guarantee it will work.”

  “What?”

  “I can supply the energy you need since you’re still cut off from it, but you have to let me into your head.”

  “How will that work?” Doc sounded worried.

  “I’ve seen it done before,” David answered. “It’s forbidden in the collectives, but I know how. The neurological sedatives they use make the part of the brain that draws energy to you fuzzy, so you can’t use it. It’s like putting a limb to sleep. It doesn’t cut you off from the part of your brain that directs that energy once you have it. We have to link our minds together. I’ll be the conduit. You’ll direct the energy.”

  “And why wouldn’t it work?” Karl asked.

  David shrugged. “Because he’s never done it before. Just like anything else, it takes skill and practice. You have your staff, and that’s the only reason I’m willing to try this. You’re used to focusing energy through it, so you’ll have a lot more control than you would without it. But you have to let me into your mind.”

  Silence followed, and Maggie wondered why Marcus didn’t want to try.

  “Look, Marcus.” David sounded annoyed again. “We’re trapped here. The plan’s gone to hell. If you want to help them, if you want to save her, this is the only way.”

  Maggie still couldn’t move and her eyes were shut, but she had a sneaking hunch that she was the her David was referring to.

  After a short silence, Karl’s voice came from directly overhead. “Marcus, come here.”

  Maggie felt Karl walk a few feet from the rest of the group. A moment later there was a second presence. Marcus.

  “What’s the matter,” Karl whispered. “Why does this freak you out? You can feel as well as I can how desperate Clay and Joan are growing.”

  “Of course I can. It’s not that I don’t want to help them, Karl. It’s just…”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been fighting the collectives my entire life. I swore an oath to myself a long time ago that I’d never willingly let anything invade my mind. Our minds are the only frontier of individuality we have left. It’s the most absolute law I have for myself, and now he’s asking me to break it. I don’t trust him. He betrayed me once before. You’re asking me to give him the chance to do it again.”

  Maggie wished she could talk. She wished she could say something to help Marcus.

  After a short silence, Karl spoke, still in a whisper. “I understand, Marcus. I do, but you are the only one capable of doing this. It’s your choice, but the alternative may be losing Clay or Joan. Or Maggie.”

  Maggie wanted to shout that she was okay, or would be, and Marcus shouldn’t use worry over her to make his decision, but she couldn’t.

  Marcus cursed softly. “When did life become so contradictory,” he muttered, and when he spoke again, Maggie could tell he’d turned away. “All right.”

  There was a sound of footsteps crossing toward Marcus. “You have to trust me,” David said.

  The team was quiet for a time, but Maggie felt the tension spike, like static electricity. She wished she could see what was happening. She could move her eyeballs around, and she thought the lids were coming up a bit—just enough to let some light in, but not enough to see what was going on.

  Then someone was grunting and gasping. It had to be Marcus. He cried out in pain and Maggie wanted to scream. What was David doing to him?

  A commotion followed and Doc’s voice reached her ears. “We’ve got you, Marcus. We’ve got you.”

  “Marcus.” It was David’s voice again. “I’m done. Can you still do this?”

  “Yes.” He gasped. “Yes. Just get me out there.”

  Then Maggie felt it. It came through the bracelet. She could even tell who it was: Clay. White-hot energy burned into his brain, and then there was nothing. No energy, no emotion, only a void, where before the power of Clay’s life had pulsed. Maggie felt sick.

  The other team members must have reacted because David asked, “What is it?”

  “Clay,” Karl said. “He just went down.”

  “He’s hurt badly,” Doc said. “We have to get out there.”

  The air went from cool to humid as they left the building. Maggie could hear the commotion of footsteps in the courtyard. She wondered how many drones the team would be fighting off tonight. Dozens, by the sound of them.

  “What do I do?” Marcus shouted.

  “The pathway I made through your brain,” David answered, “I know you can feel it. Feel your way along that pathway until you cross over the connection into my mind. Only then will you feel the energy.”

  The team was silent, and Maggie fought against her paralysis while hundreds of feet stomped nearer. When the wave of energy hit her, she knew exactly what had happened. It was just like what she’d felt that day at Interchron when the Trepids attacked them. Marcus had obviously found David’s energy and directed it through his staff. She could almost see him taking a knee and obliterating the oncoming drones.

  A few moments later, Marcus was screaming. Then, there was only silence. Maggie panicked, but what she felt from Marcus wasn’t what she felt from Clay. Marcus’s life signs were still pulsing, just more faintly, as though he’d gone to sleep. Clay’s couldn’t be felt at all.

  “Pick him up,” Doc’s voice commanded. “If more drones show up, he won’t be able to do that again. We have to get back to the ship. Nat, can you carry Clay?”

  Then they were moving again. The only indication Maggie had that they’d reached the ship was David’s voice.

  “Careful as you get in. Don’t touch the water.”

  “Why not?” Joan’s voice was more subdued than normal, as though she’d been crying.

  “When Maggie called that lava up, it fountained into the ocean. Can’t you feel the heat coming off the water? Look down by the hull. It’s boiling.”

  Karl set Maggie down on what she recognized as one of the cots in the ship. She could hear several people crying, but couldn’t identify them. A presence hovered over her, but she couldn’t identify it, either.

  With no way to know what was happening, no idea if Marcus was okay, and no way to deny that Clay wasn’t, the gravity of what had just happened crashed in on Maggie. She wished she could cry; it would have been a relief.

  Her body was exhausted. It wanted to sleep and, not knowing what else to do, she stopped fighting it. The dark, warm oblivion was a welcome respite.

  ***

  It was like trying to push his eyelids up against glue. Marcus heard muffled sounds around him but couldn’t make them out. When he finally got his eyes open, the world filled him with fear, doubt, and a sadness he couldn’t explain.

  He was on the ship, and the comforting hum told him that it was whizzing through the Pacific once more. The water around them was still black, the inner lights of the ship throwing perfect reflections of them
onto the glass, but the light coming from above was a slightly bluer shade. Dawn was beginning to break over the ocean.

  Three of the ship’s beds were occupied. Marcus himself was lying on the middle one. To his left Clay was laid out. Doc, Karl, and Joan were all standing around him. Their faces were tear-soaked, and Joan was holding Clay’s hand, running her thumb over the back of it.

  Nat was at the helm of the ship.

  To his right, Maggie was sleeping. David was sitting on the bed, holding her hand and staring down into her face. The way he looked at her, the way he held her hand…Marcus didn’t like it. The world was fuzzy though, and he couldn’t remember how he was supposed to react to these green-tinged feelings.

  He tried to sit up and groaned loudly. His head wasn’t ringing anymore, but it was throbbing painfully, and when he sat upright, pain lanced down his neck and across his shoulders. His spinal cord, all the way down to his coccyx, felt like it was pulsating. Pain feathered out along his nerves, making his fingers and toes feel numb.

  Karl came over as he threw his legs over the side of the cot.

  “What’s wrong with Clay?”

  Ignoring the question, Karl put a hand on his shoulder, and Marcus winced. It stung to be touched.

  “How are you feeling, Marcus? Are you okay?”

  Marcus looked up at him. “I feel like my head’s been used as an anvil, but other than that, yeah.” He twisted his neck painfully to look behind him at David. “Is she okay?”

  David nodded. “She needs to recuperate. She’ll sleep for a week. Literally. But she’s not hurt.”

  Marcus nodded, turning slowly back to Clay. There was an acorn-sized bore in Clay’s right temple. There was no blood or brain matter that Marcus could see, but the hole was black around the edge, like he’d been struck by lightning or sustained some kind of electrical burn.

  “He needs healing,” Marcus said, putting hands beside his hips to push himself up.

  “Marcus, you can’t—” Karl began.

  Marcus got to his feet, but once there the wave of nausea that swept over him was overpowering. He lurched back onto the cot, and it was all he could to keep from vomiting on Karl’s shoes.

  Karl put a firm hand on Marcus’s shoulder to keep him from standing, though Marcus had no intention of trying that again anytime soon.

  “Marcus, you don’t understand. You can’t. No one can.”

  Marcus shook his head at Karl, bewildered. He thought he knew where Karl was going with this, but he didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it.

  “He has severe brain damage,” Karl said quietly. “There’s nothing to be done.”

  Marcus shook his head, not caring that it made his headache worse. “No. I can do something. I know I can.”

  “Marcus,” Doc said gently, “you know that injuries, especially brain damage, have to be healed quickly. You’ve been asleep for nearly two hours. It’s far too late.” His voice cracked.

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?” Marcus was shouting, but he didn’t care.

  “We tried,” Karl said. “We tried everything we could think of. Your brain was too traumatized from…linking with David. You wouldn’t wake.”

  “I don’t think it would have mattered anyway,” Doc said, wiping tears from his face. “By the time we got you back here and could think about healing, it was already too late—too much time had passed.”

  “Doc and I can both heal small things,” Karl said. “We healed his small bruises and lacerations, internal and external. There weren’t that many. Whatever caused this was white-hot. It cauterized as it destroyed.”

  “What was it?”

  “We don’t know. We don’t know if it was a physical weapon or scorching neurological energy. Joan didn’t see it. It happened too fast.”

  Marcus looked over at Joan, who was sobbing quietly

  “His body is actually functioning quite well on its own,” Karl continued. “But he’s not going to wake up.”

  Marcus lunged to his feet but succeeded only in landing on his knees beside Clay’s cot. He put his hands on either side of Clay’s face and reached out into the universe. They were right. Clay’s body was functioning as though he were just sleeping, but there was a crowbar-sized hole that started at his right temple and reached half way through his brain. There was too much missing now—too much that simply wasn’t there anymore.

  Clay would never wake up.

  Because of him. Because Marcus hadn’t been strong enough to both rescue his friends and heal them. He’d saved them—one of them—only to let the other one die. Or perhaps his failure was much earlier. He hadn’t been strong enough or smart enough or quick enough to keep himself and Maggie and Nat from being injected with the sedative. If not for that, Clay might still be alive. And who knew what condition Maggie was in?

  Marcus slumped back in defeat. The simple, pathetic truth was that they, as a team, as a rebellion, didn’t have the strength or knowledge to defeat the collectives. Each time they went in confident that they could do it, they not only failed but also found that they were far less prepared than they originally thought. Each time disaster struck and a member of the team was lost in one way or another.

  Would this war never end? He supposed that if it did, it would be with the individuals defeated and mankind forever enslaved to a collective consciousness with all the originality of the human spirit fading into mediocrity across the canyons of time.

  Marcus rested his head against his forearms and cried. Sometimes it was the only thing a man could do.

  Chapter 33: Meetings and Plans

  Maggie woke on her back staring at a blank ceiling with a profound sense of confusion. She had no idea where she was or how she’d gotten there. She couldn’t remember what had happened the last time she’d been awake.

  She turned her head, finding that her muscles were stiff, but it felt good to move them. She felt like she’d been sleeping for days.

  It looked like she was in Medical back at Interchron, but she couldn’t think why or how she’d gotten here. Two men sat on stools on either side of the door. One looked vaguely familiar; she thought she might have met him when she first arrived. The other one she’d never seen before.

  Maggie raised her head, and the pain that lanced through her skull brought horrifying memories of the island—Colin, the Traveler, fear of rape, worse fear of Marcus and Nat being killed, David’s ring. Clay! How was Clay?

  With a groan, she pulled herself into a sitting position. Every muscle in her body creaked. The two men by the door jumped to their feet.

  They exchanged glances. Then the familiar one stepped halfway out the door. Maggie could hear the murmur of his voice as he spoke with someone in the outer room. Then Marcus appeared.

  Concern was etched in the lines of his face, which she could swear were more pronounced than before they’d left for the island. He strode across the room and took her hand.

  “How are you, Maggie?”

  He’d said those exact words several times over the last few months, always when she’d been hurt or upset. There was something so comforting about them that she smiled, despite the pain in her head.

  “I’m…confused. Are we back at Interchron?”

  He nodded.

  “How…did we get back?”

  “The same way we went away from it.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “How long have I been sleeping?”

  “Five days.”

  Maggie gasped.

  Marcus put his hands on either side of her face and looked down intently into her eyes. They seemed sadder than she remembered. “What do you remember?”

  “We were captured…Colin…then the ring.”

  He nodded. “You pulled so much energy through that ring, you nearly killed us all.”

  “I did?”

  “David pulled it off you, and you passed out.”

  “Then what happened?”

  Marcus didn’t answer for a long time. He looked down into her face, search
ing it.

  “Maggie, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  The sweeping sadness had returned full force. She could see unshed tears in the corners of his eyes, and behind them a deep-seeded grief lay waiting, barely controlled.

  His hands covered hers, thumbs stroking her palms absently. He looked down at them, but she reached up and tilted his chin up, forcing him to look into her face.

  “Marcus, what is it?”

  “Clay.”

  Maggie sighed. She’d been hoping Marcus would tell her that Clay had pulled through; that Marcus had healed him somehow. She remembered the void when Clay was struck as well as anything else, though. She supposed she’d known from that moment on the island that he was gone.

  “What happened to him,” she asked through quivering lips.

  “He took a hit to the head, to the brain. He’s not dead, but he won’t be waking up either.”

  Marcus’s gloom immediately infected Maggie, crashing over her like a tide. Clay, who’d always been so kind to her, so sweet, so quiet; whose wife was expecting a baby; who had his whole life in front of him—gone, just like that.

  She hung her head, and tears slid down her cheeks and fell on both their hands. Marcus, feeling them, pulled her into his lap. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and buried her face in his neck.

  After a few minutes, she turned her head, laying it on his shoulder. The two men, whoever they were, were gone. She wasn’t sure when they’d left, but she and Marcus were alone. Casting her mind out, she could feel others nearby but not close enough to hear their conversation or their grief.

  Pulling back, she wiped her face then his. “Where is everyone else?”

  “Around. We’ve been letting everyone mourn for Clay. The team…we haven’t talked about what happened on the island. At all. We’ve been waiting…”

  He trailed off, and Maggie knew with conviction that this talk the team would have would not be pleasant. Not only was there sadness—and no doubt bitterness—about Clay, but there would be anger over things they didn’t understand and hadn’t anticipated, mistakes that were made. And then there was David.

  “Do you feel like walking around a bit?”