Quantum Entanglement

by Liesel K. Hill

  She shrugged out of his grasp and he gazed down at her, face unreadable.

  “She’s affecting my abilities, again,” she said. “I won’t be able to keep this up for long.”

  David nodded and took her hand, pulling her to where Kristee still lay on the ground. Lila had her arms around the younger woman and Jonah stood nearby, looking awkward and worried.

  “We have to go, Lila,” David said. “How is she?”

  “In shock,” Lila said, her face a mask of concern.

  Jonah winced whenever Justine threw energy at Maggie’s shield. He watched the air warp as the shield briefly appeared. “What’s...going on?” he asked.

  “Maggie’s protecting us, but Justine’s attacking her shield. Can she Travel, Lila? Maggie won’t be able to keep this up forever.”

  “You’re doing this, Maggie?” Jonah asked, looking astonished.

  Maggie nodded, but couldn’t hold her brother’s gaze. She didn’t know whether he was impressed or disturbed, and decided ignoring him was best for now.

  “I don’t know,” Lila was saying. “This isn’t something I can Heal. No bones were broken. I’ve bound up the injury, and it’s relatively small. The problem is more with how hard she was hit. It rocked her organs against her skeleton. Her whole system is in shock.”

  David knelt down beside Kristee, who gazed at the sky as if discovering it for the first time. He took her face in his hands. “Kristee look at me.”

  Maggie’s shield sizzled with Justine’s attacks as the Trepids prowled slowly around the dome, hard white eyes staring out from black tattooed faces, looking for a way in.

  When Kristee’s eyes focused on David, he began manipulating energy, a strange sort of manipulation. Maggie couldn’t understand what he was doing. He pulled energy from the ether around him, but only a miniscule amount. She thought he’d also pulled energy from Kristee herself, which meant he wasn’t Healing her. Why would he take energy from her when she was already so weak? Yet, at the same time, he appeared to be giving her energy from himself, somehow, which wasn’t the same thing as Healing, either.

  Confused, Maggie glanced up to find Lila frowning at David as well.

  A moment later, Kristee’s eyes blinked and focused. She gasped for breath and flailed her arms and legs around.

  Lila took hold of her. “Kristee. Kristee! It’s me. You’re safe.” Kristee’s eyes focused on Lila and calmed, though her chest still heaved and her eyes darted about like a frightened squirrel. “Do you remember what happened?” Lila asked.

  A faint rumbling of the ground punctuated the question. Maggie turned her head. Justine focused energy on the ground in front of Maggie’s shield, as though trying to burrow under it.

  Kristee shook her head.

  “Right before you Traveled, we were attacked,” Lila said. “You got hurt. You’re going to be fine but right now, we need you to get us out of here. You’re the only one who can.”

  Kristee took all of them in before nodding. She pulled herself into a sitting position, crying out as she did and grasping her injured shoulder. Her breathing grew ragged again.

  “Kristee,” Lila said, “are you going to be able to do this?”

  “I,” Kristee gasped, “I can try.”

  “Just get us away from here before Maggie’s abilities fail,” David said quietly. Maggie studied him. He still squatted beside Kristee, looking...haggard was the only word. His voice sounded softer, less authoritative than it had all day, and Maggie could swear his hands trembled a bit. “If you can’t get us all the way to Interchron, that’s okay,” he told Kristee.

  Kristee nodded. “Everyone grab my arms.”

  “Executioner!”

  Maggie wrapped her fingers around Kristee’s wrist but turned at the sound of Justine’s call.

  Justine stood with arms crossed, her small army of Trepids at her back. “I’ll be timing you.” She flashed a grimace, showing pointed teeth and her forked tongue swimming around behind them. Maggie shuddered.

  The air shimmered around Justine as it did back in the alley, and she looked like Jonah’s girlfriend again. She winked at him, and Maggie saw him frown.

  The world tilted. Color swirled around them. Ribbons of blue and white danced in front of Maggie’s eyes. She didn’t remember seeing the ribbons of color when Karl Traveled. The next sensation she remembered, like moving in slow motion through jelly. Her feet thumped against solid ground, and the vertigo nearly toppled her. Jonah fell to one knee, holding his head, and Kristee’s eyes rolled upward.

  Maggie pointed at Kristee. “Uh, she’s...”

  David had already lunged forward. He caught Kristee as she lost consciousness and lowered her gently to the grass.

  “Is she okay?” Maggie asked as Lila knelt beside the Traveler. She put her hands on Kristee’s face, as Marcus often did.

  “She’s weak,” she said, straightening up. “She’ll sleep for a while.”

  “Define a while,” David said.

  Lila shrugged, looking bewildered. “I don’t know. Twelve hours? Thirty-six? She needs to heal, David, and without a Healer, her body has to figure it out on its own. It takes time.”

  David looked annoyed, but nodded.

  “Where are we?” Lila asked. “Did we make it?”

  Maggie glanced around. The meadow felt different than a moment ago. It also didn’t feel like they’d made it to where they needed to be. David must have sensed the same thing because a moment later he shook his head.

  “I don’t think we’re back at Interchron. This isn’t our future. I mean,” he glanced toward Maggie and Jonah, “it’s your future, but not ours.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Jonah moved the skin of his forehead around, as if trying to fight off a headache.

  “We may have come—who knows?—thirty or fifty-some-odd years from where we were, but we’re nowhere near far enough in the future to be where we need to be.”

  “At least we’re away from Justine for the time being,” Maggie offered. “We can stay here for a few days, until Kristee recovers. Then she can take us the rest of the way.”

  David nodded, though his brow furrowed in worry. “We’ll have to be careful. We don’t know what time we’re in, or what dangers it may pose.”

  After a moment, Maggie’s curiosity overtook her and she moved toward the western rise at the edge of the meadow. David’s hand shot out and closed around her wrist.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “To climb the rise. You can see the whole valley from up there. It’ll give us a better idea of what time period we’re dealing with.”

  “I’ll come.” Jonah stepped up beside her, his eyes asking if she wanted him to bust David’s face for grabbing her. She gave him a reassuring smile, and fought the urge to peel David’s fingers off her wrist.

  David turned to Lila. “Will you stay with Kristee for a few minutes?”

  Lila nodded.

  It took them five minutes to reach the top of the ridge. Looking back over her shoulder, Maggie had a clear view of Kristee and Lila. Looking out from the mountainside, she could see everything.

  The valley was much more densely populated than in her time. Scarcely a patch of land could be seen where something wasn’t built. The refinery had disappeared and many of the unfamiliar buildings had a shiny, metallic look.

  “Definitely not our time,” Jonah murmured.

  Maggie nodded. She looked at David. “What do you think?”

  “I think we need to stay hidden until Kristee is well.”

  “What do you think that building is?” Jonah asked.

  Maggie followed his gaze. Off to the right stood the largest building she’d ever seen. A skyscraper it belonged in a big city, not towering out of suburbia. At first, she thought dozens of smaller buildings clustered around its base, sprawling left and right. As she peered more closely, she realized they were all connected.

  “Maybe we should go find out,” she said.

  “That
’s not safe, Maggie.” David sounded annoyed.

  “You said yourself, we don’t know when we are or what dangers are out there. Shouldn’t we find out? Besides, if Kristee’s going to recover, she needs food. I’m sure you didn’t plan to be stuck anywhere. Do we have any provisions at all?”

  David rubbed his forehead, looking exhausted. “No.”

  Maggie nodded and exchanged glances with Jonah, whose face she couldn’t read.

  “Come on,” David said. “Let’s get back down to Lila. We need to find a place to hide up here. Then two of us can head into the valley.”

  Chapter 7: Outdated Notions

  MARCUS LEANED OVER the collectivist woman for a long time. The healing needed to be done slowly, delicately, because she lay so close to death. Anything too sudden might send her entire system into shock, and his effort would be wasted. Karl waited patiently a few feet away, alternately watching Marcus and casting wary glances at the woods around them.

  Marcus focused on the only spark of life left in the woman’s brain: a tiny orb of energy. He pulled matter from the surrounding universe, as well as from his own personal reserve, and used it to gently build the energy, growing it like a snowball. Once enough of it formed, he prodded the axons in her brain to begin firing. The first attempt proved weak, and many of the receptor sites failed to accept the impulses, but it was a start. As more and more of them awakened, her body responded on a nano-cellular level. Soon, entire bundles of nerves and muscle fibers responded. Organ systems quickened. Marcus used the healing energy to manually expand her diaphragm for her, bringing oxygen to the cells.

  Surprised her heart didn’t begin beating on its own, he breathed for her several more times, forcing air into her lungs. It was sucked into her bronchioles and he felt the capillary exchange. With each one, her body strengthened. He used the energy of the sun to jump-start her heart and then, with miraculous abandon, it leapt to life.

  As all the pieces of the woman’s physiology clicked into place, her consciousness came alive as well, and Marcus marveled, as he always did, at the beauty and complexity of the human body.

  Her eyes fluttered open. They were a milky-green color and for some reason, made him notice the smattering of freckles across her nose.

  Her eyes focused on Marcus, then shifted to Karl, who’d come to stand beside them. Her gaze shifted back and forth several times, and Marcus read confusion there. Then, all at once, a wave of fear came off of her. It radiated out and shivered down Marcus’s spine. It fled quickly for him, though. This was her emotion, not his. Gasping, the woman lunged into a sitting position and tried to scramble away. She didn’t get far.

  Marcus put a firm hand on her shoulder. “Relax. I’m Healing your injury, but it’s going to take a few more minutes.”

  The hole in her chest had knitted together, and Marcus could feel her body surging to replace the lost blood. The outer layers still worked to put themselves together, though, and because of the need for quick Healing, much of the tissue hardened and callused as it grew together. She would have a massive scar.

  She didn’t try to move away again. She didn’t relax either. Her eyes flitted between Marcus and Karl, and then to the woods around them. Her chest heaved with unconcealed panic.

  “W-we...w-we...” she glanced around again.

  “You were left behind,” Marcus finished for her. The Healing was done, now. She would be weak for a few days, but she would live.

  When he spoke, she glared a challenge at him, eyes trying to bore into his. Marcus merely gazed back at her.

  “I’m sure they thought you were dead,” Karl offered after a moment.

  Her eyes slid warily between the two men before resting on Marcus once more. “Why...why did it...Heal us?”

  Marcus heaved a sigh. Her question was too direct to side-step. “We need information from you.”

  “We’ll not tell it anything! Let us go back to the Union!”

  Marcus studied her, wondering what paths her thoughts traveled. David called the collective the Union when he’d first emerged from it. He’d also used the plural we. It took time for him to get used to saying I again. Maggie helped him with that.

  Karl chuckled from behind him. “Well, she certainly speaks forcefully enough.”

  Marcus glanced back at his friend. “Why wouldn’t she?”

  “David didn’t, remember? According to Nat, it took him weeks to re-learn verbal skills.”

  “Right.” Marcus’s eyes went back to the woman, who stared at him defiantly, giving no hint of what she thought of Karl’s words. It hadn’t taken David long after reaching Interchron to revert to normal speech patterns, but by then he’d been out of the collective for weeks. This woman only just emerged and she spoke as though she’d always done it. Still, based on her brain chemistry, that wasn’t true; she’d been a part of the collective until very recently. Marcus could only assume speech abilities after living in the collective would vary from person to person.

  “Do you have a name?” he asked her.

  “No more than the separatist’s arm or its legs. We don’t have names. We’re part of a whole.”

  Separatists? Is that how the collective referred to individuals? He didn’t press the issue. Instead, he nodded. “Fair enough. We still need something to call you. Have you ever lived outside the collective? Even as a child? Did you have a name then?”

  She gaped at him like he’d announced the sky was green. Marcus took it as answer enough. He turned to Karl. “What should we call her?”

  “Why are you asking me?” Karl asked.

  “I’m drawing a blank. Any ideas?”

  Karl considered before speaking. “I knew a girl when I was a child. We played hide-and-seek in the woods. Her name was...Tenessa.”

  Marcus turned back to the woman. “How do you like it? Can we call you Tenessa?”

  “No.” She glared at him.

  Marcus told himself to remain calm. “Is there something else you’d prefer?”

  “No.”

  “Then we’re going to call you Tenessa.”

  “We won’t answer.”

  Marcus took another deep, calming breath. He hazarded a glance at Karl to find his friend midway between annoyance and amusement.

  “Tenessa,” Marcus faced her squarely, “we aren’t going to hurt you. We want to know about your leader.”

  “The separatists are fools,” she sneered.

  Marcus studied her, wondering what approach to take. “Tenessa, you don’t have to actually tell us anything for us to learn what we want to know. It’s not something we can do efficiently out here, but we can take you back to our compound and have our doctor work on you. He’s an expert at studying a person’s brain and gleaning information from it.”

  “So it will steal our thoughts and force something on us we don’t want?”

  Marcus frowned at how she turned the tables on him. “No—”

  “It said it would take the information from us, even if we won’t give it.”

  Marcus sighed. “It’s ironic you see it that way. We would never invade your mind and steal your thoughts, Tenessa. It’s against everything we believe. We can study your brain—from the outside—and draw conclusions that will help us get the information we need. That’s all.”

  “It lies!”

  “Why do you think I’m lying?”

  “If we are taken to the separatist compound, we’ll have seen where they dwell. It won’t allow us leave, and we certainly won’t live among separatists, so eventually we’ll be killed.”

  Marcus barely covered a gasp. She was definitely more intelligent than most drones would be, making connections and drawing conclusions like that. Most collective drones couldn’t comprehend the most basic concepts of free living. He glanced at his best friend and found Karl’s eyebrows moving toward his hairline as well.

  “We have no wish to kill you, Tenessa. And as for the coll—I mean the Union,” Marcus ran his hand through his hair. “If you truly wa
nt to live in the Union, that’s a personal decision. We don’t agree with the lifestyle, but we respect it. We only ask that you do the same for us. We’ll have to keep you with us for a while, until we get the information we need. Eventually, though, if you want to go back, that’s a decision only you can make. I’ll make sure you get back if that’s what you want.”

  Karl hedged at that, and rightly so. It most likely wasn’t a promise he could keep, but he needed this woman’s cooperation. Not that he planned to break the promise. Rather he hoped with enough time, he’d be able to win her over to individualism. If she truly wanted to go back, he would send her. It might be years before it was safe enough, though.

  “The longer it takes you to answer our questions—the longer it takes us to get the information we need—the longer you’ll be with us. If you cooperate, you’ll get back to the Union much more quickly.”

  “We don’t believe it.”

  With an exasperated sigh, Marcus straightened his legs. This wasn’t working. Karl stepped forward.

  “We can’t help what you believe, Tenessa—”

  “Stop calling us that!”

  “Marcus has laid out your options,” Karl stepped forward. “He’s been honest with you and he saved your life. You have no reason to doubt his word.”

  “We are not foolish. The separatist only saved us because it wants something from us. Don’t pretend it won’t harm us if it suits its purposes.” The woman still lay on the ground. She clutched one arm across her chest and kept pulling her knees up to her abdomen as though protecting her womanhood. That, coupled with the emphasis she’d placed on the word harm, and the way she eyed Karl up and down as she said it, spoke volumes.

  A flash of anger rolled off Karl; he didn’t like the accusation. Crossing the distance between himself and Tenessa, he fell into a crouch beside her, leaning forward until his face hovered inches above hers. Marcus thought it somewhat over the top, but he supposed Karl meant to intimidate her. She shrank back from him, though her eyes kept their defiance. When Karl spoke, his voice was soft and icy.