“Do you feel anything?” David asked. “Pain? Anger? Fear?”
Maggie struggled, trying to call the flash to memory. She’d dreamed all of them a hundred times since her memories returned, but David’s questions forced her to examine them in a new way and she was surprised to realize she didn’t know them as well as she’d thought. “Maybe fear. It’s hard to tell. The flashes themselves make me afraid, so it’s hard to tell if the fear is because I’m seeing the flashes or if I’m feeling fear in the memory itself.” She sighed. “I don’t know.”
He nodded. “What else?”
“Karl washing up on some rocks, bleeding from the neck. This one’s really disturbing because it looks like a mortal wound. He’s gushing blood from his neck. Karl doesn’t have any scars on his neck, and I’ve never heard of time he was badly hurt or came close to dying. I suppose maybe the team simply didn’t volunteer the negative stories; didn’t want to scare me.”
“I told you they were hiding things from you.”
Maggie sighed. “I know you think that, David, and I’m sure there are things they haven’t told me, but I don’t think they’re doing it maliciously.”
“Don’t be too sure. Doc is definitely hiding things.”
“How do you know that?”
David shrugged. “I can tell, Maggie. There are things he knows but doesn’t let on about.”
“He’s a lot older than the rest of us. Of course he knows things we don’t. He’s been around a lot longer; seen a lot more.”
“Be that as it may,” David said quietly. “If Karl was Healed quickly, he wouldn’t have a scar.”
“From what I can tell, he would have to be Healed, or he would have died. Even if Marcus was right there to help, I think a wound of that caliber still would have left a scar.”
“Only it didn’t.”
Maggie shrugged, studying her hands.
“What else?”
“There’s one of Joan holding a baby.”
“Whose baby?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see details; just a bundle in her arms. But,” Maggie frowned and closed her eyes to call up the image. “I think she’s crying.”
“You think she’s crying?”
“No,” Maggie opened her eyes. “I know she is. I didn’t realize it until now. Joan is holding a baby and crying.” Maggie didn’t understand why she didn’t see it sooner. It was disconcerting for the flashes to reveal themselves more fully to her when she’d seen them so many times before. Why couldn’t she remember everything all at once? Pain clustered between her eyes and she wanted to be done talking about the flashes, now.
“There’s one of Clay on his knees, holding his head and screaming and another of Lila curled up in a ball and one of Doc burning parchment by candlelight. That’s all.”
David gave her a withering look. “Come on, Maggie: more detail on those last three.”
She briefly considered telling him where he could go, but didn’t get the chance. The door opened and two men entered. They were not the same ones who’d arrested Maggie and David. These wore the same, forest-green uniforms as the guards and their smiles were equally friendly, which was to say not at all. Both men had gray in their hair and their uniforms held more color than the ones the guards wore. The multi-colored, interconnected circles embroidered on their right breasts might have been rank insignia—she thought the guards only sported one brown circle—and both men wore a series of thick, metal bracelets on their left arms, covered in buttons, lights, and tiny digital displays.
One of them with brown, thinning hair, and a strong jaw pushed Maggie’s chair toward the back of the room. When she sat directly beside the wall, the guard placed his hands flat against it. The wall came alive with lights and images. He tapped them in an order than seemed random to Maggie. After a moment, a small compartment popped open. The man pulled out a handful of rubber circles connected to wires. He attached one to each of Maggie’s temples, the center of her forehead, three places on her chest, and each of her wrists.
David glared daggers at the man. The second man who’d come in was squat with sinewy arms and a bald head. He stood beside the door, arms crossed over his barrel chest.
David split his glare between the man by the door, and the one hovering over Maggie. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
Neither man bothered to answer. The man beside Maggie studied his wall display. “What’s your name, dear?”
Maggie considered lying, but if the mirror was a two-way, they’d already heard David addressing her.
“Maggie.”
“Surname?”
Again Maggie considered an alias, but what difference did it make? Assuming she and David could get out of here, they wouldn’t be in this time for long. Once they Traveled again, it wouldn’t matter whether she’d told these people her true name.
“Harper.”
The man’s eyebrows climbed slowly as he studied his display. His gaze shifted to her face and suspicion lurked there. A chill stumbled down Maggie’s spine.
“Thank you for telling me the truth,” he muttered. “I appreciate it.”
Maggie frowned. “How do you know I’m being truthful?”
The man arched an eyebrow and turned to exchange looks with his partner by the door. “We took your DNA while you slept,” he said, turning back to her. “The profile we came up with also pointed to that being your name. The thing is,” he pulled a chair up and sat knee to knee with her, “that doesn’t make much sense to us, Maggie. We don’t have an identity for you, except perhaps a very old one. Obviously you’ve been living off the grid. Do you have, say, a grandmother who goes by the same name?”
They were attempting to put an age to her. The ‘very old’ identity was probably her true one, but they couldn’t understand how she could be so young. They were trying to pass it off as her being her own granddaughter. Why not give them some peace of mind?
“Yes,” she lied. “I do.”
The shock started in her left wrist and jolted through her body violently enough to slam her back against her seat. Her lungs spasmed and her fingers quivered, though her arms still felt glued to the chair. When she recovered, she found David staring at her with wide, concerned eyes.
The man asking the questions gazed at his screen, mouth hanging open slightly. “You’re...lying.” He sounded shocked. He shifted his gaze to her. “Don’t lie to me again,” he said firmly, then went back to his screen. His friend left his place by the door and came to stand in front of Maggie. He gazed at the same screen the first man did.
“So she’s actually Maggie Harper? This Maggie Harper? You’ll have to tell me your secret, lady, because you look phenomenal for your age.”
“What is your birth date, dear?” the first man asked.
Maggie cast a desperate look at David. What did she tell them? If a man who looked and sounded like Abraham Lincoln showed up, even in her time, and claimed to be the famous president, born in the eighteen hundreds, would anyone believe him? Of course not! They’d invite him sample a Thorazine drip in the friendly neighborhood psych ward.
“Your birth date, Maggie.” Both men stared at her, now, mouths in firm, straight lines.
Maggie opted not to answer. They couldn’t zap her for lying if she simply didn’t say anything.
When she dropped her gaze to the floor the first man sighed and punched several buttons on his display. The shock that rocked her frame this time hurt more and lasted longer. Each second seemed an eternity. Maggie tried to scream but the electricity paralyzed her vocal chords. When the shock dissipated, the yell ripped from her throat echoed off the walls of the tiny room.
“Stop doing that!” David shouted. The two men ignored him.
Maggie let her chin rest on her chest. She trembled violently. Her muscles felt like liquid acid.
The first man lifted her chin with his forefinger, forcing her to look up into his face. “Your birth date, dear.”
“F-february sixth, nineteen e
ighty-nine.”
Both men turned back at their screen. “That is the right date,” the bald one said.
“It’s more than that,” the first shook his head. “She’s being truthful. That’s not possible. The DNA profile says her cells are only twenty-three years old. She can’t possibly be the same one.”
“Pull up that archived police report again,” the bald one said. He scrutinized the screen. “Ah hah, you see? Twenty-three years old when she disappeared.”
Maggie forced her head up. “Disappeared?” she asked.
The two men exchanged glances and the bald one took several steps back to stand beside David. The first turned fully to Maggie. “Your DNA triggered a flag from an old case in which a woman who shares your name disappeared from a piano bar. She went there with her brother and possibly his girlfriend. Plenty of witnesses observed them together, but neither sibling was ever seen again. Nor was the girlfriend for that matter, though no one seems to even know her name.”
“And you think I’m her?”
“I don’t think you possibly could be. She went missing over eighty years ago.”
“Well, there you have it.” Maggie made her voice firm and flippant. It still quavered a bit.
“Yet,” the man looked back at his screen, “your DNA and brain chemistry tell me differently. Can you explain that?”
Maggie put her eyes firmly on the floor. What kind of answer did he want? Certainly not the truth. He wanted something neat and tidy that would make all kinds of sense. The truth was not that.
“Ms. Harper, the two of you were trespassing on government property, long after curfew. If you don’t give me some satisfactory answers, I’ll have to shock them out of you.”
“You leave her alone,” David snarled.
The man transferred his gaze to David for the first time. David gazed back levelly, or so it seemed. Maggie suspected more went on under David’s passive exterior than the two guards could conjure up between the two of them.
“And what of your friend?” he addressed Maggie again. “Many who live off the grid aren’t in the system. The lack of documented identity is explainable, but the atmospheric signature in his cells is unlike any we’ve ever seen before. It doesn’t exist on earth. If we didn’t know better, we’d think he came from another planet.”
Maggie studied the man, wondering if she could possibly make the situation any worse. “Not another planet,” she sighed. “Another time.”
He leaned forward. “I’m sorry, another time? Are you telling me you can time-travel?”
She shook her head. “I’m not a Traveler.”
The man leaned forward until his nose brushed hers. His eyes searched her face. Maggie did her best not to shrink away. “But he is?”
She could tell he was fishing. Trying to understand. She shook her head again. “No, he’s not either.”
The man sat back, looking frustrated. “All right,” he said a moment later, “let’s prepare some system-specific shocks. We’ll start with one that will affect her nervous system without stopping her heart.”
The bald man nodded and moved to stand beside Maggie, punching various buttons as he did. David threw himself against his restraints, making no headway.
“We’ll get to you soon enough,” the first man said over his shoulder.
Maggie cast her eyes about desperately for some means of escape. The bald man leaned closer to the machine and something cold and hard brushed her knee. A ring of keys hung from the bald man’s belt. When he leaned in close like that, they hung inches from her fingers. She reached for them. Her arm, all the way down to her wrist was glued to the chair, so she could only stretch her palm and fingers, but stretch them she did. David went still, watching her struggle to put skin to metal.
The bald man shifted again and the pointed, metal stem of one key slid down into the groove between her index and middle fingers, and Maggie drew, pulling deeply at the energy around her. This metal was not a pure element, though, as the golden ring on the island had been. Rather, the energy came through the second-rate metal used in janitorial keys. Murky, grainy and full of imperfections, but all she had.
She pulled more deeply and waves of nausea rolled over her, causing her stomach to roil and flip. Bile rose in her throat and she gagged. The bald man frowned down at her and the first man stepped around him to watch. She pulled again and dry-wretched. If there had been anything in her stomach, she would have deposited it on the bald one’s shoes. Of course, he didn’t know how empty her stomach was. When she heaved, he stepped away. Maggie anticipated the motion and pulled one last time, knowing it might be her last chance.
She did cough up bile then, and with it went the last of the sedative. It burned away like fog before the desert sun, and the energy came flooding to her fingertips.
Using constructive energy, she picked up both green-clad men and heaved them against the wall. They hit with a sickening thud, slid to the floor, and stayed there. Maggie used the energy to slice through the magnetic fields holding her to the chair, then did the same for David.
“Are you okay?” David asked when he could move. He jumped to his feet and Maggie joined him, though she nearly fell again. Her muscles felt watery and fluid.
“Yes. Let’s go.”
A deafening alarm sounded through the building, and Maggie clapped her hands over her ears.
“You think that’s for us?” David shouted.
“It’d be an awfully big coincidence if it wasn’t. They’re probably watching, remember?” She nodded to the mirror. “We need to get out of here.”
David nodded, took her arm, and started for the door. They got all of three steps before something dug painfully into Maggie’s thigh. She fell with a yelp, fingers raking David’s arm. He swiveled and caught her before she hit the ground, yanking her back to her feet and out of reach of whatever had clawed her.
Maggie twisted around to see the brown-haired man lying prone on the floor. He’d reached out to stop her and dug his fingers into her leg. Now he attempted to pull himself forward, but his ribs obviously pained him. His face contorted and he wrapped one arm around his middle. When he spoke, it was difficult to hear him because of the alarm. Maggie read his lips well enough.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Maggie exchanged glances with David. David crouched beside the man and, in the thick, short silence between alarm sounds answered, “We’re the future.”
He stood, took Maggie’s hand, and pulled her from the room.
Chapter 16: To Be of Use
JONAH MADE YET ANOTHER circle around the copse of trees hiding Kristee and Lila. He sighed. Maggie promised she’d be back before dark. They’d lost the sun hours ago and with it, the heat. Jonah could see his breath when he exhaled, and he’d done a lot of breathing in the last few hours.
“Jonah, you should try to sleep.” Lila’s voice came from only a few feet away, but the dense wall of foliage between them muffled it.
“I’m not tired.”
“You’re wearing a trench into the ground. It’ll give away our hiding place in the daylight.”
“I am not.” He glanced down. A track had indeed opened up under his feet, so many times had he paced around the thicket. With a sigh, he turned sideways and slid between two aspen trees.
Kristee lay on one side of the space, curled up against the cold. Lila sat beside her. Blankets would be nearly as appreciated as food, as far as supplies went. Jonah’s stomach rubbed it in by growling noisily as he sat down. If Lila noticed, she didn’t show it.
On the ground in front of her, an apple-sized rock glowed. Lila was bringing forth the light, but he didn’t know how. Worry over Maggie pushed everything else out of his mind. The soft, muted illumination allowed them to see one another, but wasn’t visible outside the circle of trees. Jonah would know, after all his pacing.
“We both need to rest,” Lila said quietly. “Without food, we’re going to need our strength in the morning to search.”
&nb
sp; “So that’s the plan? To look for her in the morning?”
“For them. And yes.”
“We should go now.”
Lila sighed. “What do you expect to find in the dark, Jonah? We can’t go staggering around. We’ll break our necks.”
“I thought you future people could scan with your...other senses to prevent that.”
She gave him a hard look and he knew he’d pissed her off. “I can,” she said through clenched teeth. “You can’t. I don’t particularly relish having to carry you back here if you hurt yourself.”
Jonah glared sullenly at the ground. That rankled, but he couldn’t bring himself to argue. He took a deep breath, telling himself to be calm. None of this was Lila’s fault after all. “I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight, tired or no.”
After a moment she nodded. “Okay.”
“Will you stop being so calm and reasonable?”
A smile played across her lips. “You’d rather I ran in circles yelling, oh damn we’re gonna die?”
Jonah tried not to smile but failed miserably. He put on mock concern. “Hey. I was only worried about Maggie. What do you mean we’re gonna die?”
Lila rolled her eyes. “You’re being difficult.”
Jonah’s smiled faded. “I’m worried about my sister.”
“I know, but everything’s going to work out.”
“How do you know that?”
Lila sighed, looking frustrated for the first time Jonah had seen. “I don’t...feel worried.”
Jonah blinked at her. “That’s...um...great.”
“I mean, I think if something was wrong I’d feel...urgent or gross or something. I don’t. I think we just need to wait for them to get back.”
“Oh...kay.” What the hell was she talking about?
Lila let out an exasperated breath. “Don’t you ever pay attention to your feelings?”
“Yeah. I feel worried. About Maggie.”
“Of course you do. You’re her brother, so you’re protective. She said she’d be back before dark and she wasn’t. That’s worrisome. I get it, Jonah. But Maggie and David are two of the smartest people I know. They both have ridiculous amounts of neurological power. If they’ve gotten themselves into a tight spot, there’s no one better equipped to get out of it.”
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