David nodded, then looked sorry he had. “Yes.”
“You two are probably worse off than Lila and I. You’ve been hit with it twice.”
Lila struggled into a sitting position, face pinched in pain. David crawled toward Maggie. “You all right?” he murmured, touching Lila’s shoulder as he passed her. She nodded shakily. Unconvincingly.
When David got to Maggie’s side, he put both hands on her arm. As he gazed down at her, the pain around his eyes tightened and he winced.
“What are you—” Jonah started, but Maggie stirred, looking more lucid. She opened her eyes, looking from Jonah to David. Understanding lit her face and she vaulted into a sitting position.
“You didn’t have to do that, David.”
David’s head hung so low, his chin nearly rested on his chest. He didn’t seem to have the strength to raise it any further. He merely looked at Maggie, then away. Lila scooted over to Kristee.
“How is she, Lila?” David whispered.
“Not good. She’s out again.” Anger clouded Lila’s face. “We can’t keep doing this. She gets a little strength back, then we force her to do a small jump and it saps her again. At this rate, it’ll take us six months to get back to Interchron.”
“We don’t know how little the jump was, do we?” Maggie asked. “We might have come a long way?”
“Interchron doesn’t exist yet.” Lila nodded at something behind the three of them and they all turned to look. The only thing Jonah saw was the meadow, a large bolder resting against the slope of the mountain and the trees beyond it. Whatever Maggie and David saw told them something, though.
“Uh, someone want to explain...?” Jonah asked.
“That bolder,” Maggie pointed with her chin, “is right next to an entrance to Interchron. In Interchron’s time, it’s shattered. So if it’s not shattered yet...”
Jonah nodded. “Oh.”
“Maggie’s right,” David said. “We need to figure out when we are.”
“We all need to rest,” Lila said. “That thing, whatever it was, put our senses into shock. I don’t suppose you two came by any food?”
Maggie sighed. “We did. They took it.”
“Great,” Lila muttered.
Maggie rose to her feet.
“Where are you going?” Jonah asked.
“To the ridge. I want to see the valley.”
“I’ll go with you.”
Jonah followed Maggie to higher ground. His ears still felt raw and the exertion made his head pound harder, but he made it up the slope. Maggie got there a few steps before him, and he glanced up to gauge her reaction before he formed one himself.
“Oh,” she murmured. The despair in her voice chilled him.
He moved up beside her and stared down. Before, the civilization in the valley was different than in his time, but it still looked...civilized. Technology had advanced; the architecture was progressive; the streets were clean, if cramped.
Nothing like that met his gaze now.
What sprawled below them might have been a slum or dingy refugee camp. Everything appeared dirty and run-down. Pieces of tents and lean-tos covered the landscape, with evidence of man-made fox holes among them. What used to be the campus was now a wasteland. Not a single building met his eyes, all the way to the horizon. The beautiful structures they’d seen from this vantage point in the last time period had disappeared utterly, as if they’d never existed at all.
No green stood out anywhere, or any other color for that matter. A bog or marsh had seeped over the countryside—nothing but mud and filth and creeping brown lichen everywhere.
Maggie looked frightened. He lifted a hand to rest on her shoulder. As sore as he was, it took effort. “What now?” he asked quietly.
Looking bewildered, she leaned her head against his shoulder.
Chapter 17: Sonic Shield
KARL’S EYES POPPED open. The scent of rain on the air filled his nose. He let his eyes roam without moving his head, scanning everything around him for half a mile.
The sky had begun to lighten, but thick, dark clouds rolled across the sky. Karl doubted they’d see the sun today. He pulled himself into a sitting position and shivered. In a manly way, of course. The air wasn’t freezing, but the impending rain made it nippy and a soft wind blew cold across the mountain. Karl’s body still felt cool from its slower, sleeping state. He got to his feet, knowing the adrenaline of simple movement would warm him. He’d told his body to wake him after exactly six hours. Based on the position of the sun, it hadn’t failed him.
Marcus sat twenty yards ahead of him, facing down the slope and gazing at something. As Karl came level him, he saw what it was. Tenessa paced a short circuit fifty yards farther down. Every so often she stopped and gazed out over the valley, letting the wind blow her hair back from her face. After a few seconds she would begin her pacing again.
“What’s she doing?” Karl asked, squatting down beside Marcus.
“I think she’s arguing with herself.”
“Arguing?”
Marcus glanced at him. “I think she’s incredibly conflicted, Karl.”
Karl nodded. “I suppose she would be.” After a few minutes of observation, he understood what Marcus meant. Tenessa’s lips weren’t moving but she would pace, frown, stop, turn, look over the mountain, then pace again, as if mentally running through a list of arguments.
Marcus heaved a sigh. He stopped studying Tenessa and instead let his gaze sweep across the mountainside.
“You still want to go get Maggie, or are you leaning toward Colin again?” Karl asked, watching his best friend.
“Maggie. Now more than ever.”
Something about the way he said it tugged at Karl’s middle. “Why? What happened?”
After a slight hesitation, Marcus nodded. “A few hours ago, I felt something else.”
“What?”
“I...think my heart stopped.”
“What?”
“Only for a second,” Marcus said quickly. “Actually, it was two different times. Afterwards, my muscles felt weak. I’d swear electric current ran through them.”
Karl swallowed several times before he found his voice. “You think Maggie was electrocuted?”
“They were small bursts, designed to cause pain. I doubt she’s in danger of death, but I think she’s been captured. Someone’s torturing her.”
“Why didn’t you wake me right away?”
“At first, because I couldn’t. I was too weak to move for a while. The shocks haven’t returned, though, and I need you rested before we leave.” He ran a hand through his hair. “My right leg still doesn’t feel quite right. I don’t think I can walk on it yet.” Karl’s worry must have shown in his face because Marcus hurried on. “It’s okay. It’s much better than an hour ago. It’s healing, just slowly.”
“What do you want to do?” Karl asked.
“We need to eat. If I can sit for another hour or so, I think I’ll be ready to go.” He sighed heavily, glancing at Karl. “I wish when we got to Maggie we could tell her Colin wasn’t a worry for her anymore. I want this over with, Karl. It’s taking too long. I want Colin gone. I want Maggie to be safe.”
“I know you do,” Karl answered. He could hear the longing in his best friend’s voice; how much Marcus missed Maggie. Karl missed her too, though for different reasons. Maggie was one of his best friends. He missed her company; her charm and humor and scathing wit. It was different for Marcus. Marcus was in love with her.
“We’ll have to go over everything so when we face him again, we don’t make the same mistakes.”
“That’s just it, Karl. What mistakes did we make? How can we correct them if we don’t know? Colin knew we were there, behind him. We were Concealed, so how did he know? How did he take us so completely by surprise? He shouldn’t have been able to.”
Karl plopped down on his butt beside Marcus, vaguely longing for his favorite stuffed chair waiting for him back at Interchron. “I don’t
know,” he admitted.
“She may know,” Marcus said, jutting his chin in Tenessa’s direction.
Karl glanced out at her. “You think?”
Tenessa gazed out over the valley again. The wind picked up and blew her black hair out behind her in a straight line. She was actually quite beautiful. The collectives neither acknowledged nor appreciated individual beauty, so she probably didn’t realize that.
Marcus was right about her being conflicted. She’d dedicated her life to the collective cause. If she’d been born into them, she’d been fed lies her entire life, and yesterday perhaps gave her the first glimpse of a truth the collectives kept hidden from its drones. Karl could only imagine the disillusionment such a thing must cause.
The day before, Karl had followed her into the woods when she’d bitten him and run away. He’d only been ten feet behind her—almost ready to reach out and take hold of her—when two Trepids crashed through the trees ahead of him and grabbed her. Karl leapt silently behind a thick tree and the Trepids hadn’t noticed him. Anger narrowed his eyes as he watched them drag Tenessa, struggling, away. Marcus had thought their attackers might be a group of individuals. The Trepids disproved that theory. No individual in the world would travel with Trepids. Any who tried would be forced into the collective within an hour, and brutalized to boot.
Karl followed the Trepids—it wasn’t hard given the four-foot wide trail of crushed grass and broken foliage they left in their wake—and waited outside the line of Arachnimen where Marcus and Colin sparred with words. He’d waited, looking for the opportune moment to attack. It hadn’t come. When Colin ordered the Trepid to rape Tenessa, he knew he’d have to act, opportune moment or no.
“What do you think she knows?” Karl asked, still watching her.
“She spoke to Colin with authority. It was more than what he said about her being valuable. She demanded he order the Trepids to release her.”
Karl frowned. “Are you suggesting commanded?”
Marcus shrugged. “He said they were training her for something special, and the more I think about it—about the way she’s acted, the things she’s said—I think she may be high up in the collective hierarchy.”
Karl thought about that, and it made sense to him. More sense than he liked. “Perhaps that could explain why she can talk so much more forcefully than David could when he first came out. She’s not just another drone recently come out of the collective. She’s had experience with individualism and leadership.”
Marcus’s head snapped toward him. He obviously hadn’t thought of that before Karl said it. He nodded, slowly at first and then more quickly. “Maybe so. Either way, she knows things, Karl. Things about the world, the collectives, maybe even about Colin, that she’s not telling us.”
Karl nodded. “So we have to get her to talk to us.”
“We?”
Karl frowned at his friend.
Marcus gave him a strained smile. It didn’t touch his eyes. “You got a flea in your pocket, or...”
“Why do I have to do it?” Karl asked, loudly enough that below, Tenessa turned to look up at them.
“She hates me,” Marcus said.
“You think she likes me?”
Marcus shrugged. “At least she talks to you; lets you come within twenty feet of her. When I try, she glares at me like I’m the one who tried to rape her.”
“Did you not hear her reject the blanket I gave her last night?”
Marcus rolled his eyes. “Okay, so she’s not your biggest fan, but she doesn’t hate us equally, so you’ll have a better shot at getting her to talk to us.”
Karl opened his mouth, looking back and forth between Marcus and Tenessa, but he couldn’t think of any more arguments, and Marcus set his jaw stubbornly. Karl snapped his mouth shut and let his breath out noisily. Growling, he got to his feet.
“Et tu Marké?” Karl muttered under his breath, loudly enough for Marcus to hear. He could almost hear Marcus’s lips cracking a smile behind him as he moved down the mountain toward Tenessa.
“Make it quick,” Marcus called. Karl ignored him.
Tenessa watched him come toward her with guarded eyes. As he got close, she took two steps back, visibly locked her knees, crossed her arms over her chest and jutted out her chin.
“What does the Separatist want?”
“Come back up to where Marcus is. We want to talk to you.”
She gave him a suspicious glare. “Why?”
Karl took a moment to formulate the words, wondering if he could frame the questions without her clamming up on him. “You seemed...familiar with Colin. Even gave him commands.”
She blinked warily at him.
“You know things that could help us. About him. About how he took us by surprise.”
Her eyes went to the ground, her jaw rock-like. As well beat his fists on a brick wall as try to break through that stubbornness. Deciding to try another approach, he took on a casual tone. “Do you still want to go back into the collectives, Tenessa?”
“Don’t call us that! And of course we do.”
“Even after what they tried to do to you?”
“They...had their reasons. He wanted to teach Strange Eyes—” she glanced toward Marcus, “—a lesson.”
Karl frowned. She’d hesitated only a moment, but she had hesitated. Karl remembered something that occurred to him the night before, as he’d watched Tenessa shiver.
“What happened yesterday morning? Before you were hurt? Before Marcus and I found you?”
“Why should we tell you? The moment you gain our trust, you’ll kill us like you do all the others.”
Karl sighed. “Is that what they tell you? That we deceive and then kill?”
Her look was all the answer he needed. He searched the mountainside for some way to prove she could trust him. On the ground near his feet sat a rock, the same one Tenessa hit her attacker with and carried through time. Karl picked it up and Tenessa took two steps back from him.
“You used this yesterday to hit one of the Arachnimen, and he let go of you. I think you hurt him pretty badly. Maybe broke his nose.” He grinned at her, then stepped forward, holding out the rock. “Why don’t you hold on to this? If I do anything threatening, you can hit me.”
She gave him a look like he’d announced water was wet, but when he jiggled the rock at her, she stepped forward and took it.
“Good,” he nodded, hoping his smile looked approving and not creepy. “Now will you tell me what you remember about yesterday? Please?”
She still hesitated but he’d gotten her attention. In the way enormous human boots get a bug’s attention, anyway.
“We...came upon a group of Separatists. We wanted to...bring them into the Union. When we tried, some of them,” she glanced up at him, “became afraid. They...lashed out and we,” she indicated herself, “were injured. The next thing we remember is waking up and seeing the Separatist. And Strange Eyes.”
Karl nodded. He’d heard it again, when she described the people being afraid: the hesitation. She was covering. “And why did the people you were trying to assimilate get afraid, Tenessa? What was being done to them?”
Her gaze shifted to the ground once more. Karl pushed forward, his suspicions confirmed. “It’s because they were being terrorized, weren’t they? Colin’s Trepids hurt them, maybe even tried to rape of some them as they did with you?”
She kept her eyes down, though her brows furrowed, and he could tell his words troubled her.
“And it surprised you, didn’t it? You didn’t know the Trepids did that to those they assimilate, did you?”
Her head snapped up. “The Instigator is an exception. Not all Recruiters practice such behavior.”
Karl raised an eyebrow. “The...Instigator?”
“The man the Separatist calls Colin.”
“You call him the Instigator. Why?”
She set her gaze on the ground again, jaw tight and Karl ran a hand through his hair. “Okay, so why
do you think other Trepids don’t act that way?”
She looked him straight in the eye. “Does the Separatist truly not understand how the Union works?” She took slow, measured steps toward him, keeping her eyes down until she was ready to speak, then took on a lecturing tone. “We have lived in the Union our entire life. We’ve welcomed countless minds in. They are always afraid at the start. Because it is new to them. The Union knows every part of every mind. We hear the fears of the members and soothe them. If they’d been brutalized, we would know it.”
Karl studied Tenessa until she dropped her eyes again. She stood much closer to him by then, so her eyes studied his shoes, rather than the ground. She’d let go of interesting information without realizing it. The collective drones didn’t know about the brutal tactics of the Arachnimen and Trepids. Somehow, the collectives kept that tidbit from the general population. Karl didn’t know how. Perhaps Doc could posit a few theories. A conundrum for another time.
“Just as you have lived in the collective your whole life and had many encounters with new members, I have been an individual my whole life, and have come face to face with Trepids countless times. They always brutalize before they drill, Tenessa.”
“Don’t call us that,” she murmured, eyes still on his boots.
“Try to understand what I’m telling you,” Karl insisted. “The collectives claim they want peace. They preach a higher way of living. Yet, when no one’s looking, they condone evil things. How can you give your life to such people?”
Her jaw hardened again. “Everything the Union does is for the greater good. Would the Separatist not sacrifice everything for his cause?”
“There’s nothing wrong with sacrificing for your cause—even everything. But it must be your decision. The instant it’s forced on you, the act goes from being pure and elevated to base and vile. It stops being a sacrifice and starts being enslavement.”
Tenessa shook her head. “The Union demands much. We are willing to give it.”
He took a step forward and used his index finger to tilt her chin upward. Her eyes looked cautious. Behind the defiance, Karl could smell terror. He’d asked her to re-evaluate everything she’d ever known, and her foundation was shifting beneath her. “If you are willing to give what they demand,” he said quietly, “why did you hit the Arachniman with the rock?”
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