Persistence of Vision

by Liesel K. Hill

  She let her head fall back and closed her eyes, listening to the comforting whoosh of the wind through the caverns.

  “It’s not exactly quiet.”

  “Yeah,” she opened her eyes and found him looking over at her. “Wha—uh, why is that? When Joan brought me here before, there was no wind, and we could hear the sound of the water from…you know, wherever it comes from. Why is there wind, now?”

  He shrugged. “No one has explored these caverns. We don’t know how deep they are, how far they go, or to where. The sound of the water could come from anywhere—underground springs, rivers from the center of the earth. But the wind is different. Even if it’s miles away, one of the caverns must eventually open to the outside. The mountain can’t produce the wind, and it only comes at night. You can hear the water during the day. We don’t know why that is.”

  “Can’t you just cast your mind out and follow the caverns until you find their entire path?”

  “Sure. Most people don’t care enough to try. You used to though.”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah. You’d come down here when you couldn’t sleep. You’d spend hours feeling out the course of the caverns with your mind. From what you told me, you never found the end of them. They’re too vast, too extensive. Actually, because you used to do that, you may know the inside of this mountain better than anyone.”

  “You mean, I knew the mountain better than anyone?”

  He gave her a sad smile. “Right.”

  Maggie sighed. “Another wealth of information, lost forever.” Marcus didn’t answer, but he’d said know rather than knew. “Do you think there’s a chance my memories could come back?”

  He kept his gaze on the chasm a few feet away. “I’d like to believe that the memories are locked away inside you somewhere, Maggie, and that you could recover them. Everything we know tells us otherwise, but the fact that glimpses have come back gives me reason to hope. I also think we shouldn’t get our hopes up about it. If they come back, wonderful. But they might not.”

  Maggie nodded. “So why haven’t the caverns down here been explored physically? Why doesn’t anyone live down here?”

  “Too much to do all the time. Not enough leisure time to go looking for adventure. And as for living, there aren’t enough of us. We don’t need to come down this far for space.”

  “I’d like to explore it someday.”

  He barked a laugh. “Yeah, I know you would.”

  Silence followed, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.

  Maggie saw an opportunity. The thought of it made her stomach turn, but she decided to ask him anyway. “Maybe we should talk about something else.”

  Marcus looked over at her, and those piercing, amber eyes almost robbed her of her courage. “Like what?”

  She took a deep breath, not caring how obvious it was. “You’re the only one that hasn’t told me the details of what you remember from the last time I was here.”

  Marcus turned away, looking annoyed. She knew he wasn’t actually annoyed. She was learning that what looked to her like annoyance actually meant he was worried or distressed about something.

  “That could get complicated, Maggie,” he said quietly.

  Maggie leaned back to rest on her elbows. “So you want me to keep relying on Joan for information about our relationship?”

  He swiveled around to look at her, eyebrows hiked in surprise. “What? What did she tell you?”

  Maggie shrugged. “Just that we were romantically involved.” She tried to sound nonchalant, but her voice quivered ever so slightly on the word romantically.

  Marcus frowned. “What does she know about that?”

  Maggie put her palms up. “Only what I told her before.” She pulled herself into a sitting position again, bringing her knees up so she could rest her forearms on them.

  “And what did you tell her before?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Marcus, we’re the only two women on the team. You said yourself that I was really close to Joan.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So, unless they hate one another, women tell each other everything.”

  Marcus suddenly looked very tired. “Great.”

  “I know you’ve been trying to give me space, and I appreciate it. But it’s just making things between us more awkward.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “I never know what you’re thinking or if you’re…imagining things about me.” She hoped her face was in shadow enough that he couldn’t see her blush.

  The corners of Marcus’s mouth went up, his eyes going out of focus.

  “Hey!”

  He grinned and put his hands up, leaning away from her for the first time. “Sorry.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “I, well…I…I’ll…try to be.”

  Maggie clapped her hands over her face, sure her embarrassment was rolling off her in waves. “Look,” she finally said, not looking at him, “I know it will be uncomfortable, but I also think that, overall, it will be easier if we just talk about it.”

  Marcus took a deep breath and heaved it out. Then he shrugged. “Okay. What do you want to know?”

  “Everything?”

  His shoulders slumped again.

  “How did we first meet and what led to us getting involved and, you know, what…happened?”

  His eyes searched the ground, but he didn’t make as if to answer.

  “You know,” she said, “no one’s ever actually told me what happened when you guys…took me. I mean, the last thing I remember before waking up is being with Jonah in that ratty little bar. Was it like a beam of light taking us up through the ceiling?”

  He laughed. “Of course not. Actually, we did something that’s kind of…illegal.”

  “Illegal? There aren’t any laws here. How can something be illegal?”

  “Okay, well, it’s against the rules. We don’t believe in invading people’s minds. The way Lila was attacked? It’s a kind of neurological rape, and it’s the biggest no-no we have—right up there with physical rape or murder.”

  Maggie thought about that. “Can you murder someone by going into their mind?”

  “Oh, definitely. You can do one of two things: destroy their brain function, which will then stop sending messages to the body so it dies—physical murder—or you can do something else.”

  “Which is?”

  “There’s such a thing as leaving the physical function alone but murdering other parts of the brain so the body stays alive but the person is no longer there.”

  “So they’re a vegetable?”

  “Yes. There’s brain death, and then there are reports that people have been conscious, alive in their own heads but unable to move their bodies. They can live like that, trapped for years—unable to control their own limbs and feeling their bodies slowly die around them.”

  Maggie shivered. “Sounds awful. But how do you know all this? Has someone come back from it?”

  Marcus shook his head. “Not in our lifetimes. Our knowledge is based on medical reports that were handed down. These kind of things happened when people started experimenting with their abilities. If you had, say, a telepath who this happened to, they could communicate their thoughts to others from inside an uncooperative body.”

  “Ugh.” Maggie grimaced. “Must be terrifying.”

  Marcus took her hand, and Maggie was dismayed by how much his touch comforted her.

  “So,” she said after a moment, “what’s all this got to do with me?”

  “As I said, we don’t believe in invading people’s minds and controlling them. It takes away their agency, which is what we are fighting against the collectives to preserve in the first place. But with you that’s exactly what we did.”

  “You invaded my mind?”

  “Doc did. He used a neurological sedative.”

  “So we passed out?”

  “No. The sedative he used
put to sleep the part of your mind that’s you—your decisions, your personality. The bodily functions stay awake. Doc then took control of you and walked both of you out of that bar and off the strip to a place where we were waiting to pick you up.”

  “What did you do with Jonah?”

  “We found a place to put him. There was an overpass with a colony of hobos living under it. We laid him down in an out-of-the-way spot where he wouldn’t be disturbed and covered him with sacs and cardboard boxes.”

  “But”—Maggie rubbed her forehead—“what if he woke up before we got back?”

  “You’re thinking too linearly again. The sedative would have lasted several hours, and we planned to return you to the exact moment we took you from. So it would have been like you and Jonah had walked out of the bar to that spot and then come to. You wouldn’t have remembered how you got there, but that was it.”

  “But even if I had retained my memories, what story would I have told my brother?”

  Marcus shrugged. “We never figured one out. We thought we’d have time later to think of something. But then your memory was gone, and it was a moot point.”

  “So why weren’t we returned to that same moment? We woke up in a hotel room.”

  Marcus turned to her. “Yes, I suppose we all ought to be more curious about that.”

  “What?”

  “When we brought you back, you were unconscious. It was still afternoon, which is when you left, but your brother was gone. It had only been a few minutes since we’d left him, but he wasn’t there anymore. It took us hours to find him. Our Seekers had to figure out where he was. When they found him, he was lying on the floor of that hotel room.”

  Maggie waited, but he didn’t go on. “And, you just left me there with him? You didn’t ask any questions?”

  “We didn’t have time. The sedative was wearing off. We figured that someone—maybe his girlfriend or a good Samaritan who didn’t want the cops picking him up, had brought him there, thinking he was drunk, to sleep it off. So whose hotel room was it?”

  Maggie opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t. The implications of what he was saying sunk in, leaving her speechless.

  “Maggie?”

  “I don’t know. Marcus, that’s disturbing. Where was Jonah during that time? The hotel room was rented to some businessman in Vegas for a conference. Imagine his surprise when he returned to his room at the end of the day to find it swarming with cops and two people who woke up inside a locked door with no memory.”

  Marcus’s brow had furrowed as she spoke. “You didn’t know the guy?”

  “Not at all. And then there were the scars.” She looked down at the wolverine scar on her hand. “How did I get this? Do you know?”

  He took her hand in both of his, running his thumbs over the scar. “Yes. It was a mission. We were trying to infiltrate one of the collectives. One of the drones attacked you. He had some sort of three-pronged tool, and he scratched you. It was minor, so I didn’t Heal it right away. By the time I did, it left a scar.”

  Maggie nodded. That was the first straight, definitive answer she’d gotten about what happened in Vegas.

  “But Jonah had one two.”

  Marcus glanced down at her hand. “He had a scar like this one?”

  “No. Not like this one. His was bigger, on his leg.”

  Marcus frowned. “How big? What did it look like?”

  “I don’t know. He said it covered his whole thigh. I didn’t actually see it. He would have had to take off his pants to show it to me, and that would be weird.”

  Marcus smiled, but Maggie plowed on.

  “A doctor examined us both. And like mine, it wasn’t some fresh cut he got during the time we were out. It was old scar tissue. He swears up and down he didn’t have it before Vegas, just like I didn’t have this.”

  Marcus’s frown deepened, and his eyes wandered around the dark cavern. She knew he was trying to think of a logical explanation. Finally he shook his head. “I…I don’t have an answer for that. But you’re right. It’s disturbing. We’ll have to talk to Doc and the team about it in the morning.”

  “But…” Maggie rubbed the bridge of her nose. “But why did I see you before that, on the Strip?”

  “That I don’t know either. Doc and I talked about it. The only thing I can think of that makes any sense is that the time travel messed up your perception.”

  “How?”

  “What you saw must have been a recollection from before, a fragment of a memory, but now you perceive it as having happened before you met me rather than after.”

  “But how is that possible? If when you took me back I had no memories at all, then how did I—”

  “That’s just it, Maggie. We don’t know. You shouldn’t have any memories at all, but you remember me finding you on the ship, which was right after you lost your memories. And you have those other flashes. Somehow, some shard of memory got knocked around in your head and reinserted into your brain in such a way that you remember it as having happened before you met me. But it didn’t. It couldn’t have.”

  Maggie sighed. Fat lot of help this was, but it wasn’t his fault he couldn’t figure it out. His explanation was more than she could have puzzled out on her own.

  He ran a hand through his hair. “We’re messing with time, which we really shouldn’t be. There’s too much potential for things to go wrong, to change or get messed up. And when they do, they’re the sort of things that hurt to wrap your head around.”

  Maggie nodded. She definitely knew the feeling.

  Marcus smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Sorry. Everything I say seems to bring you distress.”

  “It’s hardly your fault. So, you did your invasion-of-the-body-snatchers thing and took me through time. Then what?”

  He shrugged. “Not a lot different from this time around, actually. We—meaning Doc—explained everything to you. We showed you around and demonstrated our abilities so you’d believe us. Then we started teaching you, training you for missions. Doc wanted me to stay around you for healing purposes. Because of that, I did a lot of your training myself, and we spent a lot of time together.”

  Maggie’s eyes went to the ground beside her. She wished she had a nervous tick, like tapping her foot, so she’d have an outlet for her pent-up nervousness, but she’d never been a foot-thumper.

  “And then what happened?”

  Marcus looked over at her again, but then he did something she didn’t expect. He laid one hand on the ground behind her and put all his weight on it, leaning in. With his other hand he tilted her chin up and let his lips brush ever so slightly against hers.

  Maggie froze but shut her eyes when their lips met. He didn’t do anything more, simply let his lips linger against hers, and she realized he was waiting for her to react. She pressed her lips back against his with the smallest of movements, holding her breath. When she did, he turned more fully to her, cupping her face in his hands and kissing her more deeply.

  She didn’t pull away. Despite its heat, his mouth on hers sent a rush of cold tingles down her spine that radiated out all the way to her fingertips.

  It didn’t last long. When he pulled away, she gasped forward, wanting more, but stopped herself, taking in a shuddering breath.

  He leaned back only far enough for his mouth to reach her ear.

  “That’s what happened,” he whispered. Then he leaned away, looking back toward the chasm.

  Maggie looked away from him. Despite all her attempts to be an adult and just talk about the relationship, the emotions had seeped in, and a profound sense of sadness settled over her. She could feel the passion he had, and clearly still did harbor for her, but she couldn’t remember it.

  “Marcus, how long did it take us after we met before we…became involved?”

  “Not long.”

  “So we were together romantically for the better part of the year I was here?”

  “Yes.” His voice was calm, matter of fact.
>
  Maggie put a hand over her eyes. “That’s a lot of history to lose,” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  When she got up the courage to glance over at him again, he was looking at her with compassion.

  “And how did you feel when…when I lost my memories and you had to send me back?”

  His face was unreadable even though it was only inches from hers.

  “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.” He looked forward again. “I cried for three days straight.”

  Again, it was said with no sadness or bitterness, no emotion at all. Maggie wanted to cry.

  “You seem to be okay with it now,” she offered.

  His head swiveled toward her again, and he shrugged. “You’re here now.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not like we’re…together, or anything—”

  “I don’t care. You’re here. I’m here with you.” He took her hand in his and looked out around the cavern. “In a depressingly lonely yet somehow peacefully hopeful cavern, and the wind is cool, and the light is shining, and…” He looked down at her and shrugged again. “And…you’re here now.”

  He smiled, looking down and away. It came off as a shy gesture, and she wanted to melt. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Maggie didn’t know why she thought talking about it would make it less awkward. Their relationship had just become exponentially more complicated.

  “Come on,” Marcus said suddenly. “We should head back.”

  “Back?”

  “You’ve got to get some sleep, Maggie. We’re leaving tomorrow. You’ll need your strength.”

  He held out a hand, which she took, and hoisted her easily to her feet. She let him hold it as he guided her through the dim corridors.

  When they reached her door, she started to go in but then turned back to him.

  “Marcus?”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m sorry I don’t remember you.”

  He stepped toward her and put a hand on her neck, his fingers digging softly into the hair at the nape. She thought he’d kiss her again, but his lips came down just between her eyes, and she wished he’d aimed a little lower.