Persistence of Vision

by Liesel K. Hill

  Out of sheer desperation, Maggie looked at Borna. “Why are you doing this? You aren’t tied to the collective either. Have you ever been?”

  Borna turned cold, calculating eyes on her. Her eyes were black and deep. Marcus’s eyes were deep too, but they held a wealth of warmth and integrity. This woman’s eyes held only darkness, like a dim room where something is lurking in the shadows, waiting to suck up all the light.

  “No,” Borna said. Her voice was solid and chilly. “I was found as an individual and recruited by the collective when they realized my talents.”

  Maggie got up onto her knees. “I know your life must have been tremendously hard before. You were probably alone and scared. I’m sure they promised you the world if you’d help them, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We can—”

  The woman held up one finger, and Maggie stopped speaking.

  “Don’t think that you can talk me out of my loyalties or appeal to my sense of decency or try to make me listen because we are both female. It won’t work.”

  The way she said it was angry and final. Maggie thought it odd, robot-like that she said female rather than women.

  “Because we’re both…female?”

  “Gender is irrelevant, a trick of genetics. It has no bearing on anything. When you enter the collective, your sense of gender identity will be annihilated.”

  Maggie took in what Borna said along with how she looked and made deductions.

  “You are trying to look the part of one who has no gender, but underneath you are feminine, and you use it to manipulate men.”

  The woman’s snake eyes bored into Maggie, unblinking. “Sometimes we must do things we don’t condone to achieve our aims.”

  “But it’s all a lie, an illusion, a contradiction. How can you hope to make a stand anywhere when you have one foot on either side of the fence?”

  The woman smiled, and it chilled Maggie’s blood. “You think we are just going to randomly go through history and take over any mind we come across, but we won’t. We have a meticulously laid-out plan, a step-by-step process that will bring all the world—past, present, and future—under our control. By the time history gets around to birthing you, Maggie, you won’t care about any of this. You’ll be a good little drone and do exactly as you’re told.”

  Colin came to squat next to Borna.

  “Terrifying, isn’t it?” he said. “That someone could forcibly change your identity, your fate, the person you were meant to become, and there’s nothing in the world you can do about it?”

  He crawled forward, putting one hand on either side of Maggie. She put her palms on the floor behind her and tried to scoot back away from him, but he moved too quickly. He put his hands over hers so she couldn’t retreat any farther. When he leaned forward, he was practically on top of her.

  “Colin.” Marcus’s voice had a deadly warning in it.

  “What?” Colin looked up at Marcus like an annoyed child.

  “Leave her alone.”

  “Do you think you can stop me, Marcus? Gender may be a trick of genetics and our…desires merely a byproduct of our hormones, but while our minds are still individualistic, they have needs. And I mean to fulfill mine.”

  With that last phrase, his eyes returned to Maggie, running down the length of her body.

  “I’d rather be dead,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Oh, I know you would.” He smiled and leaned down to whisper in her ear. The forced, fraudulent intimacy of it made her wince. “But that is not an option for you.”

  He produced a knife from somewhere, and Maggie yelped as he administered a swift, stinging slice across her cheek.

  Marcus was growling softly, clenching and unclenching his fists, but encased behind the barrier, there was nothing he could do.

  Then Colin did the strangest thing he’d done yet. He leaned down and licked the blood from Maggie’s cheek, gulping theatrically.

  “Ugh.” Maggie wiped the saliva off her face.

  Nat was still unconscious, but Marcus’s anger had faded somewhat in favor of disgust.

  “What?” Maggie said. “You fancy yourself a vampire now?”

  Colin grinned. “Not at all. But why do you think the legend of vampires was born? Human blood has power people in your time only guessed at. The qualities in our blood are remarkable, powerful, and addicting.”

  Despite her disgust, Maggie was interested in what he was saying. “What qualities?”

  “Our ability to reason. We have logic, can solve complex problems, but still have all the passion and emotion of the ages.”

  “Yes.” Maggie nodded. “That’s what makes us human.”

  “Exactly. An animal lives on instinct but has no higher reasoning capabilities. A computer can solve complex problems but feels no passion or attachment. Humans have the best of all possible worlds in them. Why do you think that men who taste human blood crave it forever afterward? Why do you think animals that taste the blood of man must be put down and never return to hunting their natural prey? The blood calls to them, compels them on a neurological level. They’ve ingested something their minds are too small to understand and their bodies too primitive to absorb, but they become drunk with the power of human life, with the feel of it all.”

  Maggie took a shuddering breath. She tried to concentrate on what he was saying while not trembling and also keeping an eye out for a good time to grab the ring.

  “What you speak of is perversion of the human spirit—a spirit you want to destroy by taking away emotion and individuality in the collectives—yet you speak of it with awe and admiration. Why destroy it, then?”

  He leaned forward until his nose was almost touching hers. “Because collective minds feel no passion—good, bad, or otherwise. And people with no passion can be controlled.”

  “S-so what? You think by drinking my blood you’ll be able to leech away my passion?”

  “No. You’re too independent for that, Maggie. But I am a Seeker, and this is merely a precaution. By tasting your blood I establish a link between my brain and your body. From now on I’ll be able to zero in on your location. I’ll be able to point right to where you are, no matter where in the world, or off it for that matter, you go. After your little stunt last time, I’ve learned to be cautious. If by some miracle you escape for a time, I’ll be able to go right to you. No one will be able to hide you or protect you from me, Maggie. Ever. Again.”

  Shivers raced along Maggie’s veins as Colin looked up at Borna and some silent communication passed between them. Borna stood and walked through the barriers toward Marcus.

  Maggie needed to distract Colin to buy Marcus more time. She didn’t know if Nat was dead or not, but the woman was going to hurt Marcus now, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She rambled, grasping for straws.

  “What is she doing? Because for wanting so much to absorb them into the collective, I gotta say, it looks like you’re killing them instead.”

  “Your friend is not dead,” Colin said, eyes shifting briefly to Nat. “For now she is only inflicting pain.”

  He turned to Maggie then, and she wanted nothing more than to escape his drilling eyes.

  “But don’t think for one second that she couldn’t do it. She could destroy their masculinity with the flick of her wrist. She could destroy your femininity, your memories, your frontal lobe, the way you perceive the world. She could annihilate any part of any person with a mere thought. And she will, if called upon.”

  Marcus got to his feet as Borna approached. He didn’t back away from her, but his body was tense with caution. She walked right up to him and did the same thing she’d done to Nat, palm starting at his face and moving downward. When she got to his waistline he tried to grab her hand in an attempt to fend off what he knew was coming, but it did no good.

  Just as Nat had done, Marcus’s head went back and every muscle in his body went into micro spasms of intense pain. His jaw locked up, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
He made no sound except for dangerously irregular rasping breaths.

  Something in Maggie snapped. She no longer cared about anything except killing this woman and helping Marcus.

  Forgetting to be inconspicuous, she jammed her hand into the pocket of her jeans. Colin was watching Marcus’s torture with that smug grin again, but he must have registered Maggie’s movement because one hand went up absently, as though to swat her attempts at escape away.

  Maggie’s fingers found the metallic surface of the ring, and she looped it around her index finger.

  Using the ring as a conduit stone, Maggie immediately felt vast amounts of energy at her fingertips. Oceans of power flooded toward her, ready to do her bidding. She understood why precious metals were only given to experts. Even as she drew more deeply on the energy, scooping as much toward her as she could, she wondered whether she would be able to control it or whether she was about to incinerate them all.

  As though struck by the fiery tongue of a whip, Colin shuddered then retreated. He crawled off her and backward, trembling visibly. The arrogant, condescending expression had been replaced with bewilderment and, could that be fear? Borna too was retreating. The instant Maggie’s finger found the ring, Borna dropped Marcus and backed away. The expression of utter shock on her face was one Maggie could see clearly, though not with her eyes.

  Maggie didn’t know if Marcus was still alive. She didn’t see him at all. She didn’t see Nat, who had begun to stir and now was trying to sit up.

  She only had eyes for the Traveler, who had to be stopped, and the secondary threat of Colin.

  They were backing into opposite corners of the room. Colin’s corner held the door. The only thing in Borna’s corner was a cabinet of some sort, built into the wall. She was moving cautiously toward it.

  Maggie was good at finding light. She focused on the closest, most accessible, most gargantuan local source. It was encased in the earth beneath them—volcanic activity dormant for thousands of years.

  She found she could control thousands of tendrils of liquid fire and could elongate and manipulate them. She used the energy she was pulling through the ring to raise the lava to her, sucking both pure energy and volcanic rock toward her while the Traveler moved closer to the cabinet.

  As the volcanic material neared the surface, Maggie drew more energy through the ring. She had to attack her enemies while protecting her friends. Liquid fire broke the surface, shooting upward in a molten pillar and desiccating the one individual in its path, and white-hot light broke in Maggie’s head, searing the image into the retinas of her eyes and the back walls of her mind.

  And then her sensory perception went too. She witnessed but did not retain—just another forgotten memory.

  Chapter 31: The Eyes of a Drone

  Nat was trying to peel back the layers of pain and find reality again when he felt Maggie pull the energy to her.

  The woman called Borna was evil in the extreme. It all happened too quickly for Nat to process what she’d done, and he knew he’d have to think about it more later.

  Nat sat up as Colin and Borna backed away. Nat had never seen anyone wield the kind of energy Maggie was handling. She still wore her conduit stone, but she’d been given the neurological sedative, which should have prevented her from using her abilities. Nat reached for his own abilities, wondering if the sedative had been burned off somehow, but the wave of nausea that washed over him meant the sedative was still potent, so how was Maggie doing it?

  He was sure Colin and Borna’s fear was mirrored in his own face. With that magnitude of energy, Maggie could blow this entire compound off the planet. All that would be left was an oozing volcano within a raw crater.

  Then the lava broke the surface. A pillar of liquid fire came from directly under Borna, encasing her in its roaring destruction. It vaporized her in a matter of seconds, evaporating flesh, muscle, and then bone like sand before the desert wind. As her liquid ashes dissipated, Nat felt the imprisonment barriers disintegrate as well.

  Movement to the left brought Colin to Nat’s attention. He turned and fled through the door. Nat knew he ought to follow the man, but there were more pressing things at hand. He had to stop Maggie before she killed them all.

  Staggering to his feet, he lurched toward her. Marcus raised his head as Nat went by. Nat pulled him to his feet, but they were both still so weak that it was like two drunks trying to keep each other upright. Eventually they made it to Maggie’s side, collapsing to their knees on either side of her.

  Marcus shook Maggie, trying to get her to focus on him. Her eyes were glazed over, glowing with the reflected light from the pillar of fire she had summoned. It was spouting up through the roof and out the top of the building.

  “Maggie. Maggie, look at me. Maggie, stop this. You must stop!” Marcus pulled the conduit stone off her hand, but it did no good. He looked as confused as Nat felt. How was she doing this?

  A sound brought Nat’s head toward the door. A man was entering, striding aggressively toward them. Colin, no doubt, returned with reinforcements. They were defenseless. He and Marcus were still feeling the effects of the neurological sedative, and while Maggie wasn’t, she was so drunk with electromagnetic power that she was barely conscious.

  He cast his eyes around, looking for something he could use as a weapon, though he doubted any physical weapon would be a match for the neurological weapons of the collective. Then he heard Marcus’s voice, and his head whipped around in surprise.

  “David?”

  The man striding toward them wasn’t Colin.

  “David, what are you—” Marcus began, but David had already reached them. He fell to his knees and slid the last few inches toward Maggie. Grabbing her left hand, he held it up.

  Nat and Marcus gaped when their eyes fell on the delicate gold band rattling around on Maggie’s index finger. Where had she gotten that?

  David grasped the ring and yanked it off her finger.

  Maggie slumped to the side, and Marcus pulled her into his arms. Immediately the lava spray ceased. Mostly it fell straight back down into the chasm it had come from, but some of it hit the sides of the hole at odd angles and sprayed outward. Marcus threw his body up to protect Maggie, but it was unnecessary. The instant he had the ring, David threw up a wall of protection. The lava spatter seemed to hang in the air as it hit the invisible wall of energy. Then David lowered it safely to the ground.

  The three of them knelt, chests heaving and staring at one another. Nat put his hands on either side of Maggie’s head. Her life signs were not faint but distant somehow. Nat was not a Healer, so he didn’t understand what he was sensing, but she was alive.

  Marcus was grasping for words. “David, how did you…? Where did she…? What are you doing here?”

  “Rescuing you,” David said. “We have to go.”

  “Go where?”

  “The team is under attack.” David looked to where the pillar of lava had been a moment ago. “If I’m not mistaken, Maggie just killed the Traveler. We’ve accomplished our principal aim. Now we have to retreat. I’ll carry her.”

  Marcus recoiled protectively, and Nat suppressed a sigh. He understood. He’d experienced this kind of sibling rivalry himself as a young man, but now was not the time for it.

  “Marcus,” David said, “you’re hurt. You can barely walk. You have two options: either drag her or try to carry her and hope you don’t drop her.”

  Marcus looked sullenly at the ground.

  “Let me carry her. I’ll make sure no harm comes to her.”

  Reluctantly, Marcus nodded.

  David wriggled one arm under Maggie’s shoulders. The other cupped her knees. He hoisted her up and turned toward the door while Nat and Marcus got to their feet.

  “Follow me. We have to hurry.”

  Chapter 32: The Canyons of Time

  The first awareness Maggie had was that she was being carried. Just as when B had attacked her using Lila’s body, Maggie was aware of noises ar
ound her and sensations, but she couldn’t make her body respond to her commands. She tried, as before, to focus on the voices around her, hoping they would bring her toward recovery.

  “What happened?” It was Doc’s voice.

  “Is she all right?” Karl asked. “David what are you doing here?”

  David’s response was calm and came from directly over Maggie’s face. He was the one carrying her. “Questions for another time. We have to get out of here. The entire place is on alert. Reinforcements are being awakened and given orders to find and kill us. If they catch us, we won’t get out of here at all.”

  “How do you know all that?” Marcus’s voice, from Maggie’s right, sounded suspicious.

  “Because I know how the collectives think. I know their protocols, the way they react to threats. They’re very efficient. We don’t have time to be standing here. I know another way out—it’s how I got in. If we hurry we can make it.”

  “But how can we trust—” Marcus began, but Karl cut him off.

  “I know you don’t like it, Marcus, but deal with it. The collective drones are converging on us. We don’t have any other choice.”

  Maggie heard an exaggerated sigh, which she assumed was Marcus, though there was no more argument.

  “Let me take Maggie, David,” Karl said. “You’ve been carrying her for a while now, and you need to lead the way.”

  Maggie was handed from one pair of arms to another.

  Maggie was carried what felt like a long way in silence. She tried to force her eyelids up, but they wouldn’t budge. At one point, she thought she’d moved her finger, but when she tried, she couldn’t do it again. She wished someone would speak so she’d know what was going on. Then, David did.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to go down to the basement level.”

  “Wait,” Karl said. “What about Joan and Clay?”

  “Where are they?”

  “Outside.”