“You all right?” Jonah asked, turning to her.
She thought she nodded. She must have because he turned and they kept going. The slums she’d seen from the ridge above looked infinitely worse up close. The structures were nothing but lean-tos made from material never meant for building: scraps of metal; bits of plywood and rotting particle board; stripped down, burnt out cars or the pieces of them; garbage, garbage, and more garbage, everywhere she looked.
The smell of human filth and acrid smoke permeated the air. Snatches of strange sounds reached her ears—soft crying, voices arguing in the distance, a human shriek.
They came upon an encampment the size of a small city. Maggie was again reminded of a refugee camp stretching to the horizon. People lived in filth, sat listlessly in doorways, and cowered when anyone walked by.
Jonah found some soiled, hole-ridden rags on a tree and handed some to Maggie. Dressed as they were, they would stand out like casino lights. A foul stench she didn’t try to identify came off the clothes. They were too big and she thought they were men’s but she put them on anyway and they ventured into the encampment.
She didn’t think they would find food. Her stomach howled, but anything they found here was likely to be rotting, like the people.
They slinked from the shadow of one structure to another, trying to blend in. Tiny alleys between lean-tos passed for streets, though their arms brushed the structures on both sides. The streets were not dirt, but mud. They squelched up to their ankles in it.
Up ahead she heard a commotion. Jonah walked in front of her, occasionally raising his hand to signal her to stop. He hurried behind a squat structure made of intertwined packing crates and Maggie followed, crouching down so she could see without being seen.
Fifteen feet away, a tall, muscular man with a shaved head and tattoos everywhere his clothing didn’t cover yanked a middle-aged woman out of a hut. A much younger woman, dressed in rags worse than what Maggie and Jonah had wrapped themselves in, wailed nearby. Mud caked her hair and dirt lodged in every pore and wrinkle of her face.
“I thought she left!” the tattooed man screamed at the younger woman, violently shaking the older woman by the arm. “Where have you been hiding her all these months? We can’t afford to feed her anymore. You know that! I warned you!”
“Please,” the young woman sobbed. “I’m splitting my meals with her. We aren’t using anything extra.”
“I don’t believe you,” the man snarled. “You’ll have half portions for the next six months to make up for what you’ve stolen.” He pulled an enormous knife from his belt. It wasn’t big enough to be a machete, but close. Eighteen inches long and a quarter inch thick, it glinted metallically, even without the sun.
When the young woman saw it, her sobs turned to hysterical screams. She wailed and keened like an injured animal. “Please! Please don’t!” Maggie was able to make out. “We’ll leave camp. You’ll never see us again!”
“You were given that choice three months ago and you lied! You know the cut-off age is fifty, and you hid her.” He trembled with anger. “We can’t trust you not to sneak her back in and try to filch rations, so the choice is now taken from you.”
The old woman, who’d been silent thus far, sat in the mud a few feet away. She didn’t look sad or desperate, the way the younger woman did. She blinked at the scene in front of her in a resigned, oblivious way. She didn’t put up a fight when the man seized her hair, wrenched her head back and dragged his knife across her throat.
No passion lit her face, no fight. She closed her eyes dully and slumped to the ground while the younger woman fell to her knees, shrieking, a few feet away.
Maggie felt sick.
The man kicked the older woman’s body aside. “She was your mother,” he said, wiping the blade off on his pants. “You clean up this mess.”
He re-sheathed his blade and stalked away, leaving the younger woman face down, sobbing into handfuls of mud.
Maggie crouched lower as the man passed. Jonah did the same, looking haunted. When the man disappeared down the lane, Jonah jerked his head to the side to signal her to follow him. As much pity as she felt for the young woman, relief washed over her at the prospect of getting away. Nothing could be done for the woman or her mother anyway.
They squatted down as they walked more often than not—most of the small structures stood only four or five feet tall—and Maggie’s back and legs soon ached. Jonah wandered across alleys and around corners as if he knew where to go. Maggie wondered if he was pursuing a lead or simply exploring.
At one point, he started across a particularly wide space, then danced backward, motioning Maggie back too. They hid between two lean-tos and waited as a teenaged boy and girl wandered past, arguing.
“I don’t want to,” the girl whined. Her ragged clothes were threadbare and left her calves and midriff uncovered. Wispy hair that might have been any color under all the muck clung to her face and neck. “It’ll hurt!”
“Only a little,” the boy said. Tall and skeleton-thin, he had gaunt eyes and black stringy hair. “It will bring us closer together, Si. We’ll be linked. Then I can find you anywhere. Come when you need help. You don’t want Ole Chain Eyes to corner you again, do you?”
“No,” the girl said, hollowing out a pit in the mud with her toe. “But it’ll still hurt at first, and Mama says I won’t be free afterward.”
“Of course you’ll be free.” The boy put his hands on her shoulders. “It’s only me you’re linking to, no one else. What am I going to force you to do?” The girl sighed and the boy took it for agreement. “Good. It’ll be okay, Si. Trust me. Lots of people do it, now. You’ll be glad we did.”
He took the girl’s hand and she allowed him to lead her off.
Maggie and Jonah moved on.
Eventually they came to an open space near the middle of the encampment. A huge, green, military-like tent with sides open to the air stood in the space. An unending line of people moved slowly through it. They emerged on the other side carrying parcels.
Maggie couldn’t see clearly, but it had to be food. She could tell by the way they cradled it, protected it as though it was a newborn babe. These people were starving and impoverished. Food was their only pleasure; their only desire.
Bewildered as to how on earth they would steal food with so many people tromping through, and wondering if they could simply join the line, Maggie turned to ask Jonah if he had a plan.
“Hey! You two! What do you think you’re doing?”
Maggie and Jonah leapt to their feet and spun to face the same man who’d cut the older woman’s throat half an hour before. Dirt filled the lines of his face and some kind of metal hung from his eyeballs. Delicate, three-link chains of tiny silver octagons jumped and shifted with his gaze.
Ole Chain Eyes.
The one called B cornering her in a glass room.
“We’re, uh,” Jonah stuttered, “just observing.”
The man walked forward until he stood toe to toe with them.
He wasn’t as tall as Maggie originally thought. In fact, despite his height, she could almost look him in the eye. When she glanced over at Jonah, she could look him in the eye, too. Strange.
Chain Eyes glanced at her warily, looking her up and down as though to judge what kind of threat she posed. It was refreshing to be seen as a genuine threat, rather than a piece of meat. She was an individual, a woman, and not a large one, so most men in Marcus’s time viewed her as prey. This man didn’t. He glanced at her with the same suspicion he regarded Jonah.
“I haven’t seen you before. How long have you been in camp?”
“About a month,” Jonah said. Relief washed over Maggie. She didn’t think she could’ve come up with the lie so quickly. Or believably.
The man’s metal-clad eyeballs shifted between her and Jonah. “What are your identification numbers?”
Maggie suppressed a grimace. They were caught. They could make up numbers, she supposed, but i
f they ended up being off by a single digit, he’d know it. Not to mention, if he was asking, he probably had a way to check them.
She glanced sideways at Jonah, who gazed back at her. They didn’t need to speak. When he turned, she turned and they simply bolted. Maggie got all of ten paces before Chain Eyes dug his sausage-like fingers into her leg.
She went down with a cry, the mud squelching around her. Chain Eyes flipped her over. He raised his arm far above his head, meat-hook of a hand balled into a fist. Maggie wanted to scream, but couldn’t. She couldn’t get away either. She twisted and kicked and punched but it was no use. The fist descended and Maggie prepared for her facial bones to be shattered. Something roared in her ears and panic choked her.
Gasping, Maggie kicked herself awake. It took her several seconds to remember where she was. When a presence moved up beside her, she shrunk away before recognizing Lila.
“Maggie, are you okay? What happened? Bad dream?”
Maggie held her head, which pounded again, and nodded.
“What was it about?”
“I dreamed I went down there with Jonah. It was horrible.”
Lila gave her a sympathetic look. Darkness had fallen while Maggie slept but Lila had made a lantern out of a rock and soft white light emanated from it, allowing them to see one another. “I’m worried about them, too,” Lila said.
“How’s Kristee?”
“Awake, actually.”
“Really?”
“You’ve been sleeping for ten hours, Maggie. So has she. She woke up all on her own. Why don’t you come talk with us?”
Maggie followed Lila to the neurochemical campfire and sat across from Kristee. “Hi there,” she said. “We met a few days ago.”
Kristee smiled. “I remember.”
She was young, but had bright eyes and a pretty smile when she didn’t look strung out. “How are you feeling?” Maggie asked.
Kristee let out a soft groan. “Honestly? Horrible. Better than I was, I suppose. Weak. You know when you’re so tired that even when you lie down, your legs ache?”
Maggie nodded.
“Multiply that by a thousand and apply it to every muscle and bone in your body. You’ll know how I feel.”
Maggie grimaced. “Sorry.”
Kristee shrugged. “At least I’m awake, right? Lila’s been filling me in on all that’s happened the last few days. What about you? You cried out just now. Did you have a nightmare?”
Maggie’s face warmed and she nodded. “Yeah. I seem to have a lot of those.”
“About what?” Kristee asked, and Lila glared at her. She probably thought Kristee was prying, but Maggie didn’t mind. For months she’d had no one to talk to about her memories and experiences. To speak openly about them to people who cared was...refreshing.
“Memories, mostly,” Maggie said.
Lila’s head snapped up, eyebrows hiked. “Have you recovered your memories?”
One look at Kristee said she knew exactly what Lila was talking about.
“You know about the Remembrancer?” Maggie asked her.
Kristee smiled sheepishly. “The members of the team talked about her to their close friends, who talked to a few friends, who talked to a few people. Pretty soon all of Interchron knew the story. It’s so strange and mysterious. Destined to become the stuff of Interchron legend, I think.”
Maggie stared into the muted light of the rock, not sure how she ought to feel about that. After a moment, she addressed Lila. “I’ve recovered most of my memories. I remember the team from the first time, Interchron, the missions we went on, Marcus.”
“That’s great, Maggie! I’m so relieved! Everyone will be. Marcus will be so happy.” Lila’s smile looked genuine and Maggie returned it.
“Now if only I could get back to him. It’s proving harder than I would have thought.”
Lila gave her a sympathetic look. “We’ll get there soon, Maggie. Kristee’s doing better. If we can avoid drama for another day or so, Kristee should be able to take us the rest of the way.”
Maggie glanced at Kristee, who nodded emphatically.
“You said most of your memories,” Lila said. “So not all then?”
“No.” Maggie sighed. “I don’t remember anything that happened on the ship or what went down when they captured me. What’s worse, the memories I’ve recovered are disjointed. I can remember a certain event, but not anything before or after it. It’s there, floating randomly in my mind and I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Maybe I can help?” Lila suggested.
Maggie snapped her head up in surprise. “That’s a great idea. David wasn’t around the first time I came to Interchron, so he can’t confirm any memories. Maybe you can. Okay, I’ll start with the most disturbing one. Was Karl ever badly injured? Specifically, in the neck?”
Lila frowned. “Not that I recall. What do you mean?”
Maggie quickly explained the image of Karl washing up on some rocks, gushing blood from his neck. Lila’s eye widened in alarm as she spoke.
“Maggie, I don’t think...” Lila’s eyes went to the ground, thinking. “If that did happen, I certainly didn’t know about it. It’s not as if Karl spends a lot of time on the coast. He’s always at Interchron with us.”
Maggie sighed. “That’s a good point. Whenever this happened, I suppose it would have been on a mission. Only the team would have been there. I should have thought of that.”
Lila’s disturbed expression remained.
“It’s okay, Lila. I’ll ask him about it when I see him. Besides, he’s fine. Obviously someone—probably Marcus—Healed him, right?”
After a moment, Lila shook her head. “I don’t go on the missions, but my mother tells me about them. Uh,” she added quickly, “not anything I shouldn’t know. How things went in general, if anyone was hurt, that sort of thing. I don’t think she’d have kept such a serious injury from me. Karl and I are close.”
“I must have seen it, Lila. If it wasn’t a memory, I wouldn’t have it to recover.”
“Are you sure it’s a memory and not a dream?”
“No,” Maggie sighed, rubbing her forehead. “I suppose images could be fusing together. Maybe I’m misconstruing them. It’s impossible to know for sure.”
“The Remembrancer said that might happen, though, right?”
“Yes,” Maggie admitted. “She said it could take years to make all the pieces fit. I wish I could make it go faster. To force the memories to come, you know?”
Lila snorted and Maggie glared at her. “What?”
“You would do something like that, Maggie. Even were it possible, and safe, it just sounds painful.”
Maggie allowed herself a grim smile until Kristee spoke again, her voice tiny and halting. “Um, it is.”
As one, Maggie and Lila turned their gazes on her.
“What?” Maggie gaped, her stomach clenching. “You know how to force a memory to return?”
Kristee nodded. “Yes.”
“How?” Lila managed to sound both demanding and skeptical.
Kristee shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I have a younger sister. When I was eight, before our parents passed away, we were playing hide and seek. Salla climbed into the branches of an oak tree to hide. The wind blew hard that day. She lost her footing and fell a long way, hitting her head. For three days, she had no memory. She didn’t know who we were, where she was, what had happened. She couldn’t remember her own name.
“My father was a student of the brain. He studied her mind and said she’d put up some kind of mental block. My mother had a talent for Healing and she’d Healed the injury to Salla’s head, but my father said this block was something of Salla’s own making.”
“And he forced his way through it?” Maggie asked.
Kristee nodded.
“Did it work?”
“Yes,” Kristee avoided Lila’s glaring eyes. “It wasn’t pleasant, but it brought back her memories and she of course she felt better b
ecause she remembered who we were.”
Maggie glanced around the dark thicket, thinking. “Kristee, could we try this now, or are you too tired?”
“No,” Lila shook her head. “It’s not a good idea.”
“We’re just going to try it. If it doesn’t work, or if it gets to be too hard, we’ll stop.”
“You don’t know what will happen, Maggie. What if you lose more memories, or accidently destroy part of your mind? This is the kind of thing that shouldn’t be done without, you know, Doc’s supervision. Besides, your memories weren’t blocked, they were...kidnapped.”
“Doc’s not here,” Maggie said calmly. “And you’re right about the memories but the Remembrancer put them back in.”
“At least wait until the guys get back.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. She loved Lila but could see right through her. “You’re only saying that because you know they won’t let me do it.”
“And for good reason,” Lila snapped.
Deciding to block Lila out for the time being, Maggie looked at Kristee. “Well, can you do it?”
“Lila may be right, Maggie. This isn’t the healthiest thing to do. In my sister’s case, it was the only thing my father could think of. That doesn’t mean it’s always the answer. My father told me we put up mental walls to protect ourselves. Usually it’s because the experience was so painful, we don’t want to remember it. The trauma is too much for us to handle.”
“You said once your sister broke through, she was fine, right? And I know what’s going to happen, so it won’t shock me.”
“You don’t know that, Maggie.” Lila crossed her arms over her chest and jutted out her jaw, looking for all the world like her mother. Maggie ignored her.
“Can you do this or not, Kristee?”
“Yes,” Kristee nodded, still avoiding looking at Lila. “I believe so.”
After another ten minutes of arguing, Lila threw up her hands in defeat, not because Maggie convinced her, but because Maggie refused to back down.
“What should I do?” Maggie asked Kristee.
“Sit down on this rock and plant your feet.”
Maggie obeyed while Lila frowned, arms folded across her chest and biting her lip. Lila was probably more scared than angry but if this gave some insight into the memories...
Quantum Entanglement Page 21
