Persistence of Vision by Liesel Hill
Chapter 22: Wind and Water and Scars
That night Maggie couldn’t sleep; her mind was reeling. After hours of staring at the darkness, she gave up on rest and threw her legs over the side of the bed.
The clothes she slept in were neither uncomfortable nor revealing, so she didn’t bother to change. Instead she stole out into the darkened hallway on bare feet, her long pajamas swishing as she walked.
The room directly beside hers was where Marcus slept. Despite the fact that there were no doors, she knew his room would be dark and he wouldn’t be able to see her go past, but she tiptoed on the other side of the hall anyway, feeling paranoid. After all, they would be going on a dangerous mission in the morning.
Once she was beyond Marcus’s room, she made her way through the twisting tunnels of the compound. All was dark and quiet, as most people were sleeping this time of night. There were always a few people up on patrol, but they wouldn’t be on the lower levels.
Maggie didn’t think about where she was going until she got there, but when she stood before the passage to the Canyon room, she knew she’d meant to end up there all along. She felt drawn to the spot for reasons she couldn’t explain.
Maggie found the conduit stone Joan had used as a lantern. After a month’s learning, doing simple things like producing light and using stones meant for specific purposes were coming easily to her. Cupping the round stone in her hand, she thought of light, and immediately a beam came from the rock, stretching out in front of her. It was dimmer than Joan’s had been, but she preferred it that way; it seemed cozier.
She made her way into the vacant cavern, holding the rock out in front of her. Unlike the last time she’d visited with Joan, a soft but constant wind was blowing through. It was strange, counterintuitive. She was deep in the mountain, but the wind was blowing as though she was standing on a mountaintop. She could see the precipice of the drop-off only because the ground she was on was a lighter darkness than the far bank. She felt drawn to that precipice but forced herself to stay several feet back. She had visions of being blown off into the emptiness, and when she shone the light toward the cliff, it looked foreboding.
Maggie sat on the same rock she and Joan talked on before and set the light down beside her. It went out, but she closed her eyes and envisioned bringing light from it. It was harder to do when her skin wasn’t actually in contact with the object. It took several tries, but finally a dull light came from the rock again. She made it stronger over several seconds, but it wasn’t as strong as when she was touching it. She pulled it into her lap with resignation. Would she ever be able to make this second nature?
Wondering what she was even doing here, she shone the light around the cavern, running the beam over the walls and turning in a circle. It jumped and dove as the rocks bubbled and caved in the natural formation of the mountain. The sound of the water from behind the far wall couldn’t be heard, drowned out by the soft moaning of the wind. The cavern was cool and dry, formed completely of dull, gray rock, and there was a man standing in the doorway.
Maggie jumped to her feet, dropping the light, which went out when it hit the floor. Her heart pounded against her rib cage, and though she tried, she couldn’t bring it back on.
“It’s me, Maggie.”
Maggie let her breath out in a whoosh at the sound of Marcus’s voice. She wished he would stop sneaking up on her like that.
His steps padded toward her in the loose dirt, and then his hand was on her arm. She could feel his breath on her cheek.
“Find the light, Maggie.”
She bent her knees, but his hand tightened on her arm, keeping her from crouching down.
“Use your mind. Find it, and imagine pulling light through it. You have to be able to do this.”
“I usually can. You just scared me.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. But anytime it’s necessary to be able to create light out of non-luminous objects, you’re probably going to be afraid, so it’s crucial to master this despite your adrenaline.”
Maggie knew he was right, even if she was a bit annoyed that he kept challenging her to do things she wasn’t completely comfortable with. She closed her eyes and tried to think of where the conduit stone was, tried to imagine the light beam again. She opened her eyes. Darkness pressed in from all sides. She tried again. Still nothing.
Marcus stepped behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders. They were warm and large enough to encompass her entire shoulder, front and back.
“Reach out with your mind, Maggie.”
“I did.”
She could feel his patient smile as his breath came hot against her right ear.
“Don’t think of the rock for a minute. Think of the air. It’s cool and refreshing. It’s all around you. You can feel it flying past. Concentrate on it.”
Eyes closed, Maggie imagined she could see the air as it whooshed past. It was blue laced with white.
“Now,” Marcus continued, “where are the voids in the air?”
The most obvious was the ground. The air was all around her, but it wasn’t rushing under her feet. Next was him. He was standing close enough that she couldn’t feel the air on her back. He wasn’t pressed up against her, but she could feel the mass of his body behind her. She could feel its warmth, the way it displaced the air around it, the energy of his bodily functions, the beat of his heart.
For the first time understanding what it meant to cast her mind out, she did it, reaching farther. She could feel the far wall of the canyon. It was twenty feet thick and laced with mineral deposits. The canyon reached down for hundreds of feet. She couldn’t feel its bottom. She reached farther, trying to feel for its depth.
Marcus’s hands seized her around the waist and yanked her backward. Her eyes flew open, and she gasped. She had been leaning out over the edge of the cliff, looking down. He’d grabbed her just as she’d begun falling over. She hadn’t even realized she was walking forward.
Marcus spun her around to face him. There was still no light—she hadn’t gotten around to finding the conduit stone—but she could feel his breath on her face and neck. When he spoke, she realized his face was even closer to hers than she’d thought, only inches away.
“You’re finally grasping what we’re trying to teach you. More than just feeling what’s around you, you were exploring it, understanding it. That’s good. You just have to learn to root your feet to one spot. Explore with your mind, not your body.”
He was smiling as he said it; she could feel his mirth, but then he turned more serious.
“Now, find the light.”
Trying to ignore the fact that she was actually touching him now and could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, she felt again for the void in the wind. There was the ground, and then there was a small, round void near where she had been sitting. It was about the right size.
She felt movement from Marcus and realized he was nodding. “Good. Now, feel what it’s made of—the potential energy it houses. Imagine the elements, the very atoms coming together to produce luminescence. Imagine them clicking together like the ignition of a flame.
Maggie imagined exactly that, and the cavern was flooded with milky, fluorescent light. Both of them tensed, eyes shutting. The light was so bright that they wouldn’t have seen the cavern even if they could’ve kept their eyes open.
“Uh, okay,” Marcus said, “now tone it down before you blind us both.”
Maggie chuckled in spite of herself, and Marcus laughed with her. It took a few seconds, but she brought the light down to a more humane spectrum. The light was no longer coming out of the rock on one side in a beam, but rather the entire rock was like a perfectly round bulb, emanating light from every part of its surface.
“You must have some kind of imagination, Maggie. Every time you successfully visualize something, everyone’s senses go into shock.”
She softly laughed again. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s amazin
They both realized at the same moment how close together they were standing. Marcus cleared his throat and stepped back.
“You know, you really shouldn’t be walking alone next to plunging drop-offs in the middle of the night. You could die.”
“Hey! If you hadn’t startled me, I wouldn’t have had to go looking for the light to begin with.”
A look of amusement stole onto his face. “Fair enough. Still, what are you doing down here in the middle of the night?” He looked around. “It’s interesting that you chose this place.”
“Actually, it’s not. Joan brought me here the first day I met her. She said I used to love it here.” Maggie sighed, letting her eyes run over what the light revealed. “I totally understand why.”
Marcus’s smile widened. “I never understood what you saw in this place. Why do you like it so much? Most people would find it…depressing.”
“I don’t know. It’s peaceful, I guess. It’s like—” Maggie turned toward the drop-off and crossed her legs, plopping down onto her backside in the dirt. “There’s all the possibility of hope but without any of the weight.”
“The weight?” He sat down beside her.
“The weight of life.”
Marcus sat close enough that their shoulders brushed, and when she looked at him, he was leaning slightly toward her. His face was inches from hers. His piercing eyes bored into hers, and she found she couldn’t tear her gaze away. He smiled and looked toward the precipice.
“Maggie, this place is completely solitary. No one lives down here, and it’s dark most of the time. Most people think it’s lonely and creepy. You find peace and hope.”
Maggie chuckled. She supposed it did sound crazy. “Well, I’m not saying I’d want to live here all the time. That would be lonely. But when I need the quiet…”
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
“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.
“I wish you remembered us,” he whispered. Then he stepped back. “Get some sleep.”
She turned and walked through the doorway where the darkness of her room swallowed her. She tried to feel for him, to sense his presence. She thought she could. But he would have gone back to his room as soon as she went into hers, and she didn’t feel his presence receding, so perhaps she wasn’t feeling him after all. Perhaps it was just the lingering feelings he’d aroused in her.
It was nearly an hour before her mind wandered into sleep. As it did, she thought she felt a presence withdrawing from her. Her last thought as sleep took her was whether she was imagining things or if Marcus had really stood outside her door for that long.