Persistence of Vision

  ***

  They stopped to make camp as the sun began to set. Despite sitting all day, Maggie was exhausted—not unlike the effect of road tripping in her own time.

  They found a small, concealed glade where the grass was thick and there was plenty of room to park the cart and lay out bedrolls. There was no need to start a fire. The night was warm, and the foodstuffs they’d brought didn’t need to be cooked.

  “So, why stop?” Maggie asked Marcus as she helped him unload the cart. “Why not drive all night? We’d get there faster, and the lack of light isn’t a problem, right?”

  “That’s true. We can feel obstacles and guide the cart around them, even in the dark. It has more to do with our own stamina. It’s amazing what the simple act of sleeping at night and waking during the day does for your health. People who sleep away the day and stay up all night don’t have as much vitality or mental acuity. We all need to be as alert and healthy as possible for this, so we stop at night. Besides, the collectives don’t know our plans. I don’t see that an extra eight hours before our arrival will make a difference.”

  Maggie laid her bedroll next to Joan’s, and Marcus lay beside her, which she wasn’t displeased about. Maggie wasn’t entirely clear on where they stood. Still, she felt safer with Marcus close by.

  Karl had been driving all day and was tired, so it was decided that Marcus would keep the first watch and after four hours would wake Clay to take over. They were only planning to sleep eight hours, so no one else would have to take a turn.

  As Maggie settled down for the night, she thought about all that had happened. She wondered what would happen at the island. Thinking about it made her heart race, so she tried not to. She felt like she was on a doomed mission in an alien world she knew nothing about and was completely unprepared for. Death, enslavement, bodily harm—these were all plausible outcomes.

  Deciding to think about more pleasant—or at least less unpleasant—things as she drifted off, she turned her thoughts to the ever-elusive flashes. She still had no idea of what they meant, and that bothered her.

  A flash of purple light. A rock formation. Brown boots walking across a room at eye level. Two large hands covering hers. A hand with an ugly, black burn on it. A woman standing in front of a broken lighthouse. Blood on her hands. A whisper of a voice. Gasping, clawing for air.

  With thoughts of the visions running amok in her head, Maggie fell into a troubled sleep, where strange women died in her arms in front of broken buildings and blood-red sunsets, and where sinister whispers became tiny, sharp pincers, picking away at the inside of her head.

  And then she felt it, far to the west.