Listen (Muted Trilogy Book 2) (15 page)

“Ready?” Jack sent.

She ignored the somersaults in her stomach as she sent an affirmative.

He stood. “I’ve got an idea. It’s a bit cliché,” he sent, walking around the table to stand next to her, “but we need to end lunch early, and we know contact should do it.” Jemma could see the guards approaching, leaving their positions near the wall, but most of her attention was focused on Jack as he took her hand and pulled her up next to him. “If we’re gonna do it, we may as well do it right. Thoroughly, and in a way that makes it look like I just couldn’t help myself any longer.” With the contact, his mental tone strengthened, and Jemma was able to shake off some of her reservations about their plan. They could do this, together. They could…

Jack’s hand cupped her cheek, and as Jemma leaned into it, most of her thoughts ceased, overwhelmed by the touch and by his strong, positive emotion. The guards could only be a few steps away, but it felt like Jack took forever to close the gap between their lips.

When his mouth finally met hers, Jemma felt a surge of emotion, stronger than she’d ever gotten from Jack before. The line between his feelings and hers blurred as they mixed, each pushing the other higher, further. Only a second or two passed before Jemma was ripped away by one of the guards, and she was already breathless.

Jemma was unsurprised when she noticed the male guard holding her arm; Heidi wouldn’t have been so rough. She saw Jack, eyes widened slightly, suck his lips inward for a second while the guards held a silent exchange on their keypads. The guard from outside the door came in to retrieve both siblings, leading them out of the room together before Heidi and Jack’s guards switched, each taking their regular charge. Jack left the room first.

“Be safe,” sent Jemma.

“You too. See you on the outside soon. Wait just a few minutes after you’re in your room to give the guards time to get out of the hall.”

“Right.”

About a minute later, Heidi and Jemma left the cafeteria.

“That was effective,” typed Heidi from behind her. Jemma rubbed her arm, unable to reply. The woman fell silent, and Jemma found herself hoping Heidi was able to avoid any trouble. It would be good knowing she was here to keep an eye on the people who were still in the building, and she wasn’t really comfortable with the idea of bad things happening to the guard because she’d helped Jemma, either.

They reached her room, and Jemma stood close to the door as it shut. Heidi offered a jaunty wave before she lost eye contact, and Jemma returned a nod. With inches to spare and Heidi no longer visible, Jemma took the slip of plastic from her jeans, careful to keep it as close to the door as she could, as far out of the camera’s range as possible. When the thick door started to pass through the frame, she slipped the plastic where she wanted it, heart skipping a beat when it caught on the lock plate for a second before moving into place.

Clang
. The door was firmly shut, and the auto-locking mechanism seemed to be up against the cell phone cover instead of where it belonged.

Jemma held her breath, waiting for an alarm, a guard, some sort of notification from the kinds of sensors they had in movies, the ones that could tell when doors hadn’t locked right.

Nothing.

She sat in the middle of the bed and counted to sixty, letting whomever might be watching a camera know that she’d made it to her room, before she moved back to the theoretically-hidden corner of her bed. She’d chewed off the top of her thumbnail before she’d even registered it was in her mouth, and she made a face as she took her thumb away. She’d stopped chewing her nails in middle school.

Jemma slid carefully off the bed, along the wall, scooting sideways until she reached the door, careful not to rattle it and knock the plate out of place. She listened at the door as she pushed it open, slowly as she could, stopping when the plastic dropped to the floor.

She fought the reflex to let go of the door, knowing that if it locked, she was stuck. She listened, not daring to breathe, but all she could hear was her own heart pounding in her ears.

She pushed the door open far enough to look out. The hall was empty. She shoved the back of the cell phone into her pocket and closed the door, starting for the cafeteria and the exit beyond it, and feeling for her connection with Jack.

It was there.

“Are you out yet?” she sent.

“I’m out of my room. Not out of the building yet. So far, so good. You?”

“Same. Just got out of my room.” She paused in her thoughts, still walking. “We didn’t talk about it, but do you know where Marcia’s or Ken’s rooms are? We could let them out.”

“I don’t.” He sent regret. It wouldn’t be safe, trying doors at random.

“All right. It was an idea.” She took a turn in the hallway and stepped back immediately with a curse. “Jack, there’s someone walking this way. All our rooms are pretty close, I think, so you need to hide, too.”

“Got it.”

“I’m going to stop Talking so I can focus.” She tuned him out and looked for the nearest door, glancing through the window in it to make sure the room was empty before ducking inside as quickly as she could without making noise. Her heart was racing again as she waited, crouched below the window, until she thought enough time had passed for the man, a scientist if the coat was anything to go by, to pass the room.

“Did you find somewhere safe?” she sent Jack, looking around her own refuge. It seemed to be a deserted study room.

“I did. He walked by about ten seconds ago. Giving it another minute. How’d you see him without him seeing you?”

“He was reading while he walked.”

“Ah. Not as good at that as you are?” Jack sent the equivalent of a wink, and Jemma felt some of her tension drain.

“All right. I’m going to try this again.” Jemma checked the window first, then opened the door. The hall was empty.

She continued toward the exit, slowing around corners, counting doors as she went. “I’m almost at the exit,” she sent. “This is going too easily.”

“Hey, don’t jinx it. Keep going. I’m just a minute behind you.”

After only a dozen more steps, she saw the door she’d been looking for, unmarked, as she’d mostly expected. She reached for Jack’s connection to let him know, but he wasn’t there. She must have gotten out of range.

They had a plan, she reminded herself, forcing herself to grab the handle. They would meet outside. He was only a minute behind her. She didn’t like losing contact with Jack, but it did make sense to keep going, to get out of the building and to a safe meeting spot.

She opened the door to a cement staircase leading upward into the light. She paused just outside, but she couldn’t feel any ill effects from being beyond whatever suppression the building offered. Maybe it would change when she attempted telepathy, but at least one of her fears, collapsing as soon as she left the protection of the building, had failed to come true.

She continued upward, blinking at the bright light, and it took her eyes several seconds to adjust. To her left and most of what was in front of her looked like buildings, brick and cement, all very typical for the region, but she felt like she should remember these buildings, specifically. She shook her head and looked to her right, seeing woods.

Without knowing whom to trust, the woods seemed the safer bet, and the woods looked dense enough to hide, so she went that direction, stopping when she could no longer see the building she’d spent nearly five weeks in.

The building looked completely ordinary. Most of it was underground, with just enough aboveground for ventilation. Again, it looked familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.

She leaned against a tree, feeling the lack of a proper meal as well as increased physical exertion; getting far enough away to avoid recapture would be a challenge. She kept her mind listening for Jack’s as a minute passed, then another.

Then another.

What if he’d gotten caught? She knew she should leave without him if he didn’t show up within another few minutes, that she should give them all a chance, at least. She knew she could do it, even though she was exhausted, stressed, and without a plan, even though Jack was the one who was good without a plan. She knew the impulse to go back in the building was a ridiculous one.

It didn’t stop her from considering it, if only briefly.

Before she had to commit to leaving, her breath caught, then released; her connection with Jack was present again, and he was sending her a thrill of success.

SIXTEEN

Unguarded

“In the woods,” she sent, relaxing further when he came into sight above the stairs.

He glanced around only briefly before making his way toward her, finding her easily once he’d entered the trees. He squeezed her hand, his eyes scanning the woods, and they moved further from the building before they stopped again.

“They were holding us on campus,” sent Jemma, catching sight of a familiar railing that finally allowed her to put the pieces of their location together, “in that building over by the nature trails.”

“The one they’ve been talking about renting out for years?” sent Jack. He shook his head. “At least we know where we are.”

“What about where we’re going? We need food, and we need a safe place to figure things out.” She paused. “And I’d like to let our families know we’re okay.”

“We can head toward home but not all the way there. Maybe borrow a phone and find a meeting point or something. We need to get started, though.”

Jemma nodded, trying to regain the surge of adrenaline she’d used to get out of the building just minutes before. “How do we get there without being found?”

“We’re on campus?” He ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. We can’t go to the nearest roads. By the time we get there, they could know we’re gone, and even if they can only spare a few people…”

“It’s not safe,” finished Jemma.

“The river meets up with the highway, right?”

“It does,” sent Jemma, “but not before it meets up with the power plant. We wouldn’t exactly blend in.”

Jack made a face. “You’re right. I think there’s some other industrial crap further north, too.” He sent a wave of frustration. “We can’t go through campus, and we need to start moving. Let’s go this way while we think.” He started north, away from campus, letting Jemma follow, staying away from the official trails the university had put through the trees. “We can stay between the river and most of the main roads. There’s no way they can spare enough people to even start a search of the woods. There’s too much area to cover.” His voice rose and fell as he sorted his thoughts. “If we can manage on whatever fruit trees we can find in the backyards we’ll pass in a couple miles, we should be able to make it to the highway. I don’t think they’ll really be able to search there by dark, which is about when we’ll make it if we take it easy and keep out of sight, assuming we don’t get turned around. The river and highway meet eventually, so we can’t mess it up
too
badly since we have to run into one or the other. Then we hitch a ride with rush-hour traffic headed toward the beach. Sound okay?”

Jemma sent as firm agreement as she could. Did they have much of an alternative? They could hope to find an empty house nearby—enough of them had been abandoned after the Event—but that would be more of a risk, trying to find one, and they’d still have to find a way to get across town if they wanted to contact their parents.

Then again…

“Couldn’t we find an empty house and use a neighbor’s WiFi and a random email address to let our parents know we’re okay? Also, won’t a lot of the rush-hour traffic be headed toward the military base? We still don’t know whether they were working for the government, Jack, not with them involved with the blood banks and the labs and maybe the police and now the college.”

“You’re right,” he sent without slowing. “Let’s talk this through. Our best options for houses are this way, too.”

“We don’t need to be anywhere specific, and they’re going to check with our families and the places we’re familiar with,” sent Jemma. She continued, trying to weigh both sides. “Those are the places we have the best chance of getting a little bit of money or some way of communicating with the outside world.”

“It’d feel a lot better to get as far from this place as we can,” Jack sent. “Neither of us can get as far as we want in good shape tonight. They haven’t exactly been training us for a marathon, and we’re looking at five, ten miles to the highway, if I remember right.” He looked at her for a moment, then ahead once more.

They were moving at a fast walk, and Jemma almost wished they were on a beach instead of in the dense woods; her thighs would be burning, but at least she wouldn’t have to watch for roots. She was feeling a little unsteady already, and when she looked at the ground too closely, it seemed like the colors were blurring together.

“We’ll start with the house,” sent Jack. “We need to stop and try to find something to fuel us for the walk, anyway. If we see somewhere that looks abandoned instead of just empty, we’ll look further. You got the newspaper. Is it a school day?”

Jemma fought her way back to that morning. “It’s a Thursday, and not a holiday or spring break.”