Voice (6 page)

She felt a surge of anger from Jack. “I know how big even the smallest of those are, Jemma. That has to hurt.”

“I guess he or a tech person found a way to make it even a little smaller than is usually available, but yes. It’s not exactly comfortable. Short of cutting it out, though, I’m not sure how much I can move around even if I could manage to shake the guards.”

“What if Heidi helps?”

“I haven’t seen her since I got back. They’ve been changing out my guard daily, but I don’t think she’s in the normal rotation.”

“You don’t have just one guard assigned?” asked April. “Mine’s pretty nice to me, usually. He isn’t the one who does the experiments, at any rate, and I don’t think he really likes it.”

“It’s not like that here at all,” she sent.

“Things are pretty different here than they were there, Jemma. Even though they know I managed to escape once, they don’t watch me all that closely. I think if I planned it right, I could get out of here. Maybe find the senator again. If he knows the cure is ready, it might be enough to get him to actually try something.”

“He stopped Talking to me, after he told me how you got taken.” Jemma picked at her nail. “I don’t think he was taken or anything. He was blocking me out. I don’t know what happened to helping us however he could, but something made him change his mind, and he wasn’t even listening.”

“As long as I can find him, I’ll make him listen,” sent Jack. “I’ll figure it out. I’m not just leaving you in there to deal with this.”

“You two are adorable.”

“April, you’ve been held there for months,” sent Jemma. “Do you not take this seriously?”

“Of course I do. But you two are some whole other class. I mean, you’ve already escaped once. Now you’re talking like you’d be able to escape again if only you didn’t have a GPS tracker in you, which you hadn’t even bothered to mention, and he’s talking like he can get out again no big deal. Meanwhile, I’m trapped here and I don’t think I could get out, and I don’t have it half as bad as it sounds like you do.”

“If you get out, you’ll still have to avoid family, have to live on the run until this whole thing blows over. Are you prepared to deal with that?” sent Jack. “If so, we’ll try to help, if we can.”

April was quiet when she answered. “No. Like I said, I’m safe enough in here. Escaping doesn’t sound safe. I’ll try it if things change.”

“It’ll be easier to get out of here, anyway,” sent Jack. “I’m pretty sure this place hasn’t gotten the memo about the cure. Most of it is just laboratories, the kind that study formulas and stuff rather than people. There aren’t many of us ‘subjects’ here, and even fewer guards. Getting out is going to be a lot easier than the first time, I think. At least once a day, there’s just one guard to cover all of us, and we come pretty close to an outside door. Depending how far I am from the city and whether Pratt’s still in the area, I might be able to get somewhere safe as soon as tomorrow. Then I’ll do everything I can from the outside to bring them down and get that cure started.”

“I’ll keep trying what I can from in here, too,” Jemma sent. “If they’re going to inject me with that stuff again, I may as well make the most of it.” She felt a quick surge of protective denial. “We won’t be able to Talk if you make it out, or if they catch you and stop testing you. I tried Talking to someone who didn’t have the drug in their system. It didn’t work.”

“Yeah, they had me try that, too,” sent Jack. “It hurt.”

“I pretended to try,” April sent. “I was tired and didn’t feel like it.”

“Smart,” sent Jack.

“All right, so that’s the plan, then? Jack, you try to escape, I keep listening, and April stays safe?”

She felt agreement from both, then jumped when she felt a hand on her arm. Dr. Harris was watching her, leaning back and shifting his attention to his clipboard when he saw she’d opened her eyes. “We’re going to administer the drug to another individual. I want you to raise your hand when you can hear and understand the person.”

She nodded, relaying the information to Jack and April.

“They must have figured out the whole chat room thing, then,” Jack sent.

“Can’t they tell when we start Talking to someone else?” asked April.

Jemma frowned, closing her eyes to make it look like she was concentrating. “When I’m Talking to Jack, they can’t tell whether I’m Talking to anyone else. Our connection’s too strong.”

“So I’m helping by being here,” he sent.

“Sort of, but you’d help more if you can get out. Even if Pratt won’t do anything and you can’t find another way to get to the cure, even knowing that you got out, that would be a big help. Just don’t get caught.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Hello?” It was a male voice, not Jack’s, and Jemma’s breath caught before she raised her hand. “Can anyone hear me?”

“Yes, sorry,” she answered.

“Loud and clear,” added Jack.

“It’s a party,” April added with more than a little sarcasm.

“So many people. Are you all here?” Despite Jack’s comment, the stranger’s voice was a little harder to hear than the others’ were.

“Ah, probably not,” sent Jack. “The three of us are all in different places. I don’t think they want us conspiring. Where are you?”

Despite the extra room in her mind, with three other people in it, her head was starting to feel a bit crowded. Between the pain she’d had at the start, the drug, and whatever was going on with the newcomer’s voice, Jemma felt her heart start to speed up along with her breath. She focused on listening instead of contributing.

“I’m in a room. It’s about twenty feet by twenty feet.”

“Need you to be a lot less specific than that,” sent April.

“I am near Pordenone. Italy.” Italy. No wonder it was hard to Talk to him, if he was sending from all the way in Italy.

“We’re in the States, here,” Jack sent.

“You all speak Italian? That is surprising.”

“Yeah, no, not so much,” April sent. “We’re all speaking English.” She paused. “I mean, we are, right?”

“Yeah, we are,” confirmed Jack. “Jemma, were you expecting this? They tell you more than they tell the rest of us.”

“No, I wasn’t. Hold on.”

She opened her eyes to see Josh grinning widely. Even Dr. Harris looked a little pleased, the corner of his mouth tugging upward. She mimed for a piece of paper, and he handed her one.

Did you know other languages would translate?

“We hoped. That was the goal.”

“It serves such great purpose if it can cross language barriers,” added Josh, only to be pinned with a look from Dr. Harris. He held up his hands, his expression anything but repentant.

Dr. Harris looked back toward Jemma. “How are you feeling?”

My head hurts, new guy’s voice makes me a little dizzy, my arm hurts. I’m tired.

He studied her for a solid minute. “Continue communicating with them for a little longer, then we’ll give you a large lunch and let you have the rest of the day off.”

“Seriously?” typed Josh. Dr. Harris ignored him, and Jemma paid attention to the voices in her head once more.

“Sorry. They said they hoped languages would translate. It doesn’t sound like they were sure it would work. Some sort of test, I’m sure. We all passed, if that’s any comfort.”

Jack sent what sounded like a snort. “I live to please.”

“Hey, new guy, what’s your name?” asked April.

“Mauro. And you are?”

Introductions went around, Jemma last.

“How’d you get taken?” April asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You haven’t been captured?” clarified Jack.

“No, I haven’t. I signed up for a study they were doing near where I live. It pays well. Does that mean that the three of you were captured?”

“Yeah, we were, so tell everyone you know to help rescue us, okay?” April sent, words nearly colliding.

“Oh no, no no, I have a family I need to keep safe. This money was for them. I’m not saying a thing.”

“I have a family, too, you know,” sent April.

Mauro didn’t respond. He remained silent through Jack’s prodding, too.

“I think he’s gone,” sent Jemma. “Either that or he’s ignoring us.”

“We should assume he can still hear,” sent Jack. “No discussion of— Well, you know.”

“I thought I wanted to visit Italy. I don’t anymore.” April sent disgust.

“Can you really blame him?” sent Jack. “If he’s trying to protect his family? There’s a lot I would and wouldn’t do to keep the people I love safe.”

“Yeah, but I mean, he’s not the one trapped here!”

“You don’t even want to try to escape,” returned Jack. “We offered to try to find you a way out, and you don’t want to take it.”

“All right, that’s enough. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know when a test is going to be the last one because they get bored of a combination or they move on to something else or because…” She swallowed. “We don’t need to spend the time we have arguing like this. Especially not inside my head. It hurts enough already.”

“Sorry, Jemma,” muttered April.

Jack sent a wordless apology, followed by a cool caress she could almost feel. This could be the last chance they had to Talk, and now they couldn’t really even say anything.

She felt a hand on her arm again and wrote a message before he could ask her to try anything with Mauro.
He stopped Talking to us. It’s just April and Jack, now
.

Dr. Harris frowned, then nodded. He studied his clipboard. “Then I want you to try once more to transfer your connection from Jack to April. Do it slowly, carefully. We don’t want you to lose consciousness again.”

***

Head pounding, she lay in her cell, staring at the ceiling, her stomach almost uncomfortably full, as promised. Luckily, she hadn’t passed out this time.

She hadn’t really gotten a chance to say goodbye to Jack, either.

She moved the arm with the tracker carefully, testing. It was still very colorful, still tender, but she could at least move it now without pain shooting through the whole arm. She trailed her fingers along it. It seemed like he’d inserted it deeply enough that she wouldn’t be able to get it out on her own, not even if she got desperate enough to try.

She sighed and rolled onto her side, closing her eyes at the resulting wave of nausea. If Jack really did escape, she was on her own. Senator Pratt had made it clear he wasn’t going to help, and if Jack wasn’t able to find some other way to help, it would be just her, with the continued injections.

Dr. Harris would only protect her from Josh for so long. Eventually, he’d either stop thinking Josh was a threat or Josh would find a way to get her alone. She knew he wanted to. And Josh wouldn’t respect her limits as well as Dr. Harris did. Jemma didn’t believe that Dr. Harris would do anything to kill her or permanently injure her.

Josh just might.

CHAPTER SEVEN:

Blind

Jemma was greeted the next morning by a welcome change in her guard; Heidi arrived to escort her for her morning trip to the restroom and then to the lab. The woman had been instrumental to her earlier escape, not just sympathetic, but actively helpful, arranging for Jemma to overhear conversations she needed to and even providing a crude map.

“I’m glad to see you in one piece,” Heidi typed as they walked, Jemma unable to respond, “though I’m more than a little surprised to see you again. How are you holding up?”

Heidi was walking beside her. It felt so different, walking beside someone instead of being prodded from behind or being led by a firm grip on the arm. Jemma waggled her hand back and forth, then shook her head. She rubbed her temple, her forehead, then showed Heidi the bruise on her arm that had yet to fade in the slightest.

Heidi tensed. Jemma could see her arms get tighter through her shirt, despite the padding, and Heidi’s face froze, her mouth tightening, eyes flashing. She stopped moving, turning toward Jemma. She studied her arm without touching it, then continued walking, Jemma trotting to keep up. She didn’t type anything further until they were in the bathroom.

“Who did this to you?” Heidi handed Jemma her keypad, which was similar to Josh’s.

“Josh. He put a tracker in me so I couldn’t escape again. It’s relatively small, considering, but it’s deep. It still sort of hurts when I use that muscle.”

Heidi took the keypad again. “It’s not just the size, why they don’t put those sorts of things in humans, or animals even. We haven’t finished testing that. I don’t know what that could do to you if we leave it in.” She put the keypad back in her pocket, then touched Jemma’s arm, looking at her for permission. Jemma nodded, and Heidi manipulated it carefully, shaking her head before letting it go. She retrieved her keypad again. “You’re right. It’s deep. We’re not getting that out of you short of outright surgery.”

Jemma nodded again. She’d already guessed as much. She held out a hand for the keypad. “Dr. Harris is trying to protect me, I think. He hasn’t let me be alone with Josh since this happened.”