Voice (9 page)

“Yeah,” answered Larson. “This one, at least. Haven’t found any of the lab coats to ask about what’s going on.”

“I’ll take her back to her cell,” said Heidi. “You two figure out what’s going on here and who knocked me out.” When she reached for her arm, Jemma noticed a streak of blood on the female guard’s fingers and winced. She must have found a way to make their “forced” separation look more believable.

“Not sure leaving her with you is a good idea if she got away once already,” said the other guard.

“It wasn’t her, Frank,” Heidi returned. “Sure, she made a run for it once she was loose, but wouldn’t you? I could see her when I got hit, and you’ve seen her arm, right? No way she could hit me hard enough to do any damage. Plus, the girl can hardly even see, and you can verify that with Dr. Harris.” Without any visible signal, all three guards lifted their hands to their earpieces. “The building is under lockdown. Nobody in or out until further notice.”

Heidi wasn’t the only guard frowning. “Who decided that?” asked Frank. “We’ve got families in here, some of us. We can’t just stay here indefinitely, especially not if the danger’s passed.”

Jemma decided it was worth the risk to speak up. “Josh tried to keep the cure from happening because he wanted longer with us test subjects. He’ll try to contain it to this building as long as possible if you let him.”

The three looked at her, cautious pride on Heidi’s face for only a moment before she shifted to consternation. She saw confusion on Larson’s face, anger and protectiveness on Frank’s.

He had to be one of the ones with a family here.

“Okay,” said Frank, “I need to find someone in charge to talk to. I don’t like this. You get her back in her cell without any delay. Larson, you try and figure out if we’ve got anyone else loose.”

Heidi and Larson nodded, Larson and Frank heading one direction while Heidi and Jemma started toward her cell, Heidi holding Jemma’s good arm gently.

“You got it started, Jemma babe,” Heidi whispered, and Jemma finally felt a smile tugging at her lips. Maybe this would be over soon, for real this time. “I wish you’d gotten out of the building, though. It complicates things a bit that you didn’t, but I think Frank will take care of that before too long.”

The activity in the hallway increased then, scientists and guards alike making their way through, mostly in pairs or groups so they could chat, and Heidi didn’t get another chance to speak until they’d reached Jemma’s cell.

“I don’t have any reason to come in with you, not now that you’re doing better,” she said.

“I understand,” said Jemma, her voice catching. She swallowed. “That feels bizarre.”

Heidi smiled, a grin that lit her face. “It’ll feel normal again before you know it. Now, get in there before someone decides we’re up to something.”

Jemma nodded and walked back into her cell, watching the door slam shut and managing not to flinch.

She was still a captive, still technically a test subject, still separated from her family and her friend and her job, but at least she’d been able to correct one of the wrongs that had been forced on the world.

***

She sat alone in her cell until dinner, when there was a quiet knock on her door rather than the customary opening of the flap at the bottom. The door opened, and Heidi walked in, bringing her a reheated frozen meal, bigger, at least, than the ones she was used to.

“I can’t stay,” she said as soon as the door had shut behind her, “but I thought you should know that one of the families disobeyed orders and snuck out. The cure is spreading.” She winked at Jemma, then banged on the door three times. She paused, holding the door before it shut, calling back to Jemma, “Enjoy your meal!”

Jemma tried to, really, but she couldn’t get comfortable, not on her cot or on her floor. She was sore all over, and she was distracted by the fact that her head still hurt. Now that she’d been cured, shouldn’t her head be feeling better, at least? Her eyesight was about the same, too.

She remembered Dr. Harris’s unvoiced concerns that the damage done could be permanent, and she set down her still-full fork. Some jobs, she’d be fine continuing if her eyesight remained like this, but her job at the library? She knew they probably couldn’t technically fire her for a disability, if they hadn’t yet fired her for her absence, but she wouldn’t feel confident working around books with such a small portion of her eyesight actually functional, not without some major changes to compensate.

She shook her head. She was borrowing trouble. If all went well, she’d be out of here tomorrow, or however long it took for everything to fall apart now that voices had returned. She needed to eat, to keep her strength up, to be ready for whatever else might come at her in the meantime.

CHAPTER TEN:

Protest

Jemma was immediately put on edge when Heidi wasn’t the guard who retrieved her from her cell the next morning. She stopped moving entirely in the entrance to her lab when she saw that only Josh was in the room.

She felt a strong shove from her guard, and she jumped at the gruff, “Go on.” She rubbed her arm, trying to decide whether it’d be better to take her chances with angering the guard than it would be to continue further into the room where Josh sat, entirely too still.

After a few seconds, she swallowed and walked forward, taking her seat without looking at Josh, concentrating instead on the fact that her guard stayed inside the room. Surely he wouldn’t let any real harm come to her. She refused to think back on any of the painful things Josh had already done with a guard present.

The silence stretched out. Minutes passed.

“Imagine my surprise,” said Josh finally, his voice surprisingly rich and low, “when we started looking into who had activated the cure and found out that the only person who was present at the time, according to the logs, was
me
.” Jemma continued to watch the guard, the blurriness of her peripheral vision effectively keeping Josh’s face in a haze. “We tried to watch the security tapes, but somebody tampered with those.” Jemma made a mental note to thank Heidi profusely if she ever got a chance. “So of course, there’s no way to prove that it was you, but I’d stake my reputation on it.”

She heard him stand, and she closed her eyes while he hooked her to the monitor.

“I thought you were on my side, Jemma. You came back, after all. I thought you wanted to help me figure all this out, find the answers, whatever it took.” He spoke in almost a sing-song, soothing tone that did absolutely nothing to help Jemma relax. “Instead, you fought me. You cut our sessions short just because things hurt a bit or because you couldn’t see. Why would you need to
see
if you could speak to the entire world, Jemma? I was helping you, not hurting you. I was helping all of us.”

Jemma remained silent, still, her eyes shut.

“You can speak now, you know. Of course you know. It’s entirely your fault. You ended it too soon, and we might not be able to replicate any of the results with the telepathy since we didn’t have time to isolate which parts were done with your mind naturally and which parts were done with the nanocreatures’ adjustments. I’ve got some serums to try, of course, to see whether we can get any results. And before you ask, no, Dr. Harris isn’t here to stop me before we can even get started. He’s left, along with most of the guards and at least half of the experts. You’ve ruined everything, Jemma.”

She opened her eyes, sending a pleading look toward the guard. He at least had the decency to send her an apologetic glance in return, but then he looked away.

He wasn’t going to save her from whatever Josh had in mind for this session.

She had to at least try to avoid what he might give her. She was already falling apart. “You’re trying it without any serums first, right? You’re intelligent enough to establish a baseline, and that’s something you weren’t able to do while the nanocreatures were active.”

He beamed at her. “And she speaks!” He picked up a needle, holding it between himself and her, taking advantage of the fact that she was looking in his direction. “I should take some baseline measurements, yes, but I’m already pretty sure I know what they’ll say. If we had Jack here with us to study, too, it might be a little different, but I’m just not sure I can handle any more disappointment right now, and this particular cocktail is a little bit more promising than unaltered Jemma is.” He set it back down and crossed his arms. “You know, one good thing about being able to speak again is that I don’t need my hands for it.”

“You couldn’t actually Talk to anyone, could you? You were in charge of studying it, but did you ever actually get to try it yourself, even once?” So much for diplomacy.

“I didn’t have to. I
created
it, Jemma. Who could know it better than I did? And who better to study it than an impartial observer?”

“You’re an impartial observer, then?”

“Of course.” He leaned back in his chair. “I’m more impartial than Dr. Harris, for all his pretending. He kept stepping in, stopping things way too soon.” He watched her, measuring, and Jemma held her breath. “Fine. We’ll start with baseline measurement. We know Talking to me isn’t gonna work, though. Hey, you,” he addressed the guard. “Get Marcia in here.” He turned back to Jemma when the guard left. “She’s one of the only ones who doesn’t drive me crazy. That brother and sister pair, they’re real suck-ups. Not a lot of talent in them, either. Their Talk barely registered, even Talking to each other. And Marcia’s girlfriend, I can’t even remember her name, I swear she jumps at anything.”

“Her name is Kendall.” Jemma’s face felt hot, and her hands were clenched. “And she jumps at everything because we’ve been held captive, tortured, kept here by guards, forced to comply with your every whim.”

“Woah, tortured? You’re here to help. I hardly call that torture.” Josh still sat back in his chair, relaxed, a smile playing at his lips.

“You repeatedly and knowingly caused us pain for your own gain, locked us in small cells, denied us choice, and knowingly gave us too little to eat. I think any sane person would call it torture. That’s probably the problem right there, though. I would hardly call you sane.”

Josh tilted his head back and laughed. “I knew I liked you for a reason.”

Jemma stared at him until she heard the door open, then shifted her attention to Marcia. Like Jemma herself, the woman had obviously lost some weight, but she still had a definite spark in her eyes, still carried herself with a sure posture, still looked like she could take on anyone in the room.

“Have a seat,” said Josh, gesturing regally at the chair on Jemma’s other side.

Jemma turned to face her, scanning her for any visible signs of damage. Marcia seemed to be in better shape than Jemma herself, though.

“You never showed up for lunch that day,” Jemma said before Josh could get started on either instruction or monologue. “We couldn’t wait, and we didn’t know where to find you.”

“We pissed off our tester that morning.” Her voice was warm, vibrant. It suited her, Jemma thought. “Ken was worried, and she kept asking questions. I was trying to calm her down, but we got caught faking answers.”

“I
knew
some of you were doing that.” Josh sounded smug. “That’s why I didn’t care to stick to the scripts, Jemma. Why would I ask you to limit your words when I had no way of enforcing it?” Jemma thought of all the times she’d yelled at him, insulted him, all while pretending to be asking him questions or answering his, and fought a smile. He must have seen it anyway, because his own smile dimmed, and his tone was a little more firm when he continued. “My hypothesis is that, unaided, the two of you won’t be able to speak to each other telepathically, even though you’re both capable of it. Without the nanocreatures to adjust and amplify, we think the few people with telepathy each run on a slightly different frequency. My gut tells me you two run on different ones.”

Jemma recalled the colors. She hadn’t conveyed those to Josh. If he was right, and if the colors had anything to do with that, then she probably wouldn’t be able to Talk to Marcia.

“Your gut doesn’t seem like a very scientific method,” said Marcia.

“Oh, but that’s only because I was dumbing it down for you.” Josh smirked. “The smarter someone is, the more they see, the more they pick up, and the more patterns they’re able to put together, even on a subconscious level. You are actually fairly smart, too. It’s something we’ve been studying. The average intelligence of the people we’ve found with enhanced abilities is nearly twenty points higher than that of the general population. That’s not a huge amount, but it’s too much to be purely coincidence. We’re not sure whether the telepathy is cause or effect. It might be something as simple as unconscious cheating, in which case you’re able to pick up more ambient information than we’ve been able to measure. At any rate, even if that’s not the case and you’re genuinely more intelligent than average, neither of you holds a candle to me. Nobody in this building does. So when I say my gut tells me something, it’s more than a simple guess.”

“But Jemma was able to basically walk right out of here, along with her boyfriend, and you didn’t stop it.” This time, Jemma did allow herself a grin at Marcia’s audacity.