Voice
Page 4
Was that even possible?
Talking was very much deliberate conversation. Emotion sometimes slipped through accidentally, if it was strong enough, but surface thoughts? She’d either read their minds or imagined it with the stress and the pain.
If she really had read their minds, they can’t have known that was a possibility, could they? She couldn’t quite get her mind to focus, but it didn’t seem like it would be a good idea, somehow, to give her the ability to read the minds of the people around her.
Jemma heard a door open and close. Soft footsteps moved toward her before her wrist was lifted professionally.
Heart rate, blood pressure still elevated. Subject seems to be regaining consciousness. Increasing pain medication.
Again, she got the impression that her mind was translating. She wasn’t really hearing anything, just getting flashes and impressions, but she was able to make sense of it, and it left her dizzy. The careful hand moved to her elbow, and she felt something cool rushing through her.
Maybe she hadn’t been unconscious as long as she’d thought. Dr. Harris had said pain medication would interfere with the drug, so maybe that was keeping Jack out.
What would her head feel like right now if she weren’t medicated?
The medication might be affecting her focus as much as the pain.
Think, Jemma.
The door opened and shut again. Had someone left or had someone else entered?
Scans are showing more damage. Still manageable. She’d benefit from reversal, but she’s still our best chance at making all this worth something. Look at her. If we could give the cure to just one person instead of everyone, I’d find a way to get it approved.
The words continued slipping past her, nearly impossible to keep hold of for long enough to interpret. After a while, her pain lessened, and she fell asleep again; she wasn’t sure which happened first. She woke to more of the same impressions.
Some want to deploy the cure now because they think you look so pathetic. Admire you. You don’t fool me. Smarter than most of the people in this place. Not me. Gonna do whatever I can to make sure they keep the cure here in the fridge where it belongs until we’ve gotten what we need from you. Already found… manage… won’t…
The crawling sensation faded a short eternity after the words. By the time Jemma was willing to try opening her eyes, the room she was in was empty save for herself and medical equipment. The light still stung, and she blinked repeatedly before trying to look around. She was still hooked up to a blood pressure monitor. She had an IV in her arm, one of the kind that would allow them to give her different medications without poking her repeatedly. Her focus still felt off, but it was returning, if slowly.
Dr. Harris entered, clipboard in hand. Jemma tried to sit until he waved her back down. “Stay where you are for right now. In about half an hour, we’ll get you something to eat, and we’ll sit you up then. We don’t really have any dedicated medical staff, but I did train briefly as a medical doctor, and we have several lab technicians, of course.” She watched him, wondering whether she would get any impressions of his thoughts, but all she saw was a downward twitch of his lips as he stared at his clipboard. “We won’t give you that drug again until we’ve found a way to mitigate its effects. Joshua is working on that as we speak.”
Jemma continued watching him. He seemed to expect her to respond, but he’d asked her not to move. She wasn’t exactly going to smile at the news.
He shook his head. “Thank you for continuing to put forth the effort, Jemma. You make a difference to countless lives in doing so.”
***
Jemma fell back to sleep waiting for her food, then once more after she ate. When she woke again, she was in her cell, on her cot. She sighed, turning to face the wall, frowning as it took a minute for the cement bricks to come into focus. She traced them with her fingertips while trying to get her thoughts in order. What had she just heard?
They couldn’t give the cure to just one person. If the cure was designed to spread, designed to be administered to everyone at once, that would make things much easier than if it required individual injections.
Something else was still bothering her about what she’d overheard, something obvious, but her mind was still moving at a frustratingly slow pace. She stopped as her thoughts finally came into focus, her fingers at the corner of one of the cement blocks.
The cure was already made, already ready to deploy. They were waiting only because they wanted to continue studying them, studying Jemma and the others under the effects of the Event.
The cure was ready, and the cure was here. She’d probably been just feet away from it earlier.
It sounded like they planned to give her the new drug again, so she’d hope she could pick up enough information to figure out how to get to the cure, how to use it. Hopefully, she would be able to survive the process more or less intact.
***
“We’re really not getting far, having to take every afternoon off.” Josh greeted her the next morning with a complaint from his keypad, ignoring Dr. Harris’s frown while Jemma got situated in her chair. Josh hooked her up to the monitor, then returned to his place beside Dr. Harris, waiting for his cue.
“Joshua worked through the night to adjust the drug so that it shouldn’t cause quite so severe a reaction next time. He is upset because I won’t let him try it yet today. Tomorrow is soon enough and will give you more time to recover. For today, we will use just the one that has had fewer ill effects.”
Josh rolled his eyes before bringing the needle over to Jemma, who was fighting the urge to do the same; they were only going to be using the drug that caused her moderate to severe pain and made her head feel huge, not the one that made her feel like she was crawling with needles until she passed out.
That was kind of them.
“We’ll start out by having you speak with Mr. Himmel today so we can gather more data there. This should also give you a few more minutes to recover.”
Jemma nodded. This, she didn’t feel like arguing with. She knew she was probably making faces as the drug kicked in, but the expansion still felt bizarre, her mind growing beyond what her head could contain.
Jack wasn’t immediately available when the drug kicked all the way in, but he joined her just a few minutes later. When Jemma glanced at the monitor, Dr. Harris turned it enough so she could see that their connection was showing. She didn’t see any sign that Josh had added the threatened ability to read exactly what was being said.
“Jemma, are you okay?” His voice held concern, affection, and frustration.
“Mostly. I’m functioning, at least. They’re not giving me that new drug again yet.”
“But they are giving it to you again? Jemma, you have to find a way to stop them.” Jack sent urgency that came just shy of panic.
“I’m not sure I can, but they’ve adjusted it, made it so I shouldn’t react that badly again. But Jack, it had some side effects they can’t have known about.” She closed her eyes to keep from looking toward the scientists, knowing she would look guilty if she did. “I think it was just supposed to boost my abilities, right? Or at least my awareness of them, or something like that. What it did, though, was make it so I could actually read minds, surface thoughts.” She felt acknowledgment and mild disbelief from Jack. “And what I found out was that the cure is already completed. They’ve already adjusted it, and it’s ready to go. They just don’t want to use it yet because they still want to study us.”
The anger she’d been restraining bubbled up, and she knew some of it seeped through their connection. She felt an answering surge of it from Jack when he responded. “They’re still risking us, still risking everyone, just to keep testing for their little experiments?”
“I don’t think everyone knows.” She pictured Dr. Harris, his comment about her helping people. “I think it’s just the ones who do the work in the downstairs lab, where they take me for scans and where they had me after I passe
d out.” She felt a wave of nausea as she placed some of the speech patterns of one of the voices she’d felt while more unconscious than not. “I’m pretty sure Josh knows.”
“Of course he does, that sick piece of shit.”
“Who’s a piece of shit?” April chimed.
Jemma jumped. She hadn’t felt her join the conversation. She narrowed her focus to Jack. “Were you trying to send to more than just me?”
“No,” he answered. “But I wasn’t trying to limit it. Maybe it’s more like a chat room than a conference call.”
She let her focus expand again. “Josh, one of my scientists. It turns out the cure is ready and just needs to be administered to one person to affect everyone. It’s in a fridge somewhere, here. I overheard him talking yesterday after I passed out.”
“One of your scientists can Talk?”
“No,” explained Jemma. “It’s a little more complicated than that. That new drug, it had some interesting side effects.” She explained them again for April.
“You’re sure you weren’t just imagining things?” April asked.
“Pretty sure, yes. I knew I was about to get pain medication right before I did, and a few other things just fit.” Jemma hesitated. “Make sure you don’t mention it. I don’t think they know what it does.”
“Of course not. This means I can go back to ignoring them when I feel like, right? I mean, if they already have the cure, I can refuse to cooperate without being responsible for killing everyone.”
Jack answered before Jemma could. “How do they react when you don’t cooperate?”
“They mostly just ignore me. Leave me in my room longer, give me food they know I don’t like, that sort of thing. It’s usually worth it.”
“You should do what’s right for you,” he sent. “Just make sure you stay safe. Cooperate if they get violent. We don’t know how they’ll act if they get desperate. They’re a lot nicer here than they are where Jemma is. It sounds like you don’t have it too bad, either.”
“Now that we’ve established that,” Jemma sent, “what are we going to do about the fact that the cure is right downstairs?”
CHAPTER SIX:
To Converse
Jemma opened her eyes long enough to look at Dr. Harris and Josh, who were paying more attention to the monitor than to her. She closed them again before Jack responded.
“Any chance you can get to it and… Administer it? Set it free? Whatever it needs?”
“They keep a guard on me all the time,” she answered. “Even in the bathroom. And that’s on top of the GPS.”
“Are they making you wear a tracker or something?” asked April.
“No.” She swallowed. “Josh injected me with one.”
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.”