Voice

by Nikita Spoke

  “You look a little better, but that’s not really saying all that much.” She hesitated, glancing at the camera, then handed Jemma the keypad and reached into another pocket, retrieving her own cell phone so they wouldn’t have to switch back and forth. “I think they’ll let this go as long as I’m the one with the phone and not you. We’ll know within a minute or two if I’m wrong.”

  “Are they listening to what we’re saying?” typed Jemma.

  “They never did add audio to that camera. That might be part of why they didn’t give you back your phone privileges. That and everyone being kind of upset with you. Dr. Harris should be coming to check on you soon now that he knows you’re up, though, so choose your words carefully.”

  Jemma nodded, looking down at the keypad, making sure it was tilted toward herself instead of toward the camera. “I don’t know exactly how much you know about what’s going on. I know you’re aware of the threats of the Event, obviously, but what about the cause?”

  There wasn’t a trace of either confusion or surprise in Heidi’s expression.

  She knew Tricorp BioD had caused the Event.

  “You know I can’t tell you everything.” Jemma knew the electronic voice wasn’t capable of conveying emotion, but Heidi sounded genuinely remorseful nonetheless. “But I can tell that you didn’t just sit around on your vacation.”

  So she was confirming that the information was correct, then, based on wherever she’d found her own information.

  Jemma sent a grateful thought toward whomever had designed the keypad to have a traditional keyboard layout since it meant she didn’t have to look as she typed. “What about the fact that there’s a fix available downstairs?”

  At this, Heidi did raise her eyebrows. She moved to type a response, but stopped when the door opened and Dr. Harris entered.

  “Jemma,” he typed, clipboard in hand, “how are you feeling? Has your eyesight returned?”

  “My head hurts, but not as much as yesterday or even last night. My eyes are a little better. Everything’s all blurry instead of black.”

  He nodded and moved closer. “I want you to watch my right hand and tell me how many fingers I’m holding up with the left.” He handed his clipboard to Heidi, who blinked. Jemma shifted her attention back to Dr. Harris.

  She could tell about where his left hand was, but as far as how many fingers he was holding up? She shook her head. He repeated the process, over and over, moving his hand closer each time until she could finally see that he held out two fingers about six inches from his other hand. She looked away from his frown only to see that Heidi wore an identical expression.

  Dr. Harris retrieved his clipboard. “Beyond that point is simply blurred, though, not completely blocked any longer?”

  “That’s right,” Jemma confirmed.

  “I was hoping for slightly better progress, but the fact that your eyesight has improved instead of worsened supports what the scans show. You should recover. We’ll still give you a few days off to help ensure that as best we can.” He turned toward Heidi. “Thank you for staying with her through the night. I can arrange for a replacement so you can get some rest, if you’d like.”

  “No, but thank you. I did get some sleep, actually, and I’ve never really needed a lot. I should be fine. Jemma will be needing breakfast, though, and then I thought I could take her for a walk. Just in the hallways, of course, and nowhere off limits.”

  “I’ll have something sent that won’t upset her stomach, and I’ll make sure the walk gets approved. As long as you stay with her, I don’t see a problem.” He turned toward the door, then paused. “Make sure she isn’t left alone with Joshua.”

  “Of course,” Heidi agreed. Dr. Harris left, and Heidi continued. “Wait until your breakfast comes before you keep typing. We should have some time without interruptions after that, and I have a feeling we’ll need it.”

  Jemma rested her eyes while waiting, leaning her head against her knees. She didn’t move again until she heard her door open. A guard handed Heidi a bowl and spoon, then left. Heidi helped Jemma arrange things without jarring her head or arm. In the bowl was oatmeal, not the instant packet kind, but rich oatmeal she could actually see texture in, at least when she looked directly at it.

  “Can you eat with one hand and type with the other?” asked Heidi. Jemma nodded, getting situated to do just that. “So the serum to reverse the Event is in the basement of the lab? I don’t really know what’s down there.”

  They were skipping the cryptic wording now, then. “Yes, I believe so. I want to get down there today and activate it, however that works.”

  Heidi was shaking her head before Jemma had finished typing. “You’re not in any condition to do that. I can’t go down there, either, but I can insist on staying with you, and maybe we can find a way to get you down there safely once you’re closer to your normal self, once your eyesight is back to normal, at least.”

  “We can’t wait that long,” typed Jemma. “Josh wants to destroy the cure so he has longer to run his tests.”

  Heidi’s eyes widened. “I can’t believe he would do that. Well, no, that’s not true. I can believe he would do that, the selfish, egotistical pig. What I can’t believe is that he would tell you this before he’d actually done it.”

  “He didn’t tell me. The drug he gave me yesterday, the one that made me pass out the first time and messed with my eyes this time?” She remembered that the cameras didn’t pick up sound, but they did record video, so she took a few bites of her breakfast. “It makes it so I can read minds, for a while, at least some surface thoughts. It doesn’t seem to be all of them. I haven’t really had a chance to study it, so I don’t know, but what I do know is that I heard Josh yesterday saying he wanted to make sure there was an accident with the cure so that they couldn’t release it for at least another few weeks. I know he’s frustrated at how slow testing has been.”

  “He hasn’t made any secret of that.” Heidi bit her lip. Trying to watch her, Jemma missed her bowl, and she looked away so she could get another spoonful. “Could you read everyone in the room?”

  “Yes and no. I don’t know how to control it or if I can. All I got from you was that you were frustrated at your job, basically.”

  “That’s true enough. So you need to get downstairs and release the cure, and you need to do it today.”

  “Right. I think even with my eyesight, I can get around all right down there. It’s not that complicated a layout, a lot smaller than up here, and I picked up a lot from Josh, from the people who work down there.” She frowned, trying to pull up a mental map, and she felt drawn repeatedly to an image of one of the rooms, the second on the right. “I think I know which room I need. What I don’t know is how to make the cure work. Josh was so focused on it not working that I didn’t get that.”

  “That, I know a little more about. I just can’t tell you how I know, so don’t ask.” She waited for Jemma to nod before she continued. “The Event was basically done with the flip of a switch, which is why it affected everybody at the same time. Before that, though, it took months for the nanocreatures to infect everybody. They stayed pretty much asleep, though, not really doing what they’d been designed to do until they were activated.”

  Jemma fought a shudder. She’d read the term before in the documentation, of course, but Heidi’s description made them sound a lot more like bugs.

  Heidi watched Jemma take a bite of her food. “The cure, though I thought it was still hypothetical, should work as a cross between ant killer and an airborne plague. The nanocreatures will be attracted to it, actively drawing it in, so it will spread very, very quickly, across barriers that should be impassable, and it will multiply as it goes. They were designed to replicate any cure they were fed, so a vial given to just one person will be enough. On top of that, if they stuck to their plan, it’ll act almost like an inoculation, training our own cells to attack the nanocreatures, at least for a time. The cure won’t be instant like the Event
was, but it’ll be as close as they could get it.”

  “So I just need to get the right one and give it to myself?”

  “That’s about it. It isn’t even an injection. Have you ever used an allergy or sinus spray, the ones that go in your nose?”

  Jemma shook her head. “No, but I know what they look like, the basics of how they work.”

  “There should be a few of those around. They’ll have a place to load the vial. Only fits one way.”

  “Got it. You said you can’t go down there. Any chance you know the schedule?”

  “No, but personnel have to scan in and out. I’ll be able to make sure it’s clear before you go down.”

  “No problem, then.”

  Jemma took another bite of her food, then looked up at Heidi, who was shaking her head, a smile on her face. “Have you always been this much of a badass?”

  ***

  They waited until a few minutes after Jemma had eaten her breakfast, when it would make sense for Heidi to escort her to the restroom or along the walk she’d mentioned. It took just minutes to reach the doorway to the downstairs level, seconds for Heidi to verify it was empty. Heidi looked at the numerical keypad, then at Jemma, eyebrows raised.

  Jemma closed her eyes, thinking, focusing on what she’d felt while under the effects of the drug, then typed in six digits before she could overthink it.

  The door clicked open.

  With a brisk wave at Heidi, who’d insisted she’d be more help guarding the door than downstairs, she walked down the stairway, then into the room she needed. She stopped, overwhelmed for the first time that day.

  There were vials and medications everywhere.

  She wasn’t even really sure what she was looking for. There were so many vials, all of them with labels that meant nothing to her, few she could even guess at, and she had to look right at them to be able to read them at all. How would she even be able to—

  She stopped, her eyes drawn to a particular vial on the third shelf of the second refrigerator.

  Whether it was something she’d picked up from Josh during one of her times on the crawling drug or whether it was something she knew through some other means she’d forgotten, she was one hundred percent sure she’d found the cure.

  CHAPTER NINE:

  Pains

  Jemma looked around again, still having trouble focusing her eyes, until in the third drawer she checked, she found what looked like the nasal spray holders Heidi had been talking about, wrapped in plastic. She set the vial down on the counter, slowly and carefully, then opened one of the applicators, holding it in the center of her vision so she could study it. It looked pretty straightforward, just the part that would go up her nose, another part that would go down into the vial, and a connection piece that would allow it to screw in.

  She set it back down, glancing toward the door to make sure she was still alone, then screwed the top off the tiny vial, holding her breath at the importance of it. If she were to drop it, break it, spill it, things could get very bad. Holding the vial still between two fingers, she screwed the nose piece on with the other hand, the fit perfect. Jemma made sure it was firmly attached, then blew out, pressed down, and inhaled before she could think of the innumerable reasons this was a bad idea.

  The liquid stung, then burned, and her imagination supplied her with a brief image of the bugs, the nanocreatures, whatever they were, clinging to her mind, her throat, whatever they could reach before they died. She shook her head to clear the image, then threw away the bits of plastic, screwed the top back on the vial, and put it back in the refrigerator.

  The longer she could go without her actions being discovered, the farther the cure could spread, and the less chance Josh or any of the scientists who might be on his side would have to stop it.

  It would help if she could get out of the facility entirely, even though she’d be caught quickly with the GPS. At least that way, she’d have a chance at exposing more people to the cure, getting it started on the plague-like spread Heidi had described. She jogged back up the stairs, entering Josh’s digits again and easing the door back open, expecting to see Heidi waiting on the other side.

  The hallway was empty.

  She closed her eyes for a second. She knew of two exits. She wasn’t really going for stealth as much as speed. She was going to be caught anyway, and just running for it would look like an overt escape attempt rather than a way to spread the cure. Which way would get her outside fastest?

  She turned right, walking at a brisk pace down the hallway, not bothering to slow her breath. That would help spread it faster, right? Assuming she’d done it right, at any rate. She saw the family area, the door beyond it, and picked up speed, nearly sprinting by the time she saw movement in the blurriest part of her vision.

  “Oomph.” She went down, tackled by a man much larger than her, though she didn’t think she’d actually been harmed. Nothing felt broken, and she suspected he’d been trained in disabling people without injury. By the time she was able to focus her eyes on his face, she saw he was staring.

  “How did you—” He stopped, looking up and shouting. “Hey, Larson, get out here.” His voice rumbled and cracked, but it worked.

  Jemma heard the buzzing of voices start up from within the rooms. The cure really did have a good range on it, if it had already reached into individual living quarters from the common area. She didn’t know whether it was good enough to reach the rest of the campus from inside the building, though, so either she needed to get out or somebody else who’d been cured needed to.

  A man came over, presumably Larson, and helped lift Jemma to standing, taking her other arm, adjusting his hold downward at her sharp intake of breath. “What’s going on? Did they finally fix things? How come nobody told us?”

  “I don’t know. Find out who was supposed to be watching her and how she got here. She almost got out. I don’t know whether they’re still part of the study now that this is over, but I’m not gonna be the one responsible for letting one of them leave without clearance. Come on.”

  They led her back through the hallway, Jemma keeping quiet, not sure what she could say to make things better instead of worse. If she told them they needed to get out, would they listen?

  “Hey, you got her. I can take her from here.” A female voice with a trace of southern accent came from behind them, and Jemma twisted to see Heidi clutching her head. “I was taking her for a walk when someone came up behind me and knocked me a good one. Came to and I could talk again, but that doesn’t seem to be just me, does it? What about the subjects?”

  The guards adjusted so they could face Heidi, taking Jemma with them.

  “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.