Jack reached across the table and cupped her face. Jemma leaned into the contact, into the reassurance he sent with it, closing her eyes until she and Jack jumped apart at the blaring of an alarm. It stopped as soon as he ceased contact.
“That is your last warning,” typed Jack’s guard. “Any further contact will result in immediate isolation. You have five minutes remaining.”
They nodded, then looked back at each other before Jemma turned her attention outwardly toward finishing her sandwich.
“How is this working? Is the shielding weaker in here, or is it a distance thing?” Jemma sent, fighting the urge to look back up at him when she felt a surge of relief.
“I couldn’t Talk to you until you tried Talking to me,” sent Jack.
Jemma felt for their connection, finding it intact. “Try focusing on something else for a few seconds, then focusing on Talking to me again.”
The connection dropped, returning to the limited version she’d been feeling for weeks. After several seconds, it strengthened again.
“We have to be both trying at the same time, don’t we?” asked Jack.
Jemma sent an affirmative. “We’ll see how far the connection goes when we leave. It’ll help if we can Talk when we aren’t in here, too.”
Jemma felt a wave of affection, the equivalent of squeezing her hand. “You seem better than yesterday.”
“I slept better, and now I can focus on planning, on our getting out of here.” She finished the last bite of her sandwich and noticed he’d already crumpled his wrapper. “Let’s keep trying to get what information we can, and we’ll plan more tomorrow when we know whether we can Talk from our rooms.”
“Fair enough.” He stopped Talking as their guards approached, his keeping him seated while Jemma’s pulled her from her chair. His eyes narrowed at her guard’s grip.
“It didn’t hurt,” she sent, along with a small smile to say goodbye. “They’re usually pretty careful with me.”
“Usually?”
He’d caught her qualifier easily. “They didn’t like it when I wouldn’t leave a couple weeks ago, at your window.”
Their connection was open, but it was devoid of any emotion as Jemma walked to the door, her guard behind her. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she sent.
“Be careful,” she got in return, and she sent the mental equivalent of a nod.
She left the room, focusing on keeping the connection open, blinking away tears of frustration when it dampened just ten steps along the hallway.
EIGHT
Undone
“I could tell, you know,” typed Josh the next morning as Jemma got settled in her chair. When she blinked at him, he grinned, attached her to the monitor, and continued once his hands were free. “I watched you and Mr. Himmel in the cafeteria, and I saw it.”
Jemma raised an eyebrow in question, reminding herself not to panic.
“All those looks.” Josh was still smiling. “You two were shy, but not awkward, even without a way to communicate. I could tell that you haven’t been together long, but you’re close.”
“Why does our relationship interest you?” typed Jemma.
“It helps in calibrating some of the levels of familiarity involved in Talking. It also tells me I probably don’t have a chance with you once this is over, do I?”
Jemma felt her jaw drop, and Josh winked and turned his attention toward his tablet. He thought she wouldn’t want to date him only because of Jack. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with a lack of attraction or that his morals were seriously warped or that he’d helped hold her in a testing facility against her will.
The man must have some sort of mental instability. It was the only explanation Jemma could come up with.
He seemed displeased at their session, frowning at the monitor repeatedly. After he unhooked her, he typed, “I’d like to see more progress tomorrow, Jemma. This should keep rising. We want it at about double the levels we were seeing last week.”
“Does it show effort?” Jemma typed.
“Not exactly. Not directly. It shows how much telepathic ability you are sending. We can’t do anything with it, though, unless it reaches high enough levels, with the restrictions, to reach others. We’re guessing that’s around here.” He pointed at a spot on the recordings, much higher than her spikes of activity were reaching.
She felt, again, the surge of worry about what would happen if she didn’t perform up to their expectations. She nodded, not quite ready to thank him for the explanation but not wanting to upset him further. His frown smoothed, and he reached for her phone.
“Have a good lunch!” he typed as she left the room.
***
Jemma’s look of relief when she entered the cafeteria would, she hoped, be attributed to her being able to see Jack, not to the feeling of having their connection reestablished. She was greeted with a mental caress, and she chose a sandwich at random before sitting across from him.
“So, Talking once we get too far apart is a bust.” He sounded almost amused, and his eyes were brighter than they’d been the day before.
“It seems so, yes.” She felt her lips pull upward, and she looked down at her sandwich.
“What are our plans, then, aside from watching and waiting?” He started eating.
“As much as I dislike it, you should probably keep playing dumb and I should keep playing nice.” Jemma paused at his agreement. There was more to it than just acceptance of her proposal. “You’re relieved at that?”
Their connection stayed open, but it was quiet for several seconds before he responded. “I didn’t like seeing him grab you like that, yesterday. It’s hard to keep my temper in here, sometimes.”
Jemma’s hand twitched as she resisted reaching for his. “I’ve lost my temper a few times, but I’ve saved it for yelling at the scientists. They can’t hear me, anyway.”
“I haven’t quite limited it that much, especially the first few days.” He rubbed at his neck. “They’ll use violence if pushed, but they don’t seem to want to. So, yes, I’m relieved that you want to keep doing what they tell you, or at least looking like you are. I’m old-fashioned enough that I don’t want to think about a woman getting hurt, especially one I care about.”
“You’d care anyway, woman or not,” Jemma sent, sure of her words, avoiding the rest of his sentence. “Did you…” She faltered. “Did they hurt you?”
“Not badly.” His mental tone was even. “Shut me in my room for a couple days, upped the number of guards on me. I stopped lashing out physically, and they brought me back down to one guard a few days ago. The scientists pretty much ignore me, though. I don’t even try to give them the results they want.”
“You keep blending into the background, then,” sent Jemma, forcing herself to take another bite. “I’ll keep being the teacher’s pet. You know where the guard station is, you said. Have you found anything else?”
“Some of the guards don’t like that we’re here.”
“How do you know that?” Jemma sent.
“Body language.” He looked up at her. “Same as I can tell you’re still upset even though we’re back to planning.”
“Of course I’m upset, Jack,” she snapped. “They’ve got us held here, and they’re armed and willing to use force, and they hurt you, and I…” She stopped at the wave of reassurance washing over her. She looked at the guards, who seemed uninterested, and then at her sandwich.
“I understand,” sent Jack. “Sorry. I’m not exactly at my best in here. I do computers, and they’re certainly not giving me any of those.”
“You’re better at reading people than I am.” Jemma gathered her thoughts. What else did they know? “There are cameras in the rooms, the labs, and in here.” Her eyes flickered to the black dome above where her guard stood. “I haven’t seen any in the hallways.”
“Right. And we know there are ‘volunteers’ here somewhere.” Jack continued eating, winking at her when she glanced at him.
“Right,” he answered. “You?”
“Same. So probably all the better rooms are that way, right?” She considered what she’d seen of Naomi. “Do you think any of them would help us? The volunteers?”
“I’ve only met one. He’s not gonna help. Reminds me a lot of what it sounds like your scientist acts like.” He paused. “I have one scientist take lead in the morning, one in the afternoon. The other takes notes.”
“Josh handles the mornings,” sent Jemma. “Dr. Harris takes the afternoons. They don’t spend a lot of time around each other.”
“If they don’t get along, we might be able to use that.”
Jemma remembered Naomi’s guard and how she’d acted around Dr. Harris. “There’s a guard for one of the volunteers, and she doesn’t like Dr. Harris. If we can find a way to communicate, maybe she could help.”
“That’s good,” sent Jack, encouragement in his voice. “What else? Anything in the newspapers?”
“Nothing that’ll help down here.”
“‘Down here.’” Jack frowned at the guards. “I think we’re underground, too. This long a building, with no windows, I think it would stand out otherwise.”
“Ken’s here,” Jemma remembered. “Ken, and us, and the volunteers, and who knows how many others. They definitely wouldn’t want to attract unnecessary attention, not with so many here. So yes, underground might make sense.” She thought over what they’d discussed. “Other than continuing what we’ve been doing, we don’t really have much of a plan yet, do we?”
“We’ll get there. Between the two of us, we’ve got more than we did a couple days ago, right?”
Jemma sent acknowledgment, finishing the last of her sandwich. “Lunches are too short.”
“It’s too quiet everywhere else,” Jack agreed.
She heard the sound of booted footsteps on the ground as their guards approached, and she stood, locking eyes with Jack. “Until tomorrow, then.”
His lips twitched, and he bowed as dramatically as he could while sitting at a cafeteria table. “Until tomorrow.”
***
Despite Jack’s reassurance, they weren’t able to find any better plans over the course of the next week. Lunch was still the best part of the day, and she felt like she was getting better at hiding their conversations.
“I’m going to level with you here, Jemma.” She hadn’t yet been hooked up to the monitor that morning, and Josh was typing while watching her. “Some of the others are trying to get your privileges revoked. We haven’t seen any further progress since things changed.”
“What can I do?” typed Jemma. She wasn’t sure how she would handle it, being sent back to the tiny room with lunches alone.
“You’re trying, right?” Josh raised his eyebrows.
“Until my head feels like it’s going to explode.”
Josh nodded. “Dr. Harris wants to get that checked out, but we’re running into some funding issues.”
“Who funds you?” Jemma tried.
“You know I can’t tell you that,” Josh scolded.
“Can you tell me whether anyone else is getting headaches?”
Josh studied her for a moment before responding. “It seems to be connected to effort. You’re getting the most.”
She was the star pupil, after all, the best behaved pet in the class.
“So then you know I’m already trying,” she typed, and he nodded.
“I had to ask. I’m pushing for a few other things, more freedom rather than less.” He tapped absently on the tray table next to him. “I’ve got the least seniority, so they don’t listen until they’re desperate, even if they know I’m right, even though I’ve proven I can get things done better than most of the people around here. Everyone’s getting cranky about the lack of results. We need this, Jemma.”
Knock, knock, knock.
Dr. Harris scowled at them from the other side of the window, and Josh nodded again, turning back to Jemma before rolling his eyes.
“I’m open to suggestions,” he typed, smiling at her.
“You can’t stop whatever’s suppressing our ability, but you need us to be able to Talk anyway,” she typed. “That’s the gist of it, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“Why haven’t you tried letting me Talk to Jack?”
“Getting lunch approved was hard enough. They’re sure that even with the cameras, guards, and limited time, you’ll be able to hide something from us.” He glanced at the window, then back at Jemma, frowning. “We think you can Talk when you touch. Did you try?”
Jemma nodded slowly. He’d have to have expected them to try Talking. That might even be why he’d almost encouraged the contact on the second day. But then why wouldn’t he have asked about it earlier?
He looked at the window again before typing. “Did it work?”
She felt her stomach churn. She wasn’t hooked up to the monitors yet. He didn’t have a way of knowing whether she told the truth or not. She’d been able to send the one surge of emotion to Naomi, though, so he had pretty good reason to expect they could Talk, she and Jack, when they touched. They’d been sure enough to instate the rules against touching in the cafeteria.
She nodded, and he mirrored her action.
“I’d thought it would,” he typed. “I was hoping that I’d see better results afterward, after you’d had a chance to use the ability properly again. The more I contribute, the more the others might listen to me.”
So her talking to Jack had given Josh a chance at proving himself better than the other scientists.
“Was there anything different about your communication in the cafeteria?” he asked.
She shook her head, grateful she wasn’t yet hooked up to the monitor. As if he read her mind, even without the machinery, he reached for the electrodes and brushed her hair out of the way before placing the sticky surfaces on the back of her neck, near the hairline. His fingers lingered for a second, and Jemma fought a shudder.
They had to get out of here.
***
“He didn’t cooperate.” Her guard looked almost sympathetic for the first time as he answered her unspoken question. He’d led her back to her room rather than to the cafeteria. “You’ll see him tomorrow.”
She walked into her room and sat on the bed, rubbing her arm. Jemma felt for their connection, hoping that maybe Jack was trying, too, and that he was close enough for it to work.
The muted connection gave her no information.
She rolled over onto her side, facing the wall, ignoring the scraping noise of her food sliding under the door. She knew she needed the energy for her session with Dr. Harris, but the thought of eating a frozen meal, in her room, alone, was entirely unappetizing.
She closed her eyes, sparing a moment to remember that she was still being watched, then deciding she didn’t care. If Josh thought she was upset over not being able to see Jack, not knowing whether he was okay or whether he was being punished beyond being denied lunch with her, so be it.
It wasn’t as if it weren’t the truth.
NINE
Expanding
Jemma forced her eyes to stay open, keeping her hand away from the bridge of her nose where her headache felt concentrated.
She’d fallen asleep during lunch, but the restless, nightmare-laden nap had only served to make her more tired.
“You aren’t trying very hard today.” Dr. Harris’s face was nearly as expressionless as the electronic voice. It was an improvement from a scowl, at least, and preferable to Josh’s sickening enthusiasm.
Dr. Harris hadn’t given Jemma back her phone, nor anything to write with, so Jemma settled for raising her eyebrows at him.
He frowned. “I told Joshua that the whole reward system was a bad idea. We saw initial progress, yes, but in order for a reward system to work, the rewards have to keep coming, even escalating. As you’re demonstrating,” h
e typed, pausing to gesture at the monitor, “progress is undone entirely when one punishes someone who has become accustomed to reward.”
Jemma watched him, not sure how to react to a rant from the man who was usually so contained.
“Detached study of your abilities,” he continued, “with you being neither mistreated nor rewarded, that was what I told them would work best. Because of their incompetence, though, we’re on a schedule that we aren’t able to meet, so they decided listening to my idiot assistant was the better idea, and your initial progress suggested that he might have been right, when it was clearly just a blip, an anomaly. I’d have fired him months ago for overconfidence, but he’s admittedly brilliant when it strikes him, so they assigned him to me in hopes I could control him, and then they go and give him most of what he wants instead of listening to my reservations.”
Dr. Harris stopped typing and closed his eyes, and Jemma gave in to the pounding in her head, massaging her temples and looking at the floor.
“They approved the room upgrades.” Jemma jumped at the continuation of Dr. Harris’s complaint. “They approved the additional guard hours required to let you have lunch outside of your room, and yet I can’t get a simple request approved to have your headaches treated properly.” He shook his head.
He didn’t treat her like a pet, like Josh did. His detachment had often been a relief, and she wasn’t entirely sure what to make of his divergence from that. It wasn’t as if he were showing affection. Instead, she was a piece of equipment that he couldn’t get serviced. It was less condescending, at least. Sort of.
“Your companion is fine.” Dr. Harris’s neutral expression had slipped firmly back into place, and his shoulders straightened. “He is unharmed and had lunch in his room, as you did. Tomorrow will bring even more ill-advised rewards. Right now, we need to work through this script once more. I’m aware that the repetition may seem pointless, but I firmly believe it is more likely to yield results than Joshua’s nonsense.”
***
Despite her continued exhaustion after her session with Josh the next morning, her heart was racing when the guard brought her to the cafeteria. He stopped before opening the door, holding a hand to his ear as he listened, while Jemma shifted from one foot to the other.
Listen (Muted Trilogy Book 2) Page 6