Listen (Muted Trilogy Book 2)

by Spoke, Nikita

  And now it was evening. Had she slept the whole day? What had she missed?

  She ran a hand across her forehead. At least she didn’t still hurt, though she didn’t feel fully herself, either. She went through her memories of the morning once more, then again, until she was fairly certain she wasn’t missing anything before she’d lost consciousness.

  Nothing in her room seemed out of place. Not that it would have a reason to be, but she would sort of expect there to be a meal, or at least one of the granola bars Josh was so fond of, since she’d missed two meals. She wasn’t hungry yet, but she was pretty sure that once her body registered its lack of food, she was going to be ravenous.

  She stood, then immediately sat in order to deal with the wave of dizziness that rushed through her. She waited a minute, then tried it again, more slowly this time, and with better success. She tried waving at the camera, then knocking on the door, before sitting again, already tired.

  A few minutes passed. She heard the door open, and she looked up to see Dr. Harris enter. He watched her appraisingly before nodding to someone in the hallway, entering the room fully, and shutting the door behind himself. “Any lingering pain?” he typed on his ever-present clipboard. Jemma shook her head. “Severe dizziness or nausea? Difficulty seeing or hearing?”

  “I was dizzy when I first stood, but I’m fine now.” Jemma looked around the room again. “My eyes and ears seem all right. What happened?”

  Dr. Harris looked down at his clipboard, avoiding her gaze. “You are able to function at a higher level, telepathically, than our other subjects. We’ve been pushing you harder, testing you more rigorously as a result, hoping to see certain responses. We failed to take into account some of the negative repercussions the extended stress could have on your system.”

  “So basically you just overworked me?” Jemma raised her eyebrows.

  “In basic terms, yes. We will refrain from testing for a day or two.”

  “A day or two. You hold me against my will and test me to my literal breaking point,” Jemma typed, once more regretting the monotone speaker, “and you’re going to give me a break for a day or two to make up for it?”

  Dr. Harris continued to watch his clip board. “You will continue to have lunch breaks with the others, and your dinner will be arriving shortly. Afterward, we will resume at a pace more similar to what we’ve been asking of the others. We want to see your promise fulfilled, Jemma, not squashed.”

  Dr. Harris executed a neat turn, rapped on the door, and left quickly, leaving Jemma in silence.

  Her first thought, after the door closed, wasn’t about the overload or the testing, but that Dr. Harris had just used her name in normal conversation for the first time. Maybe he really did have a human side to him, after all. But then, the same as with Josh, what did that mean? It was easier to pretend they were evil, that they were completely detached or unaffected, than to believe that they could genuinely care and still be holding them captive, still be running experiments.

  People were complicated. Maybe Jack was right, and when they got home, she should just get a cat. She would bury herself in work, and the cat could keep her company if she needed companionship.

  Then again, she’d figured out pretty quickly in her time here that she missed her family, and Jack himself, when she couldn’t see them.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of her dinner, the smell of which immediately set her stomach growling. When she was finished, she was exhausted, and she quickly fell into a deep, uninterrupted sleep that still managed to leave her tired the next day.

  ***

  Where are They?

  Many of our features have focused on those for whom the Event has created particular challenges. Today, I’d like to talk about a group of people who were already overlooked too frequently even before the Event.

  I’m talking about people with mental health challenges.

  People struggling with various conditions already fought against stigma and stereotypes, fought to be heard, fought against their own fears. Now, they are literally voiceless, along with the rest of us, but they have to try so much harder to speak up.

  Those without the ability to do so or without the help they need may be more likely to end up trapped in their own isolation, alone, voiceless, their cries for help increasingly unheard.

  Do you know anybody who has been affected this way by the Event? Have you? Conversely, has this given you a voice you were unable to find before? If you’re willing to share, we’d like to hear from you. Please be sure that if you are sharing somebody else’s experiences, you have permission first.

  — Katie Brink, Staff Writer

  Jemma slept in later than usual. She took her time with her breakfast and newspaper, pausing at a help wanted ad for the city library. Since all the branches tended to share advertising space, she didn’t know whether they were trying to fill her position or not. She knew they should hire someone to replace her, but she still felt a stab of hurt and another surge of anger at her captors.

  As she finished, there was a knock on the door, and it opened to reveal Naomi’s guard. The woman smiled pleasantly at Jemma, then typed on a small keypad like the one Josh used. “May I come in?” Jemma nodded. She hadn’t worked with Naomi since they started having her work with the others who could Talk, so she hadn’t seen her guard in a while, either. “I’m Heidi. Dr. Harris asked me to keep an eye on you until you’re feeling yourself again.” Heidi glanced at the camera, then back at Jemma. “Plus, I think they’re a bit short on guards and needed my help anyway.” She winked at her, and Jemma gave her a small smile in return.

  “Phone almost dead,” she typed. “No charger in room.”

  Heidi scowled. “I’ll make sure they give you one. What are you gonna do with it? Overcharge the cell phone?” She looked around Jemma’s room. “It’s not a bad room,” she typed, and Jemma noted that she was keeping her body between the camera and her keyboard, “but you shouldn’t be confined to it like this. I’ve got to take a message to the shack before I take you to lunch, and I thought you might want to come with me.” She raised her eyebrows, almost as if she were trying to tell Jemma more than she’d already said. What wasn’t she willing to say if she was already acting like the camera didn’t pick up sound?

  “That sounds fine,” typed Jemma.

  She followed Heidi out of the room, and they fell into step beside each other, Heidi continuing to type as they walked. “I don’t care much for Dr. Harris, but he seemed genuinely concerned, and he offered to pay me himself if I’d watch you. I didn’t take his money. I’m getting paid, anyway, while I’m here. But maybe he’s not as bad a guy as I thought.”

  Jemma shook her head at hearing some of her earlier thoughts echoed, and Heidi continued.

  “The guard scheduling for the next few days is a downright mess. Richards is out sick, and Bergman was already on leave out of the country. They tried getting some cops to come in but couldn’t get it approved.”

  Why was she telling her this? Her posture was relaxed, as if she were just making conversation. The speaker’s volume was relatively low; Jemma didn’t think someone on the other side of a door would be able to make out the words, even if they could tell that somebody was talking. Jemma pulled out her phone and was able to navigate to the typing app before it beeped three times and turned off. Heidi held out her hand to take it, and Jemma handed it over.

  When their hands touched, Jemma had the impression she’d gotten sometimes with Naomi, that almost-connection when they were trying particularly hard but couldn’t quite get through. She looked up at Heidi, but she was hit with a wave of dizziness.

  “Hey, you okay?” she heard from Heidi, then the woman helped her nearer the wall. “Can you make it a little further?” Jemma nodded; the dizziness was already fading. Had Heidi tried to Talk to her? Maybe it was just a side-effect from having been overloaded the day before. “Okay, I know it isn’t the most comfortable, but you can sit on the floor
here. I’m going through that door right there.” Heidi finished situating Jemma and then pointed with her free hand to a door just a few steps away. Jemma nodded, and Heidi walked briskly out of sight.

  There was quiet for a few minutes, and Jemma regained her equilibrium. She jumped when she heard the sound of a phone, presumably Heidi’s but at least one with a female voice, from the room.

  “We’re off the main channel, right?”

  “We are,” came a male’s electronic voice. “What’s this about?”

  “You heard we had one of the subjects collapse.”

  “Everyone heard that. She probably just forgot to eat or something.”

  “Really, Joe?” Jemma could already almost picture Heidi’s sarcastic expression. “She didn’t just skip a meal. It’s happening. We need to tell someone, and we need to be able to prove it.”

  “We can’t prove anything, not without taking some of their precious subjects with us. That’s never gonna happen.” Joe paused. “I’m not sure I believe it, anyway. I think it’s just something Rogers made up ‘cause he got sacked.”

  “So you think the headaches are a coincidence? Try making an appointment with a neurologist. The waiting lists are six months, minimum. More like a year with our insurance. The serum’s taking a major toll, and because these guys want to save their asses, they’re not telling anybody, and the whole world’s suffering for it. How much longer do you think they’re gonna last, Joe?”

  “So you think he was right? You think it’ll kill people off if we don’t get the Event reversed?” A few seconds of silence passed before he typed again. “Why the hell would I release the people they say they need to reverse it, then? And we’re protected down here, what with the telepathy turned off and all. The only ones getting the headaches are the ones still doing the telepathy. I’m not getting kicked out of here.”

  “You’re gonna save your own ass, just like they are, then?”

  “Damn right, I am. You’d better do the same. I won’t say anything yet because I know you’re smarter than this, but I think you’re going to try anything, and you’re going to regret it.”

  Silence fell again. A minute passed.

  “Joe, it’s gonna kill them. Jemma’s gonna go first. She’s already collapsed once. The rest won’t be very far behind her because they’re gonna get desperate and push them harder, and we’ll be asked to use more force if they don’t cooperate. Meanwhile the outside world is getting worse, and the science types might be able to solve this if they’d just suck up their pride and ask for help before it’s too late. How far are you gonna go to save yourself?”

  Heidi walked back out into the hallway and met Jemma’s eyes. She motioned for her to be quiet, and Jemma stood carefully. They walked until they had taken a turn and were out of sight and earshot of the doorway. Heidi lowered the volume on her phone. “Remember what Dr. Harris showed the most interest in during your session yesterday.” She gestured for Jemma to walk ahead, taking position behind her, more like Jemma was used to from the guards.

  Dr. Harris had been interested in her connection with Jack. He wanted to be able to recreate it. If the headaches were a symptom, then, was her connection with Jack a possible cure? For her, or for everyone? She didn’t get the headaches with him like she did when she tried to Talk with others. She’d blamed the headaches on Josh, but the same happened, to varying degrees, whenever she spent time Talking with anyone, and the pain had been coming on more quickly in each session. Yet, Talking to Jack each day at lunch hadn’t bothered her.

  She felt a thrill as she connected to Jack, pain-free, farther outside the cafeteria than they could usually reach. She soothed his worry and concern and was enveloped in the telepathic equivalent of a hug.

  When she walked into the cafeteria and saw his face, the conversation she’d overheard finally truly sank in: if they didn’t find a way out of here, the world’s population could start dying, beginning with Jemma herself.

  THIRTEEN

  Can We

  Jack stood and met Jemma in the middle of the cafeteria, stopping close enough to make his guard nervous. Heidi patted the other guard on the arm and took her place next to him.

  “You’re okay?” Jack followed up the question with the complementary body movements, and Jemma nodded. She looked at the male guard, who was still fidgeting next to Heidi, then gestured for Jack to sit back down. When she was facing away from the guards, studying her lunch choices, she relayed the exchange she’d overheard, as well as the bits of information Heidi had slipped her.

  By the time she sat down across from him, Jack was processing everything.

  “We need to get out of here,” she sent after a few bites, barely registering that the other four had joined them in the cafeteria, “and we need to do it in the next few days while there are fewer guards. But there’s so much to do, and I don’t even know where to start. There are still guards, even if there are fewer of them, and there are cameras and there are the scientists and other employees and we don’t know all the schedules or all the layout and—”

  “Hey.” Jack’s hand twitched on the table, and he picked up his sandwich. Jemma focused on swallowing a bite of her own, trying to keep her face expressionless. They’d expect her to be low on energy today, anyway, so a neutral look would probably be the least suspicious. “One thing at a time, right? So they’re lower on guards. When do they seem to have the fewest guards on hand?”

  Jemma thought about it. They all had testing in the mornings and afternoons, and if she, who seemed to be their star pupil, had a guard at her lab door, they probably all did.

  “It sounds like they sleep somewhere in the facility, so they aren’t necessarily working overnight, but they’re probably here,” she sent. “During lunch, though, they don’t seem to be working, and I would guess at least some of them go out to eat.”

  “It does seem like our best time. We can use night as a backup if we find out they don’t sleep here, but then we’re locked pretty firmly in our rooms.” He tapped on the table. “I’m not sure just running out of the cafeteria is a great idea. They’ve got their communicators, and they could alert the rest of the building before we got anywhere. Our best shot is if we can get as far as possible before anyone realizes we’re gone. Plus, there are four of them, which is better than the six or more we might be dealing with otherwise, but not great, either.”

  “Maybe Heidi could help us out?”

  “She might help in small ways, and in information,” Jack sent, glancing at the guards, “but she didn’t say anything explicit, not directly to you, right? I think she’s got some reason she wants to stay here. She’s willing to risk something to help us, but not everything.” He tapped the table again. “I’m not sure.”

  “I’ll see if I can get anything else on the way back to my room,” sent Jemma. Jack sent an affirmative. “If leaving straight from the cafeteria doesn’t work, what about ending lunch early? They’d send us back to our rooms, right? If we wait long enough that the guards are already at lunch…”

  “…then there should only be a few working.” Jack finished. “Perfect! But then how do we get out of our rooms?”

  “We need to make sure they don’t lock, I think. Slip something between the door and where it latches into the wall, like where people slip credit cards in the movies.”

  “Everything is pretty well bolted down in my room, and I don’t think my phone will fit,” sent Jack. “Oh!” Jemma felt him force himself to calm down and take another bite of his sandwich. “The back of my cell phone, the bit that covers the battery. I think that’s thin enough to fit but sturdy enough to keep the door from latching.”

  “You’ll have to hide it when they take it for lunch,” Jemma reminded him.

  “I can do that.” She looked up at him for a moment to see him watching her. His eyes were bright, his expression reflecting the affection he sent her so often, reminding her she’d been in his arms the day before. “You really scared them, you know. They�
��re worried to ask much of me. Heidi’s right, it won’t last long, but a few days? For a few days, I can get away with a little more than I have been. My doctor types already ignore me half the time, anyway, and if they’re doing even less? Slipping a piece off the phone before I leave for lunch will be nothing.”

  “The back of your cell phone, then.” Jemma looked down again, swallowing, before she could do anything stupid. “Okay, so what about the cameras?”

  He sent a wave of uncertainty. “You’ve seen what they can record. How wide of an angle do they have on the camera? Are there any places in the room they might not catch? Can they really see the door?”

  Jemma stopped to think about what she had seen the various times Josh had decided to flaunt his power, what she’d seen in that first photo of Jack. “They can’t see the door when it’s closed, at least. If they’re not watching closely and we stay as close as we can to the wall, they might not notice it open. I don’t think they can see the two corners closest to the door. They can see the rest of the room, I think, and they can tell if someone’s crouched down in front of the door. I got buzzed at my first day, but I know they were actively watching, and I think parts of me were pretty far from the door.”

  Jack sent acknowledgment. “Let’s try to spend some time in those corners and in the bathrooms today and tomorrow. They’ll blame it on pouting, on wanting privacy.”

  “Where do we go once we get out of our rooms? What do we do if we run into any guards?”

  “We have to try to get a layout,” he sent. “I’m assuming we’re going to try to bring the others in on this?”

  Jemma looked around the cafeteria at Marcia and Ken, at Katherine and Sam. “Marcia and Ken, for sure. We have to,” she sent. “Katherine, though, has made it very clear she disapproves of any attempt at breaking the rules.”

  “Hmm.” Jack sent a troubled feeling. “It doesn’t seem right, not trying.”