Voice (5 page)

Jemma—no, the subject. The subject is showing signs of distress. Not yet outside of acceptable parameters. Display shows connection with male subject remains remarkably strong. Connection to female isn’t even visible when she’s communicating with him.

She looked at Dr. Harris, who was frowning, shifting his attention between the clipboard, the monitor, and Jemma herself.

It’s working, I know it is. I knew it. They’re going to have to admit that I was right sometime. Every time they actually shut up and listen to me, they get results.

Her eyes slid past Josh, refusing to settle on him as he smirked in her direction. Her vision started to dim, the edges blurring as she sank downward. “So much for not passing out,” echoed through her mind, and she couldn’t say or even care who had expressed the sentiment.

CHAPTER FIVE:

Reading You

Pain. Her mind held nothing but pain until she faded out again.

When she awoke once more, the pain had lessened to the point that she didn’t want to arch her back, didn’t want to remove her head from her body in the quickest way possible. Still, though, her breath caught at the pounding, each rush of blood stabbing through her skull.

She focused on her breathing until she could think, until she could remember what had happened. The new drug had made her pass out again. She didn’t want to open her eyes, remembering how bright everything had been just before she’d lost consciousness.

It didn’t feel like she was resting on her cot. This surface was sturdier and more cushioned, not just a strip of canvas. She ran her fingers along the surface near her legs, finding sheets covering what was maybe a plastic mattress. Was she on an exam table or a medical bed? It felt like she was still wearing her scrubs. There was a slight pressure around her upper arm, on the good side. A blood pressure cuff, maybe?

It made sense they were monitoring her after she’d passed out. She must be down in one of the rooms in the lower level, unless one of the regular labs had an exam table she hadn’t seen.

Jemma couldn’t feel Jack’s connection. She must have been out long enough for the drug to wear off, at least the one that let her Talk to Jack. She didn’t know much about the new drug. It had seemed like, right before she passed out, she was actually reading Dr. Harris’s and Josh’s minds.

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 passed 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.”