Listen (Muted Trilogy Book 2) (2 page)

Was this the point? Maybe they were trying to stress her, to make her so grateful for something to break the monotony that she would be more cooperative. She looked around again at the functional colors, at the lack of anything to stimulate the imagination on any topic other than dungeons and medical experimentation.

Another need was starting to make itself known, and Jemma picked up the phone, navigated to where she could type, then stared at the camera.

“Do I get a bathroom break anytime soon? I don’t exactly have one in here.”

There was no response, at least not that she could see or hear.

“Hello?” she tried, frustrated again at the phone’s lack of emotion.

She threw the phone back on the bed and returned to pacing. At least it was something to do: five steps one way, turn, five steps back.

After several minutes, she heard the creak of the doorknob, and the door opened to reveal an armed man who looked much like the ones who’d taken Jemma and Jack from the blood bank. He wore a protective vest and a handgun on his hip. He jerked his head to one side, indicating which direction Jemma should walk. She stepped out of the room and looked around, barely registering a hallway as spartan as her room before the guard nudged her, not too gently, in the direction he’d nodded.

With the man just behind her, she walked, counting three doors on the right before the guard stopped her in front of a door on the left, a firm hand on her shoulder. He jerked his head again, this time at the door, and waited.

She turned the handle, opening the door to a small bathroom. There was a toilet and sink, plus a shower stall with a soap dispenser on the wall. Everything looked quite firmly attached, nothing she could really use against an armed guard, not even if she had a plan for what to do if she somehow succeeded in an attack.

Jemma did what she needed after a thorough check for anything that looked like a camera, then hesitated before leaving the room. A shower might help clear her mind, help her focus, help her pretend that everything was normal for long enough to have a chance at making it normal again. She hadn’t brought the phone to ask whether she could shower, but they were already holding her captive, and while they didn’t seem particularly friendly, they didn’t seem like they wanted to seriously harm her, either. At least not physically, not yet.

It would mean getting undressed, fully, when she had no way to keep them out. She’d be even more exposed, more at their mercy than she was already, and she didn’t even have a towel to use for afterward.

She leaned over the sink, staring at herself in the mirror. She would have to shower, eventually, if they kept her here, and doing it now, choosing this small act of rebellion, embracing this bit of normalcy, it felt like it would give her at least a little bit of control.

As for the towel, she’d had to compensate for a missing towel enough times as a teenager, when her sister, Jill, would take all the towels to the laundry right before Jemma’s shower. Jilly would usually, conveniently, be wearing her headphones when Jemma started yelling, dripping, that she’d had to dry off using her clothes.

She shoved away from the sink and turned on the shower, setting the water to as hot as she could stand. She’d been in the shower for about ten minutes when there was a loud knock on the door.

Bang, bang, bang.

She ignored it. About two minutes later, the water suddenly went from hot to ice cold, and she turned it off with an inaudible yelp. A thin towel had been shoved through the crack under the door while she showered, and she dried off before dressing and rejoining the guard outside.

His jaw was tight, his brow slightly furrowed, and he jerked his head back toward Jemma’s cell, pushing her in through the open door when she didn’t walk quickly enough.

The door slammed shut behind her. The tray had been removed from the floor, and it looked like the phone was gone, too. She was left alone, once more, with nothing but her thoughts.

Her expertise was in books. She’d been perfectly content at her library, especially after the Event, arranging things as they suited her. She’d been closer to her sister, Jill, than she’d been before, and she’d found a good friend in Jack.

Life had been good.

And now they had her locked up, following orders, unable to make her own decisions even in something as simple as when to eat. These same people had taken Jack, and probably Marcia and Ken, and who knew how many others.

They had to be stopped, but how? She and Jack hadn’t really gotten that far in their planning. It wasn’t as if the two of them could bring down this unknown group of people themselves, but who could they ask for help? The police seemed well-intentioned but severely short on staffing. Jemma had never needed to know who to go to when the police couldn’t help.

As far as what they wanted with her, a librarian who could Talk more easily with a handful of relative strangers, she wasn’t really sure of that, either. Until she’d been taken from the blood bank, she’d still held out some residual hope that all of her concerns had just been paranoia and coincidence.

Jemma sighed silently and flopped down on the bed. She closed her eyes and started running through the plots of some of her favorite stories, trying anything to pass the time.

TWO

Tested

The day had passed slowly, minutes crawling into hours until Jemma had finally fallen asleep, more out of boredom than from exhaustion. She woke to a perfunctory knock on her door, and she was still adjusting to her surroundings when the door opened.

She saw the same man from before, the one with the lab coat and clipboard. He didn’t shut the door behind him when he entered, and Jemma saw another armed guard, this one female, standing in the hallway, effectively dashing any half-formed, lingering dreams of escape.

“Are you prepared to cooperate today?” The voice from his clipboard and speaker seemed louder than it had during their last conversation.

Jemma crossed her arms, and the man visibly sighed.

“I thought that might be the case. Come with me.”

Jemma stood where she was as he left. Before he was even out of sight, the guard came in, prodding her forward and out of the room. Jemma’s shoulders and back were tense as she finally complied, following behind Doctor Clipboard and trying to mentally map the corridor.

The walls were made of the same concrete blocks as the walls in her cell. The hall seemed to be one long corridor rather than something that actually branched for her to map, but it did turn, to the left, then the right, continuing mostly along in one direction. The doors were made of wood, for the most part. Many had viewing windows in them. A few doors were more solid, like the one on her cell. From the outside, it looked like those might have been upgraded from whatever they’d been originally, the paint not quite matching what was on the others.

In one section of the hallway, each of the rooms seemed to have a large window next to the door. It was at one of these that a door opened on their right, held open by another man in a lab coat, who waved for them to enter. He was younger than the man who had been asking her questions so far, probably in his late twenties or early thirties, with light blond hair, and he held a small keypad rather than an entire clipboard. Jemma stepped into the room after Doctor Clipboard, slowing as she took in the scene in front of her.

In the middle of the room was a chair much like the ones she expected to see at the dentist’s, cushioned and made to recline, but definitely medical. Next to it were machines, some she’d seen in hospitals and knew monitored vitals, and others that looked like they dealt with fluids of some kind.

She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to be here. She focused on her heart rate, tried to keep it even and steady. If those machines were meant for her, as she suspected, she didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing how rattled she was.

“Sit, please.”

She opened her eyes at the monotone request from the man who was now standing behind her. The door shut firmly, leaving the guard in the hall. This new scientist-type seemed to be an assistant of sorts, and he held a granola bar out to her, a smile on his face.

She’d had nothing but the single, small meal since they’d taken her, so she accepted the offering, and his smile grew. Jemma briefly considered throwing the bar at his face.

Instead, she moved to sit in the chair, unwrapping the food and eating it, ignoring the churning of her stomach as the sweet sustenance clashed with the tension she tried to hide.

Jemma watched as the two moved around the room, arranging machines and a tray of instruments, typing occasionally without letting her hear what they typed. The older man frowned at his associate more than once. Finally, they turned their attention to Jemma, the younger man hooking her up to a blood pressure cuff and heart rate monitor.

“We are going to ask you questions with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers,” typed the older man while this happened. “Do you understand?”

Jemma crossed her arms, the instrument reading her pulse pulling against her finger. The man scowled, then nodded to the one next to her before he continued typing. “We have ways to work around your unnecessary defiance.”

“This won’t hurt,” he took the time to type before reaching to lift the hair from her neck.

She pulled away, shaking her head. Doctor Clipboard walked to the door and opened it, admitting the guard, who placed a hand on her weapon while looking pointedly at Jemma.

Jemma sat back where she’d been, in reach of the assistant, and the guard nodded and left, shutting the door again. Jemma heard the monitor’s gentle beep speed as her frustration and anger and helplessness translated to a physical reaction. The assistant patted her arm absently before silencing the machine and moving her hair out of the way again.

She forced herself to remain still as he pressed sticky circles against the skin at the base of her skull, then hooked those to wires attached to a machine next to the one showing her vitals.

“Let’s try this again,” typed the man in front of her. “Is your name Jemma Tyler?”

She stared. The man next to her looked at the lines on a monitor and nodded.

“Are you twenty-three years old?”

He nodded again. What was this, a lie detector?

“Are you able to communicate telepathically with people you do not know?”

A nod.

Jemma closed her eyes, picking a song at random and focusing on the lyrics, pretending she was singing them loudly, focusing on the words as if she were trying to Talk.

“Were you able to communicate telepathically before the Event?”

Lyrics. That was all she could hear, all she was thinking of.

“Were you able to communicate telepathically before the Event?”

The sound of the door jarred her focus briefly. Would they really shoot her for not
thinking
what they wanted her to? She had too many questions, so many things unanswered. It wasn’t as if she were really trying to hide anything, but it gave her some sense of control, and Jemma really didn’t want to relinquish her last thread of control without a fight.

After she opened her eyes, she blinked. Instead of the guard joining them, the man who had been standing in front of her had left. It was just her and the man beside her, the younger one, who was watching her patiently, his keyboard in one hand.

“This doesn’t have to be a struggle.” He unhooked the sensors from the back of her neck, wincing sympathetically as he pulled some hair off with them. “You can help, you know. None of us will get what we want if we don’t cooperate.”

Jemma watched him. He seemed kind, really, and the whole “good cop, bad cop” strategy was pretty hard to resist. If she was going to end up giving in anyway, was it better to do it when she chose to, even if she knew she was being manipulated?

“Let’s start over,” he typed. “I’m Josh.”

She stared at his outstretched hand before slowly reaching out to take it, shaking it firmly. Josh rewarded her with a wide smile, a hint of pride, and Jemma had a sudden strong impression of an owner who’d just taught his dog a new trick.

Her stomach churning again, she pulled back. Josh didn’t seem to register her displeasure, and he reached under the tray of implements and pulled out a piece of paper and a box of crayons. He placed both on her lap.

“There, now you can communicate properly. The crayons were the only things the guards would approve. Seem to think you’re dangerous, but I think we can work well together, can’t we?” When Jemma didn’t respond, he continued. “For instance, instead of needing to bring the guards in so I can get a sample of blood from you, we can find a compromise.”

Jemma raised an eyebrow and retrieved a red crayon from the box.
A compromise like half a vial of blood instead of a full one?
she wrote.

Josh seemed genuinely amused, his face lighting up as he laughed soundlessly. “Not quite what I had in mind,” he typed, the monotone speaker unimpressed by Jemma’s attempt at snark. “But I can offer you something in exchange for your cooperation.”