Listen (Muted Trilogy Book 2) (14 page)

So they would have to figure something out, have to find someone they could trust either in law enforcement or politics, someone with the power to
do
something, to stop this where Jemma was so powerless.

Someone who could keep Jemma from dying.

She got up and plugged in her phone, resting it on the desk where she usually ate breakfast and dinner, then made herself comfortable at the end of the bed, her back against the wall her door was in, trying to keep her feet so they would just barely show in the camera’s view. She was both drained and wired, worried and anticipatory. It was again effort for her to stay still as long as she thought she should, especially since her mind kept feeding her worst-case scenarios.

They would get caught by the guards as soon as they got out of their rooms.

They wouldn’t even get out of their rooms at all.

They’d get out of the building and there would be some sort of perimeter defense like in movies, and they’d be shot as soon as they left.

They’d make it out alive, but as soon as they got out of the telepathic suppression area, Jemma would pass out or her head would explode.

Jemma would make it out without Jack.

Jack would make it out without Jemma.

At least with the last two scenarios, one of them would still find a way to get help. The same applied if Ken or Marcia got out, or both of them; they’d find a way to get help for everyone else.

Jemma made a mental note to let the women know
why
it was so important that they get out.

She brought her knees up to her chest, pulling her feet out of view of the camera, and rested her head on her knees. She couldn’t remember her mind being quite so disorganized before, and she needed to focus if they were going to get out of this place. Right now, she should see whether someone eventually came to check on her if she wasn’t on camera for an extended period of time. If nobody came, maybe they weren’t actively monitoring her camera. Of course, it could also mean she wasn’t as out-of-view as she thought.

Tomorrow, they’d need to share a few things with Ken and Marcia. The women needed to know exactly when the attempt would be made, and they needed to know the reason behind it. They needed to know where the exit was, as did Jack.

Was that it? How could an escape be so simple and yet be so terrifying, with so many variables out of her hands?

***

Jemma spent the rest of the evening testing her limits with the camera boundaries, and she carried her tests over to the next morning. Nobody ever showed or knocked on the door, no matter how long she stayed in her corners or in the bathroom.

The morning passed slowly, but lunch started a little differently than usual; Jemma could feel Jack as soon as Heidi let her out of her room.

“Jack?” she sent, hoping Heidi wouldn’t say anything important just yet; she wasn’t up to listening to them both at once. “Where are you?”

“Just outside the cafeteria,” he sent back. “You already here?”

“I just left my room. I’ll talk when I’m there.” Either their rooms were farther apart than they’d thought or the concrete walls and heavy metal doors helped block the telepathy. Jemma tuned back in to what Heidi was saying, holding on to her connection with Jack as if it were a warm blanket.

“Hope you got your phone charged okay,” Heidi typed, and Jemma pulled hers out of her pocket.

“That helped a lot, thanks,” she typed back. Heidi nodded, seeming to get the message.

“Sorry I couldn’t do more. It’s a shame most of them who keep you in here get to go out and celebrate a birthday party tomorrow while you’re in that dingy cafeteria.”

Jemma nodded. “It’s been over a month.” She’d made sure to check the date on the paper that morning. “I haven’t even really thought about birthdays.” That wasn’t entirely true. She knew she’d missed Jilly’s.

“How’s your head?” typed Heidi.

“It’s better than it was a couple days ago.” That was true enough, anyway.

The chit-chat stayed light, nothing else clearly informational, and they reached the cafeteria quickly. Jemma’s eyes met Jack’s immediately, and she was stopped by tapping on her shoulder. “I do need to hold on to your phone for lunch. I’m sorry about that.”

Jemma frowned, an expression that didn’t take too much effort to call up, and handed her the phone, then walked toward the other end of the cafeteria, waiting until she reached the sandwich display to return his mental embrace and silent hello.

“We need to go through everything again today,” she sent. “And I need to try to send an image without contact. Heidi gave me a map, but I had to flush it.”

“Only send it if it’s not going to hurt you,” returned Jack as she joined him at the table. “I’d rather just have to meet you somewhere I already know than risk having you get one of those headaches again.”

“I’ll stop right away if it hurts,” she sent, backing it up with confidence she wasn’t sure she felt. But unlike so much of what they were planning, this was something under her control, at least to some degree. “Our connection has been stronger since whatever happened the other day, anyway.”

“I noticed, but I hadn’t figured out whether that was a good thing or not. It’ll make the escape easier. I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Be quiet and eat your sandwich.” Jemma sent, aiming for stern librarian, and Jack’s lips twitched. Hopefully, the guards didn’t notice.

“Yes, ma’am.” He took a bite, and Jemma did the same, focusing the rest of her attention on the map, as best she could remember it, and on Jack. After a minute, she felt the image shimmer, then vibrate in almost a visual echo. “Got it,” he sent, along with awed respect. “Feeling okay?”

Jemma took another bite of her sandwich. “Yes, actually. I feel like myself still, and no headache. That was easier than the first times we tried it.”

“You amaze me, you know that? Escape is going to be nothing.”

“Escape.” Her confidence drained immediately, and her sandwich nearly refused to go down. “We really need to do this? There’s so much that could go wrong, so much that we can’t do anything about—”

“Hey.” At his soft, supportive tone, Jemma closed her eyes; she knew that if she looked into his, everything would be over, because anyone who saw would know, without a doubt, that they were Talking. “We are two of the most kick-ass people I know. We can do this. We can and will get out of here, and we will find someone who can take over from there.” Of course it had already occurred to Jack that they couldn’t just go to the cops. “We will go back to our normal lives before you know it, and we’ll be able to do this because you and I? We can take on anything they throw at us.”

Jemma took a deep breath, then sent acknowledgment. “As long as it’s one thing at a time.”

“That’s the plan.” Jack’s tone held amusement and affection, a combination she was used to feeling from him.

He had to make it out of here with her.

“We end lunch early by breaking a rule or something. There are enough of them,” she sent. “We keep the doors from locking. We proceed to the exit. Do we meet there?”

“Your room is closer to the exit,” sent Jack. “It doesn’t seem safe for either of us to wait around in the hallways. I’m not sure where Ken and Marcia are. It makes sense for us all to just get out and meet a safe distance from the door. We should be able to Talk once we get away from the building, so meeting up shouldn’t be a problem, not once we escape.”

“Right.” Jemma forced down another bite. “All right.”

“If you see or hear a guard coming, try the nearest door,” Jack sent. “Then there’s at least a chance.”

“Logical. And if an alarm goes off, we just run for it. We have a better chance of hiding if we’re out of the building and out on our own.”

“I’ll pass on the information this time, if you can maybe go talk to your guard for a second?” Jack crumpled his wrapper, and Jemma stood and walked toward the guards. Today, the second guard seemed bored rather than nervous, and he wasn’t somebody Jemma recognized. What excuse was she going to use?

When she reached them, she stood so that she blocked as much of the camera as she could, not sure whether it was enough to make a difference, but hoping that if they hadn’t approached her yesterday for her brush with Ken, they wouldn’t notice Jack’s brush with Marcia. She mimed typing on her phone, and Heidi handed Jemma her cell.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt, but I forgot what time we came in. How much longer until we have to leave?”

“You have about five minutes,” the other guard answered, and Heidi retrieved the phone, looking almost amused. Jemma sat back down, and Jack had already taken his seat again, trash disposed of.

“I told them,” he sent. “We’re ready. All we have to do is wait.”

***

After a restless night, Jemma woke early, despite knowing she could use as much sleep as she could get. During breakfast, she noticed numerous mentions of headache activity in the newspaper, now that she was looking for them. Complaints found their way into personal ads, opinion pieces, and even a few of the more formal articles. Some buildings had been delayed because of mysterious illnesses plaguing their architects, and the number of help wanted ads was starting to rise again. There were no articles dedicated to the subject yet, so it wasn’t quite serious enough that the general public had noticed, but Heidi was right; it was getting bad out there, and it was up to Jemma, at least in part, to try to make things better.

Starting with escaping.

Today.

She ran for the bathroom, clutching the toilet just in time.

FIFTEEN

Chances

The pangs in her stomach were less an indicator that it was nearly time for lunch and more a reminder that it was almost time to get started. Jemma took a steadying breath at the knock on her door, then stood, leaving the relative safety of the back corner of her bed as the door opened. Heidi greeted her with a friendly smile, and she nodded in understanding when Jemma gestured toward her cell phone, which she’d left charging in plain sight. She was grateful the back cover didn’t come around very far to the front; it made its removal less conspicuous, and it made the back piece thinner, easier to slip between the door and the door frame, easier to hide against her skin along the seam of her jeans, the top barely concealed by her shirt.

Whether Heidi was dealing with nerves of her own, respecting Jemma’s apparent wishes for silence, or just not wanting to make one-sided conversation that day, the walk to the cafeteria was quiet, without the normal chatter and witty sarcasm touched with kindness Jemma had already learned to associate with the guard. Only when they’d almost reached the cafeteria did Heidi finally type a short sentence into her phone.

“I hope you have a great lunch today.”

Jemma nodded, then entered the cafeteria, her eyes locking with Jack’s. He sent her a wave of reassurance along with his normal grin of greeting.

They were going to get through this.

Jemma swallowed and forced a smile in return before retrieving a sandwich and sitting across from him.

“I think I want a steak for dinner,” Jack sent. “A nice, juicy one.”

“We don’t have any cash on us,” sent Jemma. “We can’t risk using any of our accounts because they can probably find us that way, we can’t go to the police, and we shouldn’t risk going to our families.” She’d entered the room so confident, but at the first hurdle, even hypothetical, she was already falling apart. “What are we doing, Jack? How are we even going to eat?”

“Okay, maybe the steak is unrealistic. We’ll figure it out. At least out there, we’ve got a chance at our own lives, right?” He sent her another wave of reassurance, this one laced with confidence, then frowned at the door. “You should eat some, though, if you can. We should stop lunch soon. Not sure where Ken and Marcia are.”

Jemma looked around; Jack’s frown had been overt enough to warrant a response. The siblings were there, but sure enough, Marcia and Ken hadn’t shown up.

“How long do we wait for them, if they don’t come?” she sent.

“I’m not sure. If they were caught trying to get ready for the escape…” He didn’t need to spell out the number of ways that could end badly. Jemma looked over her shoulder at the door, half expecting to see armed guards rushing in, but the only guards present were still the two posted at the side of the room.

This whole thing could fail so spectacularly.

“If they don’t come, do we wait another day, try again tomorrow?” she sent.

“I don’t think we can.” He sent both hesitation and certainty. “It seemed like Heidi was telling us today was our best shot, right? If we get out, we can find a way to help, but if we miss our chance, then we’re all stuck here.”

“All right. So we’re still doing this.”

“And within the next minute or so, too,” he clarified.

Jemma looked up at Jack; they were about to end lunch, anyway, and she needed to see him.

He looked so sure, so confident in their ability to pull this off. The parts they had control over, the parts they had planned out, all right. Those, Jemma could feel okay about. It was all the variables, the unknown, putting trust in the fact that they’d find a way to get past any obstacles, find a way to save not only themselves but the others being held captive, to save potentially everyone in the world, with a plan less detailed than the ones Jemma used for scheduling at the library.