Voice (25 page)

“Just because the world knows it exists, doesn’t mean they have access to it. It doesn’t mean they know who can use it. It’s more effective that way, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you fear an army more if it might have a weapon you’ve no way to counteract?”

“So I’m guessing you’re not selling whatever shielding you had on the building,” Jemma said.

“That shielding was ridiculous.” Josh shook his head. “It was supposed to completely protect the people in the building, cancel out the Event entirely, neutralize the nanocreatures. Instead, it just made them… sleepy. They still canceled out the vocals, but they also canceled out most of the telepathic enhancement. Now that you’ve killed off the nanocreatures, it’s useless.” He grinned again. “The fact that you were able to Talk to each other so easily even though the enhancements were so close to neutralized is part of why I’m sure you can still do it.”

He looked down at the tray, and Jemma spat out the first question she could think of. “And why were we kept apart at first? What was the point when we needed to be together for the results you were looking for?”

“They were too scared to get results.” Josh looked back at her. “We should’ve had the pairs we knew worked together in the lab first. We should’ve forced similar emotions, should’ve used my supplements sooner. They were doing it all wrong, though. They wanted to use the weakest connections that were measurable, because they were convinced that you’d be able to communicate with somebody on the outside if you were too strong, or failing that, you’d be able to coordinate an escape.” He paused. “And you
did
escape, didn’t you? Did you trade plans while you were in the lab together? Did you find a way to touch during lunches?”

Jemma raised her eyebrows again. “You’re the genius, right? You haven’t figured it out?”

He looked unfazed by her lack of information, running his fingers along the tray once more. “That’s okay, I can be patient. There’s nobody to interfere, now. Nobody to stop me. I’ve got the two of you for as long as I want.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN:

Not That

“I’d like to first see the two of you communicating without the use of any enhancements,” Josh said, smiling in a facade of rationality. “If you’re not giving me results or if you make this any more difficult than you need to, well then…” He held up a capped syringe, looking lovingly at it. “You remember how nice my enhancing drugs are, Jemma. I had to change them, of course, adjust them to better compensate for the lack of nanocreatures, but I think you’ll like the results.”

They needed to keep him from using those. Jemma wasn’t sure she’d survive it, if he resorted to following through on his threats. If Josh knew they could Talk unaided, she couldn’t see anything good coming of it. If he proved himself right, if he confirmed his suspicions, she couldn’t picture a future in which she and Jack wouldn’t be looking over their shoulders, even assuming they ever got out of here.

Jemma swallowed, watching the syringe between Josh’s fingers. She had to hope they had an agent nearby, ready to stop this. They needed to delay, to do anything possible to protect themselves. If that included using telepathy, she’d do it, and they’d figure out the consequences. Hopefully, though, they’d be rescued before that point.

“I bet it kills you that you practically invented telepathy and you’ve never even used it,” she said. “Is that why you feel such a need to prove yourself? Because you’re a failure?”

Josh sneered. “This again? I knew that I wouldn’t be able to use it before I set the Event into motion. Do you really think that came as a shock? I already knew telepathy would have a base in emotional connection. I
chose
to keep my access to those connections limited. I moved across the country years ago to get away from my smothering parents, long before I began my research. And friends? They’re just distractions. I needed to find a version of telepathy that wouldn’t require those weaknesses.”

He smiled again. “I was prepared. That doesn’t make me a failure. It makes me better able to objectively observe, and obviously, it’s worked. I knew more than any of the rest of the so-called experts.”

“Because you got paired up with
me.
” Jemma put forward as much conviction as she could muster, latching onto the truth of her words. “You wouldn’t have been able to prove most of your theories if you hadn’t gotten paired up with the only person in the area showing real results. You would’ve been just some lackey in a lab, waiting for your bosses to decide you’d screwed up too badly to keep around.”

His smile dropped. “And yet I’m the one who’s holding all the power here. You’re strapped to a chair. Powerless.”

“So what’s that make you, since you need us so badly?” Jemma returned. “You know that if you’re right, we’re your best shot at proving it. You can’t get rid of either of us, can you? No matter how much you want to make it seem like you’re the one with the power, the knowledge.” She channeled all of her pent-up frustration at him, and he scowled. “What? Liked it better when I couldn’t talk? When you could pretend I was your obedient pet?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Maybe I should start out using this, after all.” He pointed the syringe in her direction. “This one isn’t laced with any of those nice pain medications I used when Dr. Harris was watching. It won’t injure you permanently. Probably. But it
will
hurt.”

Jemma closed her eyes. She couldn’t consult with Jack first, not without committing to what she was planning. Taunting Josh, though, as satisfying as it was, wasn’t going to delay him much longer. If they gave him what he was looking for, he’d have something to focus on other than injecting them and delighting in their pain. She had to hope that if—no,
when
—he was arrested again, he’d be locked up until he was incapable of any harm. If they could make sure he didn’t have any proof, then any claims he made might be dismissed as fantasy or as an attempt to earn favor by sharing scientific advances. Tied up, though, waiting on help to arrive, running out of spoken words that might do any good, Jemma was left with just this one course of action, and it was one she knew she excelled in.

Fixing her eyes on Josh, she reached out toward Jack’s hand, and he took hers without hesitation. She saw Josh’s eyes track the movement before he glanced toward her monitor. She started with a surge of emotion, a wave of affection and a request for trust. She felt Jack send back firm acceptance, and Josh’s eyes widened, flickering almost comically between the two monitors. “We’re not letting him use those drugs,” she sent Jack. “This will stall him.” She looked at Jack and saw him grin.

“Plus,” he sent, “we can say whatever we want without him overhearing.”

Glass clattered against metal, and Jemma looked back at Josh. He’d traded the syringe for a pen and had started scribbling, still wide-eyed, on a notepad. He was muttering as he wrote, but Jemma couldn’t quite make out the words.

“All right,” she sent Jack, “any ideas about how to get out of this place yet?”

“Still working on that.” Despite the situation, she could feel mild amusement in his mental tone. “You?”

“Not really,” she sent. “I’m hoping the agent who was supposed to be keeping an eye on us shows up soon. Just trying to delay things in the meantime. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have a backup plan in case we need to get ourselves out of here.”

“Agreed,” sent Jack, “on all counts.” He slid his thumb back and forth against her skin as he sent consideration. Josh seemed content with the audible silence, which was broken only by the scratch of pen against paper. “The first step is getting out of these straps. I think they’re done up under the seats. Can you reach?”

She looked at Jack’s chair and shook her head, seeing a bit of loose end dangling from where it was fastened. “Yours is too far from me, and these chairs are too thick for us to reach our own.”

Jack looked back toward Josh, and Jemma followed his line of sight to the instrument tray nearby. “If we can get ahold of something sharp enough, we should be able to cut through the straps,” he sent. Jemma nodded, then watched as Josh turned his attention to them for the first time since they’d started Talking. She tensed, and Jack sent a soothing, wordless flood of emotion.

Jemma took a breath and spoke aloud before Josh could. “What are you getting from this that you haven’t already had a chance to see?”

Josh tapped his pen against the paper absently as he watched her. “Patterns, Jemma. One time is a fluke. Twice, a coincidence. Three times, and we start to see a pattern. Enough times, and we should be able to replicate it.” She opened her mouth, but he shook his head. “I’m not telling you
everything
. I know you understand that I’m in charge, that I know what I’m doing, despite your petty jabs. I don’t need to reveal my grand plan.” He said the last words dramatically, rolling his eyes. “Not that you could do anything to stop me, even if I told you every step I was going to take, every alternate action if initial ideas fail. I
gave
you telepathy, and I’m going to study it however I please, for however long I wish.”

“No, you didn’t,” Jemma said before she’d really thought the words through.

“What?” Josh blinked at her.

Jack answered. “You didn’t give us telepathy, did you? We were picked out beforehand from something in our blood. And now that Jemma reversed what telepathy you gave, we’ve proven we can still Talk. We don’t need you, you sadistic bastard.”

“You’d never have found it without my help,” Josh argued, turning his attention to Jack. “You’d still be just as useless as you were before the Event.”

Jack managed to twitch one shoulder far enough to approximate a shrug. “So you say.”

“We found each other without your help,” Jemma added. “We know more about what we can do than you’ve been able to find out, even after all this time.” She paused, watching him before she continued. “You still don’t even know how we communicated enough to escape the first time.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “And I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me?”

Jemma’s breath caught as she heard a noise outside. It might’ve been something as simple as a dog knocking over a trashcan, but it could be their rescue finally getting ready to make a move. “We could Talk without touching,” she said, a little more loudly than she needed to. Whether because he hadn’t heard the sound or because of what she’d said, he didn’t look away from her. “We Talked every day in the cafeteria.”

“There’s no way you could have Talked despite the shielding,” Josh protested. “Besides, we tested you for that. You weren’t able to Talk when you were in the lab together, not unless you were touching.”

“Weren’t we?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. Jack sent amusement, and Josh looked uncertain for the first time since Jemma had woken.

“There’s no way you could’ve fooled the monitor,” Josh said, his eyes flickering briefly toward the one she was currently hooked up to. “The patterns, they couldn’t have been anything other than you trying and failing to Talk to somebody.”

“And did they show you
who
I was trying to Talk to?” Jemma felt the urge to laugh as Josh looked first surprised, then impressed, then infuriated.

“You tried to Talk to me or Dr. Harris,” he said. “That’s part of why you were showing so much damage. It wasn’t just that you were trying harder, but that you were trying more often than we realized to do more than you were able. You could’ve ruined everything, Jemma!” Josh stood and paced, tossing the notepad and pen onto his chair. “The data is tainted, now. I can’t trust anything we saw before.” He wheeled toward her, storming to her chair and leaning in close enough that she could count the hairs of his eyebrows. “You brought so much of your pain on yourself,” he hissed. “The more you reached beyond your natural abilities instead of enhancing the ones that you had access to, the more damage you caused. Do that again here, and you won’t get the easy breaks while you recover. No. You’ll—”

Jemma closed her eyes, blocking out his face and ignoring the breath against her skin, then slammed her head forward as hard and fast as the strap across her torso would allow. She felt a twinge in her neck, and her forehead throbbed, but Josh’s howl of pain was worth it. He pulled away, and when she opened her eyes, she saw him clutching his nose, a muffled stream of curses escaping against his palms. Jack sent silent congratulations, and she watched as a trickle of blood found its way out from behind Josh’s hands.

“You’re going to pay for this,” Josh said, voice strained. “You’re going—”

He was interrupted again, this time by a series of bangs and crashes. Jemma looked toward the sound and saw armored men and women entering the garage, through both the large door and what had to be a smaller side door just out of her field of vision. She looked back to Josh, who was holding his hands up, blood dripping down into his mouth as he was held at gunpoint.

“Joshua Stevens,” said a familiar voice, “You’re under arrest.” Heidi came into view, spinning Josh around roughly and holding him still while a policeman cuffed him. “You deal with this one,” she told the man who’d cuffed him, “and I’ll get these two.” She jerked her head toward Jack and Jemma, and the policeman nodded, leading Josh away and starting on a list of his rights.