"We do seem to have a good bit of leeway." Jemma looked at Jack, finally realizing she still held his hand.
Jack smiled, giving her a chance to pull away. After squeezing his hand once, she did.
Jemma wished for a moment that she could still audibly clear her throat. "I don"t want you to stop being yourself," she sent, reinforcing it with a wave of certainty. "That doesn"t mean... I"m not..."
"Just tell me if it"s too much."
"Everything else is too much," sent Jemma. "Being watched, being different in a way that"s dangerous, everything changing with no explanation." She took a breath. "You"re not too much."
He sent a wave of appreciation and agreement. "I"m glad we had that talk." He grinned. "Even if the timing was a bit odd. Speaking of..." He looked down at his computer"s clock. "It"s time to call back Mister Red Car."
She nodded and took a sip of her drink while he was occupied, and they waited in comfortable silence for the man to return. When he did, he was visibly frustrated, barely flipping on the light before turning it off and leaving again. As soon as he got in his car, Jack triggered the alarm again, and the man stormed out, stopping just inside the door and leaving again without doing anything fully inside the building.
"Yes!" sent Jack, excited. "He disabled it entirely. It worked!"
"Excellent." Jemma watched as the red car sped away. "Let"s head out."
"We haven"t done enough planning. We haven"t thought this through." Jemma closed her eyes as the dream she"d been working through finally gave way to reality. They were in the s.p.a.ce behind the building, ready to break the window of the office as planned.
"It"s now or maybe never," sent Jack, placing his hands on her shoulders. "The alarm is disabled. We"ve got our new gloves, the lug wrench to break the window. If there"s some backup silent alarm, we know we have at least twenty minutes before anyone gets here."
"You"re right," she said, opening her eyes. "We"ve made this choice already. It"s just finally... I feel like I might get sick."
"Just focus on the goal," he said calmly, without distancing himself in case her nausea won out. "We"re just going to go inside and sort through paperwork, and we"re going to find some of the information we"ve been looking for. That"s all."
She nodded curtly, getting her emotions back in check. "When is it your turn to freak out?" she sent. "I"ve done it enough."
"You haven"t really freaked out," he sent, dropping one hand to his side and maintaining contact with the other. "You"ve had reasonable doubts and concerns. We"ve got a plan. Are you ready?"
She took another breath, expelling it forcefully. "Yes. Let"s do this."
"I"ll get all the gla.s.s out of the way before we go in." He let go of Jemma, looking at her one last time before smashing the window.
It was louder than Jemma had expected, and she looked around nervously, but the area, largely commercial, was deserted at this time of night. There was no flashing, no sound to indicate the alarm had been triggered. Jack turned sideways to fit safely through the tall, relatively-narrow window, and Jemma followed suit, pulling out her phone to use as a flashlight.
There were no papers strewn about as she"d worried briefly. Instead, there were just three filing cabinets. She went to the first and tried it.
Locked.
"Check the desk for a key," she sent, feeling calm and focused now that the task was in front of her. "Too many employees come in here to not have a shared key." Jack quickly responded with a wave of success and unlocked the filing cabinet for her before unlocking the next two and picking one to open. She saw files alphabetized by last name, not unexpected, and knelt to access the lower files where she should find Jack"s.
Relatively quickly, she sorted through the folders and found it, pulling the file labeled "Jack Himmel" out so she could read it. Nothing stood out at first; there was a log of relevant history, dates of donations. She turned the page again and found a bright green sheet.
Contact Brewer for special instructions regarding processing.
Jemma showed Jack, then confirmed nothing else was in the folder before putting it back in the cabinet. "There should be a master file," she sent.
"Hopefully," sent Jack, who was grabbing her file from the last cabinet, "but if not, that would explain why the texts to Marcia were coming through one at a time, if he was searching through the files individually. Maybe he"d have sent them all at once if they were in one place."
Jemma"s folder was nearly identical to Jack"s, with the standard information and the bright green page sporting the single sentence. She ran a hand through her hair. "Okay. I"ll keep going through the cabinets, reading names for anything that stands out. You check the desk for any other paperwork or, I don"t know, clues." Jack sent a wave of acknowledgment, and Jemma continued looking through the cabinets.
She checked the start and end of the alphabet, then under M for Miscellaneous, U for Uncla.s.sified.
"We have about ten minutes left," sent Jack.
"Okay." Running out of plausible ideas, Jemma checked T for Telepathy. There was nothing there, but before she could close that drawer, a nearby folder caught her eye.
""Test." Jack, I think I found something."
Jemma grabbed the folder and opened it as Jack joined her.
There was a list of subjects, including their names, Marcia"s and Kendall"s, and three others. The next page was a consolidated log of dates of donation. The next few pages looked like medical gibberish, and she handed one to Jack while she tried to make sense of another.
Subjects show markers for increased chances of successful use of telepathy, she found near the middle of the page. Subtle administration of Compound 252L has resulted in increased activity in and number of supporting cells. Forwarding data for further research.
Jemma got Jack"s attention and pointed to the paragraph. He nodded. "This page is basically saying the same thing. What about-"
There was a loud bang as the door to the office was flung open, and Jemma sent a yelp of surprise. Jack grabbed her hand and started running for the window, but armed men stood outside, blocking it, as more came in through the open office door.
Jemma clutched the folder in one hand and clung to Jack"s support with the other as a man in a dark suit stepped around the armed guards.
"You"re a resourceful duo," came a high-end mechanical voice. "I look forward to seeing what we can learn from you."
At some cue Jemma wasn"t privy to, two of the guards stepped forward, grabbing her and pulling her away from Jack.
"No!" she heard. "Jemma!"
She kicked and clawed, but the men moved her quickly through the building and tossed her into the back of a car, giving Jemma only a brief glimpse of another car that stood open and empty. She reached for her connection to Jack...
...and then fell unconscious against the leather seat, unaware by the time the car started moving only seconds later.
Turn the page for a scene from the next book in the Muted Trilogy, Listen.
Jemma paced the windowless cell, footsteps echoing off the concrete walls. The only other sound was the hum of the fluorescent lighting, a sound that seemed louder every time she sat on the sterile cot that served as her only piece of furniture.
"Jack?" she tried sending again, though she"d lost track of how many times she"d already tried, with no response. She could still feel their connection, but barely, slight enough she was no longer entirely certain she wasn"t just imagining it.
It had been hours since they"d been taken, at least. Her stomach was in knots, much too tense to let her know whether it was time for a meal.
A meal, though, was the last thing on her mind as the near-silence was interrupted by the metallic screech of the doork.n.o.b"s turn. The door opened to reveal a man in his forties, wearing a lab coat. He carried a clipboard and wore what looked like a walkie-talkie on his pocket. He shut the door behind him, the door clicking loudly as it latched into place.
As he moved closer to her, she crossed her arms, watching, waiting. There was a small keyboard at the top of his clipboard, and he typed on it, then finally looked up at her.
"Jemma Tyler, correct?" came the artificial voice from the speaker on his jacket.
Jemma raised her eyebrows, trying for defiance. Even if she had a way to respond to this man, she wasn"t sure she would. And was he really asking her whether he"d captured the right person?
He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a cell phone from at least a decade earlier and handed it to her, presumably for her use in responding. She stared at him.
He frowned, shaking the phone at her as if she should be happy to take it. Happy to use the machine to talk to the people who were holding her captive, who"d separated her from Jack. The people who seemed to know about telepathy before everyone had lost their voices and had very likely had something to do with it.
She considered him for another moment before taking the phone, typing quickly.
"Where"s Jack?" The speech from the phone was garbled but understandable.
"That"s not what I asked," he replied. "Please confirm your name."
"Go to h.e.l.l." She glared, hoping that helped offset what was lost in the electronic translation.
He frowned again. "Hostility is really not necessary."
"Are you kidding me?" typed Jemma, the delivery falling flat as the electronic voice conveyed it. "You take me and lock me up, won"t tell me if my-" She erased the word and continued, "if Jack is okay, and you don"t think hostility is necessary?" Jemma fought the urge to throw the phone at the man.
He managed to look even more frustrated, his brow furrowing further and frown deepening, and then he shuffled through papers on his clipboard, finally turning it around to show a photo of Jack, sleeping on a cot in a cell identical to hers.
She felt a flood of relief and nearly missed what the man said after turning his clipboard back toward himself.
"Now, are you Jemma Tyler?"
She nodded, trying to figure out what about the photo hadn"t been quite right, and her eyes were drawn to a point above her door.
A black, translucent dome was above it, red light inside barely visible.
"Are there cameras?" she typed.
"Can you confirm your age?" asked the man, staring at his clipboard again.
"Is that recording everything?"
"Are you, Jemma Tyler, twenty-three years of age?"
"What"s your name?" she typed.
"Irrelevant. Answer the question."
"No."
The man looked up, sighed visibly, then turned to the door, knocking firmly. It opened, allowing him to exit, and closed behind him again with a loud clang, leaving Jemma to her thoughts, her cot, and the camera.
Acknowledgments.
I couldn"t have done this without my husband, who encouraged and supported me, who took care of our daughter when I was exhausted from late nights writing or editing.
I couldn"t have done this without my parents, who were my initial encouragement, who gave me education and opportunities for success.
I couldn"t have done this without Susan, who was there through every chapter, every revision, every moment of panic.
Thank you.
About the Author.
Nikita went to school for creative writing, with the intent to become a copyeditor. When she graduated in 2006, rather than taking an unpaid internship to get started in the world of publishing, Nikita followed her husband to Italy, where they had a daughter.
After moving back to the United States a few years later, Nikita started tutoring high school and college students in essay writing, reminding her of her earlier pa.s.sion. In 2013, she started writing, working on shorter pieces until, finally, she was struck with the idea for Mute.
When she isn"t writing or reading, she is enjoying the outdoors in South Dakota with her family, practicing martial arts, or watching her favorite television shows.
Read more about Nikita and her upcoming novels at www.MutedAuthor.com.
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