Listen (Muted Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Muted Trilogy

  Dedication

  ONE Caged

  TWO Tested

  THREE Demands

  FOUR Searching

  FIVE Monotony

  SIX Quality

  SEVEN Finding More

  EIGHT Undone

  NINE Expanding

  TEN To Talk

  ELEVEN Progress

  TWELVE Overheard

  THIRTEEN Can We

  FOURTEEN Cooperation

  FIFTEEN Chances

  SIXTEEN Unguarded

  SEVENTEEN Survival

  EIGHTEEN Resources

  NINETEEN Options

  TWENTY Strings

  TWENTY-ONE Lost

  TWENTY-TWO Meeting

  TWENTY-THREE Binding

  TWENTY-FOUR What Could Be

  TWENTY-FIVE Conspiracy

  TWENTY-SIX Side Effects

  TWENTY-SEVEN Apart

  TWENTY-EIGHT Risk

  TWENTY-NINE Interview

  THIRTY Where We Started

  EXCERPT:

  Voice

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Listen

  by

  Nikita Spoke

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2015 Nikita Spoke. All rights reserved.

  Cover design and original photography © 2015 by Laura Lynne Ellis.

  Stock photography for cover:

  ©iStock.com/Antonel

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  Copyright © 2015 Nikita Spoke

  All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1518812521

  ISBN-10: 151881252X

  The Muted Trilogy

  Mute

  Listen

  Voice

  For Susan.

  ONE

  Caged

  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 when the near-silence was interrupted by the metallic screech of the doorknob. 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.

  Was he really asking her whether he’d captured the right person? Jemma raised her eyebrows, trying for defiance. Even if she had a way to respond to this man, she wasn’t sure she would.

  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. The people who, according to the records she and Jack had found, had been experimenting on blood donors.

  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 hell.” She glared, hoping the expression helped offset what was lost in the electronic translation.

  He frowned again. “Hostility is really not necessary.”

  Jemma fought the urge to throw the phone at the man. “Are you kidding me?” she typed, 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?”

  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, a small, 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.

  She turned away from the camera and toward what would have to pass for a bed, shutting her eyes and running one hand up and down her arm before she realized she still clutched the outdated cell phone in her other hand. She pressed the back button, not expecting to be able to actually use the phone, but needing to check just in case. As expected, when she returned to its home screen, the symbol at the top right indicated that the device wasn’t connected to a provider. The rest of the programs on the phone seemed to be locked, and all she could access was the program she’d been typing into.

  She sat on the cot, her back against the wall, knees pulled up toward her chest, and set the phone down on her pillow so she could wrap her arms around her legs.

  “Jack,” she tried, focusing on the remaining trace of their connection, picturing Jack as she’d seen him in the photo.

  He’d been on his side, head tucked down and knees pulled up, his back to the wall. He’d looked somehow both childlike and defensive, curled to protect himself while he slept. His brown hair, still so much shorter than it had been before they’d started Talking, had stuck out at various angles. How long ago had the photo been taken? How long had they been unconscious before Jemma had awoken?

  Jemma shoved the phone under the pillow and lay down facing the wall, running her fingers along the rough concrete, and she closed her eyes, remembering his voice the first time they’d Talked, how startled she’d been to hear it echoing in her mind. There was no echo now as she tried one last time.

  “Jack,” she sen
t into the void, almost a whisper.

  The room remained silent, empty. Jemma hadn’t ever really craved company, but never in her life had she ever felt so alone.

  ***

  Jemma blinked up at the unfamiliar ceiling. Her stomach rumbled silently, the accompanying pangs signifying its protest against the recent lack of food. How long had it been since she’d eaten, since she’d shared her last meal with Jack?

  She sat, the gray walls giving no hint as to what time it might be, the light unchanged from when she’d fallen asleep. She was stiff, sore where her jeans had pressed into her, her feet cramped from sleeping in her sneakers. She rubbed her hands against her eyes and then stretched, trying to relieve some of the tension in her body.

  A clattering noise drew her attention to the door, and she saw a small flap at the bottom had opened outward, and a tray was sliding through. Jemma leapt for the door, reaching it as the flap closed with another clatter. She knelt and ran her hand along the section that had opened, pressing firmly when it didn’t respond to light pressure.

  The flap didn’t move. She slid her fingers from it to the main part of the door. Both felt the same, like some sort of cool metal, or maybe very hard wood covered in a thin layer of paint. She could barely feel the seam between the two, and she leaned closer to try to see it, to see whether she could tell how it worked.

  A loud buzz came from above the door, and she jumped, heart racing. As soon as she ceased contact with the door, the abrasive noise stopped. She reached out slowly, eyes on the camera above her, and was rewarded with another loud discouragement just before she made contact. Jemma forced herself to take a deep breath. She expelled it through her nose, the sound less affected by the lack of voice than if she’d let it out through her mouth.

  Finally looking down at the tray, she saw one of the cheap TV dinners that amounted to little more than a snack. Beside it rested a plastic spork and a juice pouch. With one last glance at the unmoving door and the camera above it, Jemma picked up the hard, plastic tray and sat on the end of her bed, food in her lap.

  Was it safe to eat? What if they were trying to drug her or something? She picked up the utensil, holding it over the pasta. Did she really have a choice? She couldn’t exactly leave and go somewhere else to eat, and she’d have to eat eventually, so if they wanted something in her system, it would be there before long.

  Her stomach prodded her into trying a cautious bite. The food tasted normal, the lukewarm dish tasting of broccoli, white sauce, and cardboard. She swallowed, urging her body to be patient as she waited to see whether the food would settle right.

  After a few minutes, still feeling fine other than tired and hungry and sore, she finished the food, washing it down with the juice, wrinkling her nose at the combination of flavors, then looking down at the empty tray. She wasn’t quite full, but she wasn’t actively hungry anymore, either.

  She set the tray to the right of the door rather than in front of the flap. She wondered whether someone would come in to retrieve it, whether it would disappear as she slept, whether she’d soon be left with a stack of dirty, empty trays.

  Jemma made a quick circuit of the room, running her hands along the rough walls, trying to feel for any additional hidden doors or flaps, but the search turned up nothing. It only reinforced how small the room she was confined to really was.

  She closed her eyes, turning her exploration inward. She could feel it still, the slight presence she thought was her limited connection with Jack.

  After having slept for a while, and after having been unconscious previously, she wouldn’t still be feeling a phantom connection, would she? He had to be okay, still there, still connected, just without the connection functional. Her attempt at sending his name remained without the echo that would let her know it had reached him.

  She tried feeling for the residual imprint of the connections from Kendall and Marcia, but there was nothing at all, not even the trace she had with Jack’s.

  A couple of months ago, she’d wondered how long voices would be removed, how long it would take to adjust to the new reality. Now, she found herself wondering the same about being trapped in this tiny room by herself. At least if she had a book, she could pass time with something other than her own thoughts.

  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.<
br />
  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.