Voice Read Online Free PDF Page B

pretty casual to make up for it. I miss my teammates and my family.”
    Jemma felt Jack’s connection kick in, and she sent April a surge of sympathy before sending Jack a hello.
    “Good morning, Jemma. Fantastic accommodations, hmm? Did you enjoy your four-star breakfast this morning?”
    She chuckled. “Only four stars?”
    “Well, I wouldn’t want to oversell the place.”
    Jemma’s eyes flew open at the sound of the clipboard’s speaker. “Now that you’re communicating with both of them again, I’d like you to bring them together as you did yesterday. This time, though, before you try to apply the connection to your conversation with April, Joshua is going to inject you with another drug. This one should enhance things even further. You’ll be the only one receiving this injection.”
    She pulled the two into the group conversation again. “They’re going to inject me with something else to make it easier for me to make the connection with April stronger.”
    “After how bad you felt yesterday?” Jack’s tone had gone neutral, and Jemma bit her lip.
    “It’s not like I can stop them. My head’s already in constant pain. It’s hard to think about anything more complicated than—”
    “Girl talk,” supplied April.
    “Right, girl talk,” Jemma continued. “They gave me another scan this morning before deciding to do this, so I guess they think it’s worth the risk.”
    “Wait, they’ve messed you up enough that they’re scanning your brain? And you went back?”
    Jemma ignored April, ignored the prick in her arm and the burning sensation of the new drug, and addressed Jack instead. “Can you see whether you can see something? It’s not something I noticed before, so I think it’s the drug, but I can see colors for the different connections. Not that it’s necessarily relevant, but it would help to know whether it’s real or I’m just exhausted and imagining things.”
    “I’ll check,” he sent, tone still void of emotion.
    “Oh, and don’t touch, at least not yet. April said it hurt.”
    “Is that what you were doing?”
    “There are colors, but they’re pretty faint. April is some sort of purple, dark. You’re almost gold, maybe a little more brown.”
    “You two match almost,” April added. “You’re not the same color, but close. That’s cool.”
    Marcia and Ken, though, were very different colors. It could make sense for similar colors to be able to Talk more easily, but Marcia and Ken didn’t seem to have any trouble communicating, so that might not be the case.
    Any further exploration of that thought was interrupted by the second drug taking full and sudden effect. Jemma opened her eyes, seeing the room almost glow, the light too bright to handle. Her head felt ready to split open, but she couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t even focus on sending a response to Jack, who was asking whether she was okay.
    Her brain was crawling, covered in bugs with needles for legs.
    On top of the sensations, in addition to the pain, the light, to Jack and April trying to Talk to her, she was suddenly aware of something new.
    Though she knew Talking was, on some level, visual as much as audio, it felt like she was hearing it when people Talked to her. This, though it still translated to words, was more visual. She couldn’t quite see the words themselves, but she could feel them, knew what they were, her mind translating emotion and image to something that made sense.
    Jemma—no, the subject. The subject is showing signs of distress. Not yet outside of acceptable parameters. Display shows connection with male subject remains remarkably strong. Connection to female isn’t even visible when she’s communicating with him.
    She looked at Dr. Harris, who was frowning, shifting his attention between the clipboard, the monitor, and Jemma herself.
    It’s working, I know it is. I knew it. They’re going to have to admit that I was right sometime. Every time they actually shut up and