Read Online Listen (Muted Trilogy Book 2) by Nikita Spoke - Free Book Online

not entirely her own.
    “How is this… I’ve tried.” He took another bite of his sandwich.
    “I don’t know. I’ve tried, too.” Jemma looked up at him, and he winked at her, pointedly avoiding looking toward the guards.
    “We’ve probably got fifteen minutes left, tops. If it was gonna work, Talking from anywhere else in the building, it would have by now.”
    “I agree.” She looked back down at her sandwich. Watching him, there was no way she was going to be able to hide her conversation with him. “Have you seen or heard anything that might help us escape?”
    “To business, then?” She could see just a sliver of his face as he grinned at his sandwich. “Not a lot. I think I know roughly where the guard room is. They had a lot of them on me, for a while, and they don’t seem to expect a lot out of me, mentally.”
    “Pretending?” she asked.
    He sent a surge of agreement. “I make it look like I’m trying, but the guys who test me, they really can’t stand me. They don’t pay a lot of attention, mostly just make faces at the monitor.”
    “I’ve not exactly tried my hardest,” sent Jemma, “but I’m not limiting much, either.”
    “No, but you’ve managed to get things through your cooperation.” He sent admiration to her, soothing some of her worries about jumping through hoops. “You mentioned a newspaper?”
    “Every morning.” She paused. “They got me a better room yesterday, too, after lunch. What about you?”
    He sent another wave of affirmation. “Yeah, but I didn’t get an explanation for the change.”
    “Josh,” she sent, “the guy who tests me in the morning, he said he asked for it. He said they’d get better results if we were more comfortable.” She tried to keep her mental tone neutral, but she saw him look up at her, and she did the same.
    “He sounds like he likes you. Can we use that to get out of here?”
    “He thinks that our being here is the right thing, that it’s going to save the world. He likes telling me things, too. He told me we could probably get away with contact one more time today, and he lets other things slip sometimes.” She clenched her jaw. “I hate him, Jack, and I hate myself for going along with him.”
    Jack reached across the table and cupped her face. Jemma leaned into the contact, into the reassurance he sent with it, closing her eyes until she and Jack jumped apart at the blaring of an alarm. It stopped as soon as he ceased contact.
    “That is your last warning,” typed Jack’s guard. “Any further contact will result in immediate isolation. You have five minutes remaining.”
    They nodded, then looked back at each other before Jemma turned her attention outwardly toward finishing her sandwich.
    “How is this working? Is the shielding weaker in here, or is it a distance thing?” Jemma sent, fighting the urge to look back up at him when she felt a surge of relief.
    “I couldn’t Talk to you until you tried Talking to me,” sent Jack.
    Jemma felt for their connection, finding it intact. “Try focusing on something else for a few seconds, then focusing on Talking to me again.”
    The connection dropped, returning to the limited version she’d been feeling for weeks. After several seconds, it strengthened again.
    “We have to be both trying at the same time, don’t we?” asked Jack.
    Jemma sent an affirmative. “We’ll see how far the connection goes when we leave. It’ll help if we can Talk when we aren’t in here, too.”
    Jemma felt a wave of affection, the equivalent of squeezing her hand. “You seem better than yesterday.”
    “I slept better, and now I can focus on planning, on our getting out of here.” She finished the last bite of her sandwich and noticed he’d already crumpled his wrapper. “Let’s keep trying to get what information we can, and we’ll plan more tomorrow when we know whether we can Talk from our rooms.”
    “Fair enough.” He stopped Talking as their guards approached, his