Voice by Nikita Spoke Page A

we’ve been held captive, tortured, kept here by guards, forced to comply with your every whim.”
    “Woah, tortured? You’re here to help. I hardly call that torture.” Josh still sat back in his chair, relaxed, a smile playing at his lips.
    “You repeatedly and knowingly caused us pain for your own gain, locked us in small cells, denied us choice, and knowingly gave us too little to eat. I think any sane person would call it torture. That’s probably the problem right there, though. I would hardly call you sane.”
    Josh tilted his head back and laughed. “I knew I liked you for a reason.”
    Jemma stared at him until she heard the door open, then shifted her attention to Marcia. Like Jemma herself, the woman had obviously lost some weight, but she still had a definite spark in her eyes, still carried herself with a sure posture, still looked like she could take on anyone in the room.
    “Have a seat,” said Josh, gesturing regally at the chair on Jemma’s other side.
    Jemma turned to face her, scanning her for any visible signs of damage. Marcia seemed to be in better shape than Jemma herself, though.
    “You never showed up for lunch that day,” Jemma said before Josh could get started on either instruction or monologue. “We couldn’t wait, and we didn’t know where to find you.”
    “We pissed off our tester that morning.” Her voice was warm, vibrant. It suited her, Jemma thought. “Ken was worried, and she kept asking questions. I was trying to calm her down, but we got caught faking answers.”
    “I knew some of you were doing that.” Josh sounded smug. “That’s why I didn’t care to stick to the scripts, Jemma. Why would I ask you to limit your words when I had no way of enforcing it?” Jemma thought of all the times she’d yelled at him, insulted him, all while pretending to be asking him questions or answering his, and fought a smile. He must have seen it anyway, because his own smile dimmed, and his tone was a little more firm when he continued. “My hypothesis is that, unaided, the two of you won’t be able to speak to each other telepathically, even though you’re both capable of it. Without the nanocreatures to adjust and amplify, we think the few people with telepathy each run on a slightly different frequency. My gut tells me you two run on different ones.”
    Jemma recalled the colors. She hadn’t conveyed those to Josh. If he was right, and if the colors had anything to do with that, then she probably wouldn’t be able to Talk to Marcia.
    “Your gut doesn’t seem like a very scientific method,” said Marcia.
    “Oh, but that’s only because I was dumbing it down for you.” Josh smirked. “The smarter someone is, the more they see, the more they pick up, and the more patterns they’re able to put together, even on a subconscious level. You are actually fairly smart, too. It’s something we’ve been studying. The average intelligence of the people we’ve found with enhanced abilities is nearly twenty points higher than that of the general population. That’s not a huge amount, but it’s too much to be purely coincidence. We’re not sure whether the telepathy is cause or effect. It might be something as simple as unconscious cheating, in which case you’re able to pick up more ambient information than we’ve been able to measure. At any rate, even if that’s not the case and you’re genuinely more intelligent than average, neither of you holds a candle to me. Nobody in this building does. So when I say my gut tells me something, it’s more than a simple guess.”
    “But Jemma was able to basically walk right out of here, along with her boyfriend, and you didn’t stop it.” This time, Jemma did allow herself a grin at Marcia’s audacity.
    “It wasn’t on my watch, and she’s back now, isn’t she? How do you think she got here? Who left the right information where she might be able to find it, knowing that she’d come back when she knew that people would