Chapter 2

"They need you."

"No. They want to study me." Jewel turned her attention to the scientists. "How much is the D.O.D. paying you to babysit? Go away. research or not, I'm entitled to some privacy."

She wasn't expecting an answer, and the voice told her she wasn't going to get one.

"They want you because you can talk to me. You can tell them things that would take centuries to learn after they bring me there."

The artifact was coming to Global.

No wonder they were going to take me whether or not I took that stupid test.

"I know why you want me," she said, melodically. "Something's gonna be brought here reeaaallll soon."

~***~***~

"You say you know why we want you here, Miss Carter," Professor King said.

The sudden presence of the man would have startled her had the voice not told her what to expect.

"Scrub the video footage," she mentally told the voice.

King opened his tablet to the security footage he had brought with him, just in case Jewel tried to lie to him.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," she said, using the very same words he said to her father, in the same tone.

With his head down toward his tablet, King looked at Jewel. He wondered how she could have known the exact way he'd answered the Marshal's question.

"Really? Because I have proof of you saying otherwise," King said rather smugly.

Jewel stepped closer to the glass wall where King was standing. She received a shock with each step. Her effort to hide the pain of each shock, which became stronger with every step, was weakening.

"I thought you were going to figure out how this bracelet worked so we could dismantle it," King said to the scientist behind him.

"We're working on it, Sir."

"Everything keeps coming to this bracelet of yours."

Confusion came over King as he continuously tried opening something in his tablet.

"That's not possible," he said. "What have you done? What is this bracelet capable of doing?"

"What's wrong?" Jewel asked innocently.

King turned the screen toward Jewel. She saw herself on camera, yelling at the scientists who were observing her. Then everything went black. Her taunt had been erased, just as she had asked of the voice.

"Something must be trying to help me get out of here. I mean, you did kidnap me," she pointed out. "And that video doesn't prove anything. All it might prove is that I should probably be in a mental facility."

"Why's that?"

"Because it looks like I'm talking to myself. Normal people do that, sure. But so do a loooottttt of crazy people."

"Be careful what you tell them. They will want to evaluate you. They'll bring in a therapist unless you can convince them you really are crazy the voice told her."

Jewel's eyes gleamed with mischief after the light in her cell began strobing. She quickly fell to the cell's walls floor, pretending to have a seizure. To make it even more convincing, she dug her nails into her skin as if trying to regain some control, dragging her nails across her arms and legs, causing blood loss. It wasn't enough to have her moved to infirmary,

"Don't heal me. This is our way out of here. You said I wasn't emitting any more radiation than the average person, so they can't hold me on that," she told the voice as she pretended to pass out. "And, based on my performance just now, I'd say I just convinced them that I wasn't the person they were looking for."

Everything went dark, for real this time. When she woke up, Jewel waylaying on the cot in the sheriff's cell.

It was dark out, but she was able to see stars, which was something she hadn't expected to see again in a long time, not that she saw many back in L.A.

"I can't believe that worked. Town full of geniuses, my—"

She suddenly felt herself being crushed by familiar arms. Arms that belonged to someone who seemingly hated her.

"OhmyGod!!!!! Jewel!!!!!! Dad'sbeenlookingforyoueverywhere. Wherehaveyoubeen?"

Zoe's words jumbled together as she spoke. Though it was just the two of them in the office, Jewel still felt as though there were eyes on her.

She couldn't tell her sister about where she was, the cell, the light show, the seizure she faked.

"I, uh... I don't know. I remember being in that cow pasture with Dad, then I woke up here."

"Jewel, that happened over ten hours ago."

Jewel turned her focus to something else in the room. There was a bag of food on Jo's desk. There was enough there for Zoe and Jo.

~***~***~

Strange things were going on in this town, and Carter wanted to get to the bottom of it, hopefully finding Jewel in the process.

A map of the town was laid out on Allison's counter. Carter, Allison and Professor King were hovering over it. There were "x's" where the town had been hit. And no one knew what the cause was.

"You called me here to look at a map?" King asked. He seemed frustrated.

"These are the rough locations of every reported anomaly," Carter explained as he pointed out each "X".

"I'm well aware of the town's tacky little pool, Marshal. Are we gonna start placing bets now, is that your idea?"

"No. You said earlier that you had a pattern recognition software that can trace cosmic events to the point of origin, correct?" King nodded, seeming to know where Carter was going with his line of questions. "What if the events are a little more local?"

"Could that actually work?" Allison asked.

"Yeah, in theory it could. It'd take a major recalculation, though."

The back-and-forth between Carter and King continued until both men were preparing to leave.

"Marshal?" Allison began. "Thanks."

~***~***~

"Eureka will be on lockdown by tomorrow morning," the voice said. Red lights were flashing at the top of ever lamp post. "You need to hide."

Jewel had slept on the floor until the voice woke her. She checked to see if her sister was sleeping before she got to her feet. They were the only two in the building.

She turned the bracelet's digital panel toward herself and typed in the master code backdoor she'd built into it for emergencies such as this.

The bracelet powered down, allowing Jewel to open the cell without disturbing Zoe's sleep.

After she reached one of the desks, she removed a piece of paper from its pad and wrote, Zoe, burn this when you're done reading it. Eureka will be on lockdown by the time you get this message. I can't tell you how I know, and I can't tell you why I can't tell you. I'm asking you to not come after me this time. I'm not running away. But I can't be around here until lockdown has been lifted. Again, I can't tell you why. Not yet. If Dad gets to you before the soldiers do, tell him 'Archimedes'. He'll know what it means and who to get. If you don't see him, go with the residents to the bunkers. You'll be safe there.

There was a single feature Jewel left active on her bracelet. It was the radio transmitter. She wasn't going to try talking to her father, but she was able to hear him.

The diner, Cafè Deim, where Jo and Zoe's food had come from the night before was the latest location of a cosmic event. And was also the location of the events' first fatality.

She heard Carter asking if Zoe was okay because she had been there. But she knew not to expect him to ask about her. He wasn't even made aware that she was back, so she wasn't able to be mad at him for not asking about her. As far as Carter knew, Jewel was still missing.

Jewel folding the note and placed it in Zoe's open hand. She rolled her sister's hand into a fist to ensure the message wouldn't fall to the floor the moment she turned her back to leave.

~***~***~

Professor King had found the cosmic events' point of origin. It was at the home of the boy who everyone thought was missing. That was what Jewel had heard through her bracelet.

"You'll find a bunker up ahead," the voice told her.

"Any security cameras?" She asked it.

"Yes, there are."

Jewel groaned. "Can you put them on a loop?"

"Yes, but they will still know someone is here."

She groaned again. "Sensors?"

"Yes."

"Put those on a loop, too. Whoever is maintaining this bunker will know if anything has been shut off," Jewel said.

She came upon a clearing with a chain-link fence around it. Right in front of her was a heavy door. When she got it open, it led her down a stairwell which she hid under, preparing herself in case that bunker was going to be a shelter.

~***~***~

Daylight had arrived outside the bunker. The sound of large engines rumbled through the ground over Jewel's head as she tried to sleep.

"Wake up."

She waved off the invisible voice.

"You must wake up. They're going to clear this bunker."

She wanted to continue sleeping, but the voice telling her that someone had stopped to clear the bunker was enough to get her moving.

She removed her bracelet and hid it under pipes where it would never be seen as she maneuvered the twists and turns of the bunker.

Letting the scientists dismantle her bracelet wasn't that big of a concern to her as far as their figuring out how it worked went. The big concern was that her bracelet was so unique that if she still had it on her when a soldier caught up with her, he wouldn't have taken her to the bunker where she'd found Zoe with the rest of the town.

The bracelet wasn't as important as it seemed. It was simply the thing defined Jewel if she was put on a watchlist. It was like a defining feature that told the authorities who they were taking into custody.

The scientists only wanted to get their hands on the bracelet so they could see how a young kid could have made something that was beyond them.

"Jewel!!!" She heard Zoe call out.

"So much for 'Under the radar'" Jewel thought.

Zoe was mad at her. "This is the second time you've run away. I wanna know why, and 'I can't tell you' is not going to cut it. What was with that note you left for me?"

"Zoe, you need to keep your voice down. I can't tell you right now, but I promise I will when this is over, okay. But first, I need to tell you that Dad's coming to get you, and the kid over there," she told Zoe, pointing in the direction of the kid who told Carter about Archimedes. "He doesn't know I'm back, and I can't go with him. Not where he's going. If I go with him, I'll never come back out. I need you to trust me on this, and not ask me any question until we're on our way home."

Zoe tried to act annoyed, like their dad would, so that she could get more answers. But Jewel wasn't going to say anything until she got a fine from her big sister.

She knew Zoe wasn't going to give up easily and that her agreement only meant a million questions were going to be asked.

Jewel got out of sight the moment she saw Carter's head above the crowd. She hated that she was hiding from him, but if she didn't hide, there wouldn't be any need for her to prove she wasn't getting away from here.

She watched from a distance as Carter talked with Zoe and saw the kid Jewel had told Zoe about in her note. The three of them left, the kids didn't look around, but Carter did as if he felt someone's eye on him. He stopped for a moment. His eyes roamed the room. They landed on Jewel.

She knew she had to run. But her legs wouldn't move.

"They won't let me leave if I go back," she thought.

Every video and audio they have of you was erased yesterday, after they put you in our sister's cell.

Hearing the voice tell her that made her feel a lot better. And while video or audio would be preferred by the facility for legal reasons, having eyewitnesses wasn't a bad tactic. All they'd have to do is point her out and say something was missing on her person.

~***~***~

Jewel found Carter, herself, Zoe, and the kid who turned out to be Allison's son, staring at a chalkboard with a familiar math equation that was missing pieces.

"I thought you said you weren't going to come here," Zoe challenged.

"I tried. Dad practically dragged me to the car," Jewel replied. Her eyes never left the machine. Knowing exactly what she was looking at, Jewel whispered, "Someone stole this kid's discovery."

She looked to where the chalkboard had been to find it gone. It was on the floor, and Allison's son, Kevin, who was autistic, was now filling in the missing pieces of the formula which helped stop two timelines from colliding.

~***~***~

The world was safe from unknown cosmic events for the foreseeable future. The device was sent to Section Five, and Carter and his kids were more than ready to go home.

Jewel, Zoe, and Carter almost made it out of the facility before King bumped into them. He shook their hands to say goodbye, palming a note to Jewel.

She waited until they had their own vehicle back before she read it to herself.

"They know about me," Jewel said, mostly to herself, but loud enough for Carter and Zoe to hear her.

"How do you know?"

"That King guy palmed a note to me that said we'll be watching you. You belong here."

"Are there any bugs in the car?"

"No listening devices have been located."

"Let's just, not worry about that until we get home," Carter suggested.

"I'm just surprised they let me go," she said before thinking again.

"Your father will be given a promotion. If he accepts the position, you'll see your family again," the voice told her.

"So, they didn't really let me go. It was just their way of allowing me to say goodbye."

~***~***~

A short time had passed, and Carter had received the promotion the voice told Jewel about. He wasn't sure he wanted to call being the sheriff of Eureka a promotion, but then he got to the line that said Jewel was going to be taken back whether he accepted it or not. Only if he accepted the position would the Carter family have access to her.

Jewel found herself in the same cell as before, only this time, it felt more permanent.

"Pretending to have a seizure," a new voice came into play. "Very creative. But being guided through tunnels, and bypassing the tunnel's security cameras? I'm impressed. Welcome back to Section Five, Jewel."