"Emma, what's happened?" Shalimar asked again, in her calm, 'tell me now or I'll kick your ass', voice. She had walked up to her and took hold of Emma, so she had no choice but to look Shal in the eyes.
Emma started to cave. Her eyes began to tear, and her throat started to close up. She took hold of Shal's arm and let herself crumble, unknowingly losing control of her powers.
With her mind so opened, but so distracted with her own emotions, instead of being bombarded, she was doing the bombarding. Shal gasped as the emotions hit her, and she felt her knees buckle. Brennan, who was ten feet away, stumbled and almost fell when the wave hit him.
It wasn't just the intensity of the emotions that was painful; it was the number and the type of feelings. At first, all Shal and Bren could make out was Emma's own fear, anger, guilt, grief, and hopelessness; enough to make their heads pound. Then they felt Jesse.
Jesse's was ten times that of Emma's.
He was scared to the point of panic. Helpless, restrained; like a prisoner in his own body. There was anger; lots of anger, at the ones who had taken him, and even at himself for letting himself be captured. For letting them do this to him. There was guilt for the worry and grief his friends were going through. But the most powerful emotion was pain, both physical and mental. He was screaming inside, in fact, it was beyond screaming. They couldn't even begin to understand how much pain there was.
It seemed that everything they were doing to him had no escape, like it all was being kept inside him, and he had no way of releasing it. He had no control over anything, not even his own body. And there was no end to it. It continued on and on, barring him. It was terrible. One moment, there seemed to be relief, an end, the next it was a raw shooting pain; uncontrolled, unspecified, all through out his body. What they were doing to him, Shal couldn't take it. She pushed Emma away, screaming, and fell to her knees.
Brennan was in shock; all he could do was stare blankly at Emma, who too had fallen and was crying. That was how Adam found them.
Jesse was lying on the operating table, gasping for breath. Harrison had deiced to retest the effects of electricity on him and his powers, only with Harrison in complete control of him; he had no way to stop the test. Jessica had told him to blink if it got to be too much, but how could he do that when he was phased or massed way beyond his limits?
'Well I was way beyond my limits and you didn't stop it,' Jesse thought. 'God, it didn't hurt this bad the last time.'
The worst part of it was that his body had no way to prepare for the burst of electricity. And then when the pain came, he had no way to release the intensity. He still couldn't open his mouth, and he could barely tense his muscles. But, his body didn't feel as heavy, and definitely not as numb.
Harrison had spent three hours on him. And he had also spent at least half an hour arguing with an agent, a Witson, who Jesse thought sounded familiar.
"I'm telling you that he can't even talk!" Harrison said, impulsive as ever.
"And I am telling you to stop your test until he can. Now that he knows what we can do to him, we should let him reflect on it," said Witson, cool and calmly.
"Then the data will be corrupt! I'll have to start over again!"
"Too bad," Witson said.
Jesse tried to tune them out and focus on recovering, but a touch to his abdomen stopped him from withdrawing. Some one had started to massage his right leg. Jesse tensed his muscles. "Relax Freak. I'm not going to do much," came Laura's seductive voice.
"FINE!" Shouted Harrison, as the arguing continued between the two men. "Laura, sedate him! We've been forced to stop for now."
Adam didn't know who to go to first. Emma was on her side, clutching her head and crying, Shalimar was on her knees, clutching her stomach, and Brennan just looked out of it. So Adam did the only thing he could think of, "What's going on?"
Brennan was the first to recover, and went to check on Shalimar, while Adam pulled a now silent Emma into his lap.
"Emma got a hit off Jess. They're…they're, torturing him. She projected it to us. It's bad Adam. I didn't get the full hit; Shal did, but my God Adam, what they're doing to him…Adam, it's…."
Adam nodded, and stood up with Emma in his arms. He looked at Shal, who Brennan had managed to calm down considerably. "How are you?"
"I want to kill them," she said her eyes flashing gold.
"Brennan, help her up. Let's get them to the lab so I can make sure they're ok."
Ok, now you can say poor Jesse.