It's Eureka. Stranger Things Have Happened

Chapter 6

The artifact, or Arty, as Jewel liked to call it, left a viewing portal open for her. It was now the only way for her to see the outside world. Arty wasn't helping her a much as it used to.

Her connection to it seemed to be fading as evidenced by the portal's peripheral view fading with each passing week.

"What would happen if I lost my connection to Arty?" Jewel asked the security camera that was bolted to the ceiling of her cell. She didn't know why she expected a response. "Would you have to give me back to my family?"

"We study for as long as the connection is active," a voice said from the ceiling. She recognized it as Dr. Stark's.

"You seem awfully relaxed for someone who'll have to keep his ex-wife's son a secret from the very government he had taken me away from my family," Jewel said without thinking.

A lab blew up just as Jewel was about to continue. The ceiling above her cell shook violently.

Sheriff Carter was thrown backward through a glass window, shattering it to pieces.

Dad's avoiding his physical again Jewel thought. He's so superstitious about those things.

He'll wish he had it Arty replied. 

Why? What else is happening?

She hadn't been outside her cell in weeks. She was positive that if she tried to, the sun would hurt her eyes and skin, and the air would bother her lungs. She walked up to the portal.

"You terminated Dr. Carlson's position here, didn't you?" She asked aloud.

"How could she possibly know that?" Stark asked Kim. "She's never even met the man, yet she knows everything about him."

"Maybe it's talking to her again," Kim suggested.

"Have we measured brain activity yet?"

"I'll order the equipment. Maybe something will turn up this time. None of her other tests have amounted to anything."

"Well, make sure that you do. If we don't find anything, Carter's contract says he can sue for unlawful detainment." Stark left the lab. Kim called the supplies level to requisition the EEG equipment she was going to need so she could administer the tests.

Jewel wasn't sure about these tests. Kim had lied about all the tests she supposedly performed. Not once had a needle penetrated Jewel's skin in all the time she'd been in that cell.

Kim left her desk. There was a set of test tubes now in her hand for her to draw some of the girl's blood. She crossed the lab until she reached a staircase and descended. Jewel's cell was the level below. She typed in the access code once she had arrived at the cell door. It closed automatically after she entered. 

"I hope you know that the experiments you're performing on Arty are dangerous," Jewel said softly. She knew that if anything happened to Kim, Henry was going to be very upset. More than upset; enraged was more likely the proper term.

Jewel didn't know why she was helping a facility that was basically going against every code of the Geneva Convention. She hadn't done anything with the artifact's power that could deem her a threat to national security unless reading minds counted. Or slipping past thousands of Global's security cameras, now that she thought about it.

"Every experiment at GD is dangerous in its own way, Jewel," Kim replied as she tied a tourniquet around her arm. She inserted the syringe, then untied the tourniquet.

Had Kim started with any other battery of tests, Jewel might not have been so nervous. She wasn't afraid of needles, but the last time she had a cut, the color of her blood wasn't normal. It looked orange. The blood in the syringe was yellow.