Crash (14 page)

“That you spoke with the Drau. That she communicated with you.”

“She?”

Lizzie makes an impatient gesture. “That doesn't matter. Not right now.”

“It's no stretch to believe you're Jackson's sister. He never answers my questions, either.”

She laughs softly. “I know. I'm sorry. Yes, the Drau you communicated with was female. Now listen. Let me tell you what I need to tell you and then if we can still maintain the link after that, I'll answer your questions until I lose you.”

Which only makes me want to ask a ton more questions. But I don't. Instead, I summon the patience and control I learned during hour after hour of repetitive kendo exercises in Sofu's dojo and say, “Okay. Talk.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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“THE COMMITTEE SUSPECTS YOU MAY HAVE COMMUNICATED with the Drau, but at this point they have no proof,” Lizzie says. “They're going to try to find out for certain, to find out what she said to you. They're going to try to invade your thoughts and poke around inside your head. Do you understand?”

“I understand.” The possibility of them climbing inside my mind sickens me. I don't want them pawing through my memories, the precious moments I've folded away, memories of Mom, memories of my childhood. The first time I saw Jackson. The way I felt the first time he kissed me. They have no right to those.

But the Committee doesn't much care about rights.

I remember Jackson's screams carrying all the way
into the game and reverberating inside my head when the Committee tried to force its way inside his mind. He didn't let them in. He fought them. He won.

Would I win? I don't want to be in a position to find out.

“But why would they invade my thoughts?” I ask. “Why wouldn't they just ask me? And why wouldn't I just tell them the truth? Maybe even get some answers from them while I'm at it?”

“They won't ask because they don't trust human truth, and because they don't trust humans to tell the truth. You cannot let them into your head, do you understand? I took a huge risk letting you see me that first time, bringing you and Jackson here, talking with you. My team was against it. If you let the Committee find out about me, about this place—” She breaks off and shakes her head and the expression on her face gives me chills. “You can't let them find out. And you definitely cannot let them find out for certain that you've communicated with a Drau. If they do, you
will
be in danger.”

She says that so matter-of-factly. Cold dread crawls along my spine. “Why—”

“They don't need a logical reason. They don't want humans and Drau connecting in any way except violent confrontation.” She studies my face, her eyes impossibly green, pupils dilated and dark. She's afraid. For me.

Green. Even in the game. “Your eyes,” I say. “Everyone's turn blue in the game. But not yours. They stay green.
Why? Is it because you aren't part of the game?” That's the most obvious answer.

“You've seen me there. In the
game.
So I must be part of it.” She puts a weird inflection on the word game, but I'm doing the dog-at-a-bone thing, and I pursue my original question, refusing to be distracted.

“That's the logical conclusion, but is it the correct one?”

Her brows lift. “Good catch. And you're right. I can enter the game but I'm not part of the game. Not the way you are.”

“So . . . no score for you. The Committee doesn't pull you”—the first time she saved me on the mission I led while Jackson was missing . . . and in the school basement the night the Drau crossed over into my real world . . . Every time I've seen her she's had a weapon that shot light, a
Drau
weapon, not a weapon like mine—“and they don't arm you.”

“No, the Committee does not pull me or arm me. In fact, they don't know about me and I'd like to keep it that way. My life, and the lives of others depend on it. And your life depends on you keeping the Committee from confirming their suspicions about you and the Drau.” She studies my face. “Do you believe me, Miki? You need to believe me.”

I think about that for a second, my gaze fixed on the brilliant white wall of the curved corridor. “I don't disbelieve you. I think the Committee is capable of doing pretty much anything for what they perceive is the greater good.
But . . . killing me because they think I communicated with a Drau? How would that be for the greater good? I can't see the angle.”

Lizzie snorts. “The greater good? You mean their convenience. What's good for them and their entertainment.”

“Entertainment? How is a war entertaining?”

“Isn't that the question?” She makes an impatient gesture in a way that definitely reminds me of Jackson, and asks, “What did she say to you?”

I open my mouth to answer, then stop. I run through everything Lizzie's said and everything I've said. Did I confirm that the Drau spoke with me? No. No, I didn't. Lizzie made the assumption. I asked some questions, but I didn't corroborate her assumption.

Now she's asking what the Drau said. She's telling me not to trust the Committee with this information, but she expects me to trust her, a girl I don't know, a girl wearing my boyfriend's dead sister's face. Not going to happen. Instead I ask, “Why am I at risk? Why harm me?”

“Because you could expose everything. The game. Their goals. Their cruelty.” The words explode from her, too loud in the silent, sterile corridor.

“Expose it to who? Who'd believe me? We can't take weapons or harnesses out of the game, or even take pictures while we're there. Without evidence . . .” I shrug.

“You can see the other teams, the other lobbies.”

Not a question, but I nod anyway.

“If you can see them, you can communicate with them.
With the team leader, anyway. You could tell all of them the truth. The Committee doesn't want that.”

“Tell them what truth?” My skin prickles and stings. My fingers feel numb. I sway as the corridor starts to spin.

“Crap, we're losing you.” She grabs both my hands. Her fingers are smooth and icy cold. My vision fractures into a trillion colors, then realigns.

I focus on what she said about the Committee not wanting us to connect with the Drau. “You're wrong about communicating with the Drau,” I say, remembering when Jackson and I were in the caves, before we found the room with the rotting, brainless clones. We were alone—the Committee had activated Luka's con, sending him and Tyrone in the opposite direction. Jackson and I stumbled on a small patrol. He took out one Drau; I took out the other, and Jackson was anything but pleased because he wanted to question it. “Jackson's communicated with them before. He's questioned them, at least once or twice. And I'm pretty sure the Committee knows about it. They didn't kill him for it. Kind of blows your theory.”

“Like I said”—Lizzie rolls her eyes—“violent confrontation. How do you think those sessions between Jackson and the Drau went? Sunshine and roses?”

Not so much.

“Miki, listen. It's fine if you don't trust me yet, if you don't want to confide in me,” she says, tightening her hold on my hands. “But I need you to believe what I'm about to tell you. Your life depends on it.

“When the Committee tries to force their way into your head, and trust me, they
will
try to force their way in, you have to fill your thoughts with something they can't comprehend, something that will stop them in their tracks.”

“Won't that piss them off?”

“Not if they can't blame you for it. They'll still be able to project the things they want to say into your mind, exactly the way they always do. But if you do what I tell you, they won't be able to root around for answers and steal your thoughts. And they won't be able to blame you for that because it'll be
their
failing, their inability to understand human emotion that stops them, not your lack of cooperation. It's important that they believe you're cooperating. You can't give them any excuse. Do you understand?”

I understand that either she's an incredible actress or she believes every word she's saying. “Fill my thoughts with something they can't comprehend? You mean like an image? Like the visualization techniques my grief counselor taught me?”

“Yes, yes. Like that, but different. Not an image. That won't do it. In fact, a single image gives them something to fixate on. It helps them get inside. It's like a beacon leading them.”

When the Committee tried to steal Jackson's memories, he held fast to a mental picture of me. He thought that helped keep them out. Lizzie's saying it was exactly the opposite, that it made things worse. I remember the
way he screamed in pain, the way his cries reached all the way into the game to find me.

“You have to pick an
emotion
. They aren't hardwired for feelings. Love. Hate. Terror. They can't understand any of it.”

“Wait . . . are you sure?” I remember when I accused them of torturing Jackson, I thought I sensed surprise and amusement tingeing their replies.

“I'm sure,” Lizzie says. “They can mimic human emotion to a tiny degree, to make them more relatable, to make players believe their lies. But feel it? Understand it? Never.” Her tone takes on urgency. “Think of the strongest emotion you can come up with. The trick is to pick one and let it consume you, to let it overtake everything else. Let that emotion fill you.”

“And that will keep them out.”

She grimaces and dips her head to the side. “It's not foolproof. They might make it through the door, but they won't get past the entry hall. They'll still talk inside your head. They might even be able to pick up a few basic things, stuff that's weighing heavily on your thoughts, like your worry for your father and Carly. But that's as far as they'll get if you erect an emotional barrier. They won't be able to rummage through your thoughts and find anything you might want to keep hidden. Clear?”

“As mud.” I pause. “They tried to steal Jackson's memories of me. They couldn't. He didn't let them. We thought it was because he called up a mental picture of me and
pushed them out. But that wasn't it, was it? It was . . .” It was how he
feels
about me.

Lizzie smiles a little, her expression wistful. “I bet there's a story there. And I'm glad he found you.” She squeezes my hand, her eyes on mine, her gaze clear and sincere, and for a second I believe completely and utterly that she really is Jackson's sister and not some kind of clone or shell or some other weird part of the game. I believe that she loves him and all this is about protecting him, and me.

“So, um, how does it work? And what emotion do I use?”

“Anything. Love, hate, fear, hope. Anything you can focus on completely. Emotion short circuits them. They just don't get it. They can't process it. And when they butt up against it in its purest form, they get tangled trying to figure it out. But it has to be a single one. The more emotions you allow in the mix, the more they're diluted, the . . . less . . . chance you . . . have for . . . success.”

Again my vision fractures. Again my hands and feet go numb. I'm floating, weightless.

“Miki!”

I focus on Lizzie's face. She's like an overexposed photo, parts of her flaring bright. Like a lightbulb. Like a Drau . . .

Then I'm back, everything clear and in focus, and the certainty I felt about her seconds ago erodes and scatters like dust.

“We can't hold you much longer.”

“Then it's my turn for questions. You said my friend's
name, more than once. Carly. How do you know that?”

“My team and I were there in your high school basement with you.”

Of course. They were there at the Halloween dance, when Carly crossed into the game. When the Drau killed her.

“So you heard me call her name.”

“She told me her name.”

“Wait . . . when . . .”

“We saved her, Miki, then sent her back. How did you think she survived?”

“Jackson—”

She shakes her head. “The Committee would never allow that. It was us.”

I stare at her, trying to process that information, remembering how Jackson and Luka and I rushed to Carly's house after the Drau attack at the dance, how we found her locked in her bathroom, terrified. She said,
My eyes were like theirs. Gray and scary. With slitted pupils instead of round ones. Not human. Like theirs.

I didn't figure it out then. I was so grateful that she was alive, I didn't ask whose eyes she was talking about. But now, as I wonder how Carly knew the Drau have slitted pupils, an ugly suspicion uncoils like a snake.

“Where's the rest of your team?” I ask, glancing up and down the corridor. White floor. White walls. White like the walls of the underground Drau facility where we found row after row of rotting clones hooked to machines.
Clones that all looked like Lizzie.