Crash (15 page)

Jackson told me that he's wiped out facilities like that, populations of clones wearing Lizzie's face, three times.

Hundreds of Lizzies. Maybe thousands.

“They're helping to hold you here,” Lizzie says. “And doing other things.”

“Things that keep me from seeing them. Gotta wonder why.”

“I don't think you're wondering at all. I think you know the answer.” She pauses, letting me digest that. “Miki, I'm not Drau. And I'm not a shell. We went through all that last time you were here.”

“So exactly what are you then?”

“Ask me more important questions. We don't have much more time.”

More important than whether or not she's teamed up with the enemy?

“Are you teamed up with the enemy?”

“Depends on your definition of enemy.” She smiles a little, reminding me of Jackson and one brow arches as she asks, “Are you?”

Her question makes me shiver, or maybe it's because she's losing me, her ability to hold me here fading. I can feel it in the way my limbs keep going numb and prickly. “I dreamed about you, about this place, before I ever came here. I woke up from that dream with burns on my shoulder.”

“I know. I'm sorry. I was trying to contact you for so long and I almost managed that night, almost got you here.
The burns were accidental. I glitched and temporarily dropped you into the wrong place, wrong time. Definitely not in my plan. They healed?”

“Not even a scar.” I frown. “So you can transport me from the game to here, and I guess from my real life to here . . . On the last mission, it felt like the game was lagging, like weird stuff was happening . . . was that you?”

“Yes.”

“And when Jackson and I respawned at the hospital mid-mission. You again?”

“I thought I was doing something good, helping you. I thought if I snatched you back and let you know that your father made it through the surgery then dropped you back into the mission with no one the wiser . . .” She shrugs. “In the end, I think I just made things worse.”

“Does the Committee know we got hauled out of the game?”

“I don't know. They might, but if they do, they'll just think there was just some sort of glitch in the teleport. Which is another reason you need to keep them out of your head. They can't know about us, about what we're capable of.”

“A glitch in the teleport. You say that like it's no big deal.” I shake my head. “How does that work? How do they move me from one place to another? How do you?”

Something flickers in her eyes, her expression going closed and flat. Guess I stepped over the edge into the forbidden zone.

“Long-winded scientific explanation,” she says. “Just know that the glitch is probably another thing the Committee will want an explanation for when they go digging around in your head. You need to make sure they don't . . . get . . . it . . .”

Her words drag. The white walls all around me glow blindingly bright. The sound of my pulse is like a freight train and the artificial smell of the air burns my nose, scraping my airway all the way to my lungs.

“Lizzie!” I can't go. Not yet. She has so many answers.

She lets go of my numb hands. “Remember what I told you. Be careful, Miki.”

I want to thank her for trying to help when she pulled me out of the game, for being in the school basement and saving Carly, for saving my life on the mission before that, but she's spinning end over end, growing smaller and smaller as she revolves in darkness speckled with light.

So pretty. Like stars.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I STAND IN FRONT OF THE COMMITTEE, DIZZY, SWAYING.

The cloaked being on the far left lifts its hand and with a languid motion clears the amphitheater. All the shadowy figures in the tiers of seats disappear, leaving a massive empty arena, with me standing alone at its base, facing the three on the platform.

A buzz of fear chases through me as I wonder if they know about Lizzie, if they know she snatched me away from right under their noses. And if they do know, what they'll do to me now.

“You ask many questions, as always, Miki Jones.” The Committee doesn't speak out loud. They send their thoughts directly into my brain, my nerves, every sense receptor in my body. Their voice crackles in my joints,
flays the pain receptors in my skin, nearly bringing me to my knees. I cry out and cup my palms over my ears, as if that will help.

“Too much,” I gasp, but they knew that already. They did that on purpose, a warning volley with specific intent.

They scale back the intensity and say, “Only your team was affected. A minor aberration.”

I stare at them, trying to figure out what they're talking about. And then I remember what I was asking the second before Lizzie pulled me. I was asking them about the Drau and whether they crossed into the reality of all the other teams. I'm guessing that the fact that they're answering me as if there was no break in the conversation means they have no idea I was gone. One point for me. Yay, Miki.

“You're calling the Drau attack on my school a
minor aberration
?” Like all those kids at the dance don't matter, like Carly almost dying doesn't matter. Because to them, she doesn't. Anger flares and I bite the inside of my cheek to hold back all the ugly things I want to say to them. Instead, I say, “Send me back. My father, my friend, they need me and I need to be there to . . . to . . .” To what? Save them? Help them? There isn't anything I can do.

“They are safe enough, for now.” Their words dance along my nerves. I hear them in my head, my lungs, my toes, not painful but uncomfortable. A reminder that they can amp it up and bring me to my knees any time they want.

“Safe enough for now? What does that mean?” As if
I don't know a clear threat when I hear one. I feel sick, shaken. All the times I imagined Dad pinned in the mangled wreck or Carly dying, I kept thinking it felt like those images were being forced on me . . . Maybe they were.

Maybe the Committee was threatening me even then.

Or am I only doubting them because of what Lizzie just told me? I don't know what to think, what to believe.

They don't answer my question, instead posing one of their own. “What transpired, Miki Jones?”

Are they asking about Lizzie, about how she hijacked me and what was said between us? Her warnings echo in my thoughts. I stare at the floor hoping they can't read the signs of my growing unease.

The question comes again, more insistent. “What transpired on the last mission?”

I sag in relief as understanding clicks. They aren't asking about Lizzie at all, which suggests they really have no idea that she detoured me to meet with her. And if I have any say about how this pans out, they aren't going to know. It isn't that I trust Lizzie—I don't know enough about her or her true motivations to make that leap. It's more that I don't trust the Committee. I have a feeling that at some point I'm going to need to pick a side, but right now, I'll just try and get some answers that might help me decide.

“Why are you asking about the mission? I mean, you were watching, right? You're always watching.”

“We wish to hear your perceptions and conclusions.”

“My perceptions and conclusions . . . You're asking for
my opinion?” And how unrealistic is that? I study the three figures on the floating platform, digging my fingertips into my thighs. Lizzie's paranoia is rubbing off on me.

Except, it isn't just Lizzie. The Committee didn't exactly endear themselves to me when they tunneled into Jackson's brain and tried to steal his memories of me, or when they tricked both of us into staying in the game. Or when they left me isolated and alone on the last mission instead of feeding me directions through my con. Then they fed directions to Lien and Kendra who just happened to kill the Drau before I could get any important information from her. I could be making connections where none exist, making mountains out of molehills, but it just feels like there are a bunch of big and small things that don't quite add up.

“Miki Jones.” Their words scrape my skin, explode on my taste buds. “Begin.”

An order I don't dare disregard.

“We respawned in the factory. The Drau ambushed us from above with snipers on the catwalk,” I say, and keep going from there, telling them everything about the last mission, from start to finish. Everything I can remember that my team said or did, everything I heard and saw, with a few key omissions. I don't tell them about Jackson's plan for Kendra to earn the thousand points and test the freedom rumor, or about feeling like the game was lagging, or about Lizzie pulling me back to the hospital mid-mission.

If they don't bring any of that up, I certainly won't.

I don't tell them about the white room and curved corridor and the moments I just spent with Jackson's dead sister.

And I don't tell them that the Drau communicated with me right before the Committee sent Lien and Kendra to kill her.

When I'm done, I stand facing them in silence so absolute I can hear the thud of my heart, the flow of my blood through my arteries.

“You asked us once before about the possibility of a player leaving the game upon earning a thousand points.”

My breath catches in my throat. I did ask them that, the first time I met them. But why bring it up now unless they know about Jackson's plan . . . and if they know about that, what else do they know? About Lizzie, the Drau . . . ? Or is this a trick meant to throw me off balance, to make me think they know more than they do?

I scrape up whatever bravado I have left at the bottom of the pot. “I did. And you weren't exactly clear on your answer.”

“We believe in being forthright. In the event we were not clear, no, a player does not leave upon achieving said score. They evolve to the next level.”

“The next level,” I repeat softly. As if this really is just a game. “What exactly does that evolution entail?”

“Change.”

Why does that sound ominous? “Why do you let the players believe they can earn their way out?” I ask, angry, frustrated.

They don't answer my question, instead posing one of their own. “Miki Jones, you are familiar with our method of communication?”

Trick question? “You talk inside my head. Through all my senses.” We just had a whole conversation that way.

“And how do you reply to us?”

“Out loud. I speak to you out loud.”

“Why?”

I'm starting to think I know where this is going, and I'm a hundred percent certain I don't like it.

“Because you can't hear what I think. Not without my permission.”

Or so they claimed when we had this discussion before. They choose not to enter without permission, not to force their way in and steal my thoughts and memories, but that doesn't mean they couldn't if they tried.

“We require that permission now.”

So Lizzie was right. What else was she right about? My mouth goes dry. “Why? I answered your questions.”

“There may be details that you feel are unimportant or that you have forgotten. We require those details. All of them. We require you to grant us access to see events through your eyes.”

I tap my fingertips against my thigh, beating a rapid tattoo. “And if I don't want you to do that?”

“Your desires are irrelevant.” I gasp and brace myself, expecting them to just shove their way inside. “But we would prefer your cooperation. What is it you fear?”

Other than the fact that they are aliens who will know my every thought, that nothing will be private? And the more disturbing possibility that what they find might make them decide to kill me? But I don't offer those arguments. Instead, I say, “Jackson was in agony when you forced your way inside his brain. I'm not exactly rushing to sign up for the same treatment.”

“Understood. You fear the pain. There is no need. As we have explained before, you need only permit us access and there will be no pain.”

What feels like icy needles poke at my brain, worming deep into my temples and the base of my skull.

“Wait!”

The needles withdraw. “Do you decline us entry?”

I can almost hear Lizzie whispering in my ear, warning me to be careful. “I—” Emotion. Pure emotion. Let it consume me. That's what Lizzie told me to do. Am I supposed to trust her, a girl who probably isn't even Lizzie at all, who may well be a Drau hidden under human skin? Or am I supposed to trust the Committee?

Maybe in the beginning I did, but every moment that passes in the game makes me wonder if they have an agenda I know nothing about, one that has little to do with the good of mankind or keeping the Drau from destroying Earth the way they did the Committee's home planet.

“I didn't say I'm declining you entry, but what you just did . . . that hurt. You said it wouldn't hurt.”