Crash (29 page)

“Scale it back,” he snarls.

RegretRegretRegretRegretRegret
—their version of an apology.

The thoughts dampen to a whisper, butterfly wings dancing through my mind.

Panting, I look up at Jackson. “You heard them.”

He offers a spare nod.

“But it didn't affect you the way it did me.” The intensity didn't seem to bother him.

“I've had more practice,” he says with a tight smile.

He has. He's had the Committee talking in his head for years. He's questioned the Drau, had their thoughts in his mind. “But—” I think it's more because of his Drau genetics. I shake my head. The reasons he's less susceptible to the intensity of their communication aren't important now. “I think they're telling the truth. That they mean no harm.” I straighten but don't pull away, and stare at Jackson's face until I know he's focused on nothing but me. “I believe them.”

It's easy to read the anger that darkens his expression. So I'm surprised when he grinds out, “So do I.”

He rounds on Lizzie. “Straight answers. Now. What is this place? Where exactly are we? What are we doing here? If the Drau aren't a threat, then what the hell is going on?”

Despite everything, I can't help the hint of a smile that tugs at me now that the tables are turned. Jackson's been the sullen, uncommunicative, uncooperative source of almost every non-answer I've had since being dragged into the game. It's almost funny to see him on the receiving end
of evasions and non-answers.

Almost funny, but not quite, because I want answers to those same questions.

“Is there a particular question you'd like me to answer first?” Lizzie asks.

“You can start with an explanation of which side you're on,” Jackson says. “What are you? A rebel faction against the invasion? You're fighting the Drau leaders that want to take over the world? Allying with the Committee?”

Reasonable questions, but somehow they feel wrong, like Jackson and I are standing at a fork in the road and he's choosing the wrong path.

“No.” Lizzie's gaze locks with mine, green and bright.

My heart stutters. “Allying with who, then?”

“Knowledge is power?”

“Pretty much.”

“What you think you know about the Committee are half-truths and stories,” Lizzie says.

“According to you,” Jackson shoots back.

She inclines her head, conceding the point. “You don't have a reason to trust me. I get that. In fact”—she grins—“I might feel the same way if our positions were reversed.” The grin fades. “Think about that for a second, Jackson. If you were the one who'd gone missing. If you were the one who returned. What would you want me to do? To say?”

He looks away, and again my heart twists at the sight of his pain. There has to be a part of him that wants to drag Lizzie in for a bear hug, lift her off her toes and spin
her round and round. The part that believes she is who she says she is.

I think Lizzie sees how hard this is for him because she says, “Let's go somewhere we can sit down and discuss this more comfortably.”

“And have milk and cookies? Maybe join hands and sing?” Jackson fires back, keeping his hard-ass shield in place as a defense. “I'm not interested in comfort. I'm interested in answers. Right now. Right here.”

Lizzie sighs. “I can tell you what I know, and you can choose to believe or not. How's that?”

At Jackson's terse nod, she continues. “The Committee lies. Trust nothing they tell you.”

“Specifics,” Jackson orders.

“The first lie they told me was that they're the collective consciousness of a long-dead alien race. They aren't dead. They are immortal and powerful. They can transform energy and matter. Manipulate time. Teleport. According to the Drau—”

“Right there, that's a problem,” Jackson says. “Why would I trust anything you preface with
according to the Drau
?”

“We agreed you'd listen and then decide what to believe.”

Jackson clenches his jaw but gives another nod.

“According to the Drau, the Committee have always existed and will always exist. They are almost omniscient. Almost omnipotent. And eternity has made them bored.”

“Bored?” I echo as a seedling of memory unfurls inside me. Gram, taking me to the hairdresser with her when I was little. The smell of dye. The heat of the dryers—the kind that look like helmets and settle over your whole head.

Gram, I'm bored.

Play a game, Miki.

But there's no one to play with. It's boring here. They have no toys.

Make up a game.
I remember Gram's smile, patient, loving. She riffled through her purse and took out a little plastic tub of Play-Doh. She always carried toys and games in her purse. I loved that purse; it was like a treasure chest.
Here,
she said,
make little dolls. Create a whole army of Play-Doh dolls.

Delighted, I did. I created a whole tiny army with round balls for legs and round balls for heads and arms and torsos. The only things that weren't round were their tiny kendo swords. Those I rolled into cylinders, then squished them flat with my thumb.

Why am I thinking about that right now?

Creeping unease makes me shiver, leaves me feeling sick and I don't know why. I look over at the Drau, standing there in their suits . . .

Their suits are creations.

Just like every human in the game is the genetic creation of the Committee. They tinkered with our DNA, added some of their genetic material to ours way back in
our family trees. Did they do the same to the Drau? Do they have genes from the Committee, or human genes, or maybe some other alien spliced into their genome?

It's important. I just don't know why. Not yet.

I'm collecting puzzle pieces, so close to the solution.

Again, I glance at the two Drau. They haven't moved, haven't spoken again, but I feel like they're anxious, hanging on my every word, waiting for me to see the big picture.

I look at Jackson, harness crisscrossing his torso and hips, posture rigid and alert. Always alert. Always the soldier the game made him.

He turns to the Drau, frowning. “You said those suits allow them to tolerate this environment.”

“That's right,” Lizzie says.

“Those suits make them faster than us. Stronger.” He steps closer until he's eye to eye with one of the Drau. “So why create human shells if you already have life-sustaining supersuits?”

I take a sharp breath as a piece of the puzzle clicks into place: The perfect genetic mix creates the perfect soldier.

Creates . . .
We are all the creations of the Committee, like a bunch of GMO fruits and vegetables, like soybeans or corn, genetically modified to possess qualities not found in nature.

Click.
Another piece locks in place.

“Who makes the shells?” I demand. And when Lizzie doesn't answer fast enough, I ask again, louder, “Who makes the shells?”

“You know,” she says.

I feel like I've been staring at a book, trying to read the words, and they've been dancing and blurring, hovering just beyond my ability to see. But as I stare at the answers, the letters sharpen and grow clear, every one bold and readable, and I see, really see, what's there.

I just solved the puzzle box.

Sofu would catch me up under my arms and toss me in the air, so proud. Problem is, the solution—the conclusion I've reached—is horrific.

“Oh my God,” I whisper, feeling sick, the answer to my own question glaringly bright. “The Committee. The Committee makes the shells, just like they made us. But they didn't want to stop at modifying what already exists. They want to create from scratch. The clones are part of their experiments to create the perfect supersoldier. And they send us in to clean up their messes when their experiments fail.”

“Is anything they told us true?” Jackson asks.

“Half-true,” Lizzie says. “Twisted for their purposes.”

“You aren't some rebel faction rising up against the Drau leaders who want to destroy mankind,” Jackson says without inflection, his expression closed. “There are no Drau leaders bent on destroying mankind.”

“There never were,” Lizzie says.

“There's just the Committee.” Jackson clenches and unclenches his fist. “They engineered us through generations purely to play this sick game.
Generations.
”

“They have eternity.” Lizzie shrugs. “What are a couple of centuries to them?”

“So the Drau . . . they're just like us.” My stomach churns, bile crawling up my throat. I keep talking, very fast. “Pulled against their will, with no clue what the hell is going on? Thrown out there to fight kids . . . Are they kids, too? Drau kids?”

Lizzie nods, lips compressed, brow furrowed.

“It really is a game to the Committee,” Jackson says softly.

“A game,” I echo, horror a congealed lump in my throat. I back away, shaking my head, not wanting to believe. Memories slap me, of Luka and Tyrone when we were on the elevator mission, of them talking about how the place seemed familiar, like a level from
Resident Evil
or
Half Life
. The Committee must have lifted those images out of Luka's head and created a game environment based on what they took from his thoughts.

“This is all the Committee's version of some twisted RPG,” Jackson says, then with a quick look at the Drau, he explains for their benefit. “Role-playing game.”

“They're the Dungeon Masters, the game masters,” I say.

“And we're the pawns they've been moving around for years,” Jackson finishes my thought.

An RPG.
Dungeons and Dragons
. Was Luka trying to tell me something the night he brought dinner over to my place? Was he trying to warn me?

“Tell him he's wrong,” I whisper, hunching my
shoulders and wrapping my arms around my waist as I look at Lizzie.

She lifts her hand like she means to touch me, then clenches her fist and drops it back to her side. “I can't. He isn't. But you already know that.”

“So we're like gladiators fighting for the entertainment of the masses,” Jackson says, his tone flat. “
Fight Club
. Or cock fighting. Or dog fighting. We're the dogs. We fight and die while the Committee watches and cheers.”

“Humans aren't the first game pieces they've drafted. They've been doing this for a very long time,” Lizzie says. “All across the universe. Across the universes. Plural. They find planets with sentient beings. They seed the population with specific genetic material, specific traits that they want to pit against each other.”

“Hold up.” Jackson lifts his hand. “How is our DNA, human DNA compatible with theirs? How is my DNA compatible with a Drau's? How the hell did they splice all this together?”

“All DNA has the same basic building blocks,” Lizzie says. Her lips curve in a faint smile. “Humans share fifty percent DNA with a banana.”

“Okay. I feel special,” I mutter.

Lizzie arches a brow. “The genes the Committee seeded confer specific skills . . . the ability to tolerate teleportation being key. They breed soldiers. Then they play their games, pitting species against species in a war neither can win.” She pins Jackson with a clear-eyed stare. “You,
me, Miki, Luka, everyone who's ever been recruited . . . we are their Master Chief, their Marcus Fenix, their Captain Price. This is their
Halo
, their
Call of Duty
, their
Bioshock
or
Gears of War
. This is their entertainment.”

“You died for their entertainment!” Jackson roars as he jerks a step toward her. “It nearly killed Mom and Dad—” He shakes his head, panting, trying to get himself under some semblance of control. “Luka. Richelle. Amelia. Jerry. Ryan. Dozens of kids I can name just from my team alone in the past five years. What about all the other teams? All the other kids?”

“All the other kids from species across the galaxies. The Committee has been repeating this pattern for eternity.”

“I stayed sane by telling myself I was saving the world,” Jackson says. And I hear what he doesn't say: How does he reconcile all those dead kids now? I think he hasn't even gotten to the point of thinking about all the Drau he's killed.

I reach for him, but he backs away.

“Miki,” he says, my name ripped from him. “I lived with what I did to you by telling myself we could stop the annihilation of mankind.” The pain in his eyes is almost more than I can bear. “What do I tell myself now?”

My lips part, but there are no words to offer. I forgive him—he knows that—but he has to find a way to forgive himself.

Lizzie lays her hand on his forearm. He twitches but doesn't pull away.

“There is no war. There is no threat.” The words come low, dragged from his soul.

“Oh, there is a very real threat,” Lizzie says. “Just not the one you expected.” She looks over at her Drau companions and nods. I figure they're talking to her telepathically. “Time to go back,” she says to us.

“Back? To get pulled? To go on missions? To fight? I can't,” I say in a rush.

“No,” Jackson says, expression contemplative, attention focused on Lizzie. “We go back to the lobby, to do exactly what we were planning to do before my sister brought us here. We find a way to get to the other teams. We tell them what we know.”

It doesn't escape my notice that he refers to Lizzie as
my sister
. From the shift in her expression, it doesn't escape hers, either. But I suspect that any mention of that will only make him shut down, so I let it go, for now.

“So let's say we're successful, that we share the knowledge,” I say. “Tell everyone we can. Team members. Team leaders. Spread the information. Tell them how to use emotion to keep the Committee out. What does that gain us?”