Rush (17 page)

“Can I ask you something, Jackson?”

“Ask away. I might even answer.”

Funny guy. “What did you mean earlier when you told me to hang on and enjoy the ride?”

“How do you feel?”

I frown, annoyed that as usual he’s evading my question. Doubly annoyed that he’s asking me that again. He must be sensing how tired I am, and he’s going to make me admit it. Well, I’m an old hand at avoidance, so good luck to him. “I told you already, I’m fine.”

I let go of the harness and push myself to keep up, just to prove the point.

He reaches over, catches my wrist, and settles my fingers back on the harness. “No, I mean how do you feel when you’re here, underground, walking into the unknown? How did you feel in Vegas? How did you feel a little while ago facing down the Drau? How do you feel when you get pulled?”

I open my mouth, then close it. How
do
I feel? “Scared. Out of control. Freaked out.”

“And?” That one word pushes me, challenges me. It’s like he wants to climb inside my mind. But he’s already there. From the second he started talking inside my head, calling my name, Jackson Tate’s been front and center in my thoughts.

“How do you feel?” he asks again, forceful, insistent.

For some reason, I think of Tyrone and the way he seemed better down here, more focused, more— “Alive,” I whisper. It hits me then. When I’m on a mission, I don’t feel the gray fog weighing down every thought, every action. “I feel alive and it’s a rush.”

“
That’s
what I mean. You have no choice about whether to be part of this or not. You’ll be pulled no matter what. But you can choose to make the best of it.”

I recoil, appalled. “The best of it? We kill things and run the risk that they’ll kill us. Whoever I replaced is dead. Richelle is dead. We had no choice about that, no say. How do you make the best of that?”

“By grabbing hold with both hands and steering the nightmare instead of just huddling in the corner and watching it unfold.” The words are low and intense. He knows what he’s talking about. He knows what I’m feeling.

Does he know that just being with him is a rush, too? Does he know what he does to me?

“You call what happened on our last mission steering the nightmare?” I ask.

“What I could control, I controlled.”

I have a flash of memory: Jackson kicking the weapon out of the Drau’s hand. Richelle’s scream. Is that what he means about controlling what he could? Did he choose between us because he couldn’t save both? A terrible possibility.

“Your definition of control was watching my back, keeping me alive.”

“Yes.”

“How long have you been steering your nightmares, Jackson?”

There’s a long pause. I hear the faint scuff of our footsteps as we keep moving, and I think he isn’t going to answer. Then he says, “Too long. Forever.”

“Then why don’t you get your score to a thousand and get out?”

Another long pause. “There’s only one way out for me, Miki.” Every syllable is nuanced and laced with meaning, but what that meaning might be, I can’t say. I almost ask, but at the last second, I hold back. If he wanted to tell me, he would have. Instead, I ask, “Do you ever think of giving up? Just saying ‘No more’ and giving up?”

He stops and turns to face me, his expression fierce. “No, and you won’t, either.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you haven’t given up, no matter how much shit’s been dumped on you. You’re a fighter. You fought to be the best at kendo. You fought for your mom. You fought your grief. You fought to be normal.”

I stare at him, stunned. “How do you know all that? How do you know things about me?”

He steps closer. Then slowly, so slowly, he lifts his hands and curls his fingers around the back of my neck so they meet at my spine. He cups my face, his palms resting against my cheeks. I freeze, heart pounding, my mouth going dry. My skin tingles everywhere he touches.

“I know you,” he whispers. He sounds so certain that I almost believe him. I almost believe that I know him, too, that there’s something in each of us that clicks with the other, like two pieces of a puzzle.

I shake my head. “You don’t. You can’t.”

I don’t know how long we stand like that, so close I can feel his holster pressed against my hip, feel his breath touch my lips.

He lowers his head a fraction of an inch.

I’m breathing too fast, heart slamming against my ribs, blood rushing, leaving me light-headed.

My lips part. My gaze drops to his mouth. He’s going to kiss me, here in this underground labyrinth, far from the world, far from reality. And I’m going to let him. Electricity dances along my nerves, lighting me up.

But the kiss never comes.

His mouth tightens into a hard line, and he lifts his head and turns his face away. I almost grab him and drag him back. His whole body is rigid. Controlled. I suspect he’s purposely looking somewhere over my shoulder, somewhere other than at me. His jaw is set, his expression harsh.

The moment is lost. Or, more likely, he gave it up on purpose.

I’m both disappointed and relieved. He does that to me, twists me up in crazy knots and leaves me to pick at them until they untangle. I hope I do the same to him. It’s only fair. But miles underground on a mission to kill Drau really isn’t the best place to lose myself in a kiss, and I have no doubt that once his lips touch mine, I will be lost.

“Okay,” he says, dropping his hands and stepping back. “You win. I don’t know you. And you don’t know me.” He pauses. His voice lowers. “Don’t get to know me, Miki. You won’t like what you find.”

I’m confused for a second, and then I remember what we were talking about: he was claiming to know me and I was telling him he didn’t. Now he’s agreeing with me, but his words leave me completely off balance, and I don’t like it.

I stare at him, and then I lose my patience. It’s gone in a snap. “Enough cryptic warnings. What’s so wrong with you? Webbed fingers?” I grab his hand and spread his fingers. “An extra toe?”

“Tainted motives.”

I throw my hands in the air. “What am I supposed to say to that? What am I supposed to think? Talk about mixed messages. You are the most confusing, arrogant, self-absorbed, obnoxious—”

“You can call me an asshole later. Right now, you’re fighting exhaustion.” He hunkers down and then settles himself with his back against the wall and legs stretched out straight. “So we rest.”

I almost argue, but I’m smart enough to recognize that this is a concession. He’s doing this for me. He’s not the one who’s tired. So I bite my tongue and gingerly get myself settled on the ground, stunned by how grateful I am to be off my feet.

“You can lean on me,” Jackson says.

“I—”

“Lean on me.” Not an offer this time, an order.

I scoot over and lean my weight against his arm.

“Not like that.” He shifts both of us around until my back’s against one side of his chest, my head lolling sideways onto his shoulder, our legs stretched out in front of us, side by side. Not perfect on the comfort score, but better than it was a minute ago. He rests his chin lightly on the top of my head and tells me, “Sleep.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll keep watch. I’ve been doing this long enough that I don’t need rest while we’re on a mission.”

“What about Luka and Tyrone?”

“They won’t need to rest, either. You’re still getting used to the jumps. By the next mission or the one after that, you’ll be like us. A robo-soldier.” And there it is again, that thread of humor, like he’s laughing at himself.

“Is that supposed to reassure me? ’Cause I gotta tell ya, thinking about upcoming missions doesn’t exactly thrill me.”

I jump when his hands settle on my shoulders. Then I sigh as he kneads my muscles. Long fingers. Strong hands. Some of my tension slips away, and I relax more fully against him. “How long have we been here now?”

“A little over seventeen hours.”

Wow. “But when we go back, it will be the exact second we left?”

“Yes.”

My eyes drift shut. After a minute, I say, “You’re answering all my questions. What happened to the rules?”

“We’ve been pulled. We’re in”—he pauses, and when he continues, I can hear that he’s smiling—“what Luka calls the game. So the rules don’t apply. We can speak freely.”

“So you’re conceding on the name? Now it’s okay to refer to this as a game?”

“For lack of a better option.”

“Are there really rules, or you’re just making that up as a way to control everyone?”

The easy rhythm of his breathing shifts ever so slightly.

“Think you know me so well, do you?”

“Well enough to know you’re a control freak. Answer the question . . . please,” I add as incentive.

“There are rules.” He pauses. “And some of them are ones I put in place.”

“With the others.”

“The others?”

“The ones in charge of the teams in the other clearings, the ones only you and I can see. Are they on that committee you mentioned?”

“No teams. Every man for himself.”

“So you keep reminding me, but you’re just talking the talk because here you are, watching out for me. Again. Who are the people in the other lobbies?”

“There are no other lobbies. They’re all parts of the same lobby.”

“Can they see us?”

“Some of them can.”

“Why can I see them when Luka and Tyrone can’t?”

Again, the easy rhythm of Jackson’s breathing shifts, telling me that whatever answer he offers, it won’t be the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

“Because we’re alike, you and I.”

“Aaaand you’re back to being cryptic.” I change direction and ask, “So while we’re here, in the game, you can tell me things that you can’t talk about back in the real world.”

“Yes.”

“Which means the issue isn’t about me having the knowledge. It’s about something else. It’s about people—humans—overhearing, or about the Drau listening in.”

“Yes.”

“The Drau can’t listen in here?”

“No.”

I think about that, and then offer a theory. “Because they’re piggybacking on human technology to do their spying. Like the satellites you mentioned in the park. And human technology doesn’t extend to the game.”

“Yes.” He sounds pleased as he says it. I get the feeling he wanted me to figure that out. I wonder why, if that’s the case, he didn’t just tell me in the first place.

I sigh. It’s like pulling teeth. He’s giving me only what I ask for and not a single word more. Maybe an open-ended question . . . “So tell me about them, the Drau.”

“Information is power?”

“Too cliché?”

“Maybe. But still true. They come from a planet that’s . . . harsh. Harsh terrain. Harsh climate. Limited resources. Vicious predators.”

“But it’s mostly sunny. That binary star thing, right?”

“So you do listen to what I say.”

“Every word.”

His hands leave my shoulders and he wraps both arms around me, settling me more fully against him and holding me close. I blow out a shaky breath. I’m lying on the ground, in a cave, in the dark, wrapped in a boy’s embrace. Not just any boy. Jackson Tate. Infuriating, arrogant, gorgeous, competent, deliciously warm Jackson Tate. “They fought each other on their own world for thousands of years, and eventually they destroyed it.”

“Destroyed? Completely? Like they blew up the planet?”

“Close. They turned it into a wasteland. Their weapons weren’t nuclear based, but it’s a good comparison. Think about what we’d do if we unleashed a nuclear holocaust.” I cringe at the images that conjures. “They lived in that wasteland for centuries, and all the while, they worked and planned and plotted how to get off their broken hunk of rock. You’d think they’d have learned from their mistakes. You’d think that when their technology finally reached a level allowing them to go elsewhere, they’d be different.”

“But they weren’t.”

“No. They wiped out entire populations. They raped planets for their resources. They left a trail of broken worlds behind them. They are predators, and they don’t care what destruction they leave in their wake. In fact, they enjoy it. The worlds that fight the hardest give them the most pleasure.”

As if the entire explanation weren’t bad enough, that last bit shoves a blade in my gut and twists. “What you said in Vegas, about how our ancestors fled to Earth and lived among humans . . .”

“They chose Earth because they knew they could survive here, not just for one lifetime, but by having offspring. The DNA was compatible. Their appearance was compatible. Their needs for oxygen and sustenance similar.”

“How do you know all this?”

I feel him shrug. “It wasn’t just physical similarity,” he says, continuing as if I hadn’t even asked a question. “Our ancestors believed humans were tenacious and brave and honorable, that they would fight for what mattered.”

“You’re talking in generalities here. Not all humans are like that.”

“Agreed. But the good ones outnumber the bad.”

I shake my head. “Wow. You’re an optimist. Wouldn’t have expected that.”

“I’m all about the unexpected.”

I fall silent, trying to figure everything out. There are things here that don’t add up. I don’t know why Jackson’s telling me all this. He’s not exactly a forthcoming kind of guy, and I have a feeling that if I ask Luka about any of this, he won’t have a clue because Jackson won’t have told him any of it. So why is he telling
me
?

“You know this is a lot to get my head around.” Even to my own ears, my words sound slurred. The fact that I’m so tired isn’t helping my confusion. I’m already half asleep, despite the mind-boggling information he’s dumping on me.

I swear I feel his lips against my cheek. Then I tell myself I must have imagined it.

“Go to sleep, Miki,” he whispers, and his lips touch my cheek again. “I’ll watch over you.”