Rush (3 page)

I frown. “That’s not mine.”

“It is now.” His fingertips play across the screen.

“What are you doing?” A sensation of warmth flows from my wrist to my elbow. It isn’t unpleasant, just unexpected.

“Activating it.”

“Uh . . . no you’re not.” I jerk my hand away. “You’re not activating anything until I get some answers.”

“Yeah, I am. If I don’t activate it, it explodes.” He sounds dead serious.

“For real?”

He doesn’t answer, and that pisses me off. But I can’t be certain it isn’t for real, and since I’m fond of having a hand at the end of my arm, I offer my wrist. He finishes running his fingers over the screen. I notice that he’s wearing a bracelet, too. The pattern on mine is silver; the one on his is forest green.

Except . . . now the one I’m wearing isn’t silver anymore. Whatever he did, he turned mine green, too.

“What is it?” I ask, feeling like I’m parroting myself . . .
what, what, what?
But I can’t seem to make my brain come up with anything better.

“Health.”

My gaze flashes to his. Sort of. I can’t see his eyes; he’s still wearing those opaque glasses. His expression gives me nothing. “Can you be a little less cryptic?” I snap, and then regret my tone. Biting his head off isn’t likely to get me any answers. The whole catch-more-flies-with-honey thing. But then, I’ve been perfectly polite up till now, and that hasn’t gained me any ground, either.

I shake my head, and as I do, I realize the headache’s gone. That’s one good thing, at least. Never let it be said that I’m not an optimist. With effort, I modulate my tone. “So . . . the bracelet? You said it’s . . .
health
?”

One brow arches, and he dips his chin toward my wrist. “The bracelet’s your con. The color’s your health. Don’t let it turn red.”

For a long moment, I stare at him, waiting for the rest of the explanation. It never comes. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

“Not a gamer, huh?” He sighs. “It means exactly what I said.”

When I was a kid, my grandfather used to do that: answer my questions with nonanswers or riddles. I doubt Jackson Tate plays that game better than Sofu.

I change direction and ask, “Would the bracelet really have exploded if you didn’t activate it?”

There’s a slight pause that makes me think I’ve surprised him by shifting topics. Good. Better that I have him on his toes than he have me on mine.

“No,” he says, and I think the corners of his mouth twitch in the hint of a smile. I’m hit with a weird sense of déjà vu, like I’ve been in this moment before, seen his face, the sun on his hair, that smile. I smell the ocean, hear the waves breaking. Before I can figure it out, he rises and walks away, and the feeling’s gone.

“Good to know,” I mutter under my breath, sort of getting the last word, but he’s too far away to hear me, so maybe that doesn’t count.

Pushing up on all fours, I wait for the dizziness to hit. I’m surprised when it doesn’t. I feel fine. Better than fine. Everything’s in perfect working order. I run my palms along my jeans-clad thighs, then tug at the hem of my T-shirt. Even my clothes are intact, as though I never scraped away cloth and skin on the pavement, never cracked my bones into pieces and watched the jagged edges tear through muscle and flesh.

A shudder crawls across my skin, and my stomach does an unpleasant roll. Better not to think about my injuries.

The injuries that were there and now aren’t there.

Yeah, better not to think about
that
, either.

Carefully, I get to my feet, then glance at my wrist. The screen’s a dark forest green, swirling with shades of lighter green and turquoise and blue. I slide my index finger under the band. It’s tight, but not tight enough to be uncomfortable. It doesn’t yield as I try to pull it off, and I can’t find the clasp to undo it.

“Don’t bother. It’s on there until our mission’s complete.”

My head jerks up. “Luka!” I feel a surge of relief at seeing him standing in front of me, whole, unhurt, unbloodied. I take a step forward, my hands coming up on instinct to hug him, my smile stretching into a grin. Then I see the look on his face and I freeze. He looks decidedly uncomfortable. Maybe even . . . guilty. Of what?

“You’re okay,” I say, and drop my hands back to my sides, feeling lame.

“Yeah. For now.” He rakes his fingers back through his dark, wavy hair. He’s wearing a black wristband identical to mine, but he’s not tugging at his.

My thoughts rewind. “Wait . . . what . . .” I shake my head. “What mission?”

“Listen—” He exhales in a rush. “I need to tell you—”

I wait, but he says nothing more, and I’m getting a little tired of boys who talk in cryptic spurts or don’t talk at all. So I take the lead. “Telling me sounds like a great plan.” He doesn’t take the bait, so I prompt him. “What mission?”

He just stares at me.

Okay. New approach. “What happened back there on the road?”

The change of topic makes him blink. “We died. I mean,
you
died. On the road.
I
died last year.” He grimaces. “I’m making a mess of this.”

You died on the road
. I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. A part of me suspected it, but actually having it acknowledged as fact . . .

My first thought is for my dad. If I’m dead, he’s alone. If I’m dead, it’ll kill him. And Carly and Kelley and Dee and Sarah and all my other friends . . . I know what it feels like to mourn, to have a film of gray settle over every moment of every day, a fog that coats everything, leaching out color and joy. I don’t want that for them. My heart gives a hard thump in my chest. And that stops me cold.

My heart is
beating
. That means Luka’s wrong. I’m alive.

“You’re not making sense,” I whisper. “You died last year, but you’re still going to school? Still on the track team? Still going to classes?” My voice rises with each word until I’m practically screaming. “What, you’re a zombie? One of the living dead?”

I take a step forward. He takes a step back.

“No.” He shakes his head. “I’m not saying this right.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” I’m shaking with fear and anger. “This isn’t funny, Luka.”

“No, I know. Listen, I understand how you feel. I remember waking up right where you did. I remember what I thought. That I was dead. That I was in a coma. That I was dreaming the whole thing.” He touches my shoulder, and then jerks his hand away, his fist clenching as he drops it to his side. “Those same thoughts went through your head, right?”

They had. Every single one of them.

I slap my palm against his chest, over his heart. I feel the steady drum of his heartbeat. “You’re lying. You’re alive. I can feel it. Dead. People. Don’t. Have. Heartbeats.” I punctuate each word with a tap against his chest, and then let my hand fall to my side.

He shakes his head. “I am. You are. Alive, I mean.” He lifts his hand like he’s going to touch my shoulder again, but he only holds it there for a second, then drops it. “We’re mostly alive. Most of the time. But for the mission, we’re not. Not really. We’re here, and we get to go back when we’re done.”

“Start making sense, Luka, because so far, everything you’ve said just sounds crazy.” I feel sick, woozy, adrenaline slamming my pulse into overdrive and making me want to run, scream, hit something. “Just tell me what’s going on.” I enunciate each word, slow and careful. “In plain, simple terms. Just tell me what the hell is going on.”

Luka glances around like he’s looking for an escape route. I follow his gaze. We’re in a clearing surrounded by trees. There’s nothing familiar. No street. No crosswalk. No schools. No landmarks I recognize. And for the first time, I notice that there are more than three of us here.

About ten feet away are two large boulders. A boy is sitting on one, a girl on the other. I don’t recognize either one of them. The boy’s a little older, maybe twenty or so. His blue eyes are a stunning contrast to his dark skin and black lashes. His curly hair is trimmed close to his skull. He looks like a model in a J.Crew ad, and he’s watching me with an expression that I can only read as sympathetic. The girl’s red haired and pale, blue eyed, too—what’s with that?—very pretty, with a figure that’s all curves. She’s wearing a cheer uniform. The only things missing are the pom-poms. They’re both wearing the wristbands.

After a minute, the girl pushes off the boulder and walks over. She approaches me warily, like I’m some wild animal that’s going to pounce on her and tear her throat out.

“Listen . . . um . . .” Her brows shoot up and she looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to tell her my name.

“Miki Jones.”

“Richelle Kirkman.” She gestures back toward the boy on the boulder. “That’s Tyrone Walker.” I recognize her voice. She’s the girl who was speaking when I first woke up, and I’m guessing Tyrone is the guy she was talking to. “You already had the pleasure”—she rolls her eyes—“of meeting Jackson.” At the mention of his name, I glance over to where he’s standing on the far side of the boulders. “And from the looks of things, you already know Luka,” Richelle continues, then frowns. “Which is odd because we’ve never had anyone go through who knew each other from . . . before. You go to the same school or something?”

“Yeah. Glenbrook, in Rochester,” Luka says.

“Minnesota? Michigan?”

“What are you, a geography teacher?”

“It’s a hobby,” Richelle says.

Luka purses his lips and nods. “Rochester, New York. But I was living in Seattle when I was pulled. My dad was only transferred back to Rochester a couple of weeks ago. Right before school started. So we weren’t actually pulled from the same geographic area. But I wouldn’t say it’s never happened.”

Richelle nods like that means something to her. She and Luka seem to know each other, so I wonder why she doesn’t know where he goes to school or that he used to live in Seattle. But I have more important questions to ask.

“Pulled?” I glance at Luka.

“Pulled from real life,” he says.

His answer makes me shiver. I wrap my arms around my waist, holding myself together.

Richelle shoots a hard look his way and jumps in with, “Don’t listen to him. We still have real lives. They just get temporarily interrupted every now and then.”

PULLED FROM REAL LIFE
. I HEAR THE WORDS THEY’RE SAYING, but there’s a lag between my ears and my brain. Hearing and understanding are two completely different things. “Real lives?” I ask.

“Sure. I’m meeting my girls at Franklin Mills for some major shopping when we’re done here.” Richelle glances down at her cheer uniform and offers a wry grin. “I do plan to change first.”

“Franklin Mills?”

“Big mall in Philadelphia,” she clarifies.

“But . . . we’re in Rochester. . . .”

“You aren’t in Rochester anymore, Toto. We’re in the lobby, and in a few minutes we’ll be”—she makes a sweeping gesture—“somewhere else.” She pauses. “Listen, Miki. Here’s the deal. We get a mission. We kill—”

“Terminate.” Luka cuts her off. “We don’t kill anything.”

“That’s a relief.” I don’t even try to temper the sarcasm.

“Prettying it up doesn’t change it at all,” Richelle says to Luka, her tone prim.

“And that’s even less of a relief,” I mutter, feeling like Alice down the rabbit hole.

Richelle turns back to me. I read commiseration in her expression. She doesn’t need to tell me that she gets it, that she knows how freaked out I am and that my questions and sarcasm are my only defense.

“We terminate whatever it is we’re sent to terminate,” she continues. “Sometimes we’re sent to destroy a facility or a nest. It’s free-for-all scoring. There’s an individual score tally for each player. No team score. But really, the score that matters the most is survival.” She pauses, and her tone takes on a note of urgency. “Don’t let one of them get you before you’re pulled back. When you finish the mission, when you manage to make it through? Then you respawn, you know . . . rematerialize miraculously healed and you get to go back to your regularly scheduled life. Until the next time. Got it?”

I don’t get it, not even a little. I cut a glance at Luka. He shrugs and says, “What she said.”

“I don’t understand.” I mean, I understand the words—
team, score, mission, respawn
—but the concepts make no sense. “Is this a game? Are we LARPing?”

Richelle frowns. “LARPing?”

“Live action role playing? Like
Dungeons and Dragons
?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.

“No,” Luka says. “How do you know about LARPing?”

“Terry Chen.”

He nods.

I look at Richelle. “Is this cosplay?” Costume play. Before Luka can ask, I explain, “Kelley dragged all of us to an anime fan convention last year, and tons of people were dressed up and carrying weapons that looked real. Actually, a lot of them seemed to believe their costumes
were
real.” But I don’t really think we’re playing dress-up here.

“Think of it like a video game. One we don’t play on a screen,” Luka says at the same time as Jackson says from behind me, “It isn’t a game.”

I spin to find Jackson standing just a couple of feet away. He’s still wearing the khaki green pants and T-shirt that I saw him in when I first woke up, but now he looks different. It takes me a second to realize that he’s wearing a sheath tied against his thigh, the handle of what I suspect is a knife sticking out the top. There’s a leather band crossing his shoulder and a second one riding low on his hips with the butt of a weapon protruding from the holster.