Push

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

THERE’S AN EXPLOSION OF LIGHT AND A SHATTERING DETONATION of sound. My retinas burn, the light tearing into my skull, the sound pulverizing the tiny bones inside my ears.

I’m blinded and my equilibrium is shot. The floor feels like it’s falling out from under me. A hand catches my elbow and guides me down before I fall. Lien? Kendra?

Words come at me in disjointed sound bites like bits of coherence couched in radio static. I string them together as best I can. “I—ot—her.”

I know that voice. It’s the girl. The same girl.

“Lizzie?” I whisper. Or maybe I yell. My hearing’s so messed up I can’t tell the difference.

No answer.

The Drau . . . where are they?

I can’t see, can’t hear. I can’t defend myself. Or Jackson. Or Carly. I almost slash wildly, blindly, in case I manage to hit something, but what if that something is Tyrone or Lien or Kendra?

In the end, I just sit there on the floor, chest heaving, trapped inside myself with only my fear for company.

The Drau? Where are they?

I open myself to the gut instinct that always screams the alarm when they’re near. I get nothing. Radio silence.

Panic threatens. I shove it down, push the lid onto the pot, but it’s bubbling and twitching, trying to break free.

I can’t just sit here, doing nothing. I get up on my knees, push my palms along the floor, sweeping them side to side, hoping I encounter Jackson . . . Carly . . . someone.

I don’t know how much time passes. A second. A year.

The roaring in my ears fades to a buzzing, then to a faint hiss.

I’m scared to call out. Instead, I shimmy along the floor in the direction I think will take me to Jackson.

How long have I been doing this? It feels like an hour, an agony of waiting for my vision to come back online in spangled increments, for the buzzing/roaring in my ears to dull and fade. I’m terrified the Drau will get us, that my team is already gone.

I bump up against something. A shoulder.

I feel a vest with pockets but no big, round circles. Not Jackson. Luka. I find his hand. Squeeze. He squeezes back.

Now what? Wait it out? Keep moving?

I feel around until I hit the doorframe—Luka must have dragged himself this far. Then I create a map in my mind of where Luka was in relation to Jackson and Carly.

Using my elbows, I drag myself along, combat style, relying mostly on one arm because the other’s still weak and numb.

On the floor in front of me, a small shadow shifts, dark against the light floor. I freeze. It freezes. I move. It moves.

My hand.

I’m seeing my hand as I drag myself forward on my belly. It isn’t much, but it’s something.

Relief trickles through me in a weak stream. I focus on my hands, willing myself to be able to see my individual fingers.

I do. I see them.

I lift my head and manage to make out a doorway, the subtle shift in light enough that I can see a dark rectangle.

I try to make out any bright flares against the background, a hint of the Drau.

Nothing.

Pushing to my feet, I sway, dizzy. I take a step, stumble, almost fall, but catch myself at the last second as my shoulder bumps something solid. The wall.

Blinking, I stand there, enraged by my helplessness, desperate for control.

“Miki?” Jackson’s voice, camouflaged by the drone of a thousand nonexistent bees. I turn toward the sound, toward him. His arms come around me, solid, safe. I close my eyes.

“Carly?” I rasp.

“I don’t know. I didn’t get to finish what I started.”

“The Drau?”

“If there were any still here, would we still be breathing?”

He has a point.

“Can you see?” I ask.

“Just shadows.”

“Same as me. Where’s—” I swallow against the lump in my throat. “Where’s Carly?”

“Back here.” Jackson shifts me a few feet forward, but Carly’s not there. Not that I can find.

“Are you sure she’s this way?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

He hesitates. “I don’t know.”

I get down on my knees and move forward, hands outstretched. I turn right. Left. I can’t find her. Without my sight, I can’t find her.

“Wait,” Jackson says. “Stay still. Just let your eyes adjust. We’ll find her. Just give it a minute.”

He sounds like he’s strung so tight he’s about to break.

Not just because of Carly.

Because of the girl with the green eyes. Lizzie.

God, what must he be feeling?

“Did you—” I reach for him, find his hand, twine my fingers with his. “Did you see her? The girl? Lizzie?” I whisper.

He doesn’t answer right away, and when he does, his voice is so low I have to strain to hear him. “The Drau took my sister. They kept her body alive, hooked to machines. They tried to create an army of shells in her image. Three times, I’ve gone in and killed Lizzie all over again. Unplugged the machines. Pulled the tubes out of the army of clones the Drau created from her DNA.” He pauses. “Looks like I’ll be doing it a fourth time.”

I tighten my hold on his hand, feeling sick.

“She saved my life,” I say. “Maybe—”

“Don’t say it. Don’t say it, Miki. Lizzie’s gone. Has been for five years. That thing was not my sister.”

I nod, clinging to him, sick at heart, confused, scared. I remember her weapon, a Drau weapon. I remember her taking off after the Drau, but not shooting even when she was within range. Like she didn’t want to kill her own kind.

But she did, didn’t she? On the last mission, when I was bleeding out, I could swear she shot at the Drau that came at us.

“If that girl was a shell, why did she save my life?”

“That’s what they do. Keep humans alive long enough to harvest their DNA, turn them into an army of shells.”

I shiver, horrified.

As I lift my head, I see clearer shadows and light. My vision coming back online.

Carly.

I wrap my arms tight around my waist, pressing them against my belly. I don’t want to look, don’t want to see her like that, broken and bloody.

Jackson has his glasses on, hiding his eyes. His Drau eyes. Did it work? Did he save her?

I swallow against the bile that’s crawling up the back of my throat. Trembling, I turn to where I left her lying on the floor.

My vision sharpens and tunnels to the dark splotch of blood on the light floor, to the hand-drawn, cardboard mustard label lying at the edge of the crimson stain, to Carly’s yellow wig lying two feet away.

But there’s no Carly.

She’s not there.

“Carly!” I yell. Did she simply get up and walk away? I jump up and run along the hall, looking in doorways. Jackson snags me from behind.

“Jump in thirty,” he says. “She’s not here, Miki. We can only hope she respawns when we do.”

“But—” I shake my head. This makes no sense. Nothing makes any sense. “Everything about this mission has been wrong.” I stare at Jackson. “How can you be so calm?” I whisper. “How can you take all this in stride?”

“Miki?” Not Carly’s voice. Luka’s, very weak. I turn my head to find him sitting up, leaning against the doorframe, his face so white he looks like he’s been dipped in wax.

“Man, it’s like I’ve been staring straight at the sun,” Tyrone says, walking toward us along the hall, trailing one hand along the wall, still feeling his way. “What was that?”

“Flashbang,” Jackson answers.

Tyrone nods. “Stun grenade. Meant to incapacitate, not kill. So whoever used it wanted us out of the picture for a few minutes, but not hurt or dead. Why? And who?”

He turns. His eyes narrow as he glares at Lien and Kendra. They’re leaning against the wall, Kendra’s head bent forward, buried in her hands. Lien has her arms around Kendra’s shoulders.

“Are you looking at us? Are you seriously looking at us?” Lien asks. “Why would we do that?”

“To steal points,” Tyrone snarls. “You think we don’t know you’re griefers?”

Lien looks back at him, completely calm. “How could we steal points if we’re equally blinded? I can still barely see you. And think about it,” she says. “We’d have no way to smuggle a flashbang or whatever you called it into the game.”

“That’s crap,” Luka says. “You can’t bring anything out of the game, but you can bring shit in. Case in point, our clothes.”

“We didn’t do it,” Lien says. She glares at Tyrone. “And as for being a griefer, yeah.” Her chin kicks up a notch, like she’s daring him to comment. “I’m setting it up as much as possible for Kendra to get points. She needs to get out.” She swallows, and to my shock, her eyes fill with tears, all her bravado melting away. “She isn’t going to last. I need to get her out before the game breaks her. Or she ends up causing someone else’s death.” She holds out a hand to Tyrone. “You don’t understand. The game will kill her.”

“Yeah,” Tyrone says, “I understand. I understand way more than you think.”

Lien looks at Luka, then me, then Jackson.

Tears trickle along her cheeks, and she holds Kendra, her chin resting on the crown of the shorter girl’s head. “You don’t understand,” Lien says. “You don’t understand.”

But we do. We all understand.

We respawn in the Jeep in my driveway. I’m disoriented, sick at heart.

I feel like the car’s spinning round and round, skidding out of control. Except, it isn’t moving.

I pick a spot out the side window—a light post halfway up the street—and stare at it, waiting for the spinning to stop. Two older kids pass my house, looking to trick-or-treat at houses that haven’t turned out the lights yet. They’re moving impossibly slow, each step exaggerated, like they’re wading through Jell-O. This is what happens when we respawn back to real life. A momentary disorientation. A lack of synchronization between worlds.

In the seat next to me, Jackson reaches for the ignition. He and I are the only things moving at normal speed.

A dull throb builds behind my eyes. My jaw aches. Then my ears pop and—snap—everything speeds up. A car drives past going exactly the speed it should be. The kids speed up and walk at a normal pace.

“Call Carly,” Jackson says, his wrists resting on the top of the steering wheel, shoulders relaxed.

How can he be so calm? How can he even think? My brain feels like it’s growing green fuzz like three-week-old bread.

I yank out my phone. Dial.

No answer.

“Carly, call me.” I barely manage to choke the words out.

My heart feels like it’s been skewered.

Hands shaking, I try Dee’s number and Kelley’s.

“They’re not answering.” My thoughts are sluggish. All I can focus on is the memory of Carly, covered in blood. “I’ll try Amy. Shareese. Maylene. Sarah—”

Jackson reaches over and closes his hand on mine, stilling my frantic movements.

“If they’re at the dance, they won’t hear the phone, and if they do, they might not answer,” he points out.

“They could have their phones on vibrate. They could—” I press my lips together and turn my head to stare out the window, unseeing.

He backs out of the drive.

After a few minutes I ask, “Where are we going?”

“The dance.” He sounds so cold. So remote. His walls—his shields—are firmly in place. I think that if I reach over to try to touch him, I’ll slam against an invisible barrier, just like I did when we were in the amphitheater in front of the Committee.

I’m hurting, but he’s hurting, too. I’m not the only one who’s been ripped open and flayed tonight.

“Do you want to talk about Lizzie?”

He turns his head toward me, his face expressionless, his eyes hidden behind opaque shades. “No.”

“Do you want to talk about how much you knew?” When he doesn’t say anything, I clarify, “Before we got to the dance? Before the rest of us knew the Drau pushed through into our world?”

“No.”

Part of me is relieved by that. I don’t know if I’m up for a heavy conversation when the most important thing to me right now is finding out if Carly’s okay. And it will be a heavy conversation, because I’m pretty sure Jackson knew a lot more than he let on and I don’t like the idea that he purposely kept me in the dark.

We drive the rest of the way in silence.

He’s barely parked when I tear out of the Jeep and run for the school doors. He catches up, catches me around the waist, holds me back. I slap at his hands, and struggle to get free. “Carly. I need to—”

“I know,” he says. “Stay calm. Don’t draw attention. Hopefully, we’ll walk in and she’ll be on the dance floor in all her blinding yellow glory.”

He’s right.

I don’t want to ask. But I have to. “And if she isn’t?”

“We’ll figure it out, Miki.”

I don’t know how he can sound so sure. How will we figure it out if she’s dead?

We walk toward the front doors of the school, Jackson looping his arm over my shoulder and setting the pace.

“Have you ever heard of something like this?” I ask. “Of a civilian being pulled into a mission? Getting hurt? Dying on a mission?”

A muscle in Jackson’s jaw tightens. “No.”

I think back to the first time I was pulled, to Janice Harper’s little sister almost getting hit by the truck. She could have been killed. And Jackson . . . he was twelve when he and Lizzie were in that car accident . . .

“You were hurt in the car accident. You almost died,” I say.

“That wasn’t on a mission.”

“No, but you were a civilian when it happened and you ended up in the game. They made an exception for you. They could make an exception for Carly. Maybe she can be part of it. Part of the game. We could train her. Watch out for her. We could—”

Jackson squeezes my shoulder. “Yeah, they made an exception, but they had something to gain by keeping me alive, putting me in to fight. I offered a specific genetic blueprint they happen to be fond of.” With his index finger, he pushes his shades up the bridge of his nose, a subtle reminder of exactly what he brought to the table when the Committee decided to conscript him. “Carly’s human.”

“So are we,” I snarl.

“For the most part. But we’re also part something else.”

For a second, I’m blindingly furious with him. But he’s right. And it isn’t his fault that he’s right.

“Would I even want this for her, if I had a choice?” I ask.

Would I? Would I want her to be part of the game, to face what I face every time I’m pulled?

“Better than dead,” Jackson says softly. “And it isn’t your choice to make, Miki. If it’s even possible, it’ll be Carly’s call.”

Just like it was Jackson’s call to do what he did, to risk everything to try to save her.

He broke every rule for her. Risked his life and the Committee’s wrath for her.

No, not for her. For me.

“Let’s hope there’s no call to make,” he says. “Let’s hope she’s already respawned fully healed.”

Together we walk to the auditorium doors. Everything is tinged with a strong sense of déjà vu. Marcy eyes Jackson. Maylene chats with him and smiles. Jackson does the cash-for-tickets exchange. Kathy stares at her hands while she counts the bills.

Then we’re inside. The dance floor’s packed, music pumping, lights flashing. It looks exactly as it did when we arrived before. I turn to where I saw Carly last time I got here. There’s Kelley and . . . there’s Dee. Jackson and I push our way through the crowd to them.

Before I have a chance to ask, Dee yells in my ear, “Have you seen Carly? She’s late and I can’t reach her!”

“She’s not here?” A band of steel crushes my ribs, stealing my breath.

Dee shakes her head.

“When was the last time you spoke to her?” Jackson asks.

She glances at him, frowning. “I don’t know. About an hour ago?”

I round on Kelley, trying not to show how frantic I feel. “What about you?”

We’re all yelling to be heard over the music.

“Haven’t spoken to her since I got here. What’s wrong, Miki?”

Before I can figure out what I’m supposed to say, Jackson grabs my arm and, using his body as a wedge, gets us back through the crowd to the doors. We practically slam into Luka coming in as we’re going out.

There’s a split second of sheer joy at seeing him whole, unhurt, his massive injuries left behind in the game.

Then he asks, “Carly?” His expression is haunted, and I’m hurtled back into a reality where my best friend may be dead because she came after me. To warn me. To keep me safe.

My fault.

“She’s not here,” Jackson says. “And no one’s heard from her since the dance started.”

Luka looks at me and asks, “Ideas?”

My brain feels like a lead brick.

“We check her house,” Jackson says.

There’s an idea.

Luka nods. “You drive,” he says, his tone grim, and we head for the Jeep.

The second Jackson rolls up in front of Carly’s house, I don’t wait for the boys. I leap out of the car while it’s still slowing, tear up the front walk, and ring the bell. I hear someone walking around inside; then the door opens.

My words catch in my throat, clogging my windpipe, stopping my breath.

Carly’s mom stands there, her shoulders sagging, her expression grim.