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.