Crash (21 page)

VISITING HOURS END AT EIGHT. JACKSON AND I HEAD ACROSS the dark, snow-dusted parking lot toward the Jeep. We make it about halfway there when we're pulled. There's no warning, no tingling, no flares of light. One instant my foot's poised for touchdown on snow. The next, I foot-plant on grass, the sun high overhead, the trees bounding the open clearing.

The rest of the team isn't here yet. No weapons or scores. Just me and Jackson standing beside the familiar boulders.

From the corner of my eye, I catch movement in the mirror image lobbies. In one, there's just the team leader, waiting for her team to show up. In another, there's a bunch of people gearing up. In a third, I can see the black
rectangle that reveals the scores, and the team gathered around it.

“Do you think they need us?” I watch the movement in the mirror image lobbies. “Specifically us,
this team
?
Do you think they need
us
?” Because I don't think they do. I think the Committee's pulled us—
me
—to push me right to the edge, to make me crash. They aren't happy with the way I thwarted them, and everything they've done since is a clear message with clear intent.

“Does it matter? I think they do whatever the hell they want,” Jackson says, then shifts his attention to a point over my shoulder. “Incoming.”

“They're talking in your head, telling you that?”

Jaw clenched, he gives a taut nod. He doesn't like giving them even that much access. Then his gaze shifts to a point over my shoulder.

I turn to find Luka standing at the far end of the clearing, his posture rigid, hands fisted at his sides. He exhales and his whole body seems to deflate, sway, then buckle. With a low groan, he falls to his knees, head bowed.

“Luka!” I reach him a second before Jackson, skidding to my knees so my face is level with his.

“Have to stop,” he mutters, his chest moving in shallow pants. “Miki, you have to stop.”

He slams his palms over his ears and cries out in pain, then doubles over, his forehead resting on the grass.

“What's wrong?” I ask, touching his back then his shoulder then his arm. I don't know where it hurts. I don't
know what to do to help him.

“Luka, talk to me,” Jackson says.

But he can't talk.

He's shaking so hard his whole body jerks, his teeth clacking like castanets.

Desperate, I just throw myself on him, my front against his bowed back, my arms wrapped around him.

The contact seems to ease him. His breathing slows. His low moans stop.

“In my head,” he manages, the words dragged from him. He starts to sit up, then with a hoarse cry doubles over again, sounds of agony torn from him as he curls up, his fingers clawing narrow grooves in the ground. “Can't keep them out.”

I'm helpless. Again. I'm relegated to the sidelines watching someone I care about suffer, with no way to ease their pain.

I grab Jackson's leg. “Do something!” I yell.

With a snarl, Jackson grabs Luka and rolls him onto his back. He rips his sunglasses off and tosses them aside. “Put your knees on his shoulders,” he tells me. “Hold him down.”

I do what he says, scrambling around so my knees pin Luka's shoulders, his head cradled on my thighs. I'm terrified that I'm doing more harm than good.

Jackson straddles him and claps his palms against Luka's cheeks, holding him steady as he stares into his eyes.

He doesn't say anything, not out loud, but I can feel
the ripples of energy as he tries to talk to Luka inside his head the way he does with me. I don't think he's ever been able to do that with Luka before and I wonder if it's hurting him.

“He won't let me in. Damn it!”

“In my head. Can't keep them out.
” Luka's words slam me. Is he the one who won't let Jackson in now, or is it the Committee locking him out?

Their struggle pulses with power, Luka writhing beneath the weight of my knees on his shoulders and Jackson's palms flat on his chest.

“Come on, Luka,” Jackson mutters, his whole body coiled with tension.

Luka screams, the sound shredding me.

For some reason, I remember what Jackson told me when we were trying to communicate without speaking in the hospital courtyard and I was failing miserably. “Don't try so hard,” I say.

Jackson spares me a glance then looks back at Luka.

I take my own advice. I don't try. I just talk.
You're okay. It's okay. I'm here. Jackson's here. Talk to us. Tell us. What can we do?

I feel Jackson's thoughts inside me and I know he feels mine, but Luka's a closed city, the wall around him so high and strong we have no hope of breaking through.

“He isn't that strong,” Jackson says and his eyes meet mine.

He isn't. Luka isn't. But we both know who is.

They're here. Right here. Inside Luka. They have been all along.

It wasn't Kathy watching me, watching us. It was Luka.

The Committee's been watching us through Luka's eyes.

The first time I ever tried skateboarding, the board went forward, while I went back and landed hard. It was the worst winding I've ever experienced. Except for now. I feel like my lungs have collapsed and will never inflate again.

A bunch of memories slap me, running past like a slide show, and I see them all from a whole new perspective.

Bam.
After the very first mission, the one where Richelle died, when I was back in my real world, getting into the Explorer for Dad to drive me home . . . I had this creepy feeling like I was being watched and when I turned, there was Luka, staring at me from way down the street.

Bam.
The times Luka acted odd, like he was interested in me then interested in Carly then interested in pretty much anyone then not interested in anyone at all.

Bam.
Luka not firing on the Drau, holding back, as if he were watching, waiting to see what everyone else would do.

Bam.
The moment at my house when we were eating takeout and I thought he was going to say something . . . something important.

Bam.
Luka at the hospital, acting awkward and strange. Because he wasn't really there to see Carly.

He was there to see me. No . . . not
see
me.
Spy
on me.

A ton of tiny moments when Luka acted like Luka, and others when he didn't.

The moments he didn't were the ones when the Committee was staring out through his eyes.

Oh God. What do they know? What have they found out through him? Lizzie. Her Drau team. Has everything been betrayed?

I can't remember all the things I've said in front of him, all the things he's seen.

But even as I struggle to cope with this horrific revelation, my heart breaks for Luka, my friend, whose body is rigid with pain. Pain because he's fighting them, trying to keep them out.

What he said when he first showed up in the lobby were words of warning for me. He told me I have to stop. He was trying to tell me to back off, to warn me that the Committee is watching.

He had to have known they wouldn't be happy with him. But he risked that, for me.

His back bows, his whole torso lurching off the ground, throwing me off. Jackson tries to press him down. I scramble over and pull on Jackson's arm.

“Let him go,” I say, heartbroken, wary, not sure who Luka is. What Luka is. Not sure what to do to help him.

“Stop. Stop fighting,” I whisper. “It isn't worth the agony. Just let them do it. Let them do what they want.”

“Betray—” The word comes out on a gasp as Luka
arches and claws at the ground.

“I don't care. It doesn't matter. They already know what they know. Stop fighting.” I glance at Jackson, desperate.

He grabs Luka's shoulder. “She's right. Stop fighting.”

“Don't . . . want . . . to . . . let . . . them . . .”

“What makes you think you get a choice?” Jackson says.

I don't think Luka ever had a choice. I know what Jackson suffered when he tried to keep the Committee out of his thoughts. I remember the feel of icy needles poking at me when they tried to force their way inside my head. I had inside information on how to keep them out. Jackson had the strength and knowledge he's built through his interactions with them over so many years.

What did Luka have? What chance does he have against them?

Luka gasps and deflates, then he lies there, not moving, every breath shuddering through his torso.

Eventually, his eyes open. He stares at Jackson. At Jackson's eyes. Without his glasses.

“Surprise,” Jackson says.

“Not really,” Luka rasps. “Had to be a reason you wear those stupid shades all the time. So you're a Drau?”

“No.”

“A shell?”

“This matters now?” Jackson asks. When Luka says nothing, Jackson says, “No, not a shell. I'm just a guy with a few alien genes thrown in here and there.”

“So you're a spy?” I ask Luka.

He turns his head to look at me, his expression pained.

“I didn't—”

“Don't say it,” I cut him off, holding up my hand. “You had a choice. We always have a choice.” I push to my feet and hold out a hand to help him up. “You chose to stay alive by giving in to them. I'm not going to fault you for that. You think I don't know”—I gesture back and forth between me and Jackson—“
we
don't know what they're like?”

He takes my hand and I put my toes over his for counterbalance and haul him up.

“Let me explain,” Luka says.

“Are they listening now?” I turn a full circle and yell, “Are you listening now?”

“No,” Luka says. “They left.” He shakes his head. “But I don't know why.”

“How are you feeling?” I ask.

He cuts me a look and runs his hands through his hair. “Guilty. Effing guilty. That's pretty much it.”

Then that's why they left. Emotion overload.

Jackson touches my arm, making sure I'm not about to trust Luka with any inside information. I give him the death stare. Does he really think I'd be that foolish?

When Jackson didn't respawn with us after the mission in Detroit and Luka and I were trying to figure out a way to find him, Luka acted like the existence of the Committee was news to him, all surprised. But that was a lie. If he
had known about them since Richelle died, then he knew about them long before the day Jackson went missing.

Which means Luka's a better actor than I would have given him credit for. So how can I trust him now?

Easy answer: I can't. And even if I wanted to, I don't dare, because while he may be telling the truth about the Committee not being here right now, the second they come back, they'll have access to his thoughts and memories and they'll know everything he knows.

“So what the hell was that, Luka?” Jackson asks. “How long have you been spying on us?”

Luka stares off in the distance for a second and then says, “It didn't seem bad at first. They asked if they could just take a look at my memories of that first mission after Richelle died, see it through my eyes so they could help protect us better. It made sense, you know? And they asked. They didn't make me. I didn't see the harm.” He pauses. “Not then.”

He nudges the ground with the toe of his shoe.

“How do I know they aren't listening right now?” I ask. “How do I know they aren't inside you, looking out at me through your eyes?”

“You don't.” He scrapes his fingers back through his hair, then does it again.

“That's how we know,” Jackson says, low.

I look at him, then back at Luka. He's right. The Committee have no concept of emotion. If Luka was hosting them right now, he wouldn't be nervous, edgy, because
they aren't capable of that. I think back on a ton of moments since I first got pulled into the game and I see it, clear as can be, all the moments that Luka was . . . Luka. And all the ones he wasn't. The ones when he seemed off, weird, sort of flat, not really acting like he ought to. Almost as if he was trying to be what someone thought a human teenager should be. The mixed signals, the times he did things that made no sense . . . now they make sense.

Hands linked behind his head, elbows angled out, Jackson takes a step closer to Luka. Classic intimidation posture. I doubt he's even aware he's doing it. “You said it didn't seem bad at first. When did things change?” he asks.

With a sigh, I step between them.

“It wasn't a single moment or day. At first it was just them coming into my head more and more. Each time, it felt creepier. That first time, all they did was replay my memories of that mission, but every time after that, they just wandered wherever they wanted, flipping through my thoughts like they were flipping through a filing cabinet. If I try to fight, it hurts. I can't—” He shakes his head and rubs the heel of his palm on the center of his forehead, like it's hurting him right now.

“Been there,” Jackson says.

Luka swallows and nods. “So”—he shrugs—“they'd be there in the game, out of the game, whenever. It creeped me out. Pissed me off.”

“And Kathy?” I ask. “Where does she fit in?”

“Kathy?”

I have to remind myself that he made me believe he didn't even know the Committee existed, because looking at him right now, the confusion on his face, it seems like Kathy's not part of this at all.

Jackson snags his glasses off the ground and settles them in place. “Incoming.”

Luka inhales sharply and looks at me. “Are you going to tell them? About me?”

Am I? To what end? I don't know how much of what Luka is saying is the truth and how much is lies being fed to him by the Committee. One thing I do know is that the Committee can't be pleased that Jackson and I figured out we're being spied on. Until I know if and how the Committee plans to retaliate, why put the rest of the team at risk? Especially when I can't really see the benefit of them knowing.