Crash (27 page)

“Luka's dead because of the Drau.”

“But he isn't. He's dead because of the Committee, and that's the most terrifying thing of all.” I'm so sick of this, so sick of having no control, of just reacting to whatever gets thrown my way. My life is running like a train off the rails, careening to one side, a millimeter away from tipping over. My father and my best friend are lying in the hospital, maybe dying, all because the Committee is trying to rein me in, threaten me, control me.

I'm done with being reactive. It's time for me to be the one to choose, to determine time and place, to determine my own outcomes.

I stare at the trees that bound the clearing, letting my peripheral vision catch the movements in the other lobbies that are reflections of ours. There are other teams there, some big, some small. I wonder if the Drau have pushed through the boundary into their real lives. I wonder how many of them have faced down the Committee.

“We need to talk to them,” I say.

“You think I haven't tried?” Jackson asks. “There's a barrier in place, like the ones on missions that don't let you walk away until you're done.”

I encountered the barrier he's describing the first time I was team leader, on the mission to Detroit. I told Luka and the rest of my team to get out of the building, get to safety, but they couldn't. They were trapped by invisible boundaries, with no choice but to fight and see the mission through to the bitter end. The only way the Committee lets you out is if you finish the mission.

Finish the level.

Finish the game.

But they never really let you out. They just allow a temporary reprieve.

As I stand there, one of the team leaders in another lobby turns. She stares somewhere off to my right and it hits me that she's looking at me. If we turn and try to see each other straight on, we fail. But if we don't look, if we just let the corner of our eye catch the movement, then we see each other just fine.

It's that instant of awareness that decides my course. Jackson might have tested the barricade, but I haven't. And maybe he didn't have Lizzie on his side when he tried. But I do. I know I do. She told me that's what the Committee is afraid of . . . that I'll tell the other team leaders what I know. I think she was telling me to do exactly that.

I've had enough—enough of letting the Committee move me around like a chess piece, enough of leaving my life in their hands, enough of their non-answers and the possibility that everything they've told me is a lie.

Enough of them letting my friends die.

I take a couple of steps toward the trees.

“Don't,” Jackson says.

“You're worried they'll do to me what they did to Luka.”

“I am.”

I curve my palm along the base of his skull and go up on my toes, pressing my mouth to his in a brief, hard kiss.
“I have to,” I say. “I refuse to be a pawn anymore.”

I wait for him to ask,
What makes you think you get a choice?
I ready my arguments. I do have a choice. I can do more than be a dandelion blown by the wind.

“Then we do it together,” he says, showing me just how far we've both come.

I walk toward the trees. He walks beside me, each step bringing us closer to the team leader who stands looking at me, fists clenching and unclenching at her sides, expression anxious. She doesn't walk toward us, but she doesn't walk away, either. Maybe Jackson and I aren't the only ones who've said enough is enough. Maybe we aren't the only ones having major doubts.

I've never tested the boundaries of the lobby. So maybe I'm going to hit the outer limit and bounce back and land on my ass just the way I did when the Committee was holding Jackson prisoner and I slammed against the invisible wall. I know there's a possibility of failure. But there's a one hundred percent guarantee of failure if I don't at least try.

Jackson takes my hand. We're at the tree line now. Three more steps and we'll be in the forest.

Two more . . .

One . . .

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

THIS TIME, THE JUMP'S EASY. THERE'S NO DIZZINESS, NO burst of color, no painfully loud sounds. There's just the fraction of a second where I blink, my lids lowering, and when they come up again, Jackson and I stand side by side in a hallway so white it burns. He pulls his weapon cylinder and his knife, his body coiled and ready.

I leave my weapons sheathed.

“Jax,” Lizzie says, walking toward us, her lips curved in a welcoming smile. “You don't need those.”

He doesn't say anything. And he doesn't lower the weapons.

“The cylinder won't work here,” she says.

“The knife will.”

“Will you stab me? Will that make you feel better?”
She spreads her arms. “Go ahead.”

Jaw tense, he stands there for a long moment, then finally rams the cylinder in its holster and the knife in its sheath. I don't need to climb inside his head to know what he's thinking, what he's feeling. Jackson's just watched his best friend die. The game he believed he'd mastered is suddenly unpredictable and foreign. The sister he believed dead is standing in front of him. I understand the urge to fight, to lash out, to let rage rule. Without saying a word, I slide my hand into his. His fingers close on mine and he holds on tight enough that I know he needs me, just like I need him.

Lizzie steps closer, head tipped back as she studies his face. “When I left, you were this high.” She lifts her hand level with her chin. “You used to have to look up at me.”

“I was twelve,” he says. “And you didn't leave. My sister died.”

“Your sister. Lizzie. But that's the conundrum, because I'm Lizzie.”

His fingers clench on mine.

“Fine. Call me Liz. Is that better?”

“No.”

“I'm her, Jax. I'm me.”

“You're not,” Jackson says. “Even if you are my sister, which I'm not ready to concede, you're not
her.
Not the girl I knew. Five years have passed. Five years where you've been places I know nothing about. Where you haven't aged, which makes no sense. Five years where I grew up fighting
a war you—” He breaks off and takes a deep breath, and when he speaks again, his tone is cold and flat. “A war my sister introduced me to. In those five years, I changed. I'm not Jax anymore and you're not Lizzie.”

My heart breaks for him because I've seen the beating heart beneath the frozen exterior. I've seen what he's willing to sacrifice for his team, his friends. I've been inside his head, felt what he feels. His love for his sister is vast and strong. This has to be killing him, not knowing for certain, not daring to believe.

I can't imagine how I'd feel, what I'd think, what I'd do, if it were Mom standing here in Lizzie's place.

“You're right. I'm not her and you're not him. But at the same time, I am. And you are. You need to figure out a way to reconcile that.”

“Do I, now?” he asks softly, the words edged with menace.

I squeeze his hand, willing him to remember we're guests here—or, given the fact that we have no idea how to leave, prisoners. So maybe antagonizing our host isn't the ideal plan.

Lizzie sighs and turns to me, reaching out to rub her hand up and down my upper arm—the greeting of a friend. And she
has
been a friend to me, saving me when I almost died on a mission, saving Carly the night of the Halloween dance. Why us and not Luka?

I can still hear his scream, feel his terror. She could have stopped it.

“Where were you?” I ask. “Why didn't you come?”

She tilts her head, frowning. “Come where?”

“On the last mission. Why didn't you save him the way you saved me?”

Lizzie's eyes grow wide. “Save who? Miki? What's going on?” She grabs my free hand and lifts it between us and I look down to see tears splashing on my skin. I didn't even realize I was crying. I yank my hand from hers and swipe at the tears, angry to be this girl who weeps and chokes back sobs.

“Luka,” I say. “He's dead. They killed him.”

“What—” She looks at Jackson, then back at me. “I didn't know. I didn't even know you were on a mission. I thought you'd just arrived in the lobby.”

“We did,” I say. “They respawned us there after the mission. Lobby, mission, lobby. Everything's out of order. Did you know Luka was working with the Committee?” I pause. That question makes no sense. Everyone in the game is working with the Committee. “I mean, did you know they were using him to get inside information, to spy on us? They pushed into his head, stole his memories. They even . . . I don't know . . . somehow inhabited him in the real world, to watch us every day during our real lives . . . Did you know about that?”

As I say it, a chill chases up my spine. Lizzie's made it clear to me that the Committee can't find out about her. But Luka saw her on at least one mission, heard me talk about her on another. She could have viewed him as a
threat, a way that the Committee could find out about her and her team. To what ends would she go to keep her team safe? Would she see letting Luka die as a valid sacrifice?

I don't know what to think, what to believe.

“Inhabited him? Like a shell?” Lizzie stares beyond me down the corridor, then looks back at me. “You said they were using him to spy on you. What did he know, Miki? What did he give them that they could use against us? Do they know about me?”

“There they are,” Jackson says softly. “The questions that paint you guilty.”

“Or paint me logical,” Lizzie replies.

“Is that why you didn't save him?” I ask. “Because he was a threat to you? Did you let him die on purpose? To keep any knowledge of your existence from the Committee? Would you let me die, too? Or Jackson?”

“Oh, Miki,” she says on a sigh, her tone both sad and consoling. She rubs my arm again, like she forgives me for saying these horrible things to her. “I didn't save him because I wasn't there. Didn't know I should be.”

It dawns on me that my questions don't make sense, not even to me. Lizzie saved me, protected me, protected my team the night of the dance. She's done nothing but have my back since the first time I saw her. I take a shuddering breath. “Could you have saved him? If you had known? If you had been there?”

“Maybe. I don't know.” Again, she stares beyond me for a few seconds, brow furrowed. “What we do . . . It isn't
foolproof. I don't always know when you're pulled. I'm not always here to know.”

“Because you track other teams,” I say. “And follow them into missions.”

“Sometimes.”

“How does it work? How does any of it work? The game? The Committee?” I gesture at the white walls, white floor. “All of it.”

She looks at Jackson and holds out her hand, pleading. “I can explain, if you'll let me.”

“Let you?” He huffs a dark laugh. “Hell, I'll beg you.”

“It's easiest if I show you. Okay?”

He gives a brief nod.

Lizzie turns to me. “Miki?”

I don't know what she's asking me until I get the hint of an image in my thoughts, an image of me, not the way Jackson sees me, but the way Lizzie does. She's asking if it's okay to convey images inside my head, the way that Jackson did when he showed me the first time he saw me at Atlantic Beach. The way the Committee did the day they showed me the Drau destroying their planet.

“Sure,” I say. “Why not? Everyone else does.”

It's like my permission was the key she needed to open the door. Images, knowledge, certainty flood my mind and I understand things so far beyond my reach it makes me dizzy, makes me grab for Jackson's arm and hold on to keep myself from spinning away.

The fabric of the universe unfolds and I
see
it,
understand
it. Everything in the universe is made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of protons, neutrons, electrons. Protons and neutrons are made of quarks. Quarks are made of strings—tiny, tiny particles that vibrate and move.

Everything is made of strings. The universe and every other universe that exists and will exist. The Big Bang happening again and again. Infinite connections. Infinite reactions.

If the strings oscillate one way, we see one thing. If they oscillate a different way, we see a different thing. How many dimensions, how many realities overlie one another?

The basis of the universe, the basis of everything, explained by tiny loops of vibrating energy.

Lizzie takes me by the hand and leads me into space. Endless, beautiful. Stars. Galaxies. The universe expanding at an exponential rate. A vast expanse. Somehow, she folds space, and two distant points align one atop the other, connected by a wormhole. Points separated by distances that are beyond my comprehension suddenly become neighbors. One step, and you can be somewhere you were never meant to be. Time and distance don't mean anything anymore.