Crash (28 page)

Her hand in mine, Lizzie steps forward and back, then side to side, drawing me with her. She jumps and lands.

“Three dimensions,” she says. Or maybe she just thinks it and I think it with her. Up, down. Right, left. Forward, back. Three dimensions. That's what we know. What
humans know. But there are more, so many more.

Jackson steps between us, disengaging her hand from mine. Protective, always protective. He doesn't trust her, doesn't want to let her lead me on a dangerous path.

She grabs my hand again, and his. “Think of a TV show. It's only two dimensions but we perceive it as three. Imagine an actor could step right out of the screen and into our dimension. That's the explanation for it all.”

“It doesn't explain anything,” Jackson says.

She laughs and lets go of our hands and pulls out a deck of cards, shuffling them then tapping the end so all the cards align in a neat block. “Imagine that the universe is contained on a single card. Just one. A flat, two-dimensional card. But look how many more cards there are next to us. Right next to us. We can almost reach out and touch the cards beside us. Almost but not quite. Other realities. Other dimensions. The universe is infinite space within a dimension and there are other universes and other dimensions. Do you see?”

“The Committee inhabits one of those dimensions,” Jackson says. “And moves us around between others.”

“In a simplified sense, yes.” She takes a single card and bends it into a
C
shape, so the ends are just millimeters from each other. “The Committee bends time and space. They create wormholes here”—she taps the edges of the
C
—“and make use of others that already exist. They can move themselves, you, the Drau, wherever they want, whenever they want.”

“How do you know all this?” Jackson asks.

“I only know what the Drau know, what they've been able to teach me,” Lizzie says. “They're advanced in so many ways.” She grins. “Less advanced in others.”

“So Miki was right. They're part of your team.”

She laughs again, the sounds like crystal goblets clinking together, filling me to the brim. “Really? Jackson, you're so much smarter than that.”

I don't know what makes me turn. Some sort of sixth sense or maybe something in Lizzie's posture, her tone. Two Drau stand less than three feet away, glowing and bright, weapons protruding from thigh harnesses but still holstered, not drawn.

When Lizzie looked beyond me up the hallway, she was looking at them. And I didn't even sense they were there. Neither did Jackson. No warning sensation; no cell-deep certainty that the enemy was near.

But they've been there the whole time, watching.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

JACKSON TURNS AS I DO AND STEPS SOLIDLY BETWEEN THE Drau and me, his weight distributed so he's hunched a bit to the right in a boxer's stance, left foot forward, arms on guard, right elbow close to his body. Ready for a fight. Always ready.

Don't look in their eyes.
The rule's been pounded home since the beginning.

But I do, because I know the Drau can choose not to hurt me. They can choose not to kill me. Just like the Drau that Kendra killed, who begged for mercy, who showed me mercy, sparing my life when she could have drained me. I looked in her eyes, her mercury eyes. And all she did was hold my gaze.

Now, I look at the Drau and for the first time, I have a
chance to really study them, close enough to touch, without the blinders of fear to limit my view. I get my first real, lengthy look at them and what I see is more confusing than edifying.

“Their skin . . . ,” Jackson says.

“Is not skin,” Lizzie clarifies. “It's an artificial covering, sort of like a cross between clothing, a vehicle, and a wet suit you'd wear to go diving. They can't survive in our atmosphere. The barometric pressure would kill them. We wouldn't be able to survive in theirs.”

An artificial covering. How could I not see that before? Maybe because when I encountered the Drau in battle, they glowed brighter, stronger, their light nearly blinding.

“Why do they glow?”

“Natural bioluminescence. Light energy released by chemical reaction.”

“Like fireflies,” I murmur.

“Same concept, but the Drau are more like jellyfish. And they glow all the brighter in our atmosphere because of the oxygen content. Oxygen reacts with a pigment in their bodies to create light.”

Without thinking about it, I start to step toward them. Jackson shifts, barring my way, the move bringing him even closer to them. If he lifted his hand, he could touch them. I wonder if he's ever been this close to a Drau he wasn't trying to kill or question.

“Why a vehicle?” he asks, voice tight, muscles coiled.

“They don't move like we move. They don't actually
look like what you see. They're more gelatinous, comfortable in the viscous environment they're originally from. But when they began exploring other realms, they created these . . . I guess you can think of them as space suits . . . to adapt and make them faster, more resilient, more able to navigate varied environments.”

“But when I—” Killed them . . . hacked off their heads . . . I saw their blood. I saw the bones of their spines. I can't say that. I can barely stand to even think it. “They have bones,” I say instead.

“The suit has a skeleton-like support system similar to bones and a viscous environment they need in order to survive,” Lizzie says.

Bones, and blood, of sorts. “But this suit or covering or whatever it is,” I say. “It moves like skin over muscle. It reveals their emotions, their expressions, just like our faces do.”

“It does,” Lizzie agrees. “The suit sort of becomes part of them.”

“So they can't take it off?”

“They can, but it's a long and complicated process.”

I think of everything Lizzie's said so far about what she's learned from the Drau, about them exploring other realms. I look at the white corridor and picture the control room with the creepy nanoagents, the control panel Lizzie sank her hands into, everything foreign and different than any human technology I know of or could imagine. The
Drau are so advanced that their space suits are practically alive.

“They're not part of your team,” Jackson says, picking up on the same things that suddenly coalesce for me. “
You're
part of
theirs
. This place”—he gestures at the stark, brilliant walls of the corridor—“they created it. The nanoagents, the control room, your ability to pull us out of the Committee's grasp . . . It's all Drau technology.”

“There you go,” Lizzie says. “I knew you would figure it out. Yes. They created this place specifically for me, because I could not survive in an environment designed for them. They saved me after my con went red. Revived me. Gave me a life.”

“Why?” Jackson asks.

“Because of you. Because of what your eyes allowed you to do. They saw our energy exchange and they interpreted events to mean that I was part Drau. That we were all part Drau.”

“The word
exchange
implies a two-way street,” Jackson says. “The way I remember it, things were pretty one way that day. I was dying. You told me to make like a Drau and borrow some of your energy. But I couldn't stop at
some.
” His chest expands on a deep breath. “So I took it all and I killed you.”

I make a sound of denial, but Lizzie voices her objection before I can. “By mistake,” she says.

“I killed you. And they saved you.” The emphasis
Jackson puts on the word
they
speaks pretty clearly to how he feels about that.

“Jax,” Lizzie says softly.

“They saved you because they thought you might be part Drau. But they must have figured out pretty quickly that they were wrong,” Jackson says, not giving her the opening to say anything kind. “So why do all this”—he gestures at our surroundings—“to keep you alive? Once they realized you weren't Drau, why not let you die?”

“That isn't their way.”

“Isn't their way? They kill us in the game all the time.”

“In the game, they have little choice. Kill or be killed.” She shrugs. “With one lone, dying girl, they had a choice.”

“What did they do with you while they were creating this place?” I ask. “It must have taken a while. How did they keep you alive in the interim?”

“They kept me in the game, on endless cycles of missions.”

“Fighting for which side?” Jackson asks.

“Neither. I was in spectator mode. And let me tell you, it was an eye-opening experience.”

Jackson shakes his head. “Why keep you here? Why didn't they just send you home?”

She takes a sharp breath and her chin comes up. “Because the second they did, the Committee would have terminated me.”

“Believable words, but that's not the answer,” Jackson says. “Or maybe not the whole answer. Try again.”

“You always did know when I was hedging. The truth?” She holds his gaze. “No one leaves. No one escapes. Once you're in the game, there's no going back.”

“That can't be true,” I say. “There were no adults on any of the teams we've encountered. And the Committee told me that adult brains don't do well with the jump. So at some point, kids get old enough that the Committee lets them go, right?”

“No one ages out,” Lizzie says, gentle. “Your friend Tyrone doesn't have much longer. They'll kill him soon. He's too old.”

My pulse kicks up a notch and I shoot a look at Jackson. “Why not just let him go?”

“No one ever goes.”

“You did,” Jackson says.

Lizzie touches his cheek, her heart in her eyes, so loving, so sad.

“I died five years ago, Jackson. In the dimension you inhabit, I died. I can't ever go back. No one who dies in the game can. My life, your life, Miki's . . . all the lives of all the players who have been or still are part of the game. They were stolen by the Committee. None of you will ever go home completely. And if you die in the game, you can't go home at all.”

I knew that. On some level, I'd known it all along.
Still, I can't help but protest. “The Committee said that if a player earns a thousand points, they evolve to the next level,” I say.

“The next level,” Lizzie echoes. “Death's a form of evolution, isn't it? The truth is, everyone dies in the game at some point. Like your friend Luka.”

I cringe, the pain of Luka's death too fresh.

“He didn't just die,” I whisper.

“He was murdered,” Jackson says. “To keep him quiet.”

“Or because they thought he'd outgrown his usefulness,” Lizzie says.

I wrap my arms around myself. “In the lobby, before the last mission, he warned me, warned us. Told us what the Committee had been doing, the way they'd been spying.”

“One more reason they wanted him gone. Payback for leaking their secrets,” Lizzie says.

“Or maybe they wanted to make certain he didn't leak any more.” My voice breaks. I glance at the Drau, standing there like silent sentinels, then I look back at Lizzie. “I never imagined he could die. Stupid of me, huh?”

Lizzie's half smile is sad. “Not stupid. Optimistic.”

“Yeah, that's me. The consummate glass-half-full kind of girl.” I try for a smile, but I can feel it fall flat.

“So . . . your con went red in the game, but you're here. Is everyone else here, too? Richelle? Luka? All the kids who died in the game?”

Lizzie shakes her head. “Only me. And only because of what happened with Jackson right before my con went red. It was a fluke. They can't save every human who dies in the game. They can't even save themselves.”

I study Lizzie's face, trying to read her, trying to figure out what exactly her agenda is.

And while I'm studying her, the Drau are studying me; I can feel their interest, their curiosity. What I can't feel is the cell-deep genetic memory that labels them as my enemy. In the game, every alarm would be clanging right now. But not here. Because that wariness isn't cell deep, I realize. It's a construct of the Committee, a trick they feed into our thoughts. It isn't real. Still, I can't help the wariness, the distrust that lurks in my thoughts.

“There's still a war going on, still a threat against the human race,” I say. “The Drau want to invade, conquer, cut us up and make people stew.”

Lizzie throws back her head and laughs, the sound dancing along the corridor. “Actually, they're what humans would describe as vegan.”

Jackson's head whips toward her. “What?”

No harm. We mean no harm. Peace. Pacifism. Fight only if our lives are threatened.
Raw thought pours through me, lighting every neuron in my brain. I gasp and stumble and it takes a few seconds before I realize Jackson's holding me, his arms the only things keeping me from hitting the floor.