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I don’t know who made that shot. I’m too slow turning my head and by the time I do, there’s no one there.

The girl sweeps my sword off the ground, lunges, and pins the Drau through the chest. It arches, shudders, lies still. She tosses my sword down beside me and takes off down the corridor, chasing after a blur of light—a fleeing Drau. She pours on speed. But the Drau are so fast. She shouldn’t be able to catch it. . . .

They turn a corner and they’re gone.

“Miki!” Luka drops and slides across the floor to my side. He jerks my fingers out of the way, and makes a low sound as he stares at my wound. Then he puts the wadded T-shirt back in place, layers his palms, right on left, and presses hard. I scream. Really scream.

“I’m sorry.” His jaw clenches, but he doesn’t ease up. “You’re bleeding out. I need to put pressure. I need to keep you alive.”

“Two Drau. Two o’clock,” Tyrone snarls, his weapon belching black death.

Lien and Kendra zip forward. Lien’s faster, her weapon aimed and steady, but she doesn’t fire. It’s Kendra who takes both Drau down.

“I had it, but thanks for the help,” Tyrone says. He sounds angry, and the way he said
thanks
made it sound like he meant anything but.

I want to ask him why, but I can’t find the strength. I’m tired. Weak. My side hurts. I pull at the edge of the pad Luka’s pressing down on my wound. The whole thing is sticky, even the edge I’m tugging at.

My head falls back against the concrete floor. I stare at the corrugated metal ceiling, trying to breathe through the pain. My eyes drift shut. I exhale, but can’t seem to find a way to inhale again.

Jackson’s there. I feel his cheek against my lips, then his lips on mine, warm, smooth. His breath is my breath. My lungs fill.

I love you.

Did I say that, or did he?

“Breathe, Miki. Come on! Breathe!”

With a gasp I open my eyes. Luka’s above me, his face inches away.

“Okay,” he says, his voice ragged. “Okay, she’s breathing.”

My vision goes foggy. I hear Tyrone’s voice from a million miles away. He’s talking, but I can’t figure out what he’s saying.

Snap.
Luka’s face comes back into sharp focus.

“Miki, answer me! How long till we make the jump?”

“What? Why . . . ?” I stare at him. “Did you kiss me?”

“Yeah. Right. Kiss of life. You stopped breathing,” he says, his voice is tight and strained. “Be happy that I know CPR. How long till we make the jump?” he repeats.

“Thirty,” I whisper as the knowledge gets dropped in my head by the Committee. My gaze drifts away from Luka and I see Tyrone and Lien and Kendra watching me, faces pale, expressions drawn. I try for a reassuring smile, and from Tyrone’s frown, figure I fail miserably. “The girl . . . ?” I ask Luka. “She okay?”

“What girl?”

How did he not see her? He was running toward me as she was running away.

“There’s no girl,” Kendra says, her voice gentle.

“There is . . . was,” I whisper, weak, so weak. “From another team.”

“She’s not here now,” Luka says, and I can tell he doesn’t think she was ever here.

“She—”

A shout of agony echoes in my brain, deep and guttural. I echo the sound, crying out, my whole body tensing, pressure building inside my head as though a vise is crushing my skull.

As the cry in my mind fades, another follows. I arch my back, heels pressed to the floor, screaming. Screaming.

“Miki!”

Hands on my shoulders, holding me down.

“Keep her still!” Lien’s voice. “She’s making the bleeding worse.”

Pain in my gut. Pain in my brain. Something trying to get in.

I can’t—

Get out of my head.

I know that voice.

Jackson.

I can hear him, cursing them, fighting them.

You’ve taken enough. You don’t get to take this from me.
He sounds angry, determined.

“Jackson,” I scream.

“It’s Luka, Miki. I’m right here. Hang on. Just a few more seconds.”

I want to tell him I know that Jackson’s not here, that he’s somewhere else, somewhere terrible. I can feel what he feels. Someone’s hurting him. On purpose. Tunneling into his brain.

“Drau . . .”

“We got them. We’re going to jump. Any second now.”

No. He doesn’t understand. I think the Drau have Jackson. They’re cutting open his skull, taking his brain, like they did to the girl in the cold room we found in the caves. They’re going to use him to make an army of shells.

I thrash under the pressure of Luka’s hand. He rests his palm against my chest, just like Jackson did the first time I woke up in the lobby.

“I need to get to him. I need to—”

Jump.
The Committee’s inside my head, the word shimmering through all my senses. I taste it. I see it dancing like a halo of light. I feel it skittering across my skin.

A familiar agonizing pain takes root at the base of my skull and pulses outward until it blows me apart.

MY BACK ARCHES AS I COME TO, MUSCLES CLENCHING, HEART racing.

“Jackson!” His name comes out as a howl. I try to jump to my feet, fight my way to him, but my body’s sluggish, refusing to obey my mental commands.

And there’s no one to fight.

I’m alone, lying on a cold, hard floor, hands and feet prickly and numb, my stomach churning.

The Drau. The blood. The girl from the other team . . .

With a wince, I gingerly poke at the side of my abdomen. No pain. No wound. And the T-shirt that’s wadded in my hand isn’t drenched in blood. I’ve respawned fully healed. I made it through another mission.

For a second, I just lie there, breathing and feeling grateful. Then I try to figure out where I am. Not home. Not the lobby.

I’m at the bottom of a massive oval amphitheater, tiers of seats rising all around me. They climb beyond the reach of the light and disappear into darkness. Every seat is occupied by a shadowy figure, forms and faces obscured.

I’ve been called to face the Committee. Good. If anyone can help me find Jackson, it’s them.

I push to my feet, dragging my T-shirt over my head, not really into facing the Committee in my sports tank.

My thoughts scurry around like cockroaches at the flick of a light, zipping from the Drau to the Committee to the sensations that washed over me right before the jump. The pain, the rage—Jackson’s emotions reaching across time and space to crawl inside my brain, making me a powerless witness to his torment.

I remember Jackson screaming.
Get out of my head.

“They have Jackson,” I say, not even sure the Committee’s listening. “The Drau. They’re hurting him.” Killing him. What if they’ve already succeeded?

Fear for him slices me open and leaves me raw. I wrap my arms around myself, trying to hold it together.

When no one answers me I turn a full circle, searching for help, but the audience is dark and wraithlike. I feel like they’re not seeing me at all. As I complete my turn, a raised platform appears directly in front of me, hovering in midair. It’s empty.

“Show yourselves,” I say, then add, “Please.” It won’t hurt my cause to be polite. That whole catch-more-flies-with-honey thing.

The light dims, then brightens, revealing three figures sitting on the floating shelf, as shadowy and undefined as those who fill the amphitheater.

Last time I was here, they appeared to me as a trio of B-movie caricatures: a Cleopatra look-alike, a brawny guy modeled on a combo of Odin and Thor, a cowled grim reaper. Truth is, they look nothing like that. They manifested in the form I expected to see. I don’t know what they really look like. When I asked, they said they look human. Which doesn’t really tell me a whole lot of anything.

I have a name for the Drau and an idea of their home world from what Jackson told me in the cave. But I have no concept where my alien ancestors originated. I don’t have a name for them or the planet they came from. The only knowledge of them I have is a combo of speculation and what they chose to show me last time I was here, when they implanted scenes in my mind like a video.

Devastation and ruin.

A world destroyed.

The heat of the flames seared me as they showed me their memories of my ancestors herded into pens. Cries rang in my ears as they were killed and cut into manageable-sized portions. Food for the Drau.

I’m a secondhand witness to the horrific destruction of an entire species, but clueless as to who—and what—they truly were before the Drau came. The Committee aren’t exactly forthcoming, and I don’t know if that’s by intent or accident.

But I do know they’re the ones holding the controllers and manipulating the consoles in this game.

And they’re the ones who can help me find Jackson.

“They have him,” I say. “I don’t know where they’re holding him, but I know he’s in trouble. I need your help. I need weapons, a team. I need you to drop me wherever he is. I need—” I break off, certain my presentation’s hurting my case rather than helping it.

“What is it you need, Miki Jones?” Their words tunnel deep, twitching my muscles, scraping my bones. They speak in one voice, if I can call it that. It’s more an experience of sound that arouses every sense, amplifies touch and sight and taste until my entire body’s a conduit for the thoughts they choose to share. It’s similar to the way they communicate with team leaders in the game, but stronger, bigger.

The first time I was here, the experience was too intense. They’ve remembered to tone it down this time and I’m grateful.

“I’m babbling. Okay. I’ll try again.” I take a breath, slow things down. I hesitate, searching for the right words.

They misunderstand my hesitancy and say, “You may speak.” The sound is metallic and a little bitter on my tongue, prickling my fingertips, dancing like fireflies across my field of vision. So weird.

“Jackson . . . is he still alive?”

Silence. How many seconds? Three? Four? An agonizing eternity.

Terror slicks my palms. My chest feels like a truck’s pressing down on it. They’re trying to find a gentle way of telling me he’s gone, dead, killed by the Drau—

“He is alive.”

I sag in relief. I can’t speak, can barely breathe. I take a few seconds just to get myself together before asking in a rush, “So where is he? How do we find him? How do we get to him? Give me a team, or I’ll go alone if you think that’s best.”

I wait, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, feeling like my skin’s too tight.

“He is here.”

I freeze. “What?” I look around, my head whipping side to side. “Where?”

“Here.”

But he isn’t. Not that I can see.

“Wait . . . he’s here?” Hope bubbles like a shaken bottle of pop. “You already saved him from the Drau?”

“We did not.”

“But you just said . . . I don’t understand. . . . But that means you were the ones—”
Hurting him, making him scream.
The bubbles of hope burst, decaying into horror. I almost run at the Committee, aching to tear them off that floating shelf, to look into their eyes, to demand explanations. But that’s a plan doomed to failure. They aren’t even really here; they’re more of a memory bank than anything else. I have a feeling that if I reach out to touch them, there’ll be nothing there.

I try to keep my tone even, to hide the fury and resentment I feel. I don’t do a particularly good job of it. “Why would you do this?” I snarl.

The time between my question and their answer feels like a century. “It was necessary.”

I take a long, slow breath. Straightforward questions. Straightforward answers. So why is it taking them so long to reply? Why are they weighing every word? Because there are things they don’t want me to know, things they’re unwilling to tell me. But my imagination is just as bad, if not worse than the truth.

“Is he unharmed?”

“He is alive.”

I’m not reassured, but I try to hang on to the most important fact: he isn’t dead.

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“No, it is not, but it is the answer we offer.”

Which tells me a lot in and of itself.

“Why did you bring Jackson here after Detroit? Why didn’t he respawn with the rest of us?”

“In war, discipline must be maintained. Order preserved. Independent action puts all at risk.”

Or saves lives. But I decide against arguing the point. When I was thirteen, Mom and I suddenly started arguing a lot. Mostly about stupid things. What jacket I should wear. Which jeans I should buy. After a couple of months of that, she just stopped arguing back, no matter how hard I pushed. She’d get this serene sort of smile on her lips and she’d change the subject. When I’d try to keep the fight going, she’d tell me to choose my battles, to make them matter. I’m choosing mine now. “Why didn’t he come back from Detroit?”

“He was detained.”

“By you.” I ball my fists at my sides and push them for answers, because they matter. “Why? Why did you keep him here? Why did you hurt him?”

Again, a pause. Anxiety amps up my heart rate as I wait for them to speak.

“Jackson Tate was aware of the consequences.”

“Consequences for doing what? You’re not answering my questions.”

“We answer with truth. We cannot alter your desire for a different reply.”

I’ve heard the expression
seeing red
a million times. I never really got it until this second, as a haze of crimson films my vision and the thudding of my blood pounds in my ears. It’s only the patience I learned doing endless, repetitive kendo exercises in Sofu’s dojo that lets me keep the words I want to hurl at them locked away inside.

Deflect. Regroup. I have to come at this from a different angle, use what I already know to make them tell me what I don’t.

“What rule did Jackson break?”

The air shifts against my skin. The silence is absolute. I can almost feel the vibration of every atom, every molecule. And in that silence is confirmation of what I suspected: Luka and I were right. They
are
holding him prisoner for breaking some rule or law. What could he have done that was so terrible? I want to blurt out arguments and excuses, beg, plead, but I sink my teeth into my cheek and stay quiet.