Rush (4 page)

“This isn’t a game,” he repeats. “It’s real. What you do here determines your survival.” He pauses. “And the survival of every other person on this planet.”

I laugh.

He doesn’t.

And that tells me he’s either serious or seriously crazy.
Please let him be crazy
.

As I stare at him, something flickers at the edge of my vision. I turn my head. Nothing’s there. But as I turn back to Jackson, something flickers again. People. Trees. Boulders.

When I was little, Gram had this powder room that was all done in mirrors. I’d stand there and wash my hands and see a million Mikis washing their hands at a million sinks in a million bathrooms. That’s what this feels like. The images I catch from the corner of my eye are like the reflections I used to see in those mirrors; if I turned my head, the reflections would change. If I turn my head now, the reflections disappear.

I stare at Jackson, and in my peripheral vision, I see other clearings filled with people, on and on ad infinitum.

“Who are they?” I ask softly, my question aimed at Jackson, but it’s Luka who answers, “Who?”

I shift my attention to him, and at the edges of my vision are the others. “Them.”

“Them who?” Luka’s brows draw together, and he pulls his head back. “You okay, Miki? We’re the only people here.” He makes a big show of looking around the clearing and spreading his hands. “You see anyone else?”

So Luka doesn’t see them. But I do. And Jackson does; he knows exactly what I’m talking about. I can feel him watching me, even though I can’t see his eyes. Before I can question him, he says, “Gear up,” talking to the others even though he’s still facing me. They move off, out of my line of sight, and I’m left alone with him, almost as confused as I was when I first woke up.

He reaches toward me. I jump back.

Again, that barely there hint of a smile that I saw earlier. Not a nice smile; not warm or friendly. Dark and feral and inexplicably appealing. I feel it all the way down to my toes. “Good reflexes,” he says. “That’s a bonus.”

“Eight years of kendo.”

“The way of the sword.” His tone is speculative. “Are you any good?”

“Yes.” I was taught by a master—my grandfather. “Mess with me and I’ll mess right back.” I can’t believe I just said that.

Jackson’s brows shoot up.

“Good to know,” he says, echoing what I muttered after him earlier. I hadn’t thought he heard, but now I think he must have.

I glance over at where the others are gearing up. They’re on the far side of the boulders, strapping on holsters like Jackson’s. “Who are the others?”

“Tyrone and Richelle already introduced themselves.”

He knows I wasn’t asking about them. Annoyance surges, but I tamp it down. I need to redirect, come at the problem from a different angle. So instead of pursuing that line of attack, I ask, “Where’d the weapons come from?”

This time, Jackson’s smile is wider. Obviously he approves of my approach. Like I care what he thinks.

“They’re here waiting for us whenever we arrive,” he says.

“Right-handed?” he asks.

“Yes, why?”

“Now lift your arm. I’ll show you how the holster works. Next time, you do it for yourself.”

I lift my arm and he slides the straps over my shoulder. It’s a complicated layout, with a strap going diagonally across my chest and a second loop resting on my hips. I pay attention to the way he settles the buckles and snaps down the holster. If there is a next time, I definitely want to be doing this myself. I don’t like feeling like a toddler who needs help putting on her coat.

“You want your weapon on your dominant side. You don’t want to cross reach. It’ll slow you down.”

Jackson holds out a metal cylinder that’s about eight inches long. It looks like the handle of the toy light saber I used to play with as a kid.

“Please tell me a glowing blade doesn’t leap out of the end of this.” I hear a snicker to my left. I glance over and catch Richelle’s wink, then turn back to Jackson.

He’s not smiling. “You point this and you fire at anything that comes at you.”

“Anything?” I ask. “Bees? Wasps? Lost puppies?”

His lips thin, confirming what I already suspected. “You have no sense of humor,” I point out.

He ignores my observation. “Anything non-terrestrial.”

“Non-terrestrial? As in . . .
extra
terrestrial?”

He gives a short nod.

“Of course. I died today, and now I’m going to fight aliens with a light saber. Maybe after that we can look for mermaids. Or unicorns.”

“No,” he says. “Just aliens.”

Was that the barest hint of humor in his tone? I narrow my eyes. “What if I don’t want to go on this alien-hunting mission?”

“What makes you think you get a choice?” The words are harsh, but his tone is oddly gentle, like he knows I’ve been pushed almost as far as I can go. It’s the gentleness that undoes me.

Words flow like water before I can muster the will to turn off the tap. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to do this. I woke up this morning and I was just a normal girl,” I say softly, my sarcasm deserting me.

Jackson goes very still. After a long second, he says, “No, you weren’t. You were never just a normal girl.”

I gasp, his words cutting me like a scalpel.

“None of us were ever normal,” he continues, either oblivious to my pain or purposely ignoring it. “That’s why we’re here. We’re anything but normal.” One side of his mouth curls in a dark smile. “Some of us being less normal than others.”

I open my mouth to protest, to ask—

“Don’t ask,” he cuts me off before I can say a word. “We don’t have time for the answer.”

I can almost hear the clock ticking.

His tone turns fierce. “Make it through this, Miki Jones, and I’ll give you all the answers you want.”

“Now, there’s incentive,” I murmur.
Make it through this
. The only thing that keeps me from freezing in terror is what Luka and Richelle said about being miraculously healed at the end of whatever it is we’re about to face. As impossible as their assurance seems, I believe them because I
know
what happened to me when the truck hit, but I woke up here with all my injuries gone. Is that the respawn Richelle was talking about?

Jackson tucks the cylinder in my holster like I’m some sort of rebel gunslinger.

I brush my fingers over the end of it. “How do I fire it?” I ask.

“You point it and you think it.”

“Think it. Right. And how do I use—” I hold up the black band on my wrist and turn it back and forth. “What did you call it? My con?”

He nods.

“Um . . . what does that mean? Con?”

His brows rise, and then he shrugs. “Connection. Conversation. Contact. Connectedness. Take your pick. They all apply equally.”

“You don’t actually know, do you?” When he doesn’t answer, I ask, “Who decided to call it a con?”

Again, that dark half smile. “You could say the name was chosen by committee.”

“So how do I use it?”

“You don’t need to use it. It’s activated. It’ll do what it needs to do.”

Before this moment, I never understood just how thin my patience could stretch. I hold on to it by a thread. “Which is what?” I ask, syrup sweet.

His expression doesn’t change, but for some reason, I think he’s almost as frustrated as I am, that he
wants
me to understand; he just doesn’t know how to explain. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. He takes a step away from me.

Suddenly, I’ve had enough. I grab his wrist as tight as I can. His face turns toward me, and I have to fight the urge to rip the sunglasses off, to get a look at the emotions reflected in his eyes. His tendons are taut beneath my fingers. It hits me that he’s all lean muscle and strength, that he could jerk away with ease but he’s choosing not to.

“Just give me something to help me understand,” I whisper. “Tell me
something
.”

He juts his chin toward the others. “They already told you.
I
already told you. What we’re saying makes no sense to you because you refuse to believe. The only way you’ll believe is if you see it. It’s always that way.” He looks away, then back toward me. “You know the story of Medusa?”

I nod.

“The things we’re after won’t turn you to stone, but what they will do is just as bad. Maybe worse. Whatever you do, don’t look in their eyes.”

“Whose eyes?”

“The Drau.”

He holds up one finger in the universal symbol for
wait
. He looks like he’s listening to something I can’t hear. “We’ve got thirty seconds,” he barks, and I figure he’s talking to all of us. Then to me, he says, low and intense, “You stay close to me, Miki Jones. Close enough that I can hear you breathe. Got it?”

Something in his tone makes my breath catch. Aiming for sassy with a nice dose of bravado, I ask, “You always take care of the new recruits?”

He clenches his jaw and seconds tick past before he answers. “Never.” He sounds anything but happy.

Never
.

But this time is different.

Before I can process that, an agonizing pain starts in the center of my skull and pulses outward until it blows me apart.

THE NOISE HITS ME FIRST. CARS. LOTS OF THEM. HORNS. People. Voices and laughter. Guess my head didn’t blow up after all.

My palms are braced on my thighs and I’m bent forward at the waist, feeling disoriented and woozy. I’ve always been the girl with the cast-iron stomach, but nausea seems to be my new normal.

The glare of the lights hits me next. I straighten, and everywhere I look there are brightly lit signs against a backdrop of night sky.
Casino. Pick your numbers. Girls!
To my right are Richelle and Tyrone, to my left Jackson and Luka. None of them appear to be affected by whatever it is we just lived through. I wonder how many times they’ve done this. And how often.

Where are we? There’s a giant pirate ship to one side and two mirrored buildings to the other. Overhead is a bridge and, beyond that, what appears to be a mall. The signs and scenery make me think Las Vegas. I’ve never been here before, but I’ve seen it in movies. I don’t even try to figure out how we got here. At this point, I’m just going along for the ride.

When
are we? It’s night, but last thing I remember, it was late afternoon. In Rochester. Which is ahead of Vegas. “We’ve lost . . . like . . . ten hours,” I say to no one in particular.

“They’ve been banked,” Richelle replies. “We’ll get them back.”

I almost ask if they’re in Bank of America or Chase, but the way Luka’s mouth compresses in a tight line stops me. A chill crawls up my spine on creepy little centipede legs.

He catches me watching him and offers a weak imitation of a reassuring smile.

“Move,” Jackson says, already striding forward. As he passes me, he shoots me a look. At least, I think he’s looking at me. He’s still wearing those shades, even though it’s night, the smooth lenses reflecting all the bright signs in miniature.

I remember his tone when he told me to stick close enough for him to hear me breathing. I jog a couple of steps to catch up, aware of the others right behind us, forming a tight little group.

Luka falls into step beside me. “Magic,” he says, and when I glance at him, he explains, “I know you’re wondering how we got here. I said
magic
. I’m trying to be funny. . . .” He shakes his head. “Never mind.”

“We got pulled,” Tyrone says from Luka’s far side.

Jackson picks up the pace, so we all pick up the pace, now more of a slow jog than a walk.

“Pulled,” I repeat, remembering them using that word back in the clearing. The
lobby
. Luka and Richelle used it in the context of getting pulled from our real lives.

“We get pulled through time and space,” Tyrone says, and he must have read the disbelief in my expression, because he laughs and says, “Just go with it.”

Advice I decide to take, mostly for lack of alternatives. “So we can get pulled anywhere, at any time?”

“Pretty much.” He shrugs. “When we finish the job, we get pulled back again.”

His explanation only makes me want to ask about a billion more questions, like who pulls us, and how. Every time they try to clarify something, I end up more confused. Maybe Jackson was right when he told me that explanations wouldn’t cut it, that I’d have to see things for myself.

“You’re not arguing in disbelief,” Luka observes.

“Finding myself on a crowded street in Vegas is definitely going a long way toward making me a believer.”

Tyrone snorts. “You a gamer?” he asks.

I frown at the non sequitur and shake my head. “I’ve played.” Sometimes. With Carly’s brothers. But I’m no expert.

“Being a gamer helps with being a believer,” he says. “Anyway, here’s the crash course. You get points for every hit. There’s a bonus for timeliness. It starts out as triple points and decays by increments of point five.”

“We’ve yet to earn the time bonus,” Richelle says. She nudges Tyrone’s side with her elbow. “Some of us talk too much, which slows everyone down.”

“That’d be Jackson. He’s all chatty-chat,” Tyrone says, and he and Richelle exchange an amused glance. Then he looks back at me and continues. “Target at least three Drau in less than two seconds and you get multi-hit bonus points. Get them in the head? Bonus points. Get a stealth hit? Bonus points. Penalty points for injuries. Cost points for weapons.” He glances at Luka. “That pretty much covers it, right?”