Rush (21 page)

A can rolls away, toward the grass, and I crawl after it. To my horror, Dad gets there first and squats down. His eyes meet mine as he lifts the can. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “He’s just a boy. Just be yourself. It’ll be fine.”

I stare at him, my brain struggling to catch up to his words. Then I get it. He thinks my weird, clumsy behavior is because Luka’s standing on my porch. Carly was so excited because she thought I was crushing on Luka. Now Dad has that same hopeful/pleased expression. Like he thinks that being interested in a boy will make me normal again. I bite my cheek to keep from laughing because I have a feeling that if I start, I won’t be able to stop, and it won’t be pretty.

When I nod, Dad offers a reassuring smile, then hands me the can, straightens, and says, “I’ll let you two finish the groceries. I have some work to do.” And off he goes.

As soon as the groceries are put away, I manage to get Luka out of the house without another Dad moment.

“You okay?” Luka asks.

I try to hold it back. I fail. I tip my head back and laugh. It’s the sort of laugh that makes other people cringe and look away. I know I’m at the very edge, but I can’t seem to pull myself back.

“Look at me, Miki.” Luka takes my hand in his and weaves our fingers together, and that’s enough—just barely enough—to steady me and keep me sane. With a last few weepy giggles, I get myself under control.

“Well, that was embarrassing,” I mutter, purposely ignoring his directive and looking anywhere but at him.

Wiping the tears from my eyes with the back of my free hand, I walk down the driveway to the end. Luka circles me so we end up facing each other, my back to the house, his to the street. He’s still holding my hand and I slowly pull free, wanting to keep it together all on my own. I can’t start depending on anyone else. It’s me and only me. I need to remember that.

“The first few times I got pulled—” Luka’s eyes slide from mine, and he turns his head and looks off down the street, his jaw clenched tight. “The first few times I got pulled, I was a mess when I came back. I stood under a hot shower for hours, shaking and”—he pauses—“crying. There was no one to talk to, no one to help me understand. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that to you, shouldn’t have made you go through it alone.”

I don’t remind him that I wasn’t completely alone, that when I was freaking out over Richelle, Jackson was there for me. At the moment, I’m not even sure how I feel about that, about him. One minute I think we have some sort of connection, that he cares about me. The next, I see that his eyes are Drau gray, and I’m left thinking he’s my enemy. I open my mouth. I almost blurt out what I saw. Instead, I say, “It’s okay. You were just following the rules.”

He offers me a lopsided Luka smile. “Rules are made to be broken, right? Anyway, I want you to know, I’m here. You can talk to me. I’ll answer as best I can.”

“Will you?”

“I just said so.”

“Okay. Then I do have a few questions.” More than a few, but only one is digging at me like a dentist doing a root canal. “Have you ever seen Jackson without his glasses?”

His brows shoot up. “Wow. Okay. Wasn’t expecting that as your first question. Is there a particular reason you want to know?”

I cross my arms and hug myself. Is Jackson one of them? Is he some sort of spy? Worse . . . is he a shell? Is he an alien inside a human form? I should come right out and tell Luka what I saw, but that feels like a betrayal. I don’t want to stab Jackson in the back; I just want to make sure that he isn’t going to stab me first. “You said you’d give me answers, not offer questions for my questions.”

Luka scrapes his fingers back through his dark hair and frowns. “Okay. I did say that. No, I’ve never seen him without the shades.”

More questions leap to the tip of my tongue.
Didn’t you ever wonder about them? Didn’t you ever ask him why he wears them?
But asking Luka will only make him suspicious, and I’m not ready to divulge Jackson’s secret, not until I have the chance to stand face-to-face and demand answers from
him
. So I head in a different direction. “You’ve seen a room like that with all those . . . people . . . before. In Arizona.”

“It was smaller. Not as many—” He looks around as though deciding if it’s safe to talk. “Not as many rows of . . . people. But pretty much the same.”

“Those—” I break off and consider my words. “Those girls—can we call them shells?”

“I guess.” He looks around again. “Yeah, I guess we can.”

“Did you know them? Did they look familiar?”

He frowns again and shakes his head. “No, why?”

“I don’t know. Something about them nagged at me.” He just stares at me, waiting for more. I’m frustrated because I don’t have anything more, just a weird feeling that I’m missing something important. “Did you notice that they all looked the same?”

Luka nods. “Same original donor.”

That’s what Jackson called the dead girl in the cold room. “But the shells in Arizona came from a different donor?”

“Yeah.” He sounds upset. I don’t blame him. The Drau stole girls, killed them by taking their brains, kept their bodies alive with machines, and used their DNA to grow an army of mindless clones, also kept alive by machines. Clones who weren’t quite right and ended up rotting from the inside out. I’d say that’s reason to be upset.

“Do they use male original donors? Do they create male shells?” The questions come out in a rush.

Luka thinks about that. “I don’t know. I’ve only ever seen females. But I’ve only ever seen two places like this, so that isn’t much to go on.”

The relief I’d like to feel doesn’t come. Just because Luka hasn’t seen a male shell doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I’m quiet for a second.

“Luka, have you ever heard them speak?”

He knows I’m asking about the Drau. His brows draw together in a frown. “I don’t think so. I’ve heard them”—he cuts me a glance through his lashes—“I’ve, um, heard them scream. At the end, if you know what I mean. But not speak. I think they have this telepathy thing. . . .”

Unease crawls through me. “Do
we
? I mean, do you have a telepathy thing? Have you ever heard someone in your head?”

He’s still frowning. Slowly, he shakes his head. “No. Why?”

I shrug, trying to look casual. “Jackson said something about wanting to question one of the Drau. I was wondering how he would do that.” Through some sort of telepathy? Because he’s one of them? The thought is like liquid nitrogen in my soul. I don’t want Jackson to be one of the bad guys.

I can see that Luka’s about to ask me something. I don’t give him the chance because I’m not sure I want to offer answers.

“I appreciate that you’re answering my questions, Luka. The thing is, I’d like to know why.”

He looks confused. “You asked me to.”

“But I asked before, too, and you refused. What’s changed?”

“I told you, I’m sorry I left you alone before. That I didn’t tell you stuff.”

“I know. And I’m okay with that.” Sort of. I’m not so good at the forgiveness thing. “But why are you telling me stuff now?”

Now he looks embarrassed. He shrugs. “Jackson told you stuff, and he didn’t die a slow and painful death. Or a quick and painless one. So I figure that it’s okay to talk, so long as we’re careful.”

“Okay, that makes sense.” I think about my next words and choose them with care. “But I agree that we still need to be careful. I think that there really is a danger if we talk about stuff here in the real world. Maybe there are shells living right next door to us.” My gaze slides along the street, then back to Luka. “After what I saw today, I think the rules really are there for a reason.”

“I never thought they weren’t.”

A cool breeze dances across my skin. Except, there’s no breeze; it’s a hot, sunny, sticky day. Again, I look up the street, then down. There’s no one else around. Just to be sure, I recheck, letting my gaze slide along the porches of the houses closest to us.

“Have you ever seen one—not a shell . . . a real one—here in the real world?”

Luka looks as horrified by that possibility as I feel. “No.” He shakes his head. “That would be . . .”

“Yeah, it would be. I feel like I’m in a horror movie,” I blurt out.

“Or a nightmare,” Luka says.

Grab hold and steer the nightmare. Maybe that’s exactly what Jackson’s doing. Maybe he’s steering all of us precisely where he wants us, like pieces on a chessboard or players in a game.

“Do you know what Jackson was doing just before we made the jump back to reality?”

“When you two were alone in that room? I think I do. And if I’m right, he does it so the rest of us won’t have to.”

So we won’t have to terminate a body that was once human. I shudder.

“She was already dead,” I say, wanting Luka to know that Jackson didn’t kill a person. “She wasn’t alive. They took—” I swallow, then huff out a sharp breath. “They took her brain. Because it’s a delicacy for them.”

Luka’s appalled expression mirrors my feelings precisely.

“You can do this,” he says softly. “I’ve been doing it for a year, and I’m okay. This time was a bit weird because we got pulled again so fast, but usually there’s at least a couple of weeks between missions.”

“Who sends us on those missions?” My voice is equally soft. “Who sends the weapons? Who keeps score?”

Luka just shakes his head, saying nothing, because there’s nothing for him to say. He doesn’t know. I suspected that before I ever asked. Then he shrugs. “Jackson says it’s—”

“—decided by committee.”

We stand facing each other on the driveway, separated by about three feet. Separated by a million miles. I want to ask him so many things. He won’t have the answers, not all of them. There’s only one person who has those, and I don’t know when he’ll show up again.

“Luka, I want Jackson’s number.”

He hesitates, his hands clenching at his sides. “Why?”

“You have it,” I point out instead of answering his question.

“Because he gave it to me. If he didn’t give it to you, I’m not sure it’s okay if I do.”

Now it’s my turn to study him, and I get the impression that Luka’s worries have nothing to do with the game and everything to do with the kind of person he is. “You don’t mean
okay
because of the game. You mean
okay
because you don’t want to mess with his privacy.”

“Well . . . yeah . . . Just like I wouldn’t give him your number without checking with you first.”

“What about my address?”

Luka’s eyes widen. “No! Never. Not without asking.”

“So you never gave him my address when you told him you were planning to break the rules and talk to me?”

“No.”

“Then how come he showed up on my driveway just in time for my run?”

Luka opens his mouth, closes it, then says, “I don’t know.”

“It’s okay, Luka. There’s probably a simple explanation.” Like Jackson followed me home after the first mission. Or he has secret methods of getting info. Or he’s a hacker. Or a stalker—actually that one I’m sure of. He already admitted he was watching my house. Whatever. I’m sure now that I won’t get answers from Luka, because he doesn’t have them.

On impulse I reach over and hug him. It’s sort of nice and sort of awkward, and it feels pretty much like hugging Carly except Luka’s taller and broader and his chest is hard and leanly muscled. It feels safe and pleasant.

It doesn’t feel anything like hugging Jackson.

Luka pats my back in awkward little spurts, and then he clears his throat and steps back. “So, uh, see you tomorrow,” he says, even though he obviously wants to say something else.

“Wait, just one more question. If none of us are supposed to have contact outside the game, why did Jackson give you his number?”

“I never said we couldn’t have contact outside. Just that we couldn’t talk about it outside.”

“Right.” I manage to drum up a smile. “Guess we’re all breaking all the rules now.”

“Guess so.” He backs up a few feet, still watching me, and raises a hand in an easy wave. “Call me if you need me, okay?”

“Okay.”

And that’s that. I watch until he turns the corner and disappears. Even then, I don’t go inside. I just stand on the driveway staring at nothing, letting the hot sun warm my back.

IT TAKES EFFORT TO FOCUS ON THE FACT THAT BETWEEN THE long trek through the tunnels, the battles, and sleeping in Jackson’s arms, I’ve been gone for nearly two days, but in my world, my real world, only moments have passed. My
real world
. Is this it? Or are the missions my reality now? Thinking about it makes my stomach roll.

Well, if this is my real world, I have stuff here to deal with, too: friends, Dad, homework, laundry. It’s hard to get my head around that. My focus for two days has been on staying alive, but Carly’s furious with me for some reason, and for her it’s only been about twenty minutes since she and Sarah drove away. It feels weird worrying about her issues when there are things so much bigger weighing on my thoughts, but in this world, the one where my life isn’t at risk every second, her issues
are
big.

I tiptoe into the house, trying not to alert Dad to my presence. The last thing I want right now is a father-daughter chat about boys. I head up to my room, retrieve my phone, and call Carly. It shoots to voice mail. I pull the phone from my ear and stare at it. Voice mail? Since when does Carly not pick up every single call?