Crash (30 page)

“Numbers,” Lizzie says. “We're going to create a revolution, effect change, one team at a time.”

“What's stopping the Committee from killing us before we can bring the teams over to our way of thinking?” Jackson asks.

“We don't bring them over one at a time. We convince them as quickly as we can. One after another. The
Committee will be scrambling to catch up, to react. If we can get everyone on both sides to lay down weapons and refuse to fight, the game system will overload. The Committee won't stand a chance.”

I think about that for a second. “Start dropping water into a bucket a teaspoon at a time, and you won't see much. But if everyone drops in a teaspoon at the same time, everyone does their little part, then next thing you know, the bucket's full. I get that. What I don't get is how that helps us. The Committee keeps themselves segregated from the players. It's like they're behind a protective wall. Even if we overload the game system, how do we get at the Committee?”

“They rely on technology and keep themselves at a distance. They're used to acting as puppet masters, not getting their hands dirty,” Lizzie says. “And getting at them has posed a challenge. One we believe we've overcome. We're going to upload alterations to their GUI.”

I glance at Jackson to see if he knows what she's talking about.

“Graphical user interface,” he says. “It allows the gamer to interact with the game.”

“So . . . mess with it and they can't play?”

“That's the idea.”

“Will it work?” I ask.

“There's only one way to find out,” Lizzie says.

“You're planning to use the teams' refusals to play as
a distraction,” Jackson says. “Keep the Committee busy while you hack the system and take down the wall they hide behind, the one separating them from us.”

Lizzie grins at him. “It's going to happen fast and hard. You need to convert as many players as fast as you can. We'll work on it from our end.”

“Converting the Drau teams.”

“Of course. This won't work if only one side's on board. Plus, we'll be working at masking you from the Committee. It won't be foolproof. They'll know what you're up to. But we can protect you to some extent.”

“If the Drau technology is so advanced,” I say, “why don't they just use it take out the Committee? Why did they ever participate in the game in the first place?”

“Compared to us, they're advanced. Think of it like this: compared to the Drau, humans are pretty much amoebas on the technology scale. And compared to the Committee? The Drau are snails.” She tips her head, and again I have the impression her Drau companions are speaking with her.

“It's time.” She hugs me tight, then draws back, her hands resting on my shoulders. “Work fast,” she says. “There will be only so much I can do to keep you safe, and the Committee will be working to take you down. I don't know exactly what will happen once I'm in, how fast the walls they've created will come down or what will happen inside the game when they do. Be ready for anything.”

She turns to Jackson. The air around them crackles with tension. Slowly, she lifts her arms, takes a step toward him.

He doesn't move, doesn't even blink.

“Jax,” she says and closes the last of the distance.

He stands rigid as she embraces him, his expression set. Only as the floor spins away and the burning white glare of the walls grows unbearably bright does he take the leap of trust, and I hear him whisper, “Lizzie.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

WE RESPAWN BACK IN THE LOBBY; OTHER KIDS MOVE THROUGH their mirror lobbies in the periphery of my vision. The team leader I was watching just before Lizzie pulled us stands with hands on hips, her face turned toward us.

“She's first,” Jackson says. “She's alone. We'd only have to sway one person's opinion rather than a whole group. And from the way she's been watching you watching her, I'd say she's interested in talking.”

“They'll kill us,” I whisper. “You know that, right? If the Committee hasn't figured out that something's going on, they will soon. And they'll kill us, like they killed Luka.”

Just saying his name brings a crushing wave of sadness and loss. I don't fight it; I let the icy sensation crash through me, over me. Then I float to the surface, riding the wave
until I can breathe again. Jackson pulls me against him, and I loop my arms around his waist, letting myself hold tight, letting the solid strength of him anchor me.

He tugs lightly on my ponytail. “They'll
try
to kill us. That doesn't mean they'll succeed. Lizzie's keeping an eye on us,” he says, his voice rough, telling me he, too, is reeling from losing Luka. “She hasn't let them kill us yet.”

“True, but she can't watch us every second. Which is why I should do this alone. They won't go after you if you aren't part of it—” I say at the same he says, “And that's why you are going to stay right here while I cross into the other lobbies. I take the risk. The Committee won't go after you if you don't participate.”

With typical Jackson arrogance, he flashes a grin. “Great minds think alike . . .”

“And fools seldom differ.”

His brows shoot up. “Is that the other half of that quote?”

“That's the way Gram always said it.” I take a breath and step back, his hands sliding along my waist, reluctant to let me go. “I'm afraid to do this,” I say, and when he opens his mouth to tell me again that he'll do it alone, I rest my fingers against his lips. “But I'm more afraid not to.”

He laces his fingers with mine and together we start for the edge of the clearing and the team leader I saw standing alone in the mirror lobby. She sees us moving toward her and she walks closer to the edge of her lobby, watching us, waiting, her expression tense.

I drop Jackson's hand and run full tilt at the trees. For a second, it's just me, the slap of my feet on the ground, the rhythm of my stride, familiar, comforting. Then he's there beside me, long legs eating the distance as we sprint, side by side.

I don't know what to expect. Mostly, I think I'm going to slam up against an invisible wall and bounce back on my ass. But I don't. I pass through the barrier, stumbling out the other side. Maybe it's the force of our will that carries us through, or maybe this is the first sign of the success of Lizzie's überhacking skills. Either way, it hurts like hell, my skin burning like I've been stung by a thousand hornets, my stomach heaving.

Doubled over, hands on my thighs, head down, I take a couple of breaths, trying to master the nausea and pain. From the corner of my eye, I catch sight of Jackson. He's still upright, but his lips are pulled taut and his face is pale.

“Well, that was fun,” he says as I straighten up, his voice like gravel.

The team leader walks over, staying well outside our reach. Her lobby is larger than ours, and lacks boulders. It's just a flat, grassy oval surrounded by trees.

“Incoming?” she asks, studying us like we're a couple of alien specimens, hand hovering above her weapon cylinder. Can't say I blame her. If she'd just popped into our lobby, I'd probably feel pretty wary, too.

“Not exactly. More like party crashing,” I say. “I'm Miki. This is Jackson. We're team leaders, like you.”

She shakes her head. “Not possible. I've seen you on the same team. Both of you in that lobby.” She juts her chin to the left. “There's only one leader to a team.”

“Our team's a little different,” I say. “It's complicated.”

Her eyes narrow. “Why are you here?”

“We, uh . . .” I look at Jackson for help.

“We come in peace,” he says, lips curving in his trademark cocky smile. Way to win friends and influence people.

“That was eloquent.” I roll my eyes and he laughs and somehow that's enough to make the team leader drop her guard a little. “I'm Tara,” she says. “How did you get here? What are you doing here?”

“We're here to talk. There are things you need to know. Things about the game.”

“Okaaaaaay.” Her gaze jumps between the two of us, her hand still uncomfortably close to the hilt of her weapon.

“How long have you been in?” Jackson asks.

“Eighteen months.” There's a hint of pride in her tone. It hurts to know we're the ones who will strip that pride away, divest her of the comfort of believing everything she's been forced to do is for the good of mankind.

“Guess you've seen a lot of things you never thought possible in those eighteen months,” Jackson says.

She laughs, the sound rusty and dry. “You could say that. What about you? How long have you been in?”

“Five years.”

She gasps. “But, that means you would have been—”

“Twelve, first time I got pulled. I've been killing Drau
for five years and that's important for you to know because what we're about to tell you is going to be hard to swallow, and I need you to understand that it was hard for me, too.”

He tips his head at me and I start to talk, telling her everything Lizzie told us in concise terms. Tara doesn't believe us. Not at first. But I ask her questions and use her answers to guide me to new questions. I push her, make her think, make her draw her own conclusions. I stumble a few times, then finally get the groove, trying to judge from her expression how hard to hit, how deep to go, trying to copy the technique Lizzie used to help us reach the conclusions we did.

I get it now, why Lizzie made Jackson and I figure everything out for ourselves, nudging us in the right direction rather than just saying it plain and simple. Tell someone a truth that seems impossible, and she probably won't believe it. She's more likely to shut you down than climb on the bandwagon. But give her the tools to reach the conclusions on her own, to make decisions based on experience, let logic win the argument, and the truth speaks for itself.

That's what Lizzie did.

That's what Jackson and I do, and as Tara answers my questions, dragging out memories that don't quite paint the Committee in a rosy light, her posture changes, her expression alters, flitting from worried to afraid to angry.

“Have you ever met with the Committee?” Jackson asks, his voice low.

I glance around, wondering if they're listening to us right now. Wondering when they're going to intervene.

“Once,” Tara says with a shudder. “Mostly they just talk to me on missions. Inside my head, you know?” I nod, and she keeps going. “But this once, something happened and they brought me there, to that place . . .”

“The amphitheater?” I ask.

She nods. “With all the silent, faceless things watching.”

“Why did they want to see you in person?” Jackson asks.

“To reassure me, they said. But I felt more like I was on trial, like something bad would happen if I didn't give the right answers.”

“What did they need to reassure you about?”

“There was this girl on my team. She got cut off from the rest of us. When we found her she was hysterical. Sobbing. She kept saying the Drau saved her and she wasn't going to shoot them anymore. That they weren't all bad and that maybe we should try and negotiate with them.”

“You think she encountered Lizzie's team?” I ask Jackson.

“Could be. Or maybe just a group of Drau who couldn't bring themselves to kill a lone kid. What happened to that girl?”

Tara stares off at the trees. “She died on the next mission. My first loss as team leader. She was fifteen.” She sighs. “It didn't make sense. We were done. We were supposed to
jump in thirty. I could swear her con was yellow. Then she goes all sweaty and starts to moan and I check her con. Suddenly it's red. And she died, right there in my arms.” She pauses and then whispers, “I hated them for that.”

I wonder if the
them
she's referring to are the Drau or the Committee.

She jerks and lifts her head like she's just remembered we're there, or just remembered that we're strangers to her. Her expression closes. “I don't know why I told you that.”

“Because your own evidence supports what we're telling you. And because we get it,” Jackson says. “Like no one else ever can. I held my sister while her con went red.”

Tara's lips part and she stares at him in horror. At first, I think it's because of what he's just said, but there's something in her expression, something . . . distant. Like her attention's split between us and—

The Committee's talking to her. Right now. Probably telling her to take us out.
Jackson's voice, inside my head.

Her hand slides to her weapon cylinder.

I reach back between my shoulder blades and grasp the hilt of my sword. I won't kill her. But I'm skilled enough to know how to temporarily disable an attacker, nullify the threat.