Rush (15 page)

“You ever been caving?”

I shake my head.

“It’s disorienting. There’s no horizon line, and we won’t always be walking on the horizontal. The more lights there are, the more shadows are cast, and that can get confusing. Besides, I don’t want you wandering off and getting lost. If you’re relying on my light, you aren’t going anywhere.”

“That is pure condescending bullshit. Having my own light source would be less confusing, not more.” I glance at Luka. He frowns and shakes his head. I’m guessing he doesn’t like this any more than I do, but he’s not the one in charge. I turn back to Jackson. “What happened to every man for himself?”

“I’m bending the rules,” he says.

I roll my eyes. “What if I get separated from you?”

“Don’t.”

He moves forward and I stay close at his back, not wanting to fall outside the circle of light. I’m not afraid of the dark and I’m not claustrophobic, but this experience just might make me both. After a few minutes, Jackson reaches back and grabs hold of my hand. His fingers are warm; mine are like ice. I want to hold on tight and never let go, which is precisely why I pull my hand away.

“Why the glow sticks?” I ask. “Why not those helmet-mounted lights you see on TV?”

“We don’t have helmets.”

Good point. “But why the glow sticks?” It really doesn’t matter, but I need to know. I need explanations. Control. Information means I rely less on others and more on myself. Because in the end, that’s all anyone has.

“These don’t need backup batteries. They last as long as we need them to last. If we relied on human technology, we’d eventually run out of juice and end up in the dark.” He snaps his glow stick and we’re plunged into pitch black. I gasp and freeze, then Luka comes up behind me and his light catches me in the edge of its circle.

Jackson snaps his light back on. To my surprise, he takes it off his holster and attaches it to mine. “Better?”

“Yes.” It
is
better. “Why didn’t you just give me a light in the first place?” I’m both angry that he didn’t and grateful that he’s given me one now.

He says softly so only I can hear, “It seemed like a good excuse to keep you close.”

My breath locks in my throat. He can’t mean that the way it sounds. I tell myself he wants me close because I’m still new and he doesn’t want me to mess up. And I try not to look too closely at the reason I don’t want that to be true. Ambivalence—he brings that out in me.

“Why’d you change your mind?”

“It was obviously stressing you out. That isn’t the outcome I was going for.”

I stare at him, completely confused now. I don’t know what to think about him, how to feel. “Are you admitting you made a mistake?”

“Never.” He laughs and just like it did in the park, the sound reaches inside me and flutters around. “Can’t decide if you love me or hate me?” he asks.

“You make it sound like it has to be one of the two. Love. Hate. Those are strong emotions. What makes you think you’re worth either one?” My tone is flippant and I purposely don’t look at him, but I can feel him watching me.

Behind me, Luka snorts, telling me he’s heard every word.

Jackson leans close so only I can hear. “If you’re smart, Miki Jones, you’ll choose hate.”

I roll my eyes. “Why? What’s so terrible about you? I mean, other than the fact that you’re an annoying asshole who’s insanely fond of mixed messages?”

Luka steps between us and asks, “We stopping here for a reason?”

“Call it a whim.” Jackson cracks another glow stick and attaches it to his harness.

I poke at the glow stick on my harness. “So . . . these aren’t human technology?”

“No.”

“Why not just bring one of these out of the game? Show it to someone? That’d be proof.”

“Tried it. Twice,” Tyrone says from behind me. “They disappeared, just like Luka’s pics and his weapon.”

“And if you did succeed?” Jackson asks, his tone soft. “Have you forgotten the rules? The fact that we can’t tell anyone about the game? What makes you think you’d survive long enough to divulge a thing?”

The way he says that makes me shiver.

As he moves off, I see what he meant earlier. The shadows
are
weird and disorienting, dancing and weaving, then ending abruptly as they’re swallowed by the dark.

In Vegas, Jackson said that the Drau were sluggish in the dark. I wonder why they chose these eternal-night caverns to set up camp. I wonder how our arrival gave us away. I wonder where we are and exactly what our mission is. I hope I live long enough to find out.

The longer we walk, the more I think. The more I think, the more out of control I feel. There’s no Richelle this time to chat with me and keep my mind from going along a dangerous path, one that has any number of not-so-pleasant outcomes.

The air is cool, but we’re moving fast and I’m too amped to feel really cold. Still, I worry about what we’ll do if the temperature drops. “I don’t think we’re dressed for this.” The words run together in a rush. “And the caving environment . . .” I’m babbling now. “I saw this show about how spelunkers have to be careful because the environments are fragile. Even a touch can destroy—”

Jackson stops and turns to face me, the light on my harness reflecting off his ever present über-dark lenses. Which he’s wearing even in a cave. I start humming:
I wear my sunglasses at night
. . . . Then I start laughing, a little too loud. The sound bounces back at me.

He steps closer, close enough that I’m staring straight ahead at his chest, remembering how it felt to rest my cheek against it in the park. “Miki, you can’t control this,” he says.

“I—”

“We’re here. It is what it is. We don’t get a choice about that.”

“You make it sound like we get a choice about anything.”

His fingertips skim the back of my hand, just like they did that night in Vegas. “We could sit down here and refuse to move. That’s a choice. But I don’t recommend it.”

“Then what
do
you recommend?”

He’s so close that I feel his breath against my cheek. “That you hang on and enjoy the ride.”

Jackson leads us through a maze of tunnels. Everything is disorienting: the darkness, the restricted field of vision, the ever-changing shadows that have nothing to do with sun or moon. I can barely tell which way is up. There’s no real color here, only shades of gray cast in a greenish glow by the lights we carry. The textures blur and fade. Passages branch and change directions. I have a hard time knowing for certain if we’re moving on the horizontal, and I have an even harder time knowing how long we’ve been at this. Sometimes we can walk. Sometimes the tunnels narrow and dip so much we have to crawl, the rocks scraping my sides and back. Each time the passage branches, Jackson doesn’t hesitate. He goes right. He goes left. And we follow.

Every so often, he stops and turns and studies what’s behind us. “What are you doing?” I ask.

“The path is going to look different on the way out than it does on the way in. I’m doing a look-back. Memorizing the landmarks.”

“But we won’t have to find our way back. We’ll be pulled when we’re done.”

He stoops and takes some loose stones in his hand, then arranges them in a neat pyramid. This is the third or fourth time he’s done that.

“Just in case. Better safe than sorry,” Luka says, stepping up, positioning himself between Jackson and me. He studies my face. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” I nod, then turn and take a good, long look at the tunnel behind us, memorizing the outcrop high on the wall that looks like a bird’s beak.

Jackson saunters over. He makes a big show of looking at me, then Luka, and back again. His lips twitch as he shoulders his way between us.

Luka narrows his eyes at Jackson. Jackson holds his ground till Luka steps back. I’m starting to feel like a raw steak between two pit bulls. The thing is, it’s pit bull nature to fight, even when the steak isn’t there.

Then Luka juts his chin toward a group of large boulders ahead of us in the tunnel positioned perfectly at a fork in the route. “Good place to camp,” he says.

“Camp?” I ask.

“Hunker down and pick off the enemy as they run past,” Tyrone says from behind me. I glance at him over my shoulder. “In a game, it’s a good way to get a lot of points very fast.”

“Right.” I nod. “I’ve done that.”

Luka’s brows go up.

“Mostly Carly and I camp in paintball.”

“Makes sense.” Luka grins. “
Carly
and
running
are words that do not belong in the same sentence, even when you’re talking about paintball.”

“She doesn’t believe in achieving sweat unless the activity involves dancing.” And/or a guy. “So we usually just end up lying in wait.”

“But if the enemy figures out where you are,” Tyrone says, “you’re screwed.”

“Pretty much. Which is why we never win.”

“I’m a little surprised that Carly does the paintball thing,” Luka says. “They hurt when they hit.”

“And leave bruises. But Carly has a bunch of brothers. If she didn’t paintball, she’d have to miss their birthday parties.”

“My sister wouldn’t much care about that. She wouldn’t go paintballing if I paid her,” Luka says.

“Well, your sister only has one brother, so maybe she doesn’t feel as much pressure to paintball. Carly, on the other hand . . .”

“How many brothers?”

“Two older. Two younger.”

Luka looks away for a second, then back. “Maybe we should all go sometime.”

“Um . . . yeah . . . I guess.” I glance at Jackson. He’s been unnaturally quiet. I would have thought he’d break up social time before it got started. He’s watching us with his head tipped slightly to one side, his expression indecipherable. If I were forced to put a name to it, I’d say he looked wistful. Sad. But I can’t think why that should be the case.

“So what do you think, Jack?” Luka asks. “Good place to camp?”

“Would be,
Luka
, if the Drau were going to come looking for us,” Jackson says. “But they aren’t.”

“Why not?” I ask. “You said they know we’re here. Why haven’t they sent any security patrols to stop us? It isn’t like Vegas, where they don’t want to risk people seeing them. There’s no one else down here. Only us.”

Neither boy looks at me. They’re too busy glaring at each other. At least, Luka’s glaring, and I assume Jackson’s glaring even though I can’t see his eyes. I step back, leaving them a clearer sight line. Who am I to get in the way of macho posturing?

“For one thing, why expend the energy to hunt us down when they know we’re coming straight to them?” Jackson asks.

Comforting thought.

“They’re waiting for us to come to them so they can pick us off like a trash mob,” Tyrone says, sounding disgusted.

I glance at him. “Trash mob?”

“MMO term—”

“Massively multiplayer online,” Luka interjects. “Virtual game world. Gajillions of players.”

“Thanks. Actually knew that one already,” I say. “But still waiting for the explanation of
trash mob
.”

“Enemies that are just annoying because they travel in bunches and are too easy to kill.” Tyrone jumps in. “Not much of a challenge.”

“Like shooting fish in a barrel,” I say with a grimace.

“Just like.”

“And nothing like us.” Jackson’s tone is soft but laced with steel. “The Drau aren’t going to pick any of us off. We’re not so easy to kill.”

Maybe not easy, but still killable. The thought is sobering. I turn toward Tyrone. He’s leaning back against the wall watching us, one knee bent, the sole of his boot pressed to the stone. His gaze slides to Luka, then Jackson, his expression deadpan. “You done with the chatty-chat?” He lifts his brows. “We moving, or what?”

“If by
moving
you mean walking, I’m up for it,” I say. “Crawling through more of those tunnels? Not so much.” I put my hands on my lower back and arch, easing the strain. “It feels like we’ve been down here for days.”

Tyrone pushes off the wall. “How long
have
we been down here?” he asks Jackson.

“Six, maybe seven hours.”

“What?” I gasp, stunned that we’ve been moving that long and I didn’t notice the passage of time.

“When we’re on a mission, we can run longer and harder. We’re faster. We don’t have the same physical requirements that we usually do,” Luka says.

I remember him telling me that in Vegas. He said it had something to do with our cons. “Physical requirements like eating or drinking.”

“Or taking a leak,” Tyrone chimes in, with a ghost of a smile.

“Thanks for that.” I roll my eyes at him, trying not to make a big deal of how pleased I am that he’s offered up a joke, however lame. I know how hard it is to do that when your heart is broken in a million pieces and every word uttered takes a billion pounds of effort.

Then I remember something else Luka said, the first time I was in the lobby. Something about how we’re not really alive during the game. My good mood sours because some of us might not be alive at the end, either.

I swallow and look away, not wanting any of them to read my expression.

“Rest time’s over. We split up here,” Jackson says.

“Split up?” The thought sends a bolt of panic through my heart. “That sounds like a crappy plan. We should stay together.”

“No.” He doesn’t sound negotiable. “Luka, you’re with Tyrone. Miki, you’re with me.”

“I don’t think we should split up.”

“Not open for discussion.”

“This is a dictatorship, not a democracy?” I ask.

The muscles in Jackson’s jaw tense. He doesn’t usually bother to explain himself, so I’m surprised when he says, “There are two main entry points to our target. One at the north, one at the south. We need to clear both. It’ll take half the time to send a separate team to each rather than hitting one together, then moving on to the next. So what do you suggest?”

The way he asks that . . . it’s as if he actually wants my opinion. As if he wants me to make the call. I feel like my answer’s important, but I can’t imagine why. I’m not the one in charge here.

“We split up,” I say after a minute of figuring all the options. “Tactically, it’s the only good choice. But I still don’t like it.”