“We can keep her from bothering you.”
I didn’t speak right away. Mostly, in truth, because I didn’t want to feel that mental shove again. I didn’t want the distraction of it. I knew that they could do things outside the game, too. The problem was, I wasn’t sure what the limits were. I didn’t know anything about the how, or how much. Not even why they were able to.
Project Hydra must be the key.
“Stop.” The word slipped out from Anavi.
“You know . . .”
“. . . how to make it stop . . .”
“. . . it would be easy . . .”
“. . . just as easy as it is for us to never stop.”
I didn’t have a way to go on the attack at this particular second, but I had a story. A story it was almost time to tell.
“Save the threats for someone who’s scared of you,” I said.
I put a hand on Anavi’s arm and nodded at her, and she tried to nod back. But it was weak.
Definitely almost time to tell the story.
I stood, hoping Anavi would do the same.
“What are we doing?” Anavi asked, but she didn’t fight, climbing to her feet when I tugged on her arm.
“Getting you out of here for now,” I said.
Devin was frowning at the Warheads. “Go. I’ll handle the teacher,” he said.
“You’re a prince, King,” I told him under my breath.
I was relieved, and even more worried, when Anavi let me lead her out of the classroom doors without a single big-ticket vocabulary word of protest about risking her scholarship. Her eyes were nearly shut.
I steered her carefully, but quickly, up the hall. Once we were several classrooms away, Anavi’s state changed, but it wasn’t so much an improvement. She . . . wilted. Like a delicate flower in burning hot desert sun.
With those dark circles around her eyes, she looked exhausted. “I don’t want my consciousness to be erased. But they said it would be easy to take it. Lois, it feels easy.”
I had been guiding us in the direction of the cafeteria, gambling that it would be empty. I was right.
The Warheads’ usual table was the closest to the door. She wouldn’t want to sit there even with it vacant, so I kept going until we reached the next one. I eased Anavi into a chair, and then sat down beside her.
“In the game last night,” I started, trying to decide on the most important answers I needed, “were they able to get in your head?”
Anavi hesitated. “It wasn’t like it is out here. But . . . something is changing. It was different. Here, I can feel them pushing and pulling, I can almost hear their voices in my mind. They’re getting clearer, pulling me closer, overtaking my own voice.”
She paused, embarrassed, like she couldn’t believe she’d said that out loud.
“I believe you. You can trust me.”
“There were whispers last night. When I was in combat with the bridge troll, I was too busy to notice, but once that concluded . . . You know that sense of disconnection there is when you’re inside the game? As if you’ve been split in two, cleaved, but the mind is the part that matters now and it has its own sense and sensation?”
I wouldn’t have put it exactly that way, but then I didn’t have Anavi’s way with language.
“It feels more real inside than outside while you’re there,” I said.
“The only way I can explain it is, last night, you heard and saw them in the game, but I also heard them outside it. Whispers in my ears outside too, after I departed, like a . . . a strange hummed tune, almost.” Anavi waited, but so did I. I didn’t quite understand yet. She continued, “They are bringing together their talents within and without. They are strengthening, making me one of them. It would be easy to submit. To be assimilated. In there and out here. I do not know if I can resist.”
Light spilled in through the long windows at the far end of the cafeteria, and from the kitchen there were the sounds of that day’s sad lunch being made.
“You’re stronger than you think,” I said.
“Maybe,” Anavi said, and I could see she was only half convinced. Which was better than zero convinced, but not ideal.
I opened my mouth intending to reassure her, but before I said a word the PA speaker beside the cafeteria door crackled to life. Ronda’s crisp voice came over it, saying, “Lois Lane, report to Principal Butler’s office. Lois Lane, to Principal Butler’s office, immediately.”
CHAPTER 10
When the announcement ended, Anavi was shaking her head. “You don’t have to put yourself in further jeopardy on my behalf.”
“Please,” I said. “They shot me in the shoulder. Now I’d do it just because.” Also, just because there’s more going on here. “Stay here and wait out comp sci. Avoid the jerk squad until I can find you.”