I take my time letting go of Luka’s hand, pretending Jackson’s expression has nothing to do with my actions. I notice that my con is back; the feel of it on my wrist makes terror gnaw at me with sharp little rat teeth. I want to tear it off and fling it into the trees. I force myself to do the breathing thing and get my heart rate under control. The screen’s green. I intend to do everything possible to keep it that way.
I look around for Tyrone. He’s there, by the boulders, his jaw clenched tight. I want to go to him, to comfort him, to say—
What? Anything I offer will be empty and shallow, and won’t bring Richelle back.
“Gear up,” Jackson says.
“There are only four of us,” Luka points out.
He’s wrong. There are hundreds of us. I can see them in clearings that mirror our own, some of them small teams like ours, some of them teams of more than a dozen. If I try and look at them, they disappear and all I see are the trees bordering our own clearing. If I don’t look at them, I see flashes of movement and the never-ending reflections of team after team, just like Gram’s powder-room mirrors.
“Four’s all there are going to be this time,” Jackson says.
How does he know these things? He knows when we’ll get pulled. He knows things about the mission—I remember that from the last time we were in the lobby.
“Miki.”
I turn just in time to catch the harness Jackson tosses in my direction. I slide it on the way he taught me and then jog over to the open metal box on the ground where there are four weapon cylinders nestled in dense black foam.
I glance up and ask, “Does it matter which one I take?”
“Hold your hand over the box, fingers straight, palm down,” Jackson says. “The weapon you used last time will come to you.”
I do as he said, and a cylinder shoots up and slams against my palm, making me gasp. I slide it into my holster and look at Jackson. He has the knife strapped to his thigh again.
“What about one of those?” I ask.
“A weapon’s no good unless it’s more of a threat to your opponent than it is to you.”
“But everyone knows you run faster with a knife,” Luka says.
Jackson’s brows rise above the frame of his shades. I whirl to face Luka, uncertain what he means.
“It’s an in-joke,” he says, spreading his hands palms up in a gesture of conciliation. “Gaming term. First-person shooters carry a ton of weapons. They pull out a big one, like . . . a bazooka? They run slower. They pull out something small . . . say . . . a knife? They run faster.”
I nod. “Even though they should be running at the same speed, because either way, they’re carrying the same amount of weapons, right?”
“Right. First game that concept appeared in was Counter-Strike,” Jackson says.
Luka glances at him. There’s some sort of guy exchange between them that involves nods and knowing smirks, as if that bit of trivia is super important. Whatever.
Jackson turns to me. “You still don’t get a knife, no matter how fast it’ll make you run. If your enemy grabs it, he can use it to gut you.”
“Thanks for the graphics.” He’s right. Even though I know quite a bit about kendo swords, I know nothing about knives. But I can learn. I mentally move “knife research” to the top of my to-do list for when I get back. If I get back. I close my fist tight and dig my nails into my palm. When I get back. “So how come you know how to use a knife?”
Jackson tips his head, and for a second I think he isn’t going to answer—answering questions isn’t exactly his forte. Then he says, “Combat application technique training.”
“Seriously?” Luka asks, looking impressed. “Like, you took a class? They actually have a class?”
“Yeah. Eleven months of training in Fort Worth.”
“I’ve known you for a year, and you’re only telling me this now?” Luka asks.
But that’s just it. Jackson wasn’t telling Luka, he was telling me. A small distinction, but one that matters, though I don’t exactly know why. I’ll figure it out. I just need to come at it from a different direction.
In typical Jackson fashion he closes the topic right when it’s getting interesting. “Discussion time’s over. Let’s move.”
I cast a look over my shoulder at Tyrone. He hasn’t said a word. He’s just standing there, jaw clenched, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans.
Luka collects his weapon, then turns back to Jackson. “Four isn’t enough. We’ve never gone with less than five.”
“Four’s what we have.”
Never gone with less than five. I freeze. I was the fifth last time. I was the new addition because someone didn’t make it back, didn’t respawn. Who? A boy? A girl? What did he look like? What were his dreams? And how could Jackson and Luka and Tyrone bear to lose Richelle so soon after losing someone else?
Snippets of a forgotten conversation come at me—Richelle’s and Tyrone’s voices from the first time I respawned in the lobby.
“. . . selfish jerk . . . Put all of us at risk so many times. Hanging back and stealing the hit points . . . all he cared about was himself and getting out . . .”
“Doesn’t mean he deserved to . . .”
“He put you at risk. As far as I’m concerned, that means he deserved . . .”