Luka walks over to stand beside me, followed by Tyrone. A picture of Jackson bounded by a black border appears on the screen. He’s dressed in the clothes he was wearing the first time I met him, complete with the old-school aviator shades. In the picture, there’s blood on his clothes and a scratch on his cheek. The picture is odd and more than a little eerie because it isn’t a photo. It looks like a truly awesome 3-D rendering of a person. 3-D Jackson turns end over end, then zooms to the top left.
A new picture appears: Luka. He’s leaning against the wall, holding his arm, and I can see the white shards of his broken bones. I gasp. These pictures are from the end of the last battle. I take a step back, feeling uneasy as 3-D Luka turns end over end, and then lines up in the top left. Jackson’s image moves down a notch.
Tyrone’s next. The picture rotates up and over. He ends up above Jackson but below Luka.
I want to look away. The next picture will be Richelle’s. Or mine. Either way, I don’t want to see. But something pins me in place and I can’t tear my eyes from the screen.
The black frame forms. The picture shimmers into place. My heart clutches. It’s Richelle. Her last battle. Her last moment. Her skin is gray, her hair tangled, matted with blood. Her eyes are open, but she isn’t there. Beside me, Tyrone exhales in a rush, the sound like a deflating balloon. My gaze still locked on the screen, I reach for him blindly and loop my arm around his waist. He shudders beneath my touch but doesn’t pull away. I shudder right along with him, remembering the way Richelle touched me in the dark warehouse before the aliens came at us, offering silent support. Tears prick the backs of my lids.
We could have been friends. We would have been friends. I didn’t help her, didn’t do anything to help her stay safe. I barely managed to keep myself safe. And Jackson? He was busy keeping me from getting my brain sucked out through my eyes—at least, that’s what it felt like. Would he have been able to save Richelle if I hadn’t been there? Would he have even tried?
I cut him a sidelong look. He’s standing rigid and still, not even breathing. Every man for himself. He keeps insisting on that. And at the park, he told me not to feel guilty for being alive when others aren’t. But if he stands by his own philosophy, why does he look like the world is sitting heavy on his shoulders, his muscles tense, his lips pressed to a thin line?
Richelle’s picture dances to the left, nudging Luka’s down. She’s at the top.
Then comes my picture. I feel like I’m looking at someone I’ve never met. The girl looks pale and pained and wild. There’s fear in her eyes, but the tilt of her chin and the set of her mouth say she’s not quite out of the game, yet. She is me, but not me. Topsy-turvy I go, and then I’m in rank above Jackson and below the others.
Two columns of numbers pop up beside our images. The numbers beside Richelle’s name are red while everyone else’s are white. Red, like her con. Red, like her blood.
“What are they?” I ask.
“Scores,” Luka says. “The first column is our score from the last mission. The second column is cumulative for all the missions. The rank is according to the cumulative total.”
I stare at the numbers. Richelle had the lowest score for the last mission, but the highest cumulative total. That’s why her name is first. “Richelle was kick-ass,” I whisper.
“Yeah,” Tyrone says, his voice catching. “She was. And she almost made it out.”
My pulse kicks up a notch because I think I understand, but I barely dare hope. “Her cumulative score was nine twenty-five. How much did she need to make it out?”
“If she’d hit a thousand, she’d have been done.”
“Done . . . you mean finished? Finished with the . . . game?”
Jackson makes a sound of denial, but not because I’m way off base. It’s because, for some reason, this is something he wasn’t ready for me to know. I whirl toward him. “If she hit a thousand, she could have . . . what? Left? Retired? Escaped?”
“All of the above,” Luka says.
“It’s a rumor. You don’t know for certain,” Jackson says.
“So just to be clear, the rumor is that a thousand points buys your freedom?” I wait for Jackson’s nod. “And we get points for killing”—I glance at Luka—“Sorry. I mean terminating aliens?” Again, Jackson nods.
“How many?” I ask, and when no one answers, I ask louder, “How many points?”
“Five for a sentinel. Ten for a specialist,” Luka says. “A leader’s fifteen. A commander is twenty.”
So few points. It would take a very long time to get to a thousand. Maybe that’s the plan. Maybe whoever is running this bloody game wants to dangle the dream of freedom without ever delivering.
I turn to Tyrone. “You told me this. In Vegas.” I struggle to recall what he said. “You talked about multi-hit points and bonus points for . . . stealth hits. And . . . penalty points.” I pause. “When I first woke up here, I heard you say something about the boy who was here before me. . . .”
Tyrone’s expression darkens. “He was all about getting out. He didn’t care about the rest of us.”
“He was a griefer,” Luka says.