Two more come at us, and from an offshoot tunnel, at least three more. I lose count. All I know is pivot, aim, shoot. The metal of my weapon cylinder is icy cold in my hand. My arm jerks from each recoil, but I force it to hold steady. Kendo’s trained me to bear up under the strain. There’s no time to think, to plan. There’s only me, or them.
I don’t look in their eyes. But that doesn’t keep me safe from their weapons. More than once, I feel the acid burn of thousands of needle points of light digging deep. I drop, roll, fire, evade, push to my feet and fire again. I don’t allow myself to process my fear. I just move. But on some level, I sense something off. They’re definitely faster than the two we encountered earlier, more organized in their attack, but still not as quick as the Drau we encountered in Vegas.
Tyrone gets one. I think Luka gets another. I spin, and there’s one directly in front of me. My instincts scream for me to retreat. I force myself to go on the attack, and all the while, I keep telling myself not to look at its eyes. I shoot. I score. The thing makes a sound, high and eerie. My head jerks up, and for a split second, I do look in its eyes, mercury gray, swirling like storm clouds around long, slitted pupils. Terrifying. Deadly. Beautiful.
A predator’s eyes.
Do I see fear mirrored there? Pain?
Doubts wing at me like a colony of bats. What if this is all wrong? How do I know these aliens are evil? How do I know I’m justified in taking their lives? Yes, they’ve attacked us every time, but we were the ones who invaded their turf. What if they’re like the dudes in that old show Star Trek who just want to observe life on other planets?
But if that’s the case, why attack us? Why not just try to communicate somehow?
I have no chance to know because the alien’s gone, sucked into the black oblivion that spews from my weapon.
Panting, shaking, I look around. Jackson’s watching me, his expression unreadable, his weapon pointing at the spot where the alien was standing only a moment ago.
“Watching my back?” I ask.
“I need you safe,” he says.
Unexpected words spoken in an indecipherable tone. He needs me safe because I’m part of his team, or he needs me safe because I mean something to him? Given the way he’s always insisting there is no team, it’s every man for himself, I have a hard time picking option one. But going with option two means asking myself why I want to mean something to him, and thinking about things that I just can’t face right now.
“Don’t feel pity for it. Don’t feel anything,” he says, his tone rough, angry. “Trust me, it wouldn’t feel pity or empathy for you.”
“How do you know that? How do you know what I’m thinking?”
“Because I thought the same things when I was fresh and naive. Give them the chance, and they will kill you. If they happen to be hungry, they’ll eat you alive. They like their prey fresh and bloody.” He yanks up the left sleeve of his running shirt, all the way to the shoulder. The scars there are horrible. It looks like chunks of Jackson’s flesh were torn clean off the upper part of his arm, then tossed back in place by a careless hand.
I gasp and rear back, remembering the Drau in Vegas and how it bared its jagged teeth.
“But we heal. When we go back, we heal.”
“Do we now?” Jackson asks, whisper soft. “This didn’t happen in the game.”
I think that might be the most horrific thing I’ve ever heard, the fact that the Drau aren’t confined to this alternate reality, the fact that somehow one got at Jackson in the real world and savaged him. At the park, he told me they could be listening. But I thought he just meant through satellites, not that they really might be there, close enough to touch. Close enough to hurt us.
I reach out toward his arm, but he takes a step back and yanks down his sleeve.
Luka and Tyrone jog over, panting. I wonder if Jackson yanked down his sleeve because he doesn’t want them to see his scars or because he doesn’t want me to touch them.
“Are there more?” Luka asks.
The four of us move to stand in a tight circle, backs toward each other, weapons ready.
My gaze darts back and forth, but nothing comes at us.
“Why don’t we make the jump?” I ask. “We seem to have”—I can’t make myself say the word killed—“gotten all of them.”
Jackson steps away and turns a slow circle. “They weren’t the mission. They were incidental. This way.” He strides off to the right—the direction most of the aliens came from—and we follow.
I glance at Luka. “What happened in Arizona?” It feels like the answer to that question is incredibly important.
His expression closes down, and he shrugs.
As far as answers go, that one’s pretty shitty.
“Luka, if you know something, tell me. It might save my life.”
He looks at me then, desperation etched in his face. “If it isn’t like Arizona, then there’s no reason for you to know. It’s too horrible for anyone to know. I wish I could scrub it out of my mind.”
“And if it is like Arizona?”
“Then you’ll know soon enough.”