PULLED FROM REAL LIFE. I HEAR THE WORDS THEY’RE SAYING, but there’s a lag between my ears and my brain. Hearing and understanding are two completely different things. “Real lives?” I ask.
“Sure. I’m meeting my girls at Franklin Mills for some major shopping when we’re done here.” Richelle glances down at her cheer uniform and offers a wry grin. “I do plan to change first.”
“Franklin Mills?”
“Big mall in Philadelphia,” she clarifies.
“But . . . we’re in Rochester. . . .”
“You aren’t in Rochester anymore, Toto. We’re in the lobby, and in a few minutes we’ll be”—she makes a sweeping gesture—“somewhere else.” She pauses. “Listen, Miki. Here’s the deal. We get a mission. We kill—”
“Terminate.” Luka cuts her off. “We don’t kill anything.”
“That’s a relief.” I don’t even try to temper the sarcasm.
“Prettying it up doesn’t change it at all,” Richelle says to Luka, her tone prim.
“And that’s even less of a relief,” I mutter, feeling like Alice down the rabbit hole.
Richelle turns back to me. I read commiseration in her expression. She doesn’t need to tell me that she gets it, that she knows how freaked out I am and that my questions and sarcasm are my only defense.
“We terminate whatever it is we’re sent to terminate,” she continues. “Sometimes we’re sent to destroy a facility or a nest. It’s free-for-all scoring. There’s an individual score tally for each player. No team score. But really, the score that matters the most is survival.” She pauses, and her tone takes on a note of urgency. “Don’t let one of them get you before you’re pulled back. When you finish the mission, when you manage to make it through? Then you respawn, you know . . . rematerialize miraculously healed and you get to go back to your regularly scheduled life. Until the next time. Got it?”
I don’t get it, not even a little. I cut a glance at Luka. He shrugs and says, “What she said.”
“I don’t understand.” I mean, I understand the words—team, score, mission, respawn—but the concepts make no sense. “Is this a game? Are we LARPing?”
Richelle frowns. “LARPing?”
“Live action role playing? Like Dungeons and Dragons?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
“No,” Luka says. “How do you know about LARPing?”
“Terry Chen.”
He nods.
I look at Richelle. “Is this cosplay?” Costume play. Before Luka can ask, I explain, “Kelley dragged all of us to an anime fan convention last year, and tons of people were dressed up and carrying weapons that looked real. Actually, a lot of them seemed to believe their costumes were real.” But I don’t really think we’re playing dress-up here.
“Think of it like a video game. One we don’t play on a screen,” Luka says at the same time as Jackson says from behind me, “It isn’t a game.”
I spin to find Jackson standing just a couple of feet away. He’s still wearing the khaki green pants and T-shirt that I saw him in when I first woke up, but now he looks different. It takes me a second to realize that he’s wearing a sheath tied against his thigh, the handle of what I suspect is a knife sticking out the top. There’s a leather band crossing his shoulder and a second one riding low on his hips with the butt of a weapon protruding from the holster.
“This isn’t a game,” he repeats. “It’s real. What you do here determines your survival.” He pauses. “And the survival of every other person on this planet.”
I laugh.
He doesn’t.
And that tells me he’s either serious or seriously crazy. Please let him be crazy.
As I stare at him, something flickers at the edge of my vision. I turn my head. Nothing’s there. But as I turn back to Jackson, something flickers again. People. Trees. Boulders.
When I was little, Gram had this powder room that was all done in mirrors. I’d stand there and wash my hands and see a million Mikis washing their hands at a million sinks in a million bathrooms. That’s what this feels like. The images I catch from the corner of my eye are like the reflections I used to see in those mirrors; if I turned my head, the reflections would change. If I turn my head now, the reflections disappear.
I stare at Jackson, and in my peripheral vision, I see other clearings filled with people, on and on ad infinitum.
“Who are they?” I ask softly, my question aimed at Jackson, but it’s Luka who answers, “Who?”
I shift my attention to him, and at the edges of my vision are the others. “Them.”
“Them who?” Luka’s brows draw together, and he pulls his head back. “You okay, Miki? We’re the only people here.” He makes a big show of looking around the clearing and spreading his hands. “You see anyone else?”