“Jump,” Jack said wearily as he stood over her and holstered his weapon. “Go on and draft. I like you better when you’re stupid.”
“What are you doing? You’re her anchor!” Allen exclaimed, and suddenly he was there, shoving a wad of those stupid napkins onto her chest. Jack must have nicked her lung. She had time, but only until it filled with blood. The longest she’d ever drafted was forty-three seconds. If she staved it off longer than that, it wouldn’t matter.
“I can’t fragment the trauma of you shooting her,” Allen protested. “It was going to be hard enough with Sandy or Frank doing it!”
Oh God. She was going to jump. She’d give anything to be able to draft a day, an hour. “I won’t,” Peri said, teeth clenched against the pain. “I’ll die first.” She coughed again, the ragged sound filling her with fear that she was tearing her lungs to shreds.
“If she dies, Bill is going to be pissed.” Hunched and wiping the blood from him, Frank went to Sandy, her loud swearing behind the bar saying she was okay. Peri hated them. She hated them all.
Allen, though, was holding her, his eyes soft, and even that small compassion from a stranger almost brought her to tears. His eyes are so pretty, she thought, deciding that his long nose suited him where it would look wrong on anyone else, and his thin hands were blessedly warm. She wouldn’t draft, not even to save her life. Bill would just have to deal with it.
“Peri, draft,” Allen said, and she blinked, wondering why his beautiful brown eyes were scrunched up as if he were the one in pain. “You can’t do anything when you’re dead.”
“What, and have all this go away?” she rasped. “Eat shit and die.”
Frustration pinched his brow. “If you draft, I’ll let you shoot Jack.”
Peri’s eyes flicked past Allen to Jack as the man popped up from behind the bar where he’d been helping Sandy. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “She can’t rewrite a draft. I’d be dead!”
“You’ll give me the rifle?” she wheezed, clenched in pain.
Frank came out from behind the bar. “Ah, Allen?”
Nervous and looking small, Jack backed to the door. “I’m not dying for her.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have shot her,” Allen griped, and he turned Peri’s face to look at him, his thin finger callused and rough. “How about it?”
“You’ll wipe me down to nothing,” she groaned. “Use me.”
He nodded. “Someone will. You’ll never remember Jack, but I’ll give you the chance to shoot him before you forget.”
Revenge wasn’t a good weight in the balance of actions, but right now … she didn’t give a shit.
“You guys figure this out. I’m leaving,” Jack said, and Frank cocked his rifle. It wouldn’t matter, though. If Peri drafted, he’d be right back in here and he knew it.
The pressure to jump was building, and Peri looked at Jack, white-faced with anger. Her fingers felt that awful slick stickiness of blood on the varnished floor. The feel of blood was in her mouth. Pain crushed her as Allen knelt beside her, a wad of napkins pressed to her chest. She squinted at the ceiling, wondering if she could see the ghost of herself up there. Everything was important, and she sealed it all away, trying to make a knot of memory as she panted in agony. She would remember this … but she’d need a trigger. Blood, varnish, slick fingers, the hardness of the floor, the pain of loss radiating through her, betrayal, Sandy’s hair twisted in her fingers. Allen was going to take the last three years from her, but killing Jack would be worth it.
“Deal,” she said, and then … she jumped, and the world flashed silver sparkles that dissolved into blue.
Hunched and hurting, Peri stood on the stage and wiped the blood from her cheek. Sandy rose up between her and the bar, panting as she touched her lip to find she’d bitten it. The woman’s hands clenched into tiny fists.
Peri reoriented herself, knowing that in thirty seconds she was going to be dumber than a stone. She was drafting. Jack had betrayed her. Bill was lining his pockets with Opti’s agents’ efforts. Her own psychologists were working for him. So was Allen, but he’d promised to give her a rifle so she could shoot Jack’s head clean off.
She turned to Allen, watching her from behind his thick glasses and from under black curls. Frank’s rifle was in his hand. It had one shell in it. It had to be enough.
“You spoiled, entitled little girl!” Sandy shouted, still before the bar but her words unchanged from the first draft, telling Peri she wasn’t a drafter or anchor. “I’m sick of you drafters complaining. You have someone waiting on you hand and foot, treating you like a god, and all you do is bitch about it when you lose a little memory. Life isn’t fair. Love is not real. I’m doing you a fucking favor!”
“You got that right.” Peri held out a hand to Allen, her fingers and toes tingling. What if he’d lied to her, too? Why was she so trusting?