Push

CHAPTER ONE

“MIKI!”

There’s a boy calling my name.

Déjà vu. Sort of.

“Miki,” Luka Vujic says. “You okay?”

Wrong pitch, wrong tone.

Wrong boy.

There was a moment weeks ago when a different boy was calling my name, his voice inside my head, where no one else could hear.

That was the beginning, and the end. End of the known and familiar. Beginning of my new reality, where I jump between my life as plain old Miki Jones, and an alternate world where I fight the Drau—beautiful, terrifying alien predators bent on conquering Earth.

I don’t understand it. I don’t get how it works. All I know is that one minute I was trying to save Janice Harper’s little sister from getting hit by a speeding truck; the next I was lying in the road, broken and bloody. Dying. Dead. I woke up in a grassy clearing called the lobby, alive, healed, not hurt at all, lying on my back, staring up at a handsome face and old-school, mirrored aviator shades—both of which belonged to Jackson Tate.

Everything that’s happened started because of him. He was the one calling my name inside my head that day in the field behind Glenbrook High. He was the one crouched beside me when I came to in the lobby.

He tricked me, betrayed me, traded my freedom for his, offering me up to the Committee to take his place in the game.

Game. God, I hate that word. I can almost hear Jackson’s voice, insisting it isn’t a game. He was right. So right.

It’s life and death, horror and fear, and dragging me in was his only way out.

Maybe I should hate him for that.

But I think of the way he watched my back and saved me more times than I can count. He made me find the strongest parts of myself deep inside. He teased me, challenged me, believed in me.

He climbed through my bedroom window, made me laugh, made me smile.

He kissed me.

Told me he loved me—

my heart feels like it’s being crushed by a giant fist

—and then he—

the pain almost makes me scream

—died—

I force a breath past the lump in my throat

—for me. In my place.

He just needed to hang on for thirty seconds after he took the Drau hit. Just siphon off enough of my energy to hang on for thirty stupid seconds. But he didn’t. I wonder if he chose not to because it might have meant killing me.

Am I supposed to be grateful for that? Am I supposed to forgive him for leaving?

I snap the thought in half.

I’m not so great at forgiveness.

I glance around, forcing myself to focus on something—anything—to help me keep it together. Slate tiles, yellow walls, the smell of cheese and grease, a woman behind the counter, a man making pies in the back. The pizza place is exactly as I left it before I got pulled. That was days and days ago. Seconds ago. Time passes differently in the two distinct versions of my current life.

“Miki,” Luka says, urgent now. He’s about ten feet away, standing beside the empty booth we were all sitting in . . . before. Before the battle, the terror, so many people dead.

I nod to let him know I hear him, and the tension in his shoulders eases just a little.

I’ve known Luka since we were kids. We were friends until fourth grade, until his mom died. I was a clueless nine-year-old who understood next to nothing about loss and grief, and I let our friendship fade away. He moved to Seattle for sophomore year. We lost touch. Now he’s back, but we really only found each other again in the game. We’ve both been conscripted. I don’t know how Luka’s been balancing the crazy for a whole year. Between the time shifts and alternate realities, the aliens and the body count, I can barely keep it together after just a few weeks.

“Bam, we’re back,” he says, his night-dark eyes focused on me. Three little words that tell me I need to pull my shit together before I give something away. There are rules that say we don’t talk about aliens and battles and scores in real life. Breaking those rules might get us killed.

I clench my teeth so hard I swear I shear away a layer of enamel, and I nod again to let him know I get it.

Luka rakes his fingers back through his dark hair. His sleeves are pushed back and I stare at his forearm. No cuts, no blood. Last time I saw him was in the abandoned building in Detroit after the epic battle with the Drau. He had blood on his face, his hands, his arms. His shirt was torn, one eye swollen and purple. Scratches and cuts marred his skin in a dozen places.

Now, he’s fine. No wounds. No bruises.

I drop my hand to my thigh, half expecting to find sticky, warm blood and the shattered edges of my bone. But I find only smooth denim, soft from dozens of washings.

Of course.

We don’t bring our injuries back with us. Only our regret.

“Hey,” my best friend, Carly, says as she squeezes my arm.

With a jolt, I turn toward her. Until that second, I’d forgotten she was there, right beside me. For her, no time has passed. For her, it’s been seconds since I jumped up from the booth and darted for the door. But for me it’s been days of battle and blood.

The first time I got pulled, a girl on my team—Richelle Kirkman—told me that the hours we spend in the game get banked, that we get them back. We do. We restart our paused lives down to the precise second and reclaim the missing hours.

If we’re alive to come back at all.

Richelle was kick-ass, the best player on the team. She made it out every time. But not that last time. That mission ended with Richelle gray and still on the cold floor in a Vegas warehouse, her con full red.

Red like Jackson’s con.

Can’t think about that yet.

“I’m okay,” I mumble to Carly. A lie I need her to believe. I don’t dare freak out right now. I don’t know who’s watching, listening. Judging.

One brow arches delicately in that special Carly way, the pink streak in her #11 Extra Light Blond hair falling forward over her cheek. She just put that streak in a few days ago, but it’s already fading. No big deal. Carly’ll probably change it to purple or blue before the week’s out.

“You’re okay? Really?” she asks, the words dripping attitude and snark. It’s a front. She’s worried, and I hate that I’m the cause. She’s been so angry with me lately, our friendship yet another victim of the game and the secrets I’m forced to keep, but right now the only emotion mirrored on her face is concern.

A face so familiar. So special to me. She’s not part of my other reality; I never want her to be part of it, to fight, to die. I want to grab her and crush her in the tightest hug, but that would just make her worry more.

“I’m fine,” I say, trying to force my brain back up to speed. Missions demand one kind of focus. Real life demands another. This is my real life, the one where I run five days a week at the crack of dawn, vacuum the carpet in tiny, neat sections, iron the bedsheets, and wipe the kitchen counter even when it isn’t dirty.

Because I can. My choice. Mine. No one else’s.

“Do you want to go outside? Get some air?” Carly asks, then glances over her shoulder at Luka, either looking for approval or making sure he heard her.

“You think fresh air’ll help?” he asks Carly, but he’s watching me, his fingers curled into tight fists, the muscles of his forearms corded and taut. “You’re fine, Miki. Everything’s fine.” He dips his chin to the table beside him. There’s a pizza there and four unused plates, a key ring, and some bills that Luka must have tossed down to cover the cost of the meal no one will eat.

Nothing important there to see, so why did he want me to look?

Luka scoops his keys from the table and walks toward us. His gaze holds mine, his expression intent, and he lowers his brows like he’s doing a Mind-Meld thing. Problem is, the connection’s down at my end.

“Earth to Miki.” Carly snaps her fingers near my face. The faint scent of cigarettes carries from her fingers, a reminder of the distance that’s been building between us. She knows my history and she’s been smoking anyway. A lot of people who get lung cancer aren’t smokers, but Mom was. A pack a day. And now she’s dead.

Like Gram and Sofu and Richelle. And Jackson.

Everyone leaves.

I swallow, but the lump in my throat stays exactly where it is.

“Miki.” Carly tightens her hold on my arm as Luka steps up on my other side. “Breathe. Just breathe. You know what to do. You’ve done this a million times,” she says.

I have. In the two years since Mom died I’ve had tons of panic attacks. I know the signs, and I’m experiencing a bunch of them right now: the feeling that a sword of doom’s about to cut me down, the urge to escape, get out, run. The trembling. The shaking. The vise squeezing my chest.

They’re known and familiar enemies, and that’s why I recognize the subtle differences. This is no simple panic attack. It has extra special layers: it’s me battling for control, trying to balance the game with my life, locking the door against the agony that’s scratching to get in.

Jackson.

I can’t think about him yet.

“Outside sounds like a plan,” I say.

Carly wraps her arm around my waist and I cling to her, aching to spill it all out. The lobby. The battles. The aliens. The scores.

Her pupils are dilated, huge and dark, leaving only a thin rim of hazel green. Because of me. I’m scaring her.

I’m scaring myself.

I feel like I’ve been through a wood chipper and the slightest puff of air will scatter all the bloody, raw bits of me across the floor. And there, at the edges of my mind, is the numbness that’s shrouded my every moment since Mom died. It’s crawling back like a swarm of maggots to rotting flesh. Part of me wants to let it, to say: Yes. Welcome. Wreathe my world in fog. Make me numb. Make me feel nothing, nothing at all.

But I don’t want to be that girl anymore. I’ve worked so hard to be normal.

You were never just a normal girl. I hear his voice in my head, but it’s just a memory.

Jackson’s gone. Forever.

I thought I could save him like he saved me.

I failed.

I can’t bear it. I can’t mourn again, can’t do it, not right now. Not anytime soon.

The guy in the back is singing off-key while he makes the pie. The woman behind the counter plants her fists on her hips. Her expression’s pretty clear. She’d like us to find the exit, like . . . now. Thanks for the concern, lady.

The few steps it’ll take me to get to the door stretch like an abyss before me. I’m not sure that my legs won’t buckle before I hit the sidewalk.

Carly shifts my arm from her waist and drapes it across her shoulders. Like she’s afraid I’ll crumble. I won’t. I refuse. I won’t let this break me.

“Miki, it’s okay,” Luka says, drawing out the last word like he’s trying to tell me something. I watch the key ring spin round and round and round his index finger.

“Slow breaths. You know the routine,” Carly says, and shuffles us both a couple of steps closer to the front door.

My thoughts are a series of cyclones churning destruction wherever they touch down, then moving on, spinning out of control.

From the corner of my eye, I see the keys go around again. The leather fob angles toward me so I can read the word on the round medallion at the center: JEEP.

And then everything stops. No confusion. Just clarity.

Those keys in Luka’s hand: they aren’t Luka’s; they’re Jackson’s. I remember him throwing them down on the table when we first settled in the booth.

My gaze shoots to the table. Four plates. Four.

I stop dead, despite Carly’s less-than-gentle urgings toward the door.

“Find Jackson,” Carly orders Luka. “Where is he, anyway? We need to go. Like, now.”

Go. We need to go. We need to! . . .

“Wait!”

I break from Carly’s hold and turn to stare at her. She just said his name. Jackson. She remembers him. Remembers that he was here at the pizza place with us. My heart stutters, then starts to race double time. He’s not here now, but . . . he’s not dead.

Because if he were, Carly would have no memory of him at all. That’s what happens when you die in the game. Your entire existence from the moment you were conscripted gets wiped out as if it had never been.

When Richelle died in a Drau-infested warehouse in Vegas, everyone in her real life forgot all their interactions with her during the months from the time she was first pulled to the time her con went red. According to her memorial page, she died seven months before I even met her.

The only people who remember those months are the ones who knew her in the game—me, Luka, Tyrone, Jackson. For some reason, our memories of her remain.

If my con turns full red, I’ll go back to the moment where I’m lying in the road, my blood smeared on the truck’s bumper and pooling underneath me, warm and sticky. I’ll go back to my heart beating slower and slower until it stops. That will be the moment that all I am in this reality ends. My friends, my family will all forget everything about me from that second on. Like I’d never lived the intervening days, weeks, months at all. Not even memories of me from that time left behind. Just . . . nothing.

For Jackson, his life would be snuffed years ago when he died in the real world in a car crash with his sister at the wheel. In that fraction of a second somewhere in the past, he would cease to exist.

That would mean Carly never would have met him.

He wouldn’t have been here with us, out for pizza.

So while Luka and I would remember him from the game, Carly wouldn’t even know his name.

But she does. In fact, she thinks he’s here somewhere, not gone at all.

A tiny, terrifying seedling of hope unfurls. I clutch Carly’s forearm. “Did—” My voice is little more than a croak. I swallow and try again. “Did you see where Jackson went?”

“Would I be asking Luka to find him if I had?” She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “It’s like he disappeared into thin air. Check the can,” she orders Luka.

My gaze shoots to his. He smiles a little, holds up the keys, and jangles them. This is what he wanted me to figure out.

Jackson’s alive.

Tears sting my eyes, threatening to fall. I didn’t cry when I thought he was dead, but now that I think he’s alive I’m about to collapse in a sobbing heap. I bite the inside of my cheek hard until I feel like I can keep it together.

Jackson’s alive.

Which doesn’t make sense because his con was red. He was dead.

I need to find him.

“We need to find him,” Luka says.

“That’s why I told you to check the can,” Carly says.

But Luka wasn’t talking to her. We need to find him, which means I need to get Luka alone so we can figure out a plan.

“Luka! Go check.” Carly sounds exasperated. “I’d do it but, hey”—she waves her fingers in the general direction of her fly—“missing some equipment here. . . .”

“He’s not—” With a shrug, Luka gives up and heads off to do as Carly ordered.

But we both know Jackson isn’t in the little boys’ room.

He’s . . . somewhere else.