“I did it. I was twelve years old and terrified. I didn’t want to die. She told me I’d be able to stop. She sounded so sure. I believed her and I did what she said. I looked in her eyes and thought about how I wanted to live, thought about taking what I needed. I can’t explain what it felt like. I became a whirlpool, a vortex. My skin sparked. My nerves hummed like transformer wires. I was so amped I was shaking. The next thing I knew, my con was yellow and hers was red and there were Drau everywhere around us, shooting, hunting. A second later, I was on my feet, hunting them.”
His gaze locks on mine, his pain stark and bare. “We fought on. We lost three more. And I couldn’t take her with me when we were done. I tried. I held her. I looped my harness around us both thinking that would bring her along. It didn’t. In the end, I left her lying there, her con bright red. I didn’t get a choice.” His jaw sets in a tense line, then he goes on. “I left my sister there, but I brought one of them back with me. By accident. I thought they were all dead. We shouldn’t have made the jump if they weren’t. But somehow it was alive and it came along. Back to the real world. I had it by the throat and I wouldn’t let go.”
I glance at his arm, and though his shirt covers the scars I see them in my mind’s eye. I know they’re there. He hates himself for that, too, blames himself for bringing a Drau back to the real world. I wonder what happened to it, how he escaped its grasp. He was only a kid. But I don’t ask. I feel like if I ask, if I say a single word, he’ll shut down and tell me nothing.
“I left her there,” he says, “and the Drau took her and they put her on machines and kept her body alive long enough to create an army of shells in her image. And three times now, I’ve had to go back in and kill my sister all over again.”
My legs give way and I’m on my knees, tears streaking down my cheeks. I hold my hand out to him, feeling his pain, aching to heal him. “Jackson,” I whisper.
He shakes his head and backs up another step. “No, I’m not done. You think that’s the worst of it? It isn’t. I didn’t just kill my sister, Miki. I did this to you. I doomed you to this. I’m the one. I found you. I convinced them to take you. All because I thought it was a way out. I thought I could trade you for my freedom. I convinced them to take you even though they don’t usually take kids that have no siblings.” He offers an ugly laugh. “How ridiculous is that? They think that if a family loses one child, it’ll be easier if they have a second one. A spare.” The words are harsh and guttural. “They don’t understand humans. Not at all.”
I stare at him, trying to understand. “But they took you. They took both of you. Lizzie and you.”
Jackson stares at me for a long moment. “I volunteered. Like I had a choice. It was volunteer for the game or die in that car.”
I wrap my arms around myself, chilled to the core, my emotions stretching and recoiling like an elastic band. From the euphoria of Jackson’s kiss to this, to the tears tracking down my cheeks and the pain in my soul.
“So, I’m in the game because of you?”
“Yes.” His beautiful mouth twists. “Hate me now, Miki. I deserve it. I told you my motives were anything but pure.” I gasp and flinch when he spins and slams his fist against the wall. He stands there, chest heaving, head bowed. Blood drips from his knuckles. “I’d change it if I could. I’d give my life for you if I could.”
He doesn’t look at me. I don’t know how much time passes. A minute. An hour. Then he says, “And it was for nothing. They’ll never let me go. They’ll never let either of us go.”
I want to go to him. I want to run from him, from this place, from the tangled mess my life has become. I don’t know what to think, how to feel. I’m angry and hurt. Betrayed. Appalled. Part of me hates him for what he’s consigned me to. Part of me only knows that his pain hurts me, too.
He’s been doing this for so long. I can’t imagine how desperate he was to escape.
My brain is on overload. I can’t process everything I’ve learned.
“Do you remember in the park when you told me not to feel guilty that I was alive when Richelle and Mom and Gram and Sofu were dead? Do you remember that?” I watch as another fat drop of blood slides from his split knuckles and hits the ground.
“You have nothing to feel guilty for,” he says, his voice low, vibrating with emotion. “You didn’t kill them.” He turns to face me then, his eyes blazing. “And you didn’t consign the girl you love to this hell.”
The girl he loves.
I open my mouth to tell him I hate him for what he’s done to me. Or maybe it’s to tell him I love him, too. To tell him I forgive him. I do. I forgive him. Don’t I?
I need to tell him that maybe he wasn’t the one who killed his sister. That maybe the Drau who were attacking them killed her with their weapons.
But the wooziness I recognize too well hits me. I try to push to my feet. I try to speak. Then the world spins into color and light and bright, sharp pain bursting in my head as I make the jump.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE RESPAWN IS TERRIBLE. NOT PHYSICALLY—I’M USED TO that part now. But my emotions are tied up in ugly little knots, choking me. I open my eyes to leaves and grass and two familiar boulders; Luka’s sitting on one, Tyrone on the other.
“What the hell happened?” Luka asks.
“What do you mean?”