Rush The Game

of light disgorge from its shimmering weapon. As they hit, pain bursts on my skin, piercing me like the stingers of a hundred hornets. An invisible band tightens around my torso, constricting my ribs. Crack . The sensation of my rib snapping is sharp and pure and agonizing. I can’t catch my breath. My vision goes gray at the edges. The bitter taste of my fear scrapes my tongue.
    I think I cry out. Then I think that maybe my scream is locked in my mind. It takes me a second to realize that the sound I hear is actually coming from behind me, an inhuman cry followed by a human one, desperate and terrified.
    “Tyrone!” Richelle’s voice. There’s a beat of silence, then a high, tortured scream.
    Someone’s hit. Someone’s hurt. I want to look. I want to help. I can’t. The alien holds my gaze, a predator mesmerizing its prey.
    Miki! Jackson’s voice is inside my head, shooting past the pain, both sharpening and shredding my focus.
    From the corner of my eye I catch a flash of movement: a black-booted foot at the end of a khaki-clad leg. Then the alien’s weapon flies up in an arc, spinning end over end, and the devastating pressure on my lungs eases. Dragging in a breath, I wrench my gaze away.
    I’m shaking. My teeth are chattering. My fingers feel numb and prickly, like I’ve been out in a blizzard without gloves. It takes enormous effort to stay up on my knees and keep my grip on my weapon cylinder. I still haven’t figured out how to use it, but I’m not willing to let it go.
    The alien in front of me takes a step closer. Just one. It doesn’t dart in for the kill . . . because it’s toying with me.
    Predator. Prey. It likes this game.
    I will the cylinder to fire, but it sits smooth and inert in my grasp. So I chase the only option left to me and dive for the jellylike gun that Jackson kicked from the Drau’s hand.
    The alien’s a beat faster. It has its weapon. I have mine—which is a boatload of useless because I still haven’t figured out how to make it work. My heart gives an ugly lurch in my chest.
    To my left there’s another cry, high and short, even more disturbing than the one I heard before. The sound chills me. I don’t dare look around to try to see who’s been hit. I don’t dare look anywhere but at the creature stalking me. We’re separated by only a few feet now.
    Sofu taught me to mask any fear and uncertainty because seeing it would give my opponent the edge. Aim to intimidate, Miki, even when you don’t feel it . I remember his words as I huddle here facing an impossible foe, and I snarl, “You’re going down,” mostly because I can’t dredge up anything better. Maybe if I say it, I’ll actually believe it.
    The Drau moves closer. Its face—almost human—looms larger and larger, filling my vision and my thoughts. I try to avoid its eyes, but in the end, I fail. Pain sears me, stronger than before. Unbearable.
    I stumble and scream, my cry of agony reverberating through the room, echoing inside my head.
    The pain, my fear—they piss me off. This is not the way I plan to make my exit from this life, kneeling on the floor, shaking and gasping. If I’m checking out, it’ll be on my terms—just like my mom. Near the end, every doctor agreed that there was no hope and every test confirmed it, so she signed herself out of the hospital, declined heroic measures. For the longest time, I’ve been angry with her about that, too. But maybe, in this second, I understand her motivation just a little. She couldn’t change the destination. All she could do was pick the route. When she closed her eyes for the last time, she was in hospice with my dad and me by her side and AC/DC rocking on. Her terms. Yeah, so maybe I get it now. What a time to have a revelation.
    A fresh wave of pain assaults me. This time when I scream, it’s the way my grandfather taught me, loud and true, a kiai shout that focuses my energy and my will into the attack and the weapon cylinder in my hand. The metal chills until it’s like ice against my palm. A high-pitched hum starts, and vibrations run up my arm. Darkness arrows from the cylinder’s open end, instantaneous and forceful, packed with power, like water shooting from the end of a fire hose. My arm jerks back with the recoil.
    It worked. The weapon worked—
    The Drau zips aside. My shot wavers and then disappears.
    —I missed.
    It’s as if I hear my grandfather’s voice in my head: Mamoru . Defend. Protect.
    I won’t just defend,