Rush The Game

because I have a feeling that won’t be enough to keep me alive. I’ll attack. I need to hit this thing where it has no defense.
    I move on instinct, diving forward, belly to the floor, because I know my legs are too rubbery to hold my weight if I try to stand. I go sliding through the alien’s spread legs, roll onto my back, and shoot directly up.
    For a frozen millisecond, nothing happens.
    The Drau reaches down, glowing fingers curled and clawlike, smooth and reflective as glass. My heart slams against my ribs.
    Then the black hole spurting from the muzzle of my weapon sucks in the alien’s hips . . . legs folding up alongside its torso . . . shoulders . . . arms. Gone. Its light is gone. Extinguished.
    I did that. I killed it.
    Bile burns the back of my throat.
    I have no chance to puke. Or to celebrate. Another bright form comes at me. But I’ve learned from my mistakes. I don’t look at its eyes, and I don’t hesitate. I push to my knees and shoot. The hum starts; I realize now that it’s the sound of the cylinder powering up. My weapon’s darkness sucks out the Drau’s light. I have a handful of seconds to lurch to my feet before another zooms at me. They don’t just want me dead. They want to make me suffer. They want to enjoy it. Somehow, I know that, and it horrifies me.
    Adrenaline surges. I spin. Shoot. Spin again. Shoot. I don’t know how many there are or how long we fight, but then I’m spinning and aiming and there are no more targets.
    I’m panting, gasping, feeling like the whole world is out of control. It takes me a second to orient myself. When I do, I see Luka by the far wall.
    “I thought you guys said they’re slower at night.” The words that come out are not the ones I mean to say.
    “That was slow,” Luka answers, his voice tight. “You don’t want to see them during the day.”
    He’s right. I don’t. I don’t want to ever see anything like them again.
    Luka sags back against the wall. He’s holding his arm across his abdomen, supported by his opposite hand. There’s blood dripping from a ragged gash in his forearm. “I’m going to lose points for this,” he says wanly.
    I stagger toward him, barely able to stay upright, but the look of sheer horror that creeps across his features stops me cold.
    “How many times were you hit?” he asks, trying to push off the wall and failing.
    “I don’t know.” I glance down. I see nothing to justify his expression. And then I do. First, I see my thigh. My jeans are sliced clean through, and the cloth is wet, saturated with my blood. I don’t remember getting cut.
    Then I see my wrist. The screen on my black band’s no longer green. It’s an orangey red.
    Don’t let it turn red . That’s what Jackson said to me back in the lobby.
    “It’s not red,” I say to Luka, though I don’t know if I’m reassuring him or myself. “It’s orange, not red.” I’ve barely finished saying that when my legs drop out from under me and I slump to the floor. Fatigue hits me like a truck. I’m tired, so tired, and colder than I’ve ever been. And every inch of my body screams in pain.
    “You looked in their eyes,” Luka says, every word dripping horror.
    I look at Luka’s con. It isn’t the dark green we started with, either. It’s more of a greenish yellow. ROY G BIV. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet . I can almost hear Mr. Clement’s voice droning out the spectrum over and over again as he handed out the prisms back in eighth-grade science class. I don’t know why, but thinking about it now makes me want to laugh.
    Then it makes me want to cry.
    I’m so tired.
    I force my eyes to stay open even though they want to close. Luka tells me to hang on, his voice tinny, echoing like it’s coming to me through a very long tube. I see him try to move toward me, but his leg buckles. He’s hurt. There’s blood. The uneven shards of his arm bones are poking through his skin, so white against the red, red, red.
    There’s a low, keening moan beside me. I turn my head and see Tyrone crouched on the ground. There’s something in front of him. No . . . not some thing . Some one .
    “Richelle,” Tyrone rasps, and holds out his hand toward her. But he doesn’t touch her. Why doesn’t he touch her? Why doesn’t he help her?
    She’s not moving. She’s just lying there, her limbs at awkward angles.
    Pushing my hands against the floor, I try to leverage myself up. But I can’t. I’m too weak. The