Rush The Game

nothing familiar. No street. No crosswalk. No schools. No landmarks I recognize. And for the first time, I notice that there are more than three of us here.
    About ten feet away are two large boulders. A boy is sitting on one, a girl on the other. I don’t recognize either one of them. The boy’s a little older, maybe twenty or so. His blue eyes are a stunning contrast to his dark skin and black lashes. His curly hair is trimmed close to his skull. He looks like a model in a J.Crew ad, and he’s watching me with an expression that I can only read as sympathetic. The girl’s red haired and pale, blue eyed, too—what’s with that?—very pretty, with a figure that’s all curves. She’s wearing a cheer uniform. The only things missing are the pom-poms. They’re both wearing the wristbands.
    After a minute, the girl pushes off the boulder and walks over. She approaches me warily, like I’m some wild animal that’s going to pounce on her and tear her throat out.
    “Listen . . . um . . .” Her brows shoot up and she looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to tell her my name.
    “Miki Jones.”
    “Richelle Kirkman.” She gestures back toward the boy on the boulder. “That’s Tyrone Walker.” I recognize her voice. She’s the girl who was speaking when I first woke up, and I’m guessing Tyrone is the guy she was talking to. “You already had the pleasure”—she rolls her eyes—“of meeting Jackson.” At the mention of his name, I glance over to where he’s standing on the far side of the boulders. “And from the looks of things, you already know Luka,” Richelle continues, then frowns. “Which is odd because we’ve never had anyone go through who knew each other from . . . before. You go to the same school or something?”
    “Yeah. Glenbrook, in Rochester,” Luka says.
    “Minnesota? Michigan?”
    “What are you, a geography teacher?”
    “It’s a hobby,” Richelle says.
    Luka purses his lips and nods. “Rochester, New York. But I was living in Seattle when I was pulled. My dad was only transferred back to Rochester a couple of weeks ago. Right before school started. So we weren’t actually pulled from the same geographic area. But I wouldn’t say it’s never happened.”
    Richelle nods like that means something to her. She and Luka seem to know each other, so I wonder why she doesn’t know where he goes to school or that he used to live in Seattle. But I have more important questions to ask.
    “Pulled?” I glance at Luka.
    “Pulled from real life,” he says.
    His answer makes me shiver. I wrap my arms around my waist, holding myself together.
    Richelle shoots a hard look his way and jumps in with, “Don’t listen to him. We still have real lives. They just get temporarily interrupted every now and then.”



CHAPTER THREE
    PULLED FROM REAL LIFE . I HEAR THE WORDS THEY’RE SAYING, but there’s a lag between my ears and my brain. Hearing and understanding are two completely different things. “Real lives?” I ask.
    “Sure. I’m meeting my girls at Franklin Mills for some major shopping when we’re done here.” Richelle glances down at her cheer uniform and offers a wry grin. “I do plan to change first.”
    “Franklin Mills?”
    “Big mall in Philadelphia,” she clarifies.
    “But . . . we’re in Rochester. . . .”
    “You aren’t in Rochester anymore, Toto. We’re in the lobby, and in a few minutes we’ll be”—she makes a sweeping gesture—“somewhere else.” She pauses. “Listen, Miki. Here’s the deal. We get a mission. We kill—”
    “Terminate.” Luka cuts her off. “We don’t kill anything.”
    “That’s a relief.” I don’t even try to temper the sarcasm.
    “Prettying it up doesn’t change it at all,” Richelle says to Luka, her tone prim.
    “And that’s even less of a relief,” I mutter, feeling like Alice down the rabbit hole.
    Richelle turns back to me. I read commiseration in her expression. She doesn’t need to tell me that she gets it, that she knows how freaked out I am and that my questions and sarcasm are my only defense.
    “We terminate whatever it is we’re sent to terminate,” she continues. “Sometimes we’re sent to destroy a facility or a nest. It’s free-for-all scoring. There’s an individual score tally for each player. No team score. But really, the score that matters the most is survival.” She pauses, and her tone takes on a note of urgency. “Don’t let one of them get you before you’re