Read Online Rush The Game by Eve Silver - Free Book Online

eyes open. My focus sharpens. I’m falling, and there’s no way to stop it. I see the truck, so close I can make out the chunks of rust on the grille. I see the pavement, flat and gray, coming up to meet me. I hit hard and slide along the rough surface, layers of cloth and skin scraping away.
    There’s the endless screech of the brakes and the smell of burning rubber. My head jerks up and I try to scramble out of the way. I can’t find my footing.
    Terror clogs my throat.
    Then there’s a hand on my arm, tight as a vise, yanking me to my feet.
    Luka.
    He pulls. I pull. Opposite directions. Our dance is all wrong.
    He lets go abruptly. Stored momentum propels us away from each other. I tumble back and land hard on my ass and my elbows.
    Music blares. Brakes scream. I feel a rush of air as the old pickup truck surges through the space between Luka and me. It comes to a screeching stop about five feet away.
    Sprawled on the ground, I stare at the truck, my elbows stinging where they scraped along the pavement. A quick inventory tells me I’m not seriously hurt. My gaze jerks to Luka. He’s on the ground, limbs splayed. The sight makes me think of Richelle, lying so still just before we got pulled.
    Luka pushes to his feet. His arms are whole and smooth—no blood, no shattered bone, no torn skin. Other than a fresh scrape on his knee and another on his hand, he’s all in one piece. And I’m in one piece, not broken and bloody. There’s no gash on my thigh. Even my jeans are in one piece—no rip in the fabric, no bloodstain.
    Luka and I are both fine. Just like Richelle said, we respawned: rematerialized miraculously healed. That must mean that wherever she got pulled to, Richelle is okay, too. And Tyrone. And Jackson. I exhale a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
    I stare at Luka. “The others—”
    He slices the air with the edge of his hand and stalks toward me. “Not a word,” he insists, low and intense, as he hunkers down beside me. “We don’t talk to each other about it outside the game. And we don’t talk to anyone else about it. Not ever. Not if we want to live.”
    The game. He’s going to keep calling it that? The Drau, the fight—they felt real to me. If it’s a game, it’s one I don’t want to play again. But Jackson was pretty adamant when he said it wasn’t a game, and even if I wasn’t willing to take his word for it, what I’ve seen today was pretty convincing.
    I rub my forehead. I’m so confused.
    “They’ll know if we talk about it,” Luka continues. “And they’ll terminate us.”
    Our eyes lock. I can see that he believes everything he’s saying, and he’s afraid. I shiver. “Who are they ?”
    “Not a word,” he snarls.
    I nod. I know how to pick my battles. Defer. Distract. Wait it out. Right now, Luka won’t spill. But some other time, when he’s more relaxed, when his guard’s down . . .
    His lips compress in a tight line. His eyes are dark and fathomless.
    Wait. What? His eyes are dark ? They’re not blue; they’re the rich black-coffee brown I always thought they were until that moment when we were both lying broken on the ground after the truck hit us.
    Except it never did hit us.
    I glance at the truck, and then squint up at the late-afternoon sky. We’re in exactly the same place—and time—as we were before everything happened. Before the lobby and the weapons and the aliens and the battle. Richelle said the hours were banked. I guess we just made a withdrawal.
    “What do we do now?” I ask.
    “We live our lives.” There’s an edge to Luka’s answer, a tinge of bitterness.
    We live our lives. That’s what Richelle said in the lobby . . . something about getting to go back to our regularly scheduled lives. Until next time.
    Carly screams my name again, the syllables dragged out, ridiculously slow. I turn my head and see her running toward me, but her movements are almost comical, like she’s part of a film moving in slow motion. It