Push by Eve Silver Read Free Book Online

whole team.
    I can’t let him sink any lower. His life—all our lives—depends on focus and commitment. The pit of despair isn’t exactly the ideal place for us to be. Luka needs to get his head in the game. We all do. Being angry with the Committee isn’t going to lead to anything good.
    “Maybe they don’t have the luxury of caring,” I say. “You think they get to pick when there’ll be a Drau attack? You think they’re choosing the time line of this war? I doubt they get a weekly schedule from Drau high command.”
    Lien snorts. I have everyone’s attention, so I forge ahead, spinning an idea as I go, with no clue where I’m going to end up. “They have a mission that needs completing, so they pull a team to complete it. We’re that team. But we’re not alone.” I look at each of them in turn. “How many others were there in Detroit? I lost count, and I guess the actual number doesn’t really matter. What matters is that there are others gearing up right now to head out. They’re going to fight. Just like us. So the world can survive.” I pause. “I know it sounds crazy when I say it. A few groups of teenagers are all that stand against mankind’s annihilation. But crazy or not, it is what it is.”
    “Not so crazy,” Kendra says softly. “My great-grandfather was eighteen when he went overseas to fight against Hitler. He was a gunner in World War Two. He used to tell us stories about what he called the boys . . . his platoon, or whatever. They were all young. Just like us.”
    “My great-grandfather was too young to fight.” I decide not to mention that he spent part of that war interned in a War Relocation camp. His loyalty and that of his parents was brought into question because of their Japanese ancestry. War has a way of amping up paranoia and hate and prejudice.
    “Miki, how do you know there are other teams?” Luka asks.
    “You know it, too. You saw them in Detroit.”
    “I think he means how do you know there are others gearing up right now,” Tyrone says.
    “I can see them. I can see mirror-image lobbies just like ours and I can see the teams moving around in them.”
    Luka’s brows shoot up. “Seriously?”
    I shrug.
    “Wallhacks,” Tyrone says. I lift my brows and he explains, “In Counter-Strike a wallhack lets a player see through a wall, see stuff that’s usually obscured.”
    “There’s a name for this?” I ask. “A gaming term? Weird.”
    Tyrone shrugs.
    Luka cocks his head to the side. “Wait, I remember . . . first time you got pulled, right? You kept asking who they were, and I thought you meant Tyrone and Richelle. But you were asking about the other teams.”
    I nod.
    “Why you?” Tyrone asks, pushing off the boulder and coming to stand closer as he looks down at me.
    “Genetics.” It’s as simple and as complicated as that. Jackson explained it to me the night he climbed in my bedroom window. “We all have some level of alien DNA. I get a double dose because I have a specific set of alleles.”
    Tyrone and Lien nod, but the others look confused.
    “Alleles are like different forms of the same gene,” I clarify. “So we all have alien genes, but it’s like mine are pumped up on steroids.”
    “Why?” Tyrone asks.
    “Luck of the draw?” I spread my hands in an I-don’t-know gesture.
    “My great-grandfather’s stories were usually about boys who died,” Kendra says, as if we hadn’t moved on from that topic. Her tone sounds odd, sort of singsong, like she’s not quite in the same moment as the rest of us. Uneasiness uncoils in my gut as I study her expression. It’s blank, smooth. Too smooth. I’d like to see a little emotion there, even if it’s fear.
    “He told us about how they died. In the trenches. On the beach. On long, cold hikes through enemy territory. They died.” She looks at Lien and continues, her tone devoid of inflection, “I can’t do this again. I’m afraid. I don’t want to die.”
    The words don’t wig me