“You were right,” I concede as he gets the Jeep moving. “That was a waste of time.”

“Now what?” Luka asks, sounding bleak.

Good question. One I can’t answer. But I have to find an answer. Jackson’s life may depend on us.

“We talk it out,” I say. “We list everything we know, every possibility. We look for a pattern, or something that doesn’t fit the pattern.”

“It’s gonna be a short list.”

“It’ll be an empty list if we don’t at least try. So what do we know?”

“That he didn’t respawn with the rest of us.”

“And that he’s alive,” I say, needing to affirm it as fact.

Luka cuts me a sidelong glance. “If we figure out why he didn’t come back with us, maybe we can figure out where he is.”

“Maybe because he wasn’t with us in the first place,” I say. “He was on a different team.”

“And if his team’s still fighting—”

“Then he’s still there.”

I’m allowed a millisecond of hope before Luka shakes his head. “Our team wouldn’t have respawned until the mission was complete.”

Which means that even if he was on a different team, Jackson should have come back with us once the mission was done. “What if he got pulled on another mission?”

“Without coming back at all?” Luka frowns. “I’ve never heard of anyone going directly from one to another.”

“That doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.” Luka opens his mouth to answer, but before he can say anything, I contradict myself. “Yeah, it does. We always respawn at the exact second we left.”

“And the world moves on from that second,” Luka says. “Which means Jackson would have come back exactly when he left, at the pizza place, before getting pulled again.”

“Which means we still know absolutely nothing.” I slump in my seat, deflated.

CHAPTER THREE

“DAMN,” LUKA MUTTERS AS WE PULL INTO A DRIVEWAY. “I WAS gonna just leave the keys in the mailbox.”

No chance of that now. There’s a woman coming out of the garage. She’s tall and lean, her honey-brown hair falling loose to her shoulders. She stops and shades her eyes and then walks toward us.

“Jackson’s mom?”

Luka nods. “We need to come up with an explanation of where he is, stat.”

“So I guess that means we can’t ask if she has any idea where her son is.”

Luka snorts. “Like your dad knows where you are when you’re on a mission?”

“Time’s frozen when I’m on a mission, isn’t it? I doubt my dad has a clue I’m even gone.”

“Ditto for Jackson’s mom. It’s a waste of time to ask her.”

“At this point, I’m a grab-any-straw kind of girl.”

He shakes his head. “I know. But there’s no straw here to grab. And asking her anything is against the rules.”

The rules that we don’t talk about the game outside the game. Stupid rules that make no sense. Rules we’ve all broken, but only with each other, never with an outsider. I tip my head back, eyes closed. “You realize that we have big neon zero when it comes to leads. Not an auspicious beginning to our rescue operation.”

“Auspicious? Can you spell that?”

I glance over and punch him in the shoulder, trying to match his halfhearted attempt at humor.

Luka pushes open his door and climbs out. “Hi, Mrs. Tate.”

“Hey, Luka.”

I get out and linger by the passenger door, not sure if I should say hi or just fade into the background.

Jackson’s mom walks over. She’s close enough now that I can see her eyes—not Drau gray like Jackson’s but dark, dazzling green. I’ve seen that color in my nightmare—Jackson’s nightmare—the one he shared with me about his sister and the car accident that dragged him into the game.

There’s a hint of wariness in Mrs. Tate’s expression as her gaze darts to the Jeep, then back to Luka. It hits me that she’s already buried one child and now here we are, in her driveway, with her son’s car but without her son. That’s one thing Dad always says about Sofu dying before Mom: that it’s better he passed before Mom got sick, that parents aren’t meant to bury their children.

I stare at my feet. Jackson’s mom isn’t going to bury another child. He’s coming back. I’ll find a way to bring him back.

“Jackson asked me to drop off his car,” Luka says. “He decided to hang out with some guys.”

She’s quiet for a second. “Are they drinking?”

Nice one, Luka. Try to shovel us out and instead dig us in even deeper.

“No, no, nothing like that. They already had a car and he didn’t want to leave his on the street.”

“You didn’t want to go with?” she asks, and I hear the questions she doesn’t ask: Did Luka take off because Jackson’s involved with a bad crowd? Is he doing things he shouldn’t? I figure every parent thinks those things once in a while, even when they trust their kids.

“It’s all good, Mrs. T. It’s a group project. I’m not in their class.” He’s sticking to the fairy tale he already spun for Carly.

The frown fades. Mrs. Tate looks back and forth between the two of us, clearly waiting for an intro. Then she surprises me by smiling and saying, “Miki,” as if she knows me. “You’re the kendo champion.”