“On it.” I’d already pulled up the app and started the scanning process. A simulated radar arm swept around a dot in the middle of the screen. “You holding up?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Biz said with a frustrated wave of her hand. She hated to be asked about her sickness. “I’m good for a couple more hours.”
Final cache located. You may begin the slice, smuggler. Decipher the code to proceed.
The in-game message flickered across my phone’s screen in alien letters, only to be repeated a moment later from its speakers. The stilted, mechanical voice hit me like a splash of cold water. This was it. If I collected this cache, I wouldn’t be tied for first. I’d win.
“What’d you get?” Biz knelt behind me and peered over my shoulder. Her thin hands rested on my back, light as a pair of hummingbirds. “Puzzle or code?”
“Code,” I said. “Almost got it figured out.”
I’d memorized the alien alphabet when I’d first really gotten into the space opera movies. That had paid off in spades during this trip because all the codes were written with those symbols.
“Ghostlight?” Biz asked. She’d been reading over my shoulder as I tapped out the answer to the code. “Ominous.”
“Maybe this is a dark side cache?” I didn’t care. Scoring the points was all that mattered.
I tapped the entry box and thumb-typed the solution.
For a moment, nothing happened.
A metallic click, so faint it was almost inaudible, came from behind the cache’s faceplate. It opened to reveal a narrow slot lit by red and green flashing lights. I slipped my phone into the metal box and let out a sigh of relief.
We’d done it. As soon as the lights all turned green, the cache was ours.
“What are you doing up here?” A man’s deep voice boomed from off to our left.
Biz and I swung our heads in that direction so fast I heard my neck crackle like crumpled cellophane. This was what my hunch had been warning me about.
A tall man wrapped in a black robe stood on the roof of the cantina. His face was hidden by the shadows of his cowl, but I didn’t need to see his expression to know we were screwed. His voice was stern and authoritative, the sound of someone who’d just caught a couple of kids with their hands in the cookie jar.
Panic chased my thoughts around the inside of my skull. My first instinct was to run. Fortunately, I kept my cool and shook it off. We weren’t breaking any rules, and that guy, whoever he was, looked nothing like a park cast member or security guard.
An alarming idea surfaced. What if that guy was the player I’d been tied for first with?
“Don’t run.” I caught Biz’s hand. “We’ll finish this. He can’t get over to us before the box opens. We’re gonna win.”
“Good point.” Biz gave my fingers a squeeze. “Unless he grows wings, he’ll never get over here in time.”
My phone’s cracked screen mirrored the red and green flashing lights inside the cache. I’d done this a few dozen times already and knew the growing number of green flashes meant it was almost over.
“You weren’t supposed to find this one,” the cloaked figure called from his rooftop. A gust of wind had pushed his hood back to reveal heavy goggles over his eyes, and a strange mask that covered the lower half of his face in dark metal. “It’s not for you, Sleeper.”
The weirdo hadn’t raised his voice to be heard over the crowds below us, but every word he spoke was as clear as if he was standing next to me.
“Kai,” Biz whispered. “Your phone.”
A glowing golden medal rotated in the center of my phone’s splintered screen. A ring of symbols swarmed into view like a squadron of space fighters on an attack run. When the final glyph had taken its position on the screen, the letters all flipped to their English equivalents. I caught a glimpse of a message announcing my victory before a burst of static clouded my screen. A single line replaced the elaborate graphics, the bold red letters glowing so brightly they stung my eyes.
Final transfer initiated. Proceed to the gate.
The voice that announced my victory from my phone’s crappy speaker was smoother than the mechanical announcements we’d heard the rest of the day. It also had a strange accent that I couldn’t quite place. Russian, maybe. Or German.
“Look at that,” Biz said, her voice so low it was almost a sigh. “They really went all out on this contest.”
A door had opened in the wall that bordered this section of the park. A downward-sloping tunnel, its walls glowing with electric blue lines set into their surfaces, beckoned Biz and me to enter.
“Don’t!” The cloaked man had one hand raised in our direction as he shouted the words. “Turn back, Sleeper, before it’s too late.”
“I don’t think so,” I shouted back. I’d spent my whole life hearing how things weren’t for me, how I wasn’t supposed to do this or that. This one thing was mine, and no cosplaying stranger could take it away from me. “I won, fair and square.”
The man took one step back from the edge of the cantina, then launched himself across the gap with a single leap. He soared through the air, too high and fast even for an Olympic-level athlete. There was no way that guy could make a thirty-foot standing long jump.
But the goggled figure did.
Well, almost.
I saw he wasn’t going to make it at the height of his leap. The scene sped forward in my head, and I imagined the poor idiot plummeting two stories to the streets below. He might not be too badly hurt—anyone who could jump that far had to be awfully strong—but the same wouldn’t be true of the oblivious people on the crowded street. Someone would get hurt, probably badly.
There was no way
