“Oh no! Not the enemy!” Josh joked sarcastically, leaning against a trash pile and giving an exaggerated yawn. “I’m so frightened.”
I squeezed my hands into fists, anger welling inside of me all over again. I just knew Josh was going to mess this up for us. And why not? He didn’t need to win this! He didn’t even want to be here. He was just stuck here because his grandfather had ordered it. Why would he even bother to do his best?
Argh.
I grabbed Lilli by the arm and dragged her a short distance away. She looked at me and frowned. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Josh, of course!” I snapped. “He’s going to make us lose!”
“Why would he do that?” She looked honestly perplexed.
I ran a frustrated hand along my helmet. “Isn’t it obvious? He’s not taking it seriously. He doesn’t care. And if we lose our chance to rescue Ikumi because of—”
“Relax, Ian,” Lilli interrupted. “We’re going to be fine. Josh is just being Josh. But trust me—he’s way too competitive to let anyone else win—even in a video game. Besides, we should be happy to have him. He’s the only one who’s ever played this before. He probably knows all sorts of tricks and strategies.”
I scowled. I knew she was probably right. Not that it made me feel much better. Especially the idea that Josh would be good at this. Video games were supposed to be my thing. Josh made fun of me for playing them. And yet he was probably going to end up the better player. Yet another thing he could rub in my face.
Also, how did my sister become such an expert on Josh? I didn’t even realize before today that they knew each other. I thought back to the room in Mech Ops HQ. Josh had even called her by a nickname. That didn’t exactly scream casual acquaintances…
I opened my mouth to ask her, but at that moment, Starr flew into my line of sight.
“Um, are you guys going to just stand around or help me look?” she asked.
Oh. Right. The weapons cache. I’d almost forgotten. I forced myself to push Josh out of my head. I could deal with him later. Right now we had to focus on our mission.
“Where is it?” I asked. “Do you know?”
Starr tapped a finger to her chin. “Not exactly. But it’ll probably be in a small secret room in the back if it’s here. Let’s split up and look for it. If you find it, yell.”
Lilli and I nodded, and we broke apart, heading toward the back of the warehouse to start our search. Which wasn’t going to be easy, I realized as I looked around in dismay. There was trash and debris everywhere. Old spaceship parts, rusty tools, discarded robots that looked as if they’d fought in a war and lost. It was a lot to look through in less than three minutes.
“Hey!” Josh called after us. “Where are you guys going? Don’t tell me you’re retreating already!”
Ugh. We didn’t have time to explain this to him. “We’re looking for weapons,” I said, starting toward the back of the warehouse.
Josh leapt in my path. “Weapons? There’s no weapons here, dummy. They’re in the center of the game board. Once the gate opens, we rush to get them.” His tone was patronizing, as if speaking to a child.
“I know that,” I ground out. “But there might be some here, too. It’s a long story. But just, we’re going to look real quick.”
“Enemy approaching. Hatch will open in T minus two minutes,” Rocky announced.
Josh groaned. “I thought you wanted to win this thing.”
“I do!”
“Then get to the starting gate! You have to be there when it opens to get to the weapons pile first. That’s the only way to win this.” He was starting to sound anxious. Maybe Lilli was right about his competitiveness…
“You go, then. We’ll meet you there,” I said, kicking over a pile of rusty parts. Nothing. Nothing. Where was it?
“Don’t tell me you’re scared,” Josh continued, evidently not willing to take a hint. He stepped into my path again. “Don’t tell me you’re going choke like you did on the soccer—”
“I said we’ll meet you there!” I cried, instinctively reaching out and shoving him hard. To my surprise, he went flying across the room, slamming into a huge pile of precariously stacked garbage. The pile collapsed, burying Josh in debris.
Uh-oh.
“T minus one minute…”
Okay. I have to admit, I considered just leaving him there. I mean, seriously, he more than deserved it, right? But in the end, I ran over, grabbing handfuls of garbage.
“Hang on!” I cried. “I’ll get you out.”
The garbage smell assaulted my nose as I dug, stinking to high heaven. That was one nice thing about Dragon Ops—no smells! Here, on the other hand, they’d clearly perfected the technology.
“T minus thirty seconds!”
“Hurry!” cried Josh. I could see him thrashing around inside the pile. “We don’t have much time!”
“Help me!” I cried to Starr and Lilli. I hated to make them stop looking for the weapons, but maybe it was a lost cause, anyway. Maybe it was only something in the eight-bit game.
I heaved a large piece of metal to the side and Josh came tumbling out. He shook himself, garbage flying from his fancy armor, which was now stained and dented. I waited for him to yell at me. Maybe even shove me in the other direction. Instead, something sparked in his eyes. He slapped me on the shoulder.
“That was borderline impressive, man,” he said. “I didn’t know you had it in—”
“Look! There it is!” Lilli suddenly burst out. I turned to see what she was pointing at. Sure enough, behind the garbage pile I’d just dug Josh out of, there was a small opening.
“Is that it? Is that the room?”
Josh frowned. “What room? What are you talking about?”
But Starr was already diving through the tunnel, and I was
