“Wait!” Lilli said suddenly.
He stopped, turning and raising an eyebrow at my sister. “Yes, Speedy?”
“Thank you,” my sister said sincerely. “We couldn’t have done this without your help.” Then she shot me a meaningful look. I sighed.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Thanks and stuff.”
“You may not like this kind of thing? But you’re pretty good,” Starr added grudgingly.
Josh shrugged. “Yeah, well… not like it’s hard,” he said. But I caught a small smile at the corner of his mouth. “Anyway, it’s been… well, not real.” He snorted at his own joke and headed out of the room.
Once he was gone, Starr turned to us, her brown eyes sparkling. “So,” she said. “Who’s ready to gear up?”
“So what was it like?” Mom asked as she hustled to get dinner on the table. She’d gotten out of work late and had picked up pizza since she hadn’t had time to cook. Not that anyone was complaining. “To be inside the legendary Appleby headquarters?”
“Pretty awesome,” I told her. “They had all these full-size spaceship and robot models. There was even a giant Rocky the Robot you could go into.”
“So. Jealous.” Mom sighed. “My kids are living the dream. Meanwhile I’m stuck at work.” She grabbed a slice of pizza. “You’d better let me try out that demo at some point. I’m dying to see what they’ve done with the game. I used to play the original version, you know.”
“Cool,” I said. I hadn’t realized she was a fan. “Yeah, you can definitely check it out.”
Dad entered the room, scooped a slice of pizza out of the box, and shoved half of it into his mouth in one bite. A splotch of cheese dripped from his lips, and he grinned as he slurped it up. Mom snorted.
“What did you think of the place?” she asked him.
He froze. “Um, it was… awesome?” he tried. “Right, kids? Super awesome. Robots. And video games. And…”
Mom gave him a suspicious look. Dad smiled innocently at her, then turned to Lilli. “Hey, Lills, you want to go out and work on the zip line after you finish eating?”
He and my sister had been constructing this crazy zip line in the backyard that started from the balcony off the game room on the second floor of our house and went all the way to our old treehouse at the very back of the yard. Mom thought it was ridiculous and dangerous, and worried what the neighbors would think. But Dad only laughed this off. It was going to be the fastest zip line in Texas when he and Lilli were through, he’d declared. As if that addressed even one of Mom’s concerns.
“Maybe later, Dad,” Lilli apologized, pushing back her plate. She’d barely eaten any of her pizza. Not that I’d done much better with mine. The adrenaline was still raging inside me from today’s adventure at Mech Ops and had messed with my stomach big-time. “I, uh, promised Ian I’d try out the new game with him.”
Uh-huh. As if she wasn’t as eager to break out the new VR as I was.
Dad sighed. “Haven’t you played enough video games today? Don’t you want a little fresh air and exercise?”
“I do!” Lilli assured him. “Just… maybe tomorrow?”
“Fine. I’ll go work on it myself for bit,” Dad said resignedly. He knew he never won video game arguments in our house. Not with Mom being as big of a player as we were. “Come on out if you change your mind and want to help.” He addressed this to Lilli, of course. He had no illusions about me pitching in on this particular project.
“Okay, Dad,” Lilli said. “I will!”
He headed outside. We pushed back from our chairs, bringing our plates to the sink before making a mad dash for Lilli’s bedroom, where we’d stored the VR rigs under her bed. Her bed was way bigger than mine, which was good thing, since the equipment they’d sent us home with was totally bulky. Back at Dragon Ops, it was all about these tiny little goggles—not much bigger than a pair of sunglasses—and a sleek SensSuit that fit your body like a glove. These setups, on the other hand, were massive—with large space-helmet-like things you put over your entire head with a bulky battery pack attached, the size of a fully stuffed school backpack. I had to say, it was a good thing this was virtual reality and not augmented reality like Dragon Ops. I couldn’t imagine walking around in real life with all this gear strapped to my back.
But with VR? That was no problem. We didn’t have to move. We just sat down, jacked in, and entered a whole other world.
Ready or not, here we come.
“I still can’t believe they just gave us these,” Lilli remarked as she pulled the helmet over her head and fumbled for the On switch. The helmet whirred to life, lighting up electric blue and emitting a loud fan noise, presumably to keep the thing cool while it was on her head. “I mean, out of all those people, I never thought they’d pick us.”
“Well, we can thank Starr for that,” I said, fumbling with my own helmet. “I mean, if she hadn’t known about the chest, there’s no way we could have won.”
“And Josh,” Lilli added. “You gotta admit, that power-up thing turned out to be pretty useful.”
“I guess.” Something tugged in my stomach. “You never told me you knew Josh,” I added, my voice sounding perhaps a bit more accusatory than I meant it to.
Lilli shrugged. “I didn’t?” she asked. “I guess it never came up. I mean, I don’t know him well. Sometimes the teams get together, you know. I guess we met that way.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure.” That made perfect sense. So why was I still bothered by this? Who cared about Josh? We were on our own now. We didn’t have
