Josh sighed. “You still don’t trust me, do you? I guess that’s my fault.”
“Huh?” I looked up, surprised.
“Look, I owe you an apology. I’m sorry I’ve been a jerk to you. In the game, on the soccer field…”
“It’s fine,” I said quickly. “I don’t care.” Not exactly true, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to get into this now when so much else was going on.
But Josh, it seemed, wasn’t about to let it go. “It’s just… when you first joined the soccer team, you made it so clear you thought it was stupid.” He shrugged. “I guess it just made me mad.”
I turned, surprised. “What are you talking about? I didn’t do that!”
“Um, yeah you did. You kept joking around, calling it ‘sports-ball’ and saying how you hoped you could score a ‘touchdown.’”
Okay, I might have done that. And that might have come off as kind of insulting to someone who really liked the game. Someone like Josh.
“Trust me, I get it,” he added. “All my life I’ve been surrounded by gamers and geeks, thanks to my grandpa. I was always looked down on for liking sports. For actually wanting to watch the Super Bowl for the football game instead of just the commercials and the halftime show. They all thought it was so cute.” He wrinkled his nose.
“Ugh,” I sympathized. “My dad’s like that, but the opposite. He always wants me to be into all this extreme adventure stuff. Like Lilli is. He’s constantly disappointed when he finds me on the computer.”
“Your dad sounds awesome!” Josh joked. Then he got serious again. “Anyway, when you showed up that first day, making the same jokes I’d heard all my life? I got mad. I knew you weren’t going to take it seriously. Which might make us lose.” He snorted softly. “I know that’s not a big deal to you—”
“Actually, I get it,” I admitted, surprising even myself with the words. “I felt the same way when you joined our Mech Ops team.” Here I’d been mad when Josh wasn’t taking Mech Ops seriously. When I had done exactly the same thing to him on the soccer field. “If it makes you feel any better? I only made those jokes ’cause I was nervous. I knew I was going to stink at soccer. I guess I thought if I pretended not to care, it wouldn’t matter so much when I did.”
“You don’t stink at soccer,” Josh insisted. “You just need some more practice. That goal you missed? No way could you have gotten it in. Even if you didn’t choke. That goalie was huge.”
“I know, right?” I blurted out before I could stop myself. “How is he in seventh grade?”
“For real,” Josh agreed. Then he shrugged. “Anyway, if you ever want to kick the ball around, I can show you some stuff. If you want, I mean. We can even play in here. Video game soccer—perfect for both our interests.”
“That sounds pretty cool, actually,” I said, and I realized I meant it. “Thanks.” I kicked the ball back to him. He bounced it off his knees, and it flew off. Josh grinned at me.
“Now, time to summon your sister.”
Once Lilli arrived, Josh went and accessed the master game map, which showed all the players currently in-game. We popped up first, down near the bottom. A few other beta testers were playing near the starting zone. And two very faint lights shone at the top of the game map, traveling at what appeared to be a fast speed.
“The Zeta Quadrant,” Josh explained. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?”
“What’s the Zeta Quadrant?” I asked. It sounded vaguely familiar. Then I remembered. “Your grandpa mentioned it after the beta test.”
“It’s his pet project,” Josh explained. “Endgame. The final frontier, as my grandpa likes to call it. Basically, the story goes, once the players give up on this dying world, they blast into outer space and land on a paradise planet. There, they can colonize this whole new world. And beat the game.”
“And once you beat the game?” Lilli asked.
“You get out,” Josh replied. “Which I bet is exactly what Yano is trying to do.”
“Hello, space travelers, please secure your positions. We are clear for launch.”
I checked my seat belt again as the robot proceeded with the countdown. Josh and Lilli did the same. My heart pounded in anticipation. This was it; no turning back now.
Originally I thought we’d just be able to warp to the Zeta Quadrant, but Josh said his grandpa hadn’t put in warps there, preferring that players get the full experience by traveling the old-fashioned way—by spaceship. Also, this prevented players from returning to the game once they’d finished it. It was a one-way trip, and if you wanted to go back, you created a new character and started from the beginning again. If I were actually beta-testing this thing, I’d probably mark that down as a bad idea. What if you wanted to go back and do a side quest?
But it didn’t matter now. We only had one quest this time. And we were on our way.
“Three, two, one… liftoff!”
I held my breath as we rocketed straight up into space, leaving my stomach somewhere near my knees, and I white-knuckled the armrests of my chair. Lilli, meanwhile, cheered in delight, and Josh flashed her a grin. Adrenaline junkies. Go figure.
“So what are we going to do when we get there?” Lilli asked once we left gravity behind and were floating silently toward our destination. “Do we try to talk to him? Do we fight him?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I wish we still had Atreus.” I wondered what happened to the poor dragon. Had he crashed out of the game and wasn’t able to get back before it locked up? It was funny; all this time I’d been trying to avoid him. Now I desperately wished he were here.
“I can’t believe Yano was behind all this,” Lilli said,
