The Intuitives(12)

“OK, I hear you,” she said, relenting. “Really, I hear you. Be a perfect son and drive Marshall around all summer, making him happy. See if I care.” She grinned at him, waving her brush in the air as though to shoo him away. “Go on, then. This canvas isn’t going to paint itself.”

Daniel grinned back, relieved she had decided not to push the topic—for now, anyway. “I’ll be in my room if you need me.”

Sarah Walker stared at the doorway until the sound of her son’s guitar echoed down the hall, a quick, happy tune that she knew he was playing to reassure her. She stood a while without moving, letting it soothe her, as it always did. He was so talented. Why wouldn’t he play for anyone else?

I hope it won’t be too long before you find a girl you can share your music with, she thought to herself. Life is too short to spend it alone. She knew she should get back to work, but instead she set down her brush, sat on the stool, closed her eyes, and listened to her son play—she in her art studio and he in his room just down the hall, as close as any mother and son have ever been, a lifetime of experience standing between them.





5


Ash



“Rush! Behind you!”

“Way ahead of you, bro.”

Even before Snark had finish yelling, Ashton Hunt, a.k.a. Rush, had already done a leaping one-eighty and put a bullet between the eyes of two enemy players, and he was hardly even trying. Rush sat with his feet up on his desk, casually holding his controller and watching the screen from a jaunty angle, occasionally reaching out with one hand to sneak a sip of his energy drink between kills.

His top-of-the-line headset and his amped-up controller were both connected by cords to the console, so he had to be careful in grabbing the drink to make sure his arm didn’t get caught up in either one. It was, to be honest, more attention than he had to pay to the game itself. He and his friends were just warming up with a free-play match, and the random players they had pulled as enemies were pathetically slow by comparison.

“Seriously, man, you really think you have to warn me about these noobs?” Rush asked. “I’m tellin’ you, I’m goin’ pro in August. You’ll see.”

“Hey, I got faith, man. I believe.”

“You sure about that? I heard you and Wingman were taking bets against me.”

Snark’s laughter burst through the headset, briefly overriding the game sound, but it didn’t stop Rush from one-shotting another enemy who had been trying to sneak up behind him.

“Not against you, man! Who the hell said that? Me and Wing were bettin’ on how many people you’d have to beat out for it. He said two million, but I think it won’t be more than one.”

“Online mags are sayin’ four,” Rush countered.

“Whoa. Four million betas?”

“Yeah.” Rush blew another enemy away and then tried to hit his drink again, frowning at it when the can ran out.

“I’m out of juice,” Rush said. “Cover me, Snark.”

“Do my best, Chief.”

Ashton pulled his headset off and set the controller on the desk, kicking his feet down onto the floor. He was absurdly fit for a guy who did little more than go to school and play video games, but he wasn’t one to eat chips or pound sodas, not even while he was gaming. The energy drinks were his biggest vice, but he only drank the sugar-free kind. Staying lean gave him an edge. Ashton Hunt might not have been anyone important, but when ‘Rush’ talked about gaming, other gamers listened. Now his whole team stayed fit, following his lead.

He stretched his six-foot frame leisurely, then dropped the empty can into the trash and pulled another one out of the mini-fridge. He popped the top open, took a swig, and then sauntered back to his desk, propping his feet back up and sliding the headset down over his short, dark hair. He picked up the controller, and his ice-blue eyes focused back in on the screen like a hawk’s.

“Hey, Snark. You suck.”

Snark laughed through the headset again. While Rush had been gone from the game, Snark had gotten them both killed.

“Sorry, man. Team of three got me.”

“Meh, no worries. It’s just a scrub match.”

“Yeah,” Snark agreed.

Rush didn’t care about random matches. They didn’t count in the ranking system. In fact, Hostage Rescue Team Alpha: Year One was slated for official sale in August, still several months out, and when the title hit the shelves, rankings from the beta version would be wiped clean. They only mattered to Rush because the top-ranked beta players would be invited in August to compete for spots on the five-man pro team that the game developers were sponsoring.

“They’re really sayin’ four million now?” Wingman wanted to know. His Texan drawl always made Rush grin.

“Yeah. The beta’s gone viral, so they’re letting more people in.”

“Damn,” Snark said.

“Yeah. I don’t even care though. They can let five million in. I’ll still get a spot.”

Rush had been carefully maintaining his HRT Alpha ranking, refusing to move higher than number twenty. The launch competition would include the top one hundred beta players in the world, and he wanted to guarantee his spot without attracting too much attention. Everyone would be ganging up on the top five during the competition weekend. He had no intention of starting out with a target on his back.