The Intuitives(28)

“He thinks he’s good.”

“He’s not,” Rush said.

Roman was quiet for a moment, taking this in.

“OK, so you ready?” But the question was apparently rhetorical because he didn’t stop for an answer. “I’ll unplug my headset so we can both hear. We’ll just have to keep the TV down some.”

“Sure,” Roman said, happy to follow Rush’s lead.

“Sweet. OK, so we’re playing HRT Alpha: Year One. It’s not even out yet. Pretty cool, right?”

Roman nodded. That did seem pretty cool.

“The best game mode is called ‘Light It Up.’ I’ll teach you that one.”

Roman nodded again. “OK!” And the grin on his face was suddenly so big that Rush couldn’t help but smile back at him.

? ? ?

It took Roman several games to get the hang of it, while Rush patiently ran through the weapon choices and helped him learn the maps, showing him some hiding places and helping him understand how players were likely to move on each one. This one had a bottleneck here. That one had a wide-open space with no good cover there. Rush was impressed with how quickly Roman was picking up on things, so he finally suggested that they play one against each other, with some computer-generated bots on each team, just to make it more fun.

“You’ll kill me like every two seconds,” Roman protested.

“I probably could if I was really trying,” Rush admitted, chuckling, “but I’m not going to go all out on you, OK? I just want you to get the feel of playing against someone else, ’cause it’s more exciting than only playing against bots.”

“OK,” Roman agreed.

They started the game, and Roman had to admit that just knowing Rush was out there somewhere, hunting him, was kind of scary, which made the game more exciting already. When Roman found him, Rush let him have a straight-up shoot-out instead of doing anything to protect himself like dropping to the ground or throwing out grenades. Rush still got the kill because Roman’s aim wasn’t that good yet, but it was close, and Rush encouraged him.

“That was good, man! You see that? You almost got me!”

Roman grinned and ran out from the spawn point again, ready for action. Roman got a few kills on the bots while Rush practiced some of his faster moves against the bots on Roman’s team.

“You’re doing great,” Rush said about halfway through the game. “If you ask me, playing bots can be harder than playing real people. Bots are less predictable, you know? The AI is never as good as a human brain, so they do stupid things you don’t expect.”

Just then, Rush ran around a corner and slammed into Roman, who had been standing in the middle of an alley looking at his weapon options. Roman panicked so badly that he dropped a sticky grenade on the ground right on Rush’s foot, completely by accident, and Rush was laughing so hard that it killed him before he could compose himself enough to react.

Roman looked at Rush in wide-eyed terror.

How could he have been so stupid? How could he have gotten so caught up in the game that he forgot to keep his head down and stay out of trouble? Now Rush was going to be mad and hate him and never be his friend again.

“I’m sorry!” Roman blurted out.

But no angry red bees flew at his head. No punches flew at his ribs. Rush just sat there, staring at him in confusion.

“For what?”

“For killing you,” Roman said, his voice small and uncertain.

But Rush only laughed. “Dude, that’s the point of the game! You got me! Good job!”

Roman just stared at him, still coming down from the shock of it, and Rush watched him for a few moments in silence.

“OK, I’ll tell you what,” Rush said gently. “It’s getting kind of late. And you’re probably just getting tired. Why don’t you call it for the night? But now that you’ve gotten your first official kill, I can’t let you crash until we give you a tag.”

“A tag?” Roman asked, glad for the distraction, as Rush pulled them out of the game.

“Yeah, a gamer tag. It’s like a nickname. It’s what other gamers call you.”

“Oh,” Roman said. “OK. What should mine be?”

“Well, that’s what we have to figure out. It should kind of capture you, you know? Like who you are. What’s your favorite thing to do? Besides dropping grenades on my foot, I mean.”

Roman laughed and felt a little more of his tension drain away.

“I like drawing,” Roman admitted shyly. “You wanna see?”

“Sure!” Rush said.

So Roman went and got his light sketchpad. Rush started flipping through the pages, expecting nothing more than a little kid’s awkward renditions of houses and cars and trees, but he slowed down almost immediately, amazed at the seamless blending of realism and imagination.

“Who’s this?” he asked, pointing at a young girl standing in a ray of mottled sunshine, with translucent fairy wings growing out of her back. Even drawn in black and white, somehow the feel of summer—of sunshine and forest and green leaves filtering the light through a vibrant, living canopy—came through perfectly.

“That’s my sister, Shaquiya.” He pronounced the middle syllable like the word ‘why’ with a k in front of it: Shuh-KWHY-uh.