Warcross (Warcross #1)(26)
“And you’re comfortable there?” Hideo asks, regarding me.
I bristle at his condescension. “If I weren’t, I wouldn’t be much use in catching a hacker, now would I?”
Hideo doesn’t react to my sarcasm. “You’ll be one of several bounty hunters I’m hiring for this job.” He reaches toward the coffee table separating us and picks up a small black box resting on top of a stack of game magazines. He holds it out to me. “This is for you. The others will be receiving them, too.”
Other bounty hunters. Like my past hunts, I’ll be competing against others. I hesitate, then take the box from him. It’s light as air. I glance at Hideo before opening the box. Inside is a small, plastic container with two round compartments. I twist one of them open.
“Contact lenses,” I say, staring down at a clear disc floating in liquid.
“Beta versions. We’re releasing them to the public later this week.”
I look back up at Hideo in anticipation. “The next generation of NeuroLink glasses?”
His lips tilt up into the smallest hint of a smile, the first I’ve seen. “Yes.”
My eyes turn down again. They look like any contact lenses would, except that on the rims, in tiny, translucent, repeated lettering, are the words Henka Games. All that’s needed to identify them as different from a regular pair of lenses. When I shift a little, the lenses glitter in the light, suggesting that their surface is probably coated with a fine web of microscopic circuits. For a second, I forget about my annoyance with Hideo’s replies. Instead I feel like I’m back in my group foster home, listening to the radio, hearing about his earthshaking invention for the first time. “How . . . ,” I start to say, my fascination coming out as a hoarse croak. “How did you do this? How do you even power them? It’s not like you can plug them into a wall.”
“The human body produces at least one hundred watts of electricity a day,” Hideo replies. “The average smartphone only uses two to seven watts to fully charge. These lenses need less than one watt.”
I look sharply at him. “Are you saying that it can be charged just by the electricity in my body?”
He nods. “The lenses leave behind a harmless film against the eye surface that is only one atom thick. This film acts as a conduit between the lenses and your body.”
“Using the body as a charger,” I say. There’d been plenty of movies made about that, and yet here I am, staring down at it right in my hands. “I thought that was just some science fiction myth.”
“Everything’s science fiction until someone makes it science fact,” Hideo says. There’s a specific intensity in his gaze now, a glow that brightens his entire expression. I remember seeing it the first time I caught him on TV, and I recognize it now. This is the Hideo that draws me in.
He gestures toward a door at the far end of the office. “Give it a try.”
I take the lenses and head over to the door, which opens into a private bathroom. There, I wash my hands and hold up one of the lenses. It takes me at least a dozen tries, but finally I manage to put both of them in, blinking away a few tears as I do. They feel ice-cold.
As I return to the couch, I study the room. At first glance, everything seems the same. But then I notice that the brightly colored mural behind Hideo is moving, as if the painting were alive, the colors swirling and shifting in a spectacular display.
My gaze continues to wander. I notice more and more things. Layers of virtual reality, freed from the boundaries of glasses. An old Warcross game plays across another white wall in the room, covering it from top to bottom. The ceiling isn’t a ceiling anymore. Instead, I can see a dark blue night and the glittering sheet of the Milky Way. Planets—Mars and Jupiter and Saturn—are magnified and exaggerated in color, hanging orb-like in the sky. Around the room, objects have labels hovering over them. Potted Ficus floats above a green plant, along with the words, Water | +1, hinting that I would earn a point if I watered it. Couch floats above our couches, and Hideo Tanaka | Level ∞ hovers above Hideo himself. I probably have Emika Chen | Level 26 hanging over my own head.
A few translucent words appear in the center of my view.
Play Warcross
Hideo gets up and walks over to sit beside me. Now I notice that he’s wearing contacts, too—with mine on, I can see a faint, glittering sheet of colors against his pupils. “Join a session of Warcross with me,” he says. A hovering button appears between us. “And I’ll show you who I’m after.”
I take a deep breath and stare at the button before me for a few seconds. The contacts detect my lingering look, and the real world around us—the office, the couches, the walls—darkens and disappears.
When the world reappears again, we are both standing in a sterile, white space with white walls that stretch to infinity. I recognize it as one of the beginner worlds in Warcross: Paintbrush Level. If you reach out your hands and run them along the white walls, streaks of rainbow paint sweep across the surfaces. I curl my toes slightly and imagine walking—and with those double cues, my avatar moves forward. As we walk, I absently run a hand along one of the walls, watching as the colors streak behind my fingers.
Hideo leads us to a corner of the world, where he finally stops. I relax my toes and stop, too. He looks at me. “This is the first world where we noticed something was off,” he says. He runs a hand along the wall, leaving trails of bright green and gold. Then, he digs his fingers against the surface and pushes.