James Axler – Freedom Lost

“Tokens. Right. We need to get them back in the office, like the guard said,” Dean stated.

“No slots,” Jak protested, glaring at the boys who had broken into their conversation,

“Yes, slots, on the side, not on the front, see?” The older boy pointed at the side of the controls.

Jak looked and indeed, the console had the activation controls on the left side instead of in the front at crotch level like the vid games he’d encountered in the redoubt.

“Different. Not on front,” the albino said.

“No shit, genius. Now, if you’re not going to play, move,” the twelve-year-old said. “Dex and I got better things to do than stand and watch you and your little buddy figure out how to put the tokens in the games.”

“You got a mouth, don’t you?” Dean retorted.

“So do you, and you can use it to kiss my ass if you keep bothering us,” snarled the older one identified as Dex.

“How about I stomp head?” Jak asked. “Not take long.”

Neither of the boys appeared impressed. “Big talk, Spooky. Try it, and mall sec men will show up and kick the shit out of you,” the younger boy said. Jak spotted a telltale bulge under Brack’s shirttail. The boy was heeled, a blaster close at hand.

Jak had his own Colt Python, but left it holstered. “Might be worth it,” the albino said, considering the risks and developing a mental picture of the pair of snide punks on the ground, broken and bleeding.

“I ain’t scared of you,” Brack said.

“Me, neither,” Dex agreed.

Jak abandoned the mock friendly tone. Playing nice wasn’t in his nature anyway. “Should be. Should piss pants right now.”

Dean took Jak’s arm. “Smoke it, Jak. You’re supposed to be keeping me out of trouble, remember?”

“Next time talk shit, chill you,” Jak said to the insolent pair, his ruby eyes blazing as he allowed Dean to lead him away. To their credit, Brack and Dex kept their mouths shut.

The door of the office was open. Dean and Jak walked in and waited for the seated figure in the dress suit to look up. That was, if he could be bothered to stop his rapid writing of numerals in a thick ledger book to notice their presence. The man was doing his mental computations in pen, and by the light of a single oil lamp.

“What?” he barked.

“You Templeton?” Dean asked.

“That’s me. Who are you?”

“Clients, I guess. Need memberships and tokens. Guard said you’d take care of us.”

“Prices are on the board.” The jowly man pointed at a chalkboard hanging on the wall behind him. Prices were listed in different colors of chalk inside a preprinted grid. The numbers were hard to read in the low lighting, but not impossible.

“Why do you keep it so dark back here?” Dean asked.

“Saves money,” Templeton replied. “Juice costs jack. Vid games take a lot of juice. I can use candles and oil lamps ten times cheaper.”

“What do you think, Jak?” Dean asked softly, wanting to know what his friend’s opinion was of the prices on the board. Since Jak had the gold, he’d be the one paying for the entertainment. The least Dean could do was to get his input.

The albino shrugged. “Don’t know. Not good with figures.”

Dean studied the board some more, calling up his own knowledge of mathematics from both his time spent in school and what his mother had taught him at night when he was still a toddler. A handy mall rate of exchange with the official silver logo of The Bank of Freedom printed on top was also thumb-tacked next to the cluttered blackboard.

“What do your gold wafers weigh, Jak?” Dean asked, doing computations in his head.

The albino stuck a hand in his pocket and caressed one of the pieces. “Tenth ounce, mebbe.”

“Don’t let him know you’ve got more than one,” Dean whispered. “The way this chart reads, we should be able to get out of here with a membership and ten free vid games each. Mebbe more games if he’s really honest, which I doubt.”

“You two ready to deal, or what? We don’t like loiterers in here,” Templeton said, looking up from the book where he was scribbling in more numbers. “Get enough of that outside, people waiting, watching. That’s why we have the membership fee. Keeps out the riffraff.”