“Knew you two were going to get into trouble the minute I laid eyes on you last night,” Ryan said gently, his mouth turning upward at the sides as he fought back a relieved smile. “They treating you okay?”
“Extra special,” Dean said. “Jak, too. Hot food. Clean bunk. No creeps or pervs. Nicest cell I ever been stuck in, far as cells go.”
Morgan had been honest about that much of the forced bargain anyway, Ryan thought to himself.
Ryan gestured to the chairs, one per side, and father and son sat down facing each other.
“Quiet in here,” Ryan observed.
“Not in the cells. Some drunk keeps singing all about moons hitting eyes and big pizza pies.”
“Every place like this has got a drunk, Dean.”
“I guess.”
“You want to tell me what happened?” Ryan asked. “Take it slow and don’t leave anything out.”
“Not much to tell,” Dean said. “We were in the vid arcade, watching some guys play a game”
HAVING WATCHED the same two boys play Mortal Kombat for about a half hour, Dean decided to wade in for a try first chance he got. The opportunity came when the game finally became vacant after a particularly enthusiastic Dex had run out of the needed tokens and left with Brack to find more.
“Want to take me on, Jak?” Dean asked as they stepped up to the machine.
“No contest. Hand-to-hand. Beat you good,” Jak said confidently.
“Not if you don’t know the right moves. Got to punch these button, move these levers. And you don’t know shit about comps,” Dean bragged.
“Like you do.”
“Like I do, yeah.”
“Back Florida, pressed wrong button, screwed everything up. Ryan pissed good,” Jak retorted, referring to a past mat-trans jump where Dean had decided to apply his magic touch to one of the gateway’s operating system’s keyboards and had sent the stressed comp banks and hardware into a series of fiery shutdowns. Ryan had been furious, picking Dean up with both hands and slamming him down butt first on a table for a conversation that still made the boy feel guilty.
“I still know enough to beat you at this,” Dean said insistently.
“Take best shot,” Jak replied.
Each of the boys put their tokens in the twin vid slots and was offered a menu of choices of fighters from which to make a selection.
“There’s a girl on here, Jak.”
“You pick her,” the albino retorted. “I’ll try go easy on girl.”
Before they could do so, however, the two players who had been dominating the machine for most of the night came over.
“You guys took our vid game,” Dex accused.
“Not yours.” Jak replied. “Ours.”
“See, you newbies, you don’t understand,” Brack said slowly. “Certain games are off-limits when the arcade champions are in the house, and guess what, Spooky? I’m here, and that’s my vid game you’re standing in front of.”
The larger of the two moved to push Jak aside. The albino effortlessly sidestepped the attempt, grabbing on to the outstretched arm and tossing the attacker over his shoulder. The teen who had been thrown flew helplessly into the heavy plastic-and-metal side of another of the game consoles, hitting it ass first. His breath exploded out of him with a grunt of pain.
Dex quickly scrambled to his feet, his cap now off, his hair tumbling into his eyes. In his right had he held a knife, four-inch blade with a short bone handle. It wasn’t a predark weapon, but one manufactured from the remains. Black electrical tape was wrapped around the handle to help hold the steel of the cutting edge in place.
“Come on, you creepy little shit! You want a piece of me?”
Jak brightened. “Knife fight. Okay. Bored comps.”
“Hold up, Jak,” Dean said. “This is stupid. If he wants the game, let him have it. Dad will be triple pissed if we get into trouble.”
“Your dad, not mine. Too late, Dean,” Jak replied. “Watch back.”
Jak took off his brown-and-green camouflage jacket and pulled his own sharpened blade, switching it swiftly from the right hand to the left. He kept his luminous red orbs focused on his challenger, watching his foe’s eyes. Jak had been in enough hand-to-hand brawls to know to never watch the other’s man knife, you always watched the other man’s eyes.