The 13 th tribe

[10]

With posters of the latest muscles-and-mayhem movies and sexy women leaning on sexier cars, a lead guitar propped against an amp by an unmade bed, and dirty clothes scattered everywhere, Toby’s room looked like a typical teenage boy’s-except for the 9mm handgun on the nightstand, the bare bulbs under wire cages tacked to a stone ceiling, and the twin sixty-inch plasma TVs mounted to one wall.

The plasmas were displaying different images of the same video game: views of a city from what could have been birds swooping between buildings, diving to take in streets packed with cars or sailing up over rooftops. Could have been birds, but weren’t. With a flick of Toby’s finger on a control pad, a missile shot out as if from the bottom of the screen, sailed through the bubbling tip of a fountain of water spraying up from a pond, and streaked under a crowded portico right into a hotel lobby. An explosion sent glass and bricks, cars and people flying away on currents of fire and smoke.

“Yeah!” Toby said from a black leather chair.

“Pull up,” Sebastian said, standing behind Toby with his hands on the back of the chair. “Pull up!”

Toby did, and the screen showed the hotel facade drawing closer, sweeping down as the camera angled up. Sky came into view, but the camera zoomed toward windows on the top floor.

“Pull up!”

“I am!”

The camera crashed through windows, and the monitor went black.

“I told you,” Sebastian said, giving the back of the chair a fierce shake.

“I did pull up!” The boy twisted around to glare at Sebastian.

“You waited too long. You wanted to see the missile hit. You can’t do that. I told you, release the missile and get away. Shoot and scoot.”

“Like this,” Phin said from a matching chair beside Toby’s. On the plasma in front of him, a missile shot out from the bottom of the screen, heading for a building with a big sign mounted above the doors: POLICE. The camera banked away, climbing. He laughed, a pronounced Ha-ha-ha! The camera continued to turn and climb, and a building slid onto the screen from the right, panning across it like a swipe-away transition between movie scenes. It filled the screen, and Phin’s monitor went black.

“Ha!” Toby said.

“Wait a minute,” Phin said. “That building’s in the wrong place!”

“It is not,” said Sebastian. “You were supposed to study the maps.”

“I did! It wasn’t on my radar!”

“It was, I saw it.”

“So did I,” Toby said. “I was wondering what you were doing.”

“You weren’t looking at it,” Sebastian told Phin.

“It’s too small… down there in the bottom corner. How am I-?”

“You want it in the center of the screen?” Sebastian said. “Then how you gonna see where you’re going, what you’re shooting at?”

Phin tossed the control on the floor. “This is stupid.” He stood and headed for the door.

Sebastian grabbed his arm. “If you can’t even play the game-”

Phin pulled his arm away. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll beat that thing by tomorrow. Stop coaching.”

They stared at each other for a few moments. Phin rolled his head, audibly popping out the stiffness, and said, “All right, one more go, then I’m done.” He picked up his controller and dropped into the chair.

“Watch the radar this time,” Toby said.

Phin glared at him. “When we’re doing this for real, we’ll see who gets the most kills.”

“You’re on,” Toby said and pushed the button to restart the simulator.