Recoil Read Free Page A

at a
time. Today I’d be gone for hours, and that would be hard for her. Robin didn’t
much mind being stuck at home. He was too introverted to find the socials
anything but an ordeal, and usually took a book along with him so he could find
a quiet corner and read while the rest of us used the opportunity to “practice
our interpersonal social skills” and tried to “meet others with a view to
pursuing relationships with them”, or whatever it was the regulation advocated.
    “Anyway,” I added, “you may well have met me. With these things,”
I tapped my respirator, “it’s hard to tell.”
    “I’d have remembered,” said Bruce with a smile that was almost a
leer. He looked me up and down as if to emphasize his point.
    His unwavering attention made me uncomfortable. I exchanged a
glance with Leya , who raised her eyebrows and tilted
her head at Bruce as if to say, “Get him.”
    “Are you going to the social next Saturday?” Bruce asked me.
“It’s a picnic in the city park. I’ll be there.”
    “I don’t know. Yeah, maybe,” I said.
    I stared out the window, hoping he would stop looking at me and
drop the subject. Our westbound highway was largely empty. Six-lane traffic
jams were a thing of the past — the upside of a pandemic which kept people
inside. It wasn’t a scenic drive, but still it was good to see something more
than the unchanging sameness of home. As we drove under an overpass, I read
graffiti sprayed in black paint on the passing pillars: World-War-Rat- atat , and directly beneath a security camera on
the wall to our right as we emerged, someone had painted the message: One Nation
under Observation.
    “We could hang out together,” Bruce persisted.
    I looked an appeal at Leya . In the
unwritten code of friendly behavior, girls were supposed to have each other’s
back at moments like this, weren’t they?
    “We —” Bruce began, but Leya interrupted.
    “So, when did you qualify?”
    “Day before yesterday. I must have been the last of the four,” I
said, relieved at the change of subject.
    “You’re not … You’re not the one who killed Jakhil ,
are you?” she asked, sounding incredulous.
    I nodded and shrugged. I was trying to act casual but beneath the
respirator, I was grinning.
    “Dude!” she said, leaning over to bump elbows with me again.
“Props!”
    “Thanks.”
    “You won? You?” said Bruce.
    “Yeah,” I said, trying not to take offense at the note of
disbelief in his voice. “I got lucky, I guess.”
    “No way was that just good luck. You must be hot, girl!” said Leya .
    I tried to look modest. “You guys must be really good too, to
qualify.”
    “I took out my fair share of the invaders and repbots ,”
said Leya .
    “Oh, I’m good alright,” said Bruce, nodding and smiling. “And I’m
looking forward to getting my game on with you.”
    Was I imagining the double meaning? I could be. Being cooped up
inside and kept away from others for the last four years hadn’t given me much
experience dealing with people face-to-face. I frowned at him.
    “I like a challenge,” he said to me. It sounded a bit like a threat.
    I asked Leya about her Game history,
and for a while we three chatted about our favorite hobby, trading war stories
and comparing scores. I heard enough to know that while Leya was no slouch in the sniping department, Bruce, unless he was exaggerating, was
an exceptional player. On another day he might well have been the one to take
down Jakhil .
    We were still talking about The Game and whether Jakhil’s second-in-command would automatically become
commander of the Alien Axis Army now that he was dead, or whether there might
be a leadership challenge, when we pulled up in front of a huge two-story brick
house in a subdivision of similar McMansions.
    “Check it out,” said Bruce, peering out the window, “it’s a
starter-castle.”
    The boy who came out the front door decon unit was tall with orange hair. When he got closer, I saw