Dragons vs. Robots Read online

  Lilli glanced out the window. “Let’s hope we don’t lose power like Uncle Jack said.” She frowned. “Or worse, the Wi-Fi goes out.”

  “No kidding.” I scrambled onto my bed. “That would be just my luck. I finally decide to go online, and online is like, nah.”

  Of course even as I made the joke, I realized deep down I was kind of hoping for just that. A good excuse not to be able to do what we were about to do. Too bad, so sad. Can’t say we didn’t try…

  But the lights remained on. And Lilli joined me on the bed, grabbing her laptop and plopping it on my lap.

  I swallowed hard, the familiar fear rising to my throat. My heart raced in my chest as I stared down at the log-in screen. My hands shook as they settled on the keyboard.

  This was it. There was no turning back now.

  “The password’s Atreus-One-Two-Three,” Lilli informed me. I gave her a look. She shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry. Never got around to changing it.”

  I slowly typed in the password. Letter by letter. Number by number. With each stroke of a key, my anxiety rose. Higher and higher, my breath catching in my throat. When I reached the end of the sequence, my finger hovered over the Enter key as I dared myself to press it.

  “Come on already!” Lilli groaned, reaching over and punching it herself.

  I watched, heart pounding, as the computer revealed my desktop, which unfortunately wallpapered long ago with a huge close-up shot of Atreus. Guess she had never bothered to change that, either.

  In the corner, the little Wi-Fi icon blinked, then turned solid.

  We were online.

  “All right,” Lilli said. “Now load up Fields of Fantasy. Let’s get this over with.”

  I nodded slowly, trying to keep my vision from going blurry as I guided the cursor over to the familiar game icon. I hadn’t opened the game in three months. Was Atreus still there, still waiting for me? What would he do if he saw me online?

  I paused at the icon. Tried to will myself to click on it.

  “Are you okay, Ian?” Lilli asked, peering at me. Her expression morphed into pity when she caught my face. She reached out for the laptop. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to do this. Just give me back the laptop, and you can go back to the kitchen. I’ll log in and deliver the message to Ikumi.”

  I felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment. She must have thought I was so pathetic. I mean, what was I afraid of? Some evil video game dragon lurching from the screen to devour me in real life?

  “I got it,” I muttered, brushing her hands away. I tried to remind myself of Ikumi, who might actually be in real danger. Unlike me, safe and sound in a spare bedroom, afraid of some pixelated monster coming to get me.

  I clicked and typed in my user name and password when the game loaded to the screen. Then I moved my cursor over to the New Mail button and opened my mailbox. To my surprise, there was a letter from Ikumi.

  A letter dated two days ago.

  “Ooh! Open it,” Lilli cried. “Maybe it’s about her dad!”

  I nodded grimly, hands shaking as I clicked Open. The envelope blinked, then expanded the message to full screen.

  I gasped as I read the single word, slashing in bold letters across my screen.

  HELP!

  And suddenly the lights went out.

  I screamed. I couldn’t help it. But Lilli screamed, too, so I didn’t feel quite so ridiculous. A moment later, Aunt Robin poked her head into our room, freaking us out all over again.

  “You guys okay?” she asked.

  For a split second I thought maybe she’d seen the help message. But then I realized she was talking about the power outage. Duh.

  “The lightning must have knocked out a transformer or something,” she continued. “The whole neighborhood’s out.”

  “We’re fine,” Lilli assured her. “Just… Do you have a flashlight or something?”

  We could see the outline of Aunt Robin’s head nod in the darkness. She disappeared for a moment, then returned with two bright flashlights, tossing one to each of us. “Hopefully it won’t last long,” she said. “Let me know if you need anything.” And with that, she left the room.

  Lilli and I exchanged glances. Then we dropped the flashlights, turning back to the computer screen. Since we were working off a battery-powered laptop, it was still on. But Fields of Fantasy had disconnected.

  “Ugh.” Lilli made a face. “The Wi-Fi must be out, too. Just our luck.”

  I nodded grimly, my mind racing. “What are we going to do?”

  “There’s not much we can do,” Lilli said with a shrug. “Just… wait for it to come back on, I guess.”

  “But that could take all night!” I protested, closing the laptop and setting it on the bed. “You saw the message. Ikumi needs our help. We can’t just sit around and wait!”

  “You got a better idea?” Lilli asked.

  I glanced out the window. It looked as if the rain had stopped. Though that didn’t guarantee our electricity would come back on anytime soon. I remembered the last time we had an outage; it had taken half the day for them to fix the damaged transformer. It had been our first day of winter break, too, and I was bouncing off the walls with no TV, no games, no internet. Mom had finally gotten fed up and announced we were leaving the house. She was taking me to—

  I shot up from the bed. “What if we went to Epic Fun Play?”

  Epic Fun Play was this awesome old-school video arcade that had opened last year, not far from our house. It had this amazing two-floor laser tag room and all these old-school video games from back when our parents were kids. Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Centipede. It was like a Wreck-It Ralph movie come to life. I would go there sometimes to play games. Games that didn’t need the internet to function.

  But the place did have free Wi-Fi. I remembered seeing the signs.

  Lilli glanced at her watch. “Do you think they’re open still?”

  “Even if not, I bet Maddy will let us in,” I said. Maddy was the owner of the arcade and basically the second-coolest adult I’d ever met after Uncle Jack. Not only did she love video games, but she was also an artist who illustrated manga and other graphic novels. Like, real ones you found in bookstores. She lived in an apartment above the arcade, so I knew she’d be there, even after hours.

  “Yeah, but she might be out of power, too,” Lilli reminded me.

  “Maybe. But she has a generator,” I said. “Remember? That’s why Mom took us there when the power went out over Christmas break. All the lights in the neighborhood were out except for hers.”

  “That’s right!” Lilli remembered. “Good thinking, Ian!”

  I smiled, feeling pleased. Except also feeling more freaked out. Here I’d had a very good excuse not to go online. And I’d gone and blown it up.

  For Ikumi, I reminded myself. You’re doing this for Ikumi.

  My sister glanced at the closed bedroom door. “Okay,” she said. “We’re going to need to sneak out. No way Uncle Jack and Aunt Robin are going to let us go out on our own at night.”

  I nodded, wrinkling my nose. She wasn’t wrong. But still, what if Aunt Robin came to check on us again and we weren’t there? She would totally freak. Uncle Jack would probably call out the National Guard. After all, he’d almost lost us once already in a video game theme park.

  “We’ll leave a note,” I decided aloud. “In case anyone comes to check on us. They’ll be mad, but at least they’ll know where we are and that we’re safe.”

  “Good idea,” Lilli agreed, flicking on her flashlight and digging in the nightstand drawer for paper and pen. I watched as she scribbled an explanation, then set it down on her pillow.

  Something inside me squirmed. No turning back now.

  Thankfully, the bedroom was on the first floor, which meant we could easily pop out the screen and slip out the window. I felt a little like I was in a real-life video game as we climbed out into the dark night as quietly as we could, Lilli’s laptop safely in a messenger bag. A real-life sneak mission
that, while never one of my favorites in the game world, was actually kind of cool in real life.

  Once outside and away from the house, I looked around, shining my flashlight onto the quiet street. Every house on the block was dark, completely without power. Even the streetlights were unlit. Kind of giving the normally safe suburban neighborhood a distinct horror movie vibe. I suddenly pictured a large man in a hockey mask lurking behind a hedge, ready to strike—

  Something rustled in the bushes. I let out a small shriek, leaping back. Until I realized it was nothing more than a black cat, peering up at me with obvious disdain. As if to say, And here they call me a scaredy cat…

  “You okay?” Lilli asked, raising an eyebrow.

  I laughed uneasily. “Trash mob. What are you going to do?”

  She giggled. “It does feel a little like a video game, doesn’t it?” she remarked, shining her flashlight down the dark street. She switched to a movie-announcer voice. “Can our brave heroes make their way down the forbidden Oak Street? Past the dastardly mailboxes of doom?”

  “Will they brave the terrible traffic lights?” I continued, joining the game. “Will they make it past the Petersons’ puppies of peril?”

  “And what will await them at the end… in the Epic Fun Play dungeon of doom? Will they find Wi-Fi? Or will they find death?”

  We both broke out laughing so hard we could barely walk. Lilli kept telling me to shush—no need to alert the neighbors to our secret quest—they might call Aunt Robin. A truly terrifying boss mob we definitely didn’t want to have to face alone.

  I pushed down my laughter as we continued to our destination. Still, I couldn’t help feeling a little excited about the secret mission. It’d been a while since I’d done something even remotely daring. I had to admit, it felt pretty good.

  It took longer than it would have if we’d had our bikes—our usual mode of transportation—but we made it to the arcade about fifteen minutes later. I let out a breath of relief as my eyes caught the familiar neon sign above, lit up like daylight. The first light we’d seen since the power had gone out. Like a literal light at the end of the tunnel.

  “We made it!” I declared. “Quest complete.”

  But when I grabbed the door handle? It was locked.

  “Or… maybe not,” Lilli said with a sigh.

  I groaned, banging my fist against the door in frustration. So much for an easy quest. I leaned against the nearby brick wall, staring out into the dark night. “If only you had real-life lock-picking abilities,” I remarked to Lilli, remembering her epic skills back from our Dragon Ops days.

  She snorted. “Right? Though—real-life breaking and entering might lead to a very bad game over. As in go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.”

  “Good point.”

  I turned back to the door, then looked up. Was that a faint light I saw in the upstairs window? Maybe Maddy was up there working on her art. Maybe if we knocked, she’d hear us and let us in, even though she was technically closed. It was an emergency, after all. Or it might be, anyway. We still weren’t quite sure.

  My mind flashed back to Ikumi’s message.

  Help.

  I rang the doorbell, then knocked with my fist, just in case. “Maddy?” I called out. “Are you there? It’s me—Ian Rivera!”

  We waited, for a moment hearing nothing. Then my ears caught a rummaging beyond the door. There was the click of a lock, and the door swung open. Maddy stood there, dressed in a big fluffy bathrobe with a weird array of cats wearing space helmets plastered all over it. She rubbed her eyes with her fists, then blinked back at us.

  “Hey, Ian,” she said. “What are you doing here so late?”

  “It’s not that late,” I pointed out. “It’s only eight thirty.”

  She glanced at her wrist as if expecting to see a watch there. Then she laughed. “Oh, right. Sorry. I’m still on Tokyo time.”

  “You went to Tokyo?” I asked, impressed.

  “I wish. I was just on a Zoom call with my publisher over there,” she explained. “They need three more chapters of artwork by the end of the month to stay on schedule, and we were going over the text to make sure I got it right.”

  “Cool,” I exclaimed. And I meant it, too. Imagine drawing manga for a living! That was almost as good as being a video game programmer like Uncle Jack!

  “Sorry,” Lilli broke in. “I’m Ian’s sister, Lilli. And we didn’t mean to wake you. It’s just… the power’s gone out everywhere, and we knew you had a generator.”

  “And… you needed a late-night video game fix?” Maddy raised an eyebrow.

  “Your Wi-Fi, actually,” I explained.

  The eyebrow went higher. “You want to use Wi-Fi?” she asked. She made a big show of looking outside from left to right. “Did the world get taken over by pod people while I was on deadline?”

  I blushed. I hadn’t thought about how weird that would sound, coming from me. After all, how many times had I told Maddy in the last three months that I didn’t “do” the internet anymore? She’d thought it was so funny—this twelve-year-old Luddite, obsessed with old-school video games and denying all things online.

  If only she knew why.

  “It’s kind of an emergency,” Lilli piped in.

  Maddy gave her a skeptical look. “Emergency-emergency? Or, like, you need to learn some new TikTok dances emergency?”

  “The first,” I assured her. “We have to check on someone. Make sure they’re okay.”

  Rain started to fall again, splashing onto my shoulders. Maddy looked up and sighed. “Fine. Come in before you get soaked to the skin.”

  She hustled us through the front door and into the arcade. The place had been shut down for the night, and the screens to all my favorite games were dark. Until, that was, Maddy walked behind the prize counter (she gave out the best prizes in town) and everything came to life. The screens loaded with their blocky graphics. Their eight-bit theme songs cheerfully beeping and booping through the arcade.

  Lilli let out a low whistle, turning in a circle to take it all in. “Wow,” she said. “This place is like Ian heaven. No wonder you come here so much.”

  I breathed in the familiar stale air, feeling my body relax for the first time all evening. Lilli wasn’t wrong. This was my safe space. The one place I could come and still feel like a gamer. I trailed a hand along an old Galaga game, having the instant urge to stick in a quarter and start playing.

  But we had more important things to do now. So I plopped down at one of the tables in the corner, which Maddy used to host Dungeons and Dragons sessions on weekends. Reaching into my bag, I pulled out Lilli’s laptop.

  “Come on,” I said, beckoning to Lilli. “Let’s get this over with.”

  I could feel Maddy watching us curiously as Lilli came over and pulled up a folding chair next to me. “Everything all right?” she asked.

  “We don’t know,” I admitted. Which was something I’d normally never say to a grown-up. No need to get them all worried and up in our business. But Maddy was different. I was pretty sure if something really went wrong, she’d have our backs.

  After connecting to the internet, I drew in a breath, then loaded up Fields of Fantasy again, selecting the mail icon on the load-in screen and pulling up Ikumi’s message.

  Help!

  I bit my lower lip. What did she mean by that? Did she want me to help her? Or her dad? Both? A little more information might have been useful in this case.

  “Why don’t you write her back?” Lilli suggested.

  I nodded, placing my hands on the keyboard again. Hey, it’s Ian and Lilli, I typed. Sorry it took us a while to reply. Is everything okay? What do you need?

  I glanced back at my sister. “Does that sound all right?”

  “Yeah. Send it. Then we can wait—see if she replies.”

  “Good idea.” I pressed Send on the message. Then I turned to Maddy. “Do you mind if we hang out for a little bit? We’re w
aiting to hear back from our friend.” I paused, then added, “We don’t know for sure, but she might be in some trouble.”

  “And… she doesn’t have a phone?” Maddy asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Her dad’s really strict,” Lilli said quickly. I shot her a grateful look.

  Maddy didn’t look entirely convinced. But in the end, she nodded. “Fine. But you gotta make yourselves useful if you’re staying. Help me clean the machines. These games get crazy dirty during the day.” She tossed me and Lilli some rags and a bottle of Windex. “I can use all the help I can get.”

  And so we got to work, wandering the arcade, wiping off the screens and controllers of the various game cabinets. Maddy wasn’t wrong; some of them were filthy. Definitely needed to remember to wash my hands after my next visit.

  “What on earth is this game?” Lilli asked a few cabinets down, squinting at a bear in a party hat being chased by killer trees. “It looks weird. And it doesn’t even have a… What’s it called? A joystick?” She rolled her rag over the little trackball that sat in its place.

  “Crystal Castles,” I said, stepping over to her side. “It’s supercool. You, like, run around this maze, collecting gems.”

  “So like Pac-Man.”

  “Uh, yeah, except completely different!” I exclaimed, a little offended. I mean, really! Crystal Castles and Pac-Man were not even remotely the same. That was like saying Mario and Zelda were the same! Fortnite and Apex Legends!

  Lilli rolled her eyes. “So sorry. My mistake.”

  Maddy walked over to us, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I swear this kid was born before his time,” she declared. “Before my time, even.”

  Lilli giggled. I groaned.

  “Whatever, haters,” I said, walking over to the Dragon’s Lair cabinet and watching the familiar animated scene of Dirk the Daring and Princess Daphne play out on-screen. “These games might not have the flashiest graphics or soundtracks sung by celebrities, but they’re still awesome. The building blocks of today’s most important games.”