“Okay.”
“Shoot anything that has a swastika on it.”
“What’s a swastika?”
He points toward a strange red symbol on the screen. “That thing.” He shows me his controller and begins pointing at the various knobs and buttons. “The joystick moves you back and forth. This button makes you shoot. This one makes you jump. These two together make you duck. And these two together make you swivel.”
I blink, memorizing his directions. “Got it.”
Cody regards me for a moment. “The girl who proved Goldbach’s conjecture? Yeah, I’m sure you do.”
He restarts the game and we’re off. I pick it up easily. My fingers moving swiftly across the controls. It’s enjoyable. It occupies my otherwise swimming mind. I can see why Cody turns to it when he’s having a bad day.
We survive a surprise attack on the bridge and make it to a sleeping enemy camp. I manage to annihilate everyone within a matter of seconds. Before Cody has even made it off the bridge. He whistles, impressed.
“You got a secret vendetta against Nazis?” he asks.
I laugh but don’t respond otherwise. I just keep going. Keep shooting. Keep ducking punches. Diving away from bombs. Keep fighting.
Never. Stop. Fighting.
What Cody doesn’t know is that when I look at the screen, when I stare those computer-generated soldiers in the eye, I don’t see their flat, two-dimensional faces. I see Alixter.
In every single one of them.
I see his chilling blue eyes. His white-blond hair. His handsome, smug features. His soulless grin.
And I destroy it.
If only it were that easy.
But then I remember Kaelen waiting outside, counting down the seconds until my fifteen minutes are up, and I know I can’t hide in here all day. Neither of us can. Any minute now, Kaelen will be transessing through that door, ready to use whatever means necessary to get the information he’s looking for out of Cody’s head.
“Cody?” I say cautiously, keeping my eyes glued to the enormous screen.
“Yeah?”
“Why do you think the memories in my head would lead me to you?”
I can hear him sigh next to me. I can tell I’ve broken the rule. Brought up the subject I wasn’t supposed to bring up. But what choice do I have?
If I want to protect Cody from the wrath of Alixter via Kaelen, and save Zen’s life, I have to get the information myself.
“I told you,” he says, sounding irritated. “I don’t know.”
I open my mouth to argue but I’m interrupted by a bright beeping sound. A notification box has popped up on the upper left side of the screen: The lotto announcement will air in two minutes. Would you like to change the input?
“Yes,” Cody says to the screen, pausing the game and dropping his controller next to him. He taps the surface of the coffee table, causing it to shift into another giant flat-panel screen. Like the one embedded in his kitchen counter. He maneuvers through various digital contents until he comes across a small orange-and-white square with a row of numbers displayed across the middle. I recognize it. I saw something similar on Cody’s countertop just this morning. Except that one was almost a week old. This one has today’s date.
The wall screen has changed. I’m now staring at a three-dimensional projection of a life-size woman who appears to be standing in the middle of the room. Next to her is a large clear container filled with tiny white balls that have numbers printed on the side.
“What is this?” I ask.
“It’s the Magnum Ball Lotto.”
I watch as the balls in the container start to jumble and hop and dance until one of them is blown into a tube at the top and rolls all the way down to the base. The woman standing in the living room picks it up and reads the number aloud. She continues to do this until seven numbers have been read.
Cody, who has been standing directly in front of her, slouches and swipes his fingertip across the glass coffee table, causing the small white-and-orange square to minimize into the corner.
“What happened?”
“I didn’t win,” he says dejectedly.
I lean forward and drag the digital lotto ticket back into the center of the coffee table. “How does it work?”
“Switch to game mode,” he commands the wall screen. Then he sinks back into the couch and scoops up his controller again. “Twice a week they pick seven random numbers. If your numbers match, you win the jackpot. It was up to $1.1 billion this week.”
“How many numbers are there in total?”
“Eighty-five.”
“But,” I protest, “the chance that you would have the same seven numbers as the ones randomly selected from eighty-five options is one in 200 million.”