Caine squinted at the numbers on the display. Two hundred and fifty-one kilowatts. That was insane. A whole arcade didn't pull that much power, let alone some tiny, beat-up game console he'd dug out of the trash.
He frowned. "Hey, Mr. Reeve. You ever seen a game eat this much power?"
The old tech barely glanced over, until he did, and his face immediately tightened. He grabbed the console, fingers tapping along its side to bring up a diagnostic scan. The numbers didn't budge. Didn't drop. If anything, the demand was steady. Like it was mocking.
Reeve's throat bobbed. "This thing is pulling industrial-grade voltage. No way in hell a normal game console needs this." His sharp eyes locked onto Caine. "Where the hell did you get this, kid?"
Yeah. Nope. That wasn't a question Caine was about to answer honestly. Mr. Reeve was definitely the type to report things to people like, oh, Caine's mom. And that would be a disaster.
"Well…"
Caine wasn't a gangster. He just hung around the wrong crowd. A bunch of kids who thought they were tough; smoking, stealing, breaking into places they had no business being in. Stupid, reckless stuff. The kind of thing that, in a big city, might get you a warning. Maybe a slap on the wrist.
But Sol City wasn't a big city. And Sol City didn't do warnings.
People went missing all of the blue here. Regularly. The government had bigger things to deal with than delinquent kids, so they made things simple: caught smoking, stealing, or breaking into places then you're going straight to juvy. No trial. No debate.
Caine got lucky.
When they found him messing around with a drone; a stolen drone, he didn't get thrown in with the others. Maybe because he hadn't been holding a cigarette. Maybe because he looked more like a reckless idiot than an actual criminal. But one of the guys they did arrest knew him, and that was enough to make the enforcers suspicious.
If it weren't for Uncle Matthew, Caine probably would've been locked up.
His uncle worked for the government and had just enough sway to keep him out of juvy. "The kid's reckless, sure. A bit of a liability. But he's not a criminal."
That was the argument that saved him.
Instead of prison, they gave Caine something worse: a month of trash duty. In the same damn district where he'd crashed that drone.
Which was how he ended up with the console. And why he really didn't want to tell Mr. Reeve.
"Hey, kid. I'm asking you something."
"VICTORY! WOO!"
A cheer exploded from the front of the arcade. A group of players jumped from their seats, fists in the air.
Mr. Reeve's Arcade was a narrow storefront jammed between two bigger buildings, part of a strip of old-school shops that hadn't been updated in years. Inside, it was packed; game stations lined the walls, screens flashing with high-speed action, shelves stacked with discs, some of them imported straight from off-world markets.
Mr. Reeve's frown vanished. He dropped the console onto the table and turned to the kids, shaking his head. "You guys won?"
One of the players, Living King, grinned. "Hell yeah, we did!"
Reeve chuckled, already walking over to check their stats.
Caine felt Jace nudge him. "Why didn't you tell him?"
Caine shot him a look. "Tell him what?"
Jace leaned in, voice low. "That you picked it up from the trash."
Caine rolled his eyes. "Can you hear yourself? Tell Mr. Reeve I picked up a game console from Bayhand Estate's trash?"
Jace raised an eyebrow. "And?"
"That doesn't just make one more person aware of my trash-picking punishment. It also makes him think I'm some kid who steals from garbage."
Jace snorted. "Aren't you?"
Caine ignored him. "He'd tell my mom. And if I wanted her to know, I wouldn't have brought it here." He crossed his arms. "If I could keep it at home, I would've. But I can't. So now Mr. Reeve can't know either."
Jace smirked. "So, what's the plan then, genius?"
Caine exhaled. Looked toward Mr. Reeve, who was still distracted. "We figure out what this thing is." Then we get rid of it. Simple.
Except nothing about this damn console was simple.
The console didn't look special though. Just an old, beat-up thing he pulled from the trash, covered in dust, with buttons that felt a little too sharp at the edges, like they weren't meant to fit together. It was weird, yeah, but weird things turned up in the processing yard all the time. You didn't question it. You either took it or left it. And since he's concluded the one month of picking trash punishment, he might as well get a little fun out of it.
Jace was next to him, flipping through game cases like he actually had money to buy one. Mr. Reeve, the arcade guy, was busy hyping up the kids who just won a match, grinning like he was the one who pulled off the victory. Perfect timing.
Caine tapped Jace on the shoulder. "Keep watch."
Jace glanced at him, then at the console, and sighed. "This is a terrible idea."
He was probably right. But did that stop Caine? Absolutely not. He reached under the table, grabbed a spare power cable, and plugged it in.
CLICK.
BOOM.
Every single power was gone. The arcade. The two buildings next to it. Half the damn street.
Neon signs fizzled out. The vending machine let out a sad little whine before dying completely. Some poor guy outside yelled something about his cash register turning off all of a sudden.
Jace let out a slow, shaky breath. "Uh…"
Then came the yelling.
"The hell just happened?"
"My register just shut down!"
"Oi, Reeve! Your damn arcade killed the power again? But today it's more than worse."
Mr. Reeve turned around, his face going from cheerful to murderous in under two seconds. His eyes locked onto Caine, then the dark arcade, and finally… the lit up console. The only thing that had changed was the white screen displaying a word in orange "Applecon." The irony.
His voice came out sharp, cutting through the silent chaos. "What. Did. You. Do, kid?"
Caine swallowed hard.