Page 51 of Tapeworld Induction

“Is it painful?” she asked.

He looked at her like he’d never been asked that by someone who actually cared. “Yeah… It comes and goes, though.” Her heart overrode her other concerns. She did know Isaak. And she could trust him.

She smiled playfully. “I could rub it for you?”

He laughed. “It’s okay. I just need to rest it for a minute. But I appreciate the offer…” While the tension in his leg resolved, another kind of tension grew between them. Did he feel it too?

Then Isaak said, “It’s feeling a lot better now. We should carry on.”

When they reached the fourth-floor landing, a door was open, bright blue and yellow lights spilling out into the stairwell. Sacha was waiting for them.

“Isaak. Miss.”

He was younger than Isaak by about five years, and yet, like Isaak, worry lines had formed around his eyes and mouth. Sacha was still blessed with a youthful face, but one that had seen a lot in its time. He was wearing a green utilitarian vest decked out with various pockets, bits of multicoloured wire peeking out of them. His blonde hair was cut short, jarhead-like. A far cry from the long hair of his London Lazarus days.

These two were the team’s biggest stars: the stalwart, hardened team captain and his eager apprentice, a neophyte whose gameplay skills grew in leaps and bounds as they worked together. Their strategy, technique, and shared quick-speak gave them an edge over other teams, with both coming in clutch for the other and ensuring victory, while the rest of the team slugged it out and made a path for them.

Isaak nodded at him. “Sacha, this is Dylan. Dylan, this is Sacha. Be nice!”

Sacha waved them inside his flat, closing the door behind them, grumbling audibly in his faint German accent. “Doesn’t call for months, then barges in here demanding that I’m nice…”

Isaak looked over his shoulder. There was a veiled threat in his eyes. She wondered what it would be like to be Isaak’s enemy, and she couldn’t believe Sacha would be on that list.

The man gave Isaak a wounded look. “What? It’s true, isn’t it?”

“It’s not like I didn’t want to call…” Isaak said, leading them further into Sacha’s flat.

Two huge studio lights lit up the main space, giving off a low buzz, and various cameras and screens were set up around the walls. Dylan had to be careful not to step on any of the hundreds of cables running over the floor. At the centre of the room, on a table about bar height, were chunks of cobbled-together chipboard, connected with varying lengths of wire. Simultaneously a workshop and an abstract display, though she couldn’t figure out the meaning.

“Are you an artist, Sacha?”

She reached for a strange-looking piece of metal sitting on one of the many shelves arranged around the room, and just the act of touching it caused something else to fall down, clanging to the floor.

“Miss, Miss! Be gentle!” Sacha stormed in after her, waving her away from the various contraptions and wires. “This is my work, yes.”

After putting back whatever had fallen, he strode over to where she was standing now, and his arm reached behind her. Dylan’s self-preservation instinct kicked in. She was about to slap his hand away when she heard a click, a button that Sacha had pressed behind her.

The wired-up arrangement on the table started moving. A shock of LEDs flashed erratically, coalescing into predictable patterns as Sacha moved away.

Isaak sidled up to her. “Cool, isn’t it? Sacha always had a thing for hardware. His pastime when we weren’t training or playing.”

The tinkerer watched his moving objet d’art with pride.

From Dylan’s perspective it still looked like a mess… except that now it was moving. The meaning behind it, and the spectacle of lights, eluded her. It was a surprising new side to someone she’d only known from ReSports game footage.

“What’s it supposed to be?” she whispered through her hand at Isaak, feeling like she was completely missing the point.

Isaak glanced at her, his pink-brown lips pressed together for a moment. “Do you know Miró?”

“The Spanish painter? Squiggly lines guy?”

He nodded and smiled, then raised his eyebrows and gestured towards Sacha.

“This is inspired by him?” Dylan asked.

“Sacha’s a bit of a Dadaist,” Isaak said with a mischievous grin.

His old friend looked at the two of them. “Don’t go filling the lady’s head with tripe, Isaak. I simply try to put out what’s inside my brain.”