“Those two probably know a lot about what’s going on here.”

“Do we go down there?”

Summer frowned. “We need information if we’re going to help John. We shouldn’t risk letting them get away without finding out more about them.”

Pigeon gave a nod. “Then we better hurry.”

*****

Nate paused beside Trevor after entering Arcadeland. He had never been inside such a vast arcade before. Beyond the tiled lobby he could see traditional standing video games, driving games, shooting games, plus diverse games where a player could win tickets.

“This place is big,” Trevor murmured.

“Let’s check it out,” Nate said.

For the first few minutes, Nate and Trevor roamed the aisles of games, surveying the different ways to spend tokens. Some of the shooting games looked really cool. One let two players hunt dinosaurs together. Another offered the chance to roam a zombie-infested mansion armed with machine guns. A third turned the player into the gunner atop an armored vehicle that prowled around a battlefield.

Trevor seemed extra interested in the racing games. You could ride a motorcycle that you turned by rocking it from side to side. A long row of car racing games used steering wheels to put the player in the driver’s seat. Most featured exotic courses. Some of them were apparently set in the future. One unusual racing game allowed the player to pedal a bike that powered a one-man airship.

Nate didn’t spend a lot of time on the traditional video games. There were some slick fighting games, and a few classic games like Gauntlet, Donkey Kong, and Pac-Man. But he could play games like that at home.

Most of the arcade was devoted to games that allowed the player to win tickets. Nate found Skee-Ball, basketball, and Whac-A-Mole. Some of the games seemed like pure chance, where you spun a big prize wheel or pressed a button to drop a ball onto a spinning platform riddled with holes.

On one side of the arcade they found a coin-operated shooting gallery depicting a scene from the Old West, with lots of little targets spaced around the area. They paused to watch people shooting. One target made the mannequin at the piano start playing. Another made the spittoon rattle. A third made an owl flap its wings and spin its head around.

“Let’s get some tokens,” Trevor suggested.

Nate led the way to a token machine. He inserted a twenty, and coins came clinking out like he’d won a jackpot. “Is this enough for now?” Nate asked.

“Do one more for me,” Trevor said. “They want us to be thorough—that’ll take some money.”

Nate fed the machine a second twenty and let Trevor collect the tokens. While Trevor scooped them out, Nate scanned the room. There were people around, but the arcade wasn’t packed. He supposed it probably got more crowded in the evenings and on weekends.

“Where do you want to start?” Trevor asked.

“Too many choices—it’s hard to pick.”

“Do you want to win tickets?”

“I don’t know,” Nate said. “Let’s see what prizes they have.”

They wandered over to the redemption counter, where various items were on display alongside the quantity of tickets required to claim them. The prizes ranged from cheap little army men and gummy bracelets for 5 tickets up to sound systems and guitars for 15,000.

“This is such a rip-off,” Trevor said. “The cheap things are junk, and you could buy the cool stuff for so much less than it would cost to earn all those tickets.”

“Earning the tickets is supposed to be fun,” Nate said. “I think they have the prizes as sort of a bonus.”

Trevor folded his arms and leaned against the glass counter. “I don’t know. If I put in all the effort to win 10,000 tickets, I’d want something better than a neon clock.”

“You could get two mini foosball tables,” Nate pointed out.

“Exactly,” Trevor said. “How long do you think that mini foosball table would stay fun?”

“You can be like me, and just go for the bouncy balls. Let’s see . . . the little ones are 25 tickets, medium are 50, and the bigger ones are 100. Cheap and fun.”

“If you say so.”

“You’re welcome to give your tickets to me,” Nate said.

“I could probably find a prize if I had to,” Trevor hedged. “Maybe that glow-in-the-dark yo-yo.”

“Hours of fun,” Nate said. “Want to shoot some hoops?”

“We can shoot hoops for free,” Trevor mentioned. “At the park. At our school.”

“Right, but on a normal court it isn’t timed, the balls don’t automatically keep coming, nothing keeps score, and you don’t get tickets at the end. Besides, we’re not really paying for it.”

“Okay, I’m in.”

They walked over to the row of basketball shooting games against the wall. Most had mini basketballs. A couple at the end were larger, with full-sized balls and a longer distance to the hoop.

Only one person was currently playing—a skinny kid with dark hair who looked to be about their age. He was on one of the smaller machines. As the timer ticked down, he sank one ball after another, most of them swishes. After releasing each shot, he snatched another ball before the previous one had dropped. Taking no time to aim, he kept shooting with mechanical regularity. The infrequent missed shots didn’t rattle him, although occasionally an inbound shot would collide with a ball still bouncing on the rim.

For the last thirty seconds, the hoop slid farther away, awarding three points instead of two for each basket made. After the hoop retreated, the kid missed only twice even though he was still shooting about as fast as Nate could imagine. At the buzzer, his score was 105. The machine started expelling a long ribbon of tickets, which joined other strips of tickets coiled at his feet.

“That was amazing,” Nate said loudly.

The kid looked over. “I’ve been practicing.”

“Can you shoot like that every time?” Trevor asked.

The kid shrugged. “Mostly. You guys want to have a competition?”

Nate didn’t feel very eager. He doubted he could sink half as many baskets in the same amount of time. “What sort of competition?”

The kid smiled. “Whoever sinks the most baskets keeps all the tickets.” He looked down at the tangled ribbons of tickets by his feet.

“We don’t have any tickets,” Trevor said. “We might only earn a few.”

“Then you don’t have much to lose,” the kid replied.