6 RENEGADE UNICORNS

6 RENEGADE UNICORNS Lunar day 252 Breakfast time In addition to Kira and Violet, Roddy Marquez was also in the rec room. This was no surprise. Roddy used the virtual-reality system every chance he got. It wasn't even rare to find him there before breakfast. Since school took place in the rec room, Roddy often got up early to score a few veeyar hours beforehand. He had a pair of hologoggles strapped over his eyes and sensogloves on his hands. Based on his movements, it appeared that he was playing a

first-person shooter game. While the same moves probably looked cool inside the game, outside it Roddy looked bizarre, like a person who had found a snake in his pants. Kira was crouched by the veeyar controls, about to jack her portable computer into the interface. Violet was beside her, watching gleefully. "What are you—" I began, but Kira quickly hushed me. Roddy froze in the midst of his game, as though he'd heard me, which was a surprise. The hologoggles had speakers built into them, and Roddy liked to play with the sound cranked to eleven. "Hello?" he asked. "Is anyone there?" We all kept our mouths shut. "Hello?" Roddy asked again. When there wasn't an answer, he resumed playing the game. Kira hurried over to me with Violet and led us out of the rec room, into the hall where Roddy wouldn't hear us. "What are you doing?" I asked. "Getting Roddy off the veeyar system for once," Kira replied. "Because he never shares it with anyone," Violet said angrily. "Especially me. Remember what he did

the other day?" "Yeah," I said. "I remember." Everyone at MBA knew what had happened. Kira called it the Rainbow Unicorn Incident. Violet and Inez Marquez had been dying to play Unicorn Fantasy, a new game that was a huge fad back on earth. (I wasn't very clear on the rules of the game, as I had never played it, but from what I could understand, you played a unicorn who could fix environmental disasters with the power of music and rainbows.) Roddy had staunchly refused to get off the system, though. For five hours. Finally, Violet and Inez had rebelled by tying his shoelaces together and then kicking him in the butt. Roddy had tried to chase them, tripped over his shoelaces, and face-planted on the floor. The problem was, he hadn't fully removed the hologoggles yet, so he ended up with two enormous welts around his eyes that made him look like an angry raccoon. The hologoggles had also been fractured. Luckily, Chang knew how to fix them, but he'd had to use duct tape, which meant they were now unwieldy and uncomfortable. There were only three other pairs of hologoggles on the base and it was unlikely that we'd get a replacement anytime soon. Even though Roddy had been the

instigator, Violet and Inez had still gotten in trouble. (Most of the Moonies secretly sided with them, though. We had all had issues with Roddy hogging the veeyar system.) It was possible to play veeyar games in our rooms, but those interfaces weren't nearly as good as the one in the main rec room. The games tended to glitch and stutter. So everyone wanted to use the main one— if we could ever get Roddy off it. "So," Kira went on. "I've worked out a way to hack the system. I think I know how to get Roddy to stop playing." "How?" I asked. Kira smiled deviously. "Jack in and see." "All right." I quickly returned to the rec room with the girls, grabbed some hologoggles and sensogloves and pulled them on. "Hey, Roddy," I announced loudly, so he'd hear me over whatever he was playing. "I'm joining the game." "I hope you do a better job than usual," Roddy replied churlishly. "This game's not easy. If you're gonna suck, you'll take me down with you." Despite his attitude, Roddy was probably right. I wasn't very adept at first-person shooter games. But I jacked in anyhow.

There was a flash of light, and then I found myself standing on a strange planet, under attack by a horde of aliens. Often the extraterrestrial worlds Roddy chose were gorgeous, reminiscent of the most beautiful places on earth. This one wasn't. We were in the armpit of the universe, a planet that had apparently been used as a garbage dump by every other alien culture. Trash ranging from crashed spaceships to piles of smoldering metal scarred the entire landscape. I was up to my knees in some sort of foul, viscous sewage. The aliens we were fighting weren't much more attractive. They seemed to be mostly composed of armor plating, spikes, and teeth. Instead of having weapons, they fired bolts of acid from various orifices on their body. I wasn't sure what the orifices were supposed to be. (To be honest, I didn't really want to think about it.) Roddy's avatar was right beside me, a towering mountain of muscle who looked nothing like Roddy at all. He was blasting aliens with machine guns the size of cannons. I had never updated my avatar. It was simply me, and I was dwarfed by Roddy and the aliens. My gun looked like a peashooter.

"Get down!" Roddy yelled. I had no choice but to dive into the sewage as an alien bombarded us with toxic bodily fluids. True, both the sewage and the alien were completely imaginary, but in the veeyar system, they were both revoltingly realistic. While I was submerged, Roddy shredded the alien with a burst of bullets, then took out the rest of the brigade as well. I resurfaced, dripping ooze, to find that the attack was over for the moment. We shifted into exploratory mode, slogging through the muck. Roddy glared at the gun in my hand. "That piece of garbage won't do you any good against the Bosnakkian Blastbeetles. Why haven't you ever upgraded your weaponry?" "Because I don't like playing this game." "Then why are you even here?" "I wanted to talk to you," I said. I wasn't merely stalling for Kira's sake; this was the truth. "About Lars Sjoberg." "Why? Are you trying to figure out who poisoned him?" "He wasn't poisoned," I lied. "His food got contaminated."