The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 450

Chapter 450: 450 | A Poorly Designed System

The boardwalk arcade opened at nine-thirty, which gave me ten minutes of standing outside the entrance like a stray dog who had identified the source of a promising smell and committed to waiting.

The building sat at the midpoint of the boardwalk, sandwiched between a surf shop that sold twenty-dollar wax bars and a restaurant advertising fish tacos at prices that suggested the fish had attended college. The arcade itself was called VOLTAGE, rendered in neon letters that buzzed with the frequency of equipment that had survived seventeen California summers without maintenance. The front window displayed a row of claw machines containing plush toys whose eyes communicated the specific despair of objects that had accepted their imprisonment.

Eden pressed his face against the glass. "I can see a basketball machine."

"We know," Marco said. "You’ve told us three times."

"I’m updating you on the status. The basketball machine remains present. This is valuable reconnaissance."

Caden stood beside Eden with his hands in his pockets and his blonde hair catching the morning light in a way that his Refract ability probably wasn’t responsible for but that I couldn’t entirely rule out. Caden possessed the rare quality of looking precisely this good by accident, which was either a gift from genetics or evidence that Light Tongue operated in ways the IHL had not successfully classified.

Finn had found a bench fifteen feet from the entrance and was lying flat across it with his eyes closed, his lanky frame overflowing both ends. His fingers moved in slow circles, generating invisible filament patterns against the salt air that nobody could see and that served no function beyond keeping his hands occupied while his brain processed information he would reveal at the exact moment it became relevant and not one second before.

Percy stood beside me with his notebook open, documenting the arcade’s exterior signage, the condition of the sidewalk, the placement of the emergency exit sign relative to the main entrance, and the fact that the neon Z in VOLTAGE flickered at a rate of approximately one point seven hertz. Percy’s blue hair rippled in the coastal wind and his pen moved with the steady rhythm of someone who found comfort in the act of recording the world exactly as it presented itself.

"The Z is dying," Percy said.

"Everything dies eventually."

"The Z will die within approximately three weeks based on current flicker frequency degradation. I find this information neither comforting nor distressing. I am simply aware of it now and will continue to be aware of it."

"That’s the Percy experience."

"I am aware of that as well."

A woman in a VOLTAGE staff shirt emerged from a side door at nine twenty-eight, two minutes ahead of schedule, and propped the main entrance open with a plastic chair that had been repurposed so many times it had achieved a kind of structural enlightenment. She looked at the six boys arranged across the boardwalk in various configurations of anticipation and defeat and said nothing, which was the correct response.

Inside, VOLTAGE proved larger than the exterior suggested. The space ran deep, opening from a narrow storefront into a warehouse-sized room packed with machines, lights, and the accumulated sonic output of several hundred electronic devices competing for dominance. The carpet was the specific shade of purple that arcades had used since 1987 and would continue using until the sun expanded enough to prevent further carpet manufacturing. The ceiling hung low with exposed ductwork painted black, and the air carried the signature scent of arcade atmospheres worldwide: stale popcorn, machine oil, warm plastic, and the faint ozone note of power supplies running at capacity.

Caden inhaled through his nose with the expression of a sommelier evaluating a particularly ambitious vintage. "This is it. This is the smell."

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