The reminder doused that flare of warmth.
“Why this world?” she asked, her finger circling over the screen. “Why did you choose this particular setting?”
He hesitated, but said, “I’m not sure what you know about my past...”
“Only what the media has reported.”
“I grew up in a rough neighborhood of Seattle called White Center. Back then crime, gangs and drugs had a grip on the area. Mom worked most nights, and by the time I was eleven, my grandmother had died, and I stayed in our apartment by myself. It wasn’t anything to hear drug deals, fighting or gunfire in the alley behind our building. I was so immune to it, I’d just turn up the TV to drown it out. There wasn’t any calling the cops.”
The memories worked themselves back in, vines sprouting from seeds he’d thought long dormant. The fear of being home alone, wishing his mother was with him. Missing his grandmother.
“Still, with all that around me, my mother made sure I never got caught up in drugs or gangs. Even though she came in dragging, dog-tired and bleary-eyed at five o’clock in the morning after a night shift, she got me up, made my lunch, walked me to the bus stop, met me there after school, helped me with my homework, fixed dinner and then went to work. When she noticed I had an aptitude for computers, she took on more shifts and found a way to enroll me in college-level computer courses because I wasn’t being challenged enough in high school. She always made a way. I graduated high school in the top ten percent of my class because of her. I was accepted to college because of her... And then I failed her by going to jail.”
He remained silent, watching the shock wash over Mycah’s face. Waited for the disgust or at least the unease as she realized she was in a room—that she’d gotten pregnant by—the thug her parents, the media called him.
But the disgust never came.
Compassion did.
And he had to battle past his first instinctive defense—slam up his guard. Reject what he perceived as pity.
Then she touched him. Covered his clenched hand with her smaller, more delicate one, and his walls cracked and tumbled down.
“Tell me,” she said, her thumb brushing over his knuckles.
And he did. The story he’d never shared with anyone pouring out of him as she held his hand, his gaze and his heart.
“My mom... Like, I said, she gave me everything, all of her. So I never begrudged her the little bit of life she grabbed for herself, even if the men she chose were...lacking. It’s like she had a radar for unemployed, drunk users. Most of them were jerks but harmless, but the last one...”
A fine tension invaded his body as he traveled back to that night ten years ago in their White Center apartment. His mother and her boyfriend arriving home after a night out at the local bar. Both had been drinking. Arguing. Getting louder and louder.
“Achilles, look at me.” A hand cupped his cheek and he opened his eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d closed them. “Keep those beautiful eyes on me. Go ahead. Finish it.”
He nodded, squeezed her hand and drew it down to his thigh.
“One night, Mom came home from a date with her new boyfriend. Matt.” His mouth twisted around the name, a thin layer of grime covering his tongue. “They’d been dating for two weeks and he was different from the others. There was nothing harmless about him. He had an edge to him. Mean. Hard...” Achilles shook his head. “They were a little drunk and were arguing. I was in my room and tried to ignore it. She wouldn’t have appreciated me interfering, anyway. But then I heard her cry out in pain. I bolted out of my bedroom into the living room and he had her on the floor, hitting her. I...I snapped. I punched him. And I kept punching him. I found out later that the neighbors overheard and called the cops. Next thing I know, I was in cuffs and hauled off to jail.”
He slid his hand out from under hers. He spread both of his hands out and stared at his fingers as if he could still see the bruised and swollen knuckles stained with Matt’s blood. Could still feel the pain from beating a man unconscious.
It didn’t take much to conjure the horror that had filled him at his actions.
“I ended up serving two years for the assault. Only my mother’s testimony, my clean record and Matt’s not-so-clean record kept me from more time. But while I was in, I saw men—boys, really—just like me who’d made mistakes. One bad decision that had led them there. Whether it was made in the heat of the moment or done years ago and set them on a path of more poor decisions. Yes, some of them belonged right where they were, there’s no denying that. But others? Others didn’t have the ability to see anything different. And when I was locked up in that cell, I started dreaming about this game. And the idea stayed with me after I graduated college after I was released from jail, and years later after I started working with the software design company. What story could I tell? But more importantly, for youth like me, like the men I was locked up with, like the girls I went to school with who were told they were worth no more than their bodies and smile... What could I get them to see?”
He grabbed his laptop, clicked a few keys and pulled up more game art. This one depicted the same teen stepping through a portal. One side was the world from the previous art and on the other side was a present-day urban inner city. A kid from one world stepping into an unknown one.
“You asked why the high-fantasy setting?” Achilles asked Mycah. “Think about every movie or book you’ve seen or read from that genre, set in that world. When you meet the characters, they don’t know their purpose yet. The most important thing for all of us is finding our identity, our reason for being. Because when we do, we begin to understand why we’re here. We begin to have hope.”
He shook his head. “I’m not saying this game will give kids those answers, but I am saying research has proven that video games stimulate the brain. Can actually change it in some regions. So instead of giving them a game that aggrandizes what they see every day—crime, violence, debasement of their community and people—what about a game that will awaken their brains to more? Create a different mindset and passion for something that elevates them above the reality they already know? Spark a vision in them where they see themselves as heroes, warriors, kings, queens, where they make connections and fight as a team for a common goal instead of against one another? I want to create a game where they can escape the horrors of their current environment long enough to glimpse something different, something greater. To connect with it. To see they have potential and purpose.”
As the last word echoed between them, he braced himself against the regret that tried to creep in. From the vulnerability of exposing that part of himself.
“I’m so damn awed by you,” Mycah rasped. She sucked in an audible breath and leaned back, pressing the heels of her palms to her eyes. “Give me a minute. It’s the freaking pregnancy hormones.”
Huffing out a short laugh, Achilles cuffed her wrists and gently drew her arms down. She kept her eyes squeezed closed, but after a moment she opened them, and her dark gaze glistened.
“I’m serious.” She rose on her knees, tunneled her fingers through his hair, fisting the strands and tipping her head forward until it pressed to his. “What was your mother’s name?”
“Natia Lee.”
