Nope, no, absolutely not. Hisroom? Adeline, what is wrong with you? Thatmightbe worse.
After a concerning quantity of stairs - seriously, how deep does this go? - we finally step into a massive room. The space is enormous, which is as expected considering the whole house is like this. To my left, there’s a pool table, beside it is an air hockey table, the kind you only ever see in arcades. There’s a dartboard on one wall, a gaming console with a massive TV on another, and even a couch with bean bag chairs that look way too expensive to be in a basement.
I let out a laugh before I can stop myself. What is this? A man cave?
But then something else catches my eye.
It’s tucked off to the side, half-shadowed by the jut of a beam. It’s so easy to miss, and yet I can’t seem to look away.
Before I can stop myself, I’m already walking toward it.
It’s a long workbench, like you’d see in a garage or lab. A tangle of wires spills over one side, trailing from open panels of half-assembled devices. There are soldering irons, safety goggles, a stack of thick notebooks filled with sketches, equations and strange notations I couldn’t decipher if I tried. Tiny metal limbs, gears, circuit boards, and whole piles of motors…
I don’t know what I expected.
But it definitely wasn’t this.
So, this…
This is what they meant when they called him a prodigy.
I glance back at the table, at the strange, brilliant mess of metal. “You built all of this?” I ask.
When he doesn’t answer, I turn to glance at him and find him already watching me, arms crossed loosely as he leans over a counter that’s in the middle of what I now realize is a fully functional kitchen. There’s a fridge, a stove, and even a marble-topped island with barstools. This room is probably bigger than my entire house. You could actually live here. Comfortably.
He shrugs lightly from where he’s leaning. “Yeah.”
I glance back at the desk. “Right,” I mutter. “Of course you did.”
His mouth twitches, probably hearing my sarcasm, before he lazily pushes off the counter and strolls over, casual as anything, hands in his pockets.
He stops beside the workbench and nudges a small silver device with the back of his knuckle.
“I built that one when I was thirteen,” he says, like it’s no big deal. “It was supposed to track movement. Ended up stalking some random dog for a week.”
I blink. “You had a robot stalk someone else’s dog?”
“Technically,” he says, tapping the top of the device, “I programmed it to follow sound. Unfortunately, dogs breathe.”
A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it, and I shake my head, a half-smile tugging at my mouth. “I’m guessing that didn’t go over well with the owner.”
“Actually, it went fine,” he says. “The neighbours thought it was cute.”
I blink. “Seriously?”
Kai leans one hip casually against the workbench. “They thought it was for school or something. Gave me cookies and invited me over for tea.”
I stare at him, dumbfounded. “You got rewarded. For stalking someone’s pet.”
He lifts a shoulder in a lazy shrug. “People love a story. And they love me.”
I almost roll my eyes.
He doesn’t even say it like he’s bragging. He just says it like it’s a fact.
And maybe it is.
Because of course they’d love him. He’s Kai Steele. Golden boy. Brilliant, charming, talented. He could probably run over their mailbox, and they’d bake him a pie for it.
