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Jordan hadn't actually been looking for Harrison; he wasn't quite sure if that would count as weird or not. Still, he was sort of pleased to run across the blond Moon hunter while on his way through the library. It looked like Harrison was intent on his screen; Jordan kept his steps quiet as he came up behind the chair, looking over Harrison's shoulder.

It looked like he was playing a game - some kind of first-person shooter? The graphics were kind of primitive, but so was most of the technology on the island; it was just cool that there were games on the library computers at all, much less anything that looked half decent. Jordan watched Harrison play for a minute. Then he said, "Look out for the sniper."

"Nah, I just saw something moving in the window up there," Jordan said. "I think if you go the other way around those crates you can stay out of his line of sight. Are you playing someone or just the computer?" He glanced around; nobody else seemed to be playing, unless they were somewhere else in the complex. Was there enough of a network to play games over?

Land mine, Ferros said gleefully.

What? I don't see a land mine.

"Does it have a multiplayer?" Jordan watched interestedly. "I'm not much of a gamer but I like these kind of games." He squashed the urge to point out a route. It always annoyed him when people did that.

"Er. Looking for something new to read," he hedged. "I finished all the books I got last month. Got bored."

Jordan snorted. "Nah, War and Peace was a good one, just couldn't put it down," he replied, deadpan. The books he'd gotten around Christmas had actually been mostly novels and nonfiction, but he couldn't let an allegation like that pass unchallenged.

"Them's fightin' words," he said cheerfully, and claimed a nearby computer. It took him a minute to locate the game, but once he'd figured out where it had been hidden, getting logged in and set up wasn't difficult. He studied the multiplayer screen. "Huh. Looks like someone's running a match already," he said. "I'd rather get a feel for the game before jumping in on someone who knows how to play, though."

He clicked the button that would start a new match, and titled the fresh game noobs only. "That should keep any self-respecting gamer out."

"That was terrible," Jordan said, and laughed. "History is written by the victorious, so I hope you can back that up."

"You gotta back out to the main menu," he said helpfully. "Hit multiplayer. I set up a match specifically for people of our skill level."

"Casual gamers," Jordan said, not quite managing to sound innocent. "Oh, there you are."

It took him a couple of minutes to get the feel of the controls; his keyboard had an annoyingly sticky A key, too, which caused a few muttered curses. He did better once he'd figured out not to hit it too hard. The game required a certain amount of patience and a degree of fiddly precision with aim and cover, its firing controls rather more accurate than Jordan had quite expected. Maybe that was why Harrison had been having so much trouble with the sniper.

Ferros observed with deep suspicion. He wasn't fond of computers, liked things better when he or Jordan could understand directly how they worked; computers, with their lack of visible moving parts and arcane intricacy, puzzled him and made him inclined towards distrust. That is not how jumping works, he observed.

"Game physics don't work like actual physics," Jordan muttered, focusing on getting his aiming reticule centered. "You have to account for that."

Shotgun shells, an explosive barrel across the way; Jordan made a mental note. It was a small map, not designed for extensive stalking and hiding. Whoever had programmed the game seemed to have designed it as mostly a simple shootout for versus mode.

"Er?" he said, belatedly registering that Harrison was making a comment. He glanced over and shrugged. "I was in college before I got recruited. I had a computer and a few friends, so I was pretty much expected to play a few games now and then. I didn't want to suck at it, so I practiced on occasion." There, that was Harrison at the other end of the digital street. He took careful aim and fired.

"I played flash games when I wanted to kill time on the computer and nobody was on Facebook," he added.

"At what?" Jordan smirked, unable to resist needling a little.

"I like it all right," he added, "but it doesn't take over my life like it did some guys'. Good thing, probably. Dude I knew was getting pretty close to flunking out of half his courses from being addicted to games."

"Sure you did," he replied amiably, and took a side street, trying to guess which spawn point Harrison had reappeared at.