Gamers Con: The First Zak Steepleman Novel (11 page)

I kept my left wrist as still as possible.

Only moving my thumb on the directional stick.

Guiding Carol about the three-dimensional platform which was set in the middle of a jungle.

We did battle on a rope bridge which had a nasty habit of swinging side to side, showing off the distant ravine far below.

Tapping away with my right fingers so that I would dodge all of Flooreem’s blows.

Right when I got Flooreem where I needed him, I pummelled him mercilessly.

Another two rounds later, and I’d won
Hearts of Fire 6
.

I only needed to win the next stage to beat my opponent.

When I glanced at my opponent, to see how he had reacted to my victory, I saw that he was stone-faced, just as stone-faced as he’d been right from the start.

Maybe he knew something I didn’t because when the next game flashed up on screen,
Mounted Warriors
, he appeared to know
just
what he was doing.

Mounted Warriors
is a fantasy-style beat ’em up, and the main hook is that all the characters—all the fighters—are mounted on various
fantasy
creatures.

Lucky me, I got a dragon, while my opponent got a unicorn.

But that wasn’t enough for him
not
to grind me into the dirt.

It was over before I even knew what was happening, and we were tied going into the final stage of our matchup.

I looked back over my shoulder to Steve, maybe half thinking of staging an appeal.

I got the sense that
something
wasn’t right here.

That maybe my opponent cheated in some way . . . gone about beating me with a less-than-fair method.

The way my opponent had just dominated the entirety of
Mounted Warriors
seemed off to me . . . but before I had another second to think, the next game was flashing up on screen.

What might, perhaps, be the last game I got to play in the Grand Tournament.

At Gamers Con.

Would I be going out of the Second Round just like I had the year before?

Only one way to see.

For the last game, something happened that
almost
never
does.

It was a game I’d never played before.

Hardened Voyage.

It caught me completely by surprise.

Of course I’d
heard
of it . . . but, for some reason, as sometimes happens, I’d never actually got around to picking up a copy and having a bash at it.

I studied my opponent briefly, tried to work out whether or not he was glad at this choice of game, and then I looked back to Steve.

Then I flushed all other thoughts from my mind—the
pain
in my wrist—and told myself to just focus and do the best I possibly could.

The game wasn’t really a beat ’em up
per se
, it was more of a role-playing game . . . or, at least, that was what I’d understood from the stuff that I’d read . . . but the stage that had been handpicked for me and my opponent to do battle was certainly familiar to a fighting game.

We were positioned on the top of an airship—floating through puffy clouds.

We were wearing sort of nineteenth-century outfits, and I realised that it was maybe a steampunk-themed game.

I appeared to have a sword—my opponent a whip, and I got the feeling that this fight was going to be over before I started.

How wrong I was.

My opponent skipped around me, dealing damage all over the place, and I could only sit back and do my best to block before—
inevitably
—getting myself knocked out.

I breathed in deep, tried to put the fiery sensation pounding through my left wrist out of my mind once more.

I knew that there was
no
room for error.

I
had
to win the next round, else I would be heading out of the Grand Tournament.

And coming here—to Gamers Con—would’ve just been one great, big waste of time.

For some reason, as the stage was resetting for what might very well have been my final stab at a game in the tournament, I glanced upwards, to Dad.

I saw that he sensed something was up.

He stood, leaned over the railing of the spectators’ platform and his expression was all screwed up, his eyes not much more than slits, as he peered on out from beneath the lenses of his glasses.

He’d
brought
me here so that I could show him what I could do.

That I was truly
exceptional
at what I did.

Now it was my chance to prove him right.

To repay all those times that he’d either forked out money to help me along the way, or given up his time—like now—to indulge me, bring me down to Gamers Con, and other conventions like it, other tournaments.

This, the
Grand Tournament
, was the big one.

And I could prove so much to him
if only
I could win.

I gripped the gamepad tighter still, now not caring at all about the pain. I latched onto the gameplay mechanics, somehow managing to stay out of the way of my opponent’s beatings—to keep myself from the edge of the platform, the airship, where he could quite easily knock me to my death.

And, right when I least expected it, I got my chance.

My opponent took one step too far, and I swept in, swiping my sword, and sent him barrelling right over the edge of the airship.

Down through the clouds.

And out of sight.

. . . Gone forever . . . or so it seemed.

I blinked myself back, got myself ready for the final round of our fight.

Slipped my opponent a sidelong glance.

Saw that he wore a faint smile on his lips.

Was he smiling because he
knew
that I’d got lucky?

That I had no
practice
at this game?

. . . And that I wouldn’t get so lucky a second time?

There was only one way to see.

The next foray was by far the hardest-fought, the two of us going toe-to-toe with our avatars, neither of us coming within so much as a step from the edge of the airship.

We dealt each other a ton of damage, up till the point that
both
of us
were sitting right on the brink.

I knew that just a lash from his whip, or a thrust from my sword, would be all that it would take to finish off our melee, and to send one or the other of us through to the next round.

And that was when a very strange thing happened.

My opponent, he suddenly, and without explanation, mumbled out of the corner of his mouth, “Left. Right. Down. Press A . . . then
hit
me.”

For a couple of seconds I was sure that I hadn’t heard anything at all.

And then I noticed his character strafe to the side, then back, just far enough.

I didn’t waste time—didn’t
think
about what he’d said.

With a thrust from my sword, I sent my opponent tumbling right over the edge, freefalling through the clouds, and down to the distant ground below.

That was it.

I’d won.

I was
through
to the next round.

24

THE FEELING WAS STRANGE.

Normally, when I win, I feel this kind of squeezing feeling in my gut.

Then this
great
, bubbling sensation that seems to pass through my blood.

It gives me some new level of energy I never imagined I had.

Now, though, all I felt was empty.

Empty and cold.

Because I knew what had happened—what had
taken place
in our game.

It had caught me totally off guard.

My opponent had had me sewn up.

One-hundred-per-cent.

No question about it.

He could have easily finished me off at any time.

But he chose not to.

He chose to
let
me win.

He
gave
me that move.

I hardly had a chance to think before my opponent was extending his hand, and I was taking it off him, and shaking it.

And then, just like that, he was beating a retreat, heading away from here.

Slipping out of the arena.

Still sitting on the sofa, the gamepad in my hands, the pain in my wrist now reduced to a dull throb, I looked back to Steve, the invigilator for Round Two.

I didn’t need to say anything.

After all, Steve was a gamer, just like me.

Both of us knew what had gone on here.

But, instead of saying anything, he just flashed his eyebrows, and then scrawled something down on his clipboard.

I felt totally puzzled as I headed on back to the waiting area—off to await my position in the last eight of Round Two.

* * *

It was a strange atmosphere—just like at all video-game competitions.

Though everybody waiting to play their next matchup was sitting about in close proximity, nobody at all was speaking.

It was odd to feel alone with the pounding pain in my wrist. All I could really do was stare at the bright-red welt forming there, and try to will it to go away.

A couple of times, I looked back up to my dad, now sitting back in his seat, tapping away at his mobile, wrapped up in his chess match again.

I couldn’t blame him.

It wasn’t exactly a
thrilling
spectator sport if you didn’t know what was going on.

I got through the next two rounds with three-zero victories.

I held my own in the first two games, and then used the tip which my first opponent had slipped me when
Hardened Voyage
rolled around.

So then it was off to the final.

I faced off with another thirteen-year-old kid, where I did just the same.

No sweat.

Not at all.

In fact, I finished them all off in such record time—booked my place in the quarter finals so fast—that I was able to go around the back of the curtain and watch the final stages of the matchup between Chung Wen and another competitor.

Almost on instinct, I spun around, gazed on up to the spectators, and picked out Chung’s mum sitting there.

Unlike my dad, she was sitting on the very edge of her seat, hands clasped in her lap, staring
intently
at her son, watching how well he was doing.

When I turned my attention back to the screen, I saw that they’d just started into
Hardened Voyage
. . . and, surprisingly, that Chung seemed to be having just the same trouble getting to grips with it as I had.

That was to say that he kept on taking minor blows from the other competitor, who was gradually chipping away at his damage meter.

And then Chung did something which near enough took my breath away.

He tried out the same button combination that I had.

The same combination that my first opponent had
given
me.

Without which I surely would’ve bombed out of the competition.

Chung won the round, and then the next, and the next.

He won his own tree, and, just like I did, he went through to the quarter final.

I could feel my heart beating up in my throat, and the pain seemed to pulse against my wrist.

I couldn’t quite believe it.

25

AS STEVE AND HAROLD jointly announced me and Chung to have gone through to the quarter finals, among the other gamers clapping politely, I tried to catch sight of my opponent from the first round of the knockout.

I couldn’t see him anywhere.

When I turned my attention back to Steve and Harold, they were handing out medals to those who’d got this far, who’d managed to reach the Second Round.

I remembered that medal, I still had it back home, in my bedroom.

A silver gamepad on a velvety-purple cord.

The other gamers all took their medals politely—just as politely as they’d clapped—and then they shuffled on off, apparently back to their hotel rooms, maybe even looking forward to being able to enjoy the rest of Gamers Con.

I overheard a few of them mumble things about how
Hardened Voyage
had been a complete curveball, and not a fair one at that.

I supposed—on some level—I had to agree.

It wasn’t an authentic fighting game after all.

But, then again, this was Gamers Con. And we were supposed to be the best. So we had to cope with whatever it was they put before us.

No excuses.

When the others had gone, it left me alone with Chung and the two invigilators: Steve and Harold.

Already, Harold was gesturing for me to come on over, to hear the plan for Sunday . . . what would be the final day of the competition.

I held off for a moment, saw that my dad was clambering his way down the steps from the spectators’ platform, coming in my direction.

I saw that he was yawning his head off, and blinking away sleep.

That’s another thing that me and my parents have nothing in common—they’re morning people and I’ve always been a night owl, feeling most awake around ten o’clock, around about the time then.

But despite being a morning person, my dad still had enough energy this late at night to keep on clinging to his mobile, to occasionally tap something out on the chess app that he no doubt still had open there.

I wondered if he ever thought he might get
just a little
bored of staring at those black-and-white squares, at staring at the
exact same
pieces, hour upon hour.

I guess he had to sleep sometime.

He sidled up to me, gave me a light smile, then waited there, apparently wanting me to get through with whatever it was he wanted me to get through with so that he could shove on off to the hotel room and get his eight hours’ sleep.

Some people just don’t know they’re actually
alive
.

Anyway, I shuffled off to Harold and Steve, shot Chung a brief smile which he batted away with a sturdy, neutral expression—what I supposed was his
trademarked
expression.

I noticed his mum skulking about nearby, apparently as eager as my dad to get off as soon as possible.