Gamers Con: The First Zak Steepleman Novel (10 page)

I looked about, looked for some official to ask.

One of those people in the dark-purple polo shirts.

But there was nobody about.

I looked to Dad, eyes wide, panicked out of my mind.

He looked just as stumped by the sign as I was.

. . . And then I remembered the All-Access Pass which hung around my neck.

The pass which meant just what it said . . .
All-Access
. . .

I took a look at the sign before me, glanced about, and then I shifted on past it.

I thought that I could hear my dad saying something—him calling out to me—but there wasn’t time.

When I caught sight of a clock up on the wall, I saw that it was already eight twenty.

I was already
twenty
minutes late.

I rushed onwards, tripping over a couple of the bases of the poles which carried the flexible tape to mark out the queue.

I’m pretty sure that I ducked under the tape a few times too.

I only had eyes for the opening out ahead.

The opening which, I knew, led to the concourse where the rest of my group would be meeting up for the Second Round.

Finally, I reached the gap, peered through it, saw the group of people—gamers—streaming off following after a purple-shirt.

They were down a level.

I needed to head along a downward-sloping ramp to reach them.

I ploughed onwards, not caring about where I was putting my feet now.

I couldn’t help but smile.

Just a little.

Because I
knew
that I was going to catch them up.

And maybe that was my mistake—thinking that I’d
done
it—perhaps that was the reason why I’d stopped thinking about where I was putting my feet and I felt my toes smash into something solid, felt myself hurtling through the air, tumbling over and over, seemingly without stopping.

And landing on the hard—
hard
—floor with a sickening
thump
.

21

I THINK, for a couple of moments at least, I might’ve blacked out.

When I found myself on the ground, just about every single one of my big bones cried out in pain.

I held my eyes shut.

I could hear voices all around me.

People calling for help.

Stuff like that.

And then there was a voice.

A solitary voice . . .
familiar
.

Those strange, echoing, almost
booming
tones.

“Zak?”

Finally, I opened my eyes, blinked away as much of the pain as I could manage . . . and really didn’t make all that good a job of it . . . still, I found myself, bleary-eyed, staring up at the invigilator from the Ignition Tournament . . . my brain flooded like a car engine for a couple of moments, it just wouldn’t turn over . . . what was his name?

And then it struck me, right as I tried—and
failed
—to respond to him.

Harold.

I took in his features, his
spindly
body, the way his throat stuck out. And that wispy, weird sort of beard-thing that he had going on his chin.

And, of course, his dark-purple polo shirt.

He was crouched over me, a hand supporting him against the hard, well-polished floor. “Zak?” he said again.

I blinked again and the image before me came just a little clearer.

I noticed that there were others surrounding him—the other gamers.

And, for some reason, my brain saw fit to pick out one of the faces in particular.

The face of the Chinese kid—Chung Wen.

Chung stood among them, a smudge smaller than the guys in their twenties and thirties.

He wore a neutral expression. His sleek, black hair was parted to one side. And I wondered—
dizzily
—if his mother had styled it that way.

“Zak? Can you hear me?” Harold said, his eyes wide, and mouth remaining latched open in shock even though he had nothing else to say.

I reached about me. Felt the solid ground with my elbows down at my side.

Gently, taking
extreme
care, I attempted to prop myself up.

Pain flushed right through me.

It started at my bones and pounded its way up to the surface of my skin where it seemed to be trying to needle its way out.

I gritted my teeth, told myself not to pay attention to it.

Harold held out his hand for me to grab.

I took it off him.

Together, we hauled my bulk back up onto my feet.

I stood there for a couple of moments, swaying a little.

Harold acted fast, seized hold of my forearm so that I wouldn’t topple right the way over.

Now that I was standing up, I seemed to get at least some sort of control over my senses.

Or, at least, I found that I was able to somehow zone in on just where the pain was at its worst—at its most
intense
.

My left wrist.

That was where it
really
ached.

I also noticed a dull throb at my knee, but that was all.

As if he’d anticipated my thoughts, Harold said, still gripping tight to my forearm, “You fell on your wrist—as you went over.”

Not wanting to make any sudden movements because it sent a bone-shattering pain right through me, forced me to grind my teeth, I gradually brought my left arm upwards.

Brought my left wrist out in front of me.

It was bright red.

I breathed in deeply, still aware of all the other gamers staring at me.

Only now beginning to feel the first flushes of embarrassment.

With my other hand, I touched the wrist tenderly.

Pain flurried up to my temples.

Harold looked to me with a wide-eyed stare. “Can you move it at all?”

I gritted my teeth, stared at my left wrist as if I might be able to will it not to hurt any more, then I tried to turn my hand.

The pain was excruciating.

But I forced myself to get it all the way around.

Only when I tasted blood in my mouth did I realise that I’d been chomping down so hard from the pain that I’d cut open the inside of my cheek.

When I breathed in the papery, plastic smell of the convention centre, it seemed almost like it might cut open the insides of my nostrils.

I heard a couple of mumbled remarks but couldn’t make out any of the distinct words.

I knew that the gamers wanted to get on with the Second Round . . . and, perhaps even
more
important to them, they wanted to see if I was going to be able to continue.

For them, if I was to drop out now, it would mean one less competitor for them.

One less that they’d have to beat.

I couldn’t blame them, I would’ve felt the same.

That’s just how pro-gaming goes.

I brought my left wrist around another rotation, experimenting with the pain.

Again, it was almost too much to bear.

But, when Harold opened his mouth to ask me the question I
knew
he was going to ask, I knew already how I was going to respond.

“You think you can play?” Harold said.

“Yeah,” I said, still gritting my teeth, “I’ll be fine.

22

AS IT TURNED OUT, I probably would’ve been fine if I hadn’t rushed all the way to the Second Round.

Because the format of this particular stage was going to be a simple two-versus-two knockout.

It was sorted alphabetically by first name, and since ‘Zak’ has a habit of ending up near the bottom of any self-respecting list—
surprise, surprise
—that was just what happened.

Not that I minded, though.

It meant that I could take some time to recover.

Give myself a chance to get some sort of a grip on my pain.

Within our group of players, there was a pair of knockout tournaments.

Thirty-two players in all.

Two
trees
with sixteen players each.

The top two players—the winners of each tree—would go through to the quarter finals.

The last eight of the Grand Tournament.

This, I could already see, was going to be somewhat brutal.

I couldn’t help glancing along the lists of names, looking for just where Chung Wen would feature in all of this and seeing that he was off in the other tree.

We wouldn’t need to play one another to get into the quarter finals.

For some reason, I took some sort of solace from that.

And I wondered
just what
I was really afraid of with him.

Because, if I
really
wanted a good shot of taking the trophy then, surely, I’d have to get my head around playing him at
some point
. . . then again, I guess that I should’ve been somewhat happy at being able to put it off till the last possible moment.

The Second Round—it turned out—would feature a variety of fighting games.

Like the First Round, it would be a blind competition, meaning that we would have no idea what game exactly we’d be playing before the title card popped up on the screen.

The way it worked was that the players waiting to play had to sit on a whole bunch of sofas while; behind a black, velvet curtain, the games all took place.

From where I sat, I could look up and see my dad sitting in the spectator seats, on the front row.

He was, true to form, tapping away at his mobile on his chess app again.

When he finally spotted me, he gave me a smile and a wave.

Actually looking away from the screen of his mobile for a couple of seconds.

The spectator seats were about three-quarters full in all, and there must’ve been a good hundred or so people watching us play.

That was
just a little
nerve-wracking.

The way the stage was arranged, the spectators could look down on either side of the black velvet curtain—so they could see both the players waiting, like I was, on the sofas, and then the other side where the players were duking it out on the screens there.

I could hear the mashing of buttons from where I sat, and the occasional curse under somebody’s breath as they apparently got beaten.

Harold stood on our side of the curtain, apparently making sure that none of the returning—victorious—players would chatter away at us, let us know just which fighting games were coming up.

I guessed there was
another
invigilator on the other side of the curtain, equally ensuring fair play between the gamers.

My first opponent was a forty-something man who was stick-thin . . . almost as thin as our invigilator Harold.

I knew that he was
my
opponent, of course, because he was the only one who
hadn’t
shifted off to the other side of the curtain to play yet.

And, as I mentioned, I was the
last
player of all to get the chance to play.

My opponent wore a pair of those purple-tinted glasses that I remember some teacher, sometime, some
place
, saying were for dyslexia . . . or had it been ADHD, something like that?

. . . Or maybe he was just trying to be cool by wearing colour-tinted sunglasses inside.

Whatever.

Anyway, as I took up my seat on the sofa, on the other side of the curtain, the last to play for the first stage of the Second Round, I lifted up the gamepad and felt all the muscles of my left wrist tug tight.

Pain seared its way up my arm.

So intense that I was sure—just for a second—that I was going to faint from it.

When I slipped my opponent a sidelong glance, I saw him notice my flinch at the pain in my wrist. But I couldn’t afford to let him get the mental advantage. Couldn’t let him think that I was
weak
. . . I wasn’t the best at fighting games, as it was, so I knew that I couldn’t allow him any other sort of advantage.

If I lost against him then I would be going out of the competition.

On my backside.

I looked back over my shoulder to Steve—who it turned out was on
this
side of the curtain making sure we didn’t get up to any cheating—and I wondered what he might say to me asking for an icepack, maybe something to help with the large, red bulge that had sprung up on the outside of my left wrist.

But, I guessed, I’d have to get it seen to later.

After I’d finished up this game with my opponent.

Whether or not I went through.

And so, teeth clenched tight, I turned my attention to the screen, and the first challenge.

23

AN ONSCREEN MESSAGE gave us some quick instructions.

That there would be three stages.

Three
different games.

The player who won the most stages would go through.

I gripped the gamepad tighter with my right hand because I was slightly afraid that if I pressed a little too hard with my left I might drop it out of pain.

I had to concentrate now.

Had to stay one-hundred-per-cent focussed.

I knew my opponent would be.

The first game which popped up on the screen was
Hearts of Fire 6
.

I couldn’t help but smile to myself when I saw it.

Though I’ve never been one for beat ’em ups, it was far and away the fighting game that I’d played most of in my bedroom back home.

In fact, I even had a high score in Gamers Gold: the gaming magazine I subscribe to.

It would’ve been nice to have had a choice of character before being thrown into the thick of things, but, all things considered, I was fairly happy with the level-playing field the organisers had struck.

I was Carol—this massively muscular, weight-lifting woman with a ridiculously tight bodysuit. Among her special abilities, she had these knuckledusters which could take down a character twice her size with ease.

My opponent got given Flooreem: a yoga-instructor-type, bald guy who looked like he must’ve been seventy or so . . . but that was just a show, because, as I well knew from completing the single-player mode many times over, he could pull a surprise when you least expected it . . . one of those death-grip karate chops of his to the back of the neck which could easily drain half your health.