Gamers Con: The First Zak Steepleman Novel (5 page)

But by
far
the most beautiful sight there were the plasticky badges that lay on everybody’s plate: the ones which read All-Access and had that cheery red ribbon all about the border.

Now, I knew, I really
had
arrived at Gamers Con.

For some reason I got all timid then, and just sort of hovered at the door to the place with my dad sort of hanging off me, apparently equally as taken aback by this breakfast awaiting us, though I’m not sure why . . . that’s another way that me and Dad are different.

While I eat like a shire horse, Dad eats more like a sparrow, and a very weight-conscious sparrow at that.

“Please, Mr Steepleman, take a seat.”

I glanced around. Saw that it was Harold standing there. Another of his nervous grins splitting his cheeks, though it wasn’t like I could mention anything about that grin.

And he
kept
grinning, holding out his hands to, apparently, indicate the chair at the head of the table.

I hung back precisely half a second more, and then sat down.

It was one of those plumped-up leather chairs, the ones that have a whole bunch of air inside of them, and I immediately found myself sinking into it, probably coming quite close to dying of comfort.

The chair was
white
leather so I made a mental note to myself to
try
not to let anything stain it . . . that’s the thing with white materials, you’ve always got to take
extreme
caution with them.

My dad sat down beside me.

And it began.

* * *

It was only after I’d demolished a good three—or was it four?—stacks of pancakes that I realised someone was standing in the doorway, waiting to come inside, hanging back in the same—slightly nervous—way that I had.

I saw that it was the Chinese kid: Chung Wen.

Luckily for Chung, though, his mum wasn’t as timid as my dad had been, and she shepherded him in through the doorway, and over to the seat furthest away from me and Dad that she could possibly pick.

I gave a sort of sheepish grin in Chung’s direction.

He didn’t respond in any way.

Another pile of pancakes later, and I noticed another couple walking in.

The black kid, and the blond girl.

The ones who I’d noticed standing in the queue.

While the black kid wasn’t
much
of a surprise, the blond girl certainly was.

Oh, sure, I’d seen her down there going through with the ‘Ignition Tournament,’ but I hadn’t thought, not really even for a minute, that she would actually go on to win one of the five places . . . and there was always that knowledge that I’d gained from Harold the day before, that all of us—all
five
of us—had been associated with Alive Action Games.

So, apparently, she was a serious gamer too.

. . . At least as serious as me.

We all sat down to eat without any words to one another—each of us with our respective parents . . . Chung with his mother, and the rest of us with our dads.

By the time one of the officials in their purple polo shirt offered me
yet more
pancakes, I couldn’t believe that I was actually thinking of turning them down.

Of telling them that I was full.

There was also the thing where I was constantly glancing up to the doorway to see who might come through next. Who might complete this five-some of kids who’d all worked, and been discarded by, Alive Action Games.

But nobody else
did
come
.

We just went on waiting.

Finally, at the end of the breakfast, a familiar figure appeared.

Mr Yorbleson as I recognised him from the evening before.

Like yesterday, he wore a suit, but today he had a light-blue, silk handkerchief sticking out from the breast pocket. He had on the same smile as before, and his eyes just seemed to slink about the room kind of like a snake looking through a boxful of mice and trying to decide which one is most delicious.

Unfortunately, if we’re getting into
mouse
analogies, and specifically
nutrition
, the more well-endowed of us are going to get into trouble.

We all know what happens to the fat guy in a film where there’s a monster going about eating everybody.

I hoped that Mr Yorbleson wasn’t a cannibal.

Hope was all I had.

Mr Yorbleson sat to have some of his own breakfast.

Though I didn’t think to ask him whether or not
he’d
placed in the Ignition Tournament to merit this breakfast, it certainly crossed my mind.

If there’s one thing that always rubs me up the wrong way, it’s the people who like to claim the prizes after they’ve cheated . . . or, worse, without doing any of the work themselves.

Mr Yorbleson tucked one of the serviettes into the collar of his shirt as he busied himself eating a sixteenth of a pancake before setting his cutlery down on his plate, apparently finished.

A thought crossed my mind that the pancakes we’d just eaten might’ve been poison, and that Mr Yorbleson had sat down to eat with us merely as a way of gaining our confidence.

If it
had been
poison then I guess I—more than anybody else—would’ve been lying on my back, kicking my legs in the air, and choking . . . but I wasn’t . . . at least not yet.

When Mr Yorbleson swept the table with his glare, took us all in and saw that we’d each finished our breakfast, he clapped his hands together like we were in school or something, and then he rose to his feet, sticking that same smile on across his lips.

“Champions,” he said, “I
do
hope you’ve enjoyed your breakfast, you really
have
deserved it, and I would ask that you accept my best wishes for the rest of the convention—that you all have a very
successful
”—he kind of
hissed
those
s’s
—“Grand Tournament.”

And, with that, he clapped his hands once again, and then strode on out of the room, off to someplace he had to be, I imagined.

I wasn’t all that sad that he’d ducked out.

In fact, it felt like the atmosphere in the room had become a touch lighter already.

I glanced about the others, took them in, and was surprised to see quite a few of them—all of them
except
Chung—looking back at me.

It was that same, old familiar routine.

Since our parents were there, nobody wanted to speak at all.

It would just have been
awkward
.

I was about halfway to screeching the legs of my chair back when I heard footsteps behind me. When I turned, took in the person standing in the doorway, I could hardly believe my eyes.

It was the boy with blazing-red hair and pox-white skin.

The boy from
Halls of Hallow
.

9

IF IT HADN’T been for my dad tugging on the sleeve of my t-shirt, I probably still would’ve been down at the Winners’ Breakfast, and not up in my bedroom getting in some last-minute warm-up on my Sirocco 3000 before venturing down for the preliminary rounds.

I blazed through a few levels of first-person shooter
They Came from Hell!! 2
and I played through some of the better-known scenarios: side-quests, of western third-person shooter
Dust Devil
.

I knew the patterns of these gaming competitions well.

How they often started off with shooting games in the mornings, moved onto more skill—rather than
reaction
—based games in the afternoons.

But, I suppose, I could’ve been wrong.

It wasn’t like I could do very much about it now.

I would hardly learn anything new.

This was all just an exercise to get my brain all limber and ready for competition.

It was only when I heard the shower going—Dad having another one . . . yeah, that’s another of his ‘charms’ . . . he prices personal-cleanliness just a little above breathing . . . and a little below chess—that I dared to dig down into the carrying case for my Sirocco 3000 and fish out
Halls of Hallow
.

I stared at the disk for a long time, all snug there in its place, and I thought long and hard about whether or not I really wanted to do this—if I really wanted to fire it up, maybe get a whole bunch of stuff on my mind, right before a competition.

In the end, I decided that I just
had
to know.

So I stuck it into the disk tray.

Unfortunately, though I’d
obviously
managed to get past that first cut scene, it appeared that I
hadn’t
saved after all.

I looked to that deep, dark-purple pool again.

The Cloaked Figure.

Those archways.

The shadows.

The sleek, black marble floors.

And I waited.

Waited for the boy to appear.

Was
that
what I was waiting for . . .
really?

I breathed in deep, expecting to see him come along and intercept the Cloaked Figure at any moment, but, no, nothing happened at all.

And even though I knew that I had an impending competition, I couldn’t help but allow the flicker of that idea to cross my mind, that crazy thought that maybe—
just maybe
—I might have some time to step into the game, to reach round the back of the console, brush my fingertips along the infrared strips and step right
inside
the game.

It was then that I heard the shower click off and my dad making that loud sigh of his as he stepped out and grabbed a towel. I quickly switched off the Sirocco 3000 and flipped the disk back into its case. I replaced it in the side pocket of the carrying case as if it was something that would get me into a world of parental trouble.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a long while, just trying to stop my thoughts from fizzing about my skull so wildly, to stop myself from thinking about
that
kid, and that I’d seen him, moments before I’d left for Gamers Con, in
Halls of Hallow
.

. . . But, try as I might, I simply couldn’t help myself.

The boy had told the Cloaked Figure that he had
done
something.

And the Cloaked Figure had scolded the boy, told him that he
hadn’t
brought him something.

What could that be?

I had no idea at all.

What finally shook me on out of my daze was Dad’s mobile buzzing.

When I went over to check the screen, I saw that it was Mum calling.

So I picked up.

“Hi Mum,” I said.

“Zak? How’re you getting on there?”

“Fine,” I said, and then explained to her all about what had happened—about the Ignition Tournament, and how I’d managed to
win
an All-Access Pass.

I think she understood most of it, but who’s to say for sure?

“That’s nice,” she said, as I finished up my potted explanation, and then, “is your father there at all?”

It was right then that Dad stepped out of the bathroom, one of those plush, white hotel room towels wrapped about his waist. He looked kind of like a mole peeping its head out from underground without his glasses, and his skin had gone all red from the hot steam.

I handed Dad the phone and then lay back on the bed staring up at the ceiling, hands folded behind my head, trying to relax.

I knew from experience that trembling—any
kind
of trembling—can mean certain death at a video-game competition.

And I had no intention of going out early.

I was
determined
to prove to everyone that
I
was the best.

. . . Or something like that.

I listened to Dad speaking to Mum for a few minutes, but soon lost the thread of whatever it was they were talking about because the subject matter was so boring.

When I overheard Mum asking Dad to pass his mobile to me so that I could speak with my aunt, I quickly scrabbled up onto the edge of my bed, onto my feet, and then made motions at my watchless wrist.

Dad caught the gist, and he swiftly hung up on Mum, telling her that everything would be just fine, but that we were running a little late and had to get out the door.

When Dad set his mobile down on the bedside table, he set about drying himself, then said, “Why didn’t you want to speak to your aunt?”

I gave a shrug. “I dunno, awkward?”

Dad shrugged back with a smile, continuing to dry himself.

10

JUST LIKE THINGS always are on the first day of a fresh convention, the atmosphere was pretty manic. There was a lot of running around, a lot of kids—and adults—rushing back and forth trying to be in the right place at the right time.

I have never really understood that.

Why people get stressed.

I mean, at Gamers Con, it’s just about the easiest place ever to get about.

Take where I was going for example.

I was heading for the First Round of the Grand Tournament.

There were signs up all over the place—just about every fifteen paces or so there was one of those screens with the appropriate letter beside it.

All me and Dad had to do was navigate through the manic crowds, keeping our eyes fixed on the letters that hung from the ceiling.

As it turned out, the letter assigned for information on the First Round was X.

. . . So—guess what?—we followed the X . . .

The signups were just as boring as signups should be, which was to say, just about the same as the day before at the Ignition Tournament.

There were regulations, like having to hand in our mobiles before commencing play.

No biggie.

In the crowd, I spotted my breakfast companions, all of them apparently with their eyes also fixed on the prize.

And it would be up to me to stop them.

I remembered something about underestimating your enemy, and it being an
extremely
dangerous thing to do, and I thought there might just be something to that.

I’d been just a
shade
arrogant the day before, what with my thinking that those other kids were just totally useless.