Gamer (Gamer Trilogy) (9 page)

a throbbing. A throbbing that increasingly intensified. Soon
enough I felt like I was vibrating with energy like a crackling
spark plug and I felt invincible.

The rush had come so fast and yet I had no idea what it
was. I knew, however, that I needed this energy and so I
was more than prepared to use it.

Having abandoned concern with the danger to myself, I
channelled my frustration at my situation, my anger at
Grace, at Victor, at B3ast, at Stefanie and I channelled my
newfound desire to win that Omega if it was the last thing I
did – and blasted apart my chamber.

The rush as I pushed against the walls and then through
them, tensing my power throughout them to disintegrate
their support, was unexplainable. The roar of sound as the
walls were torn apart, forced outwards, explosively
propelled by my own power, made me writhe, almost, with
satisfaction. In this moment, I was a god. And now I was
free.

Thinking these thoughts over, I gave myself a moment to
recover. I realised that my best chance of survival was my
power. I needed to train it, shape it, perfect it and extend my
maximum endurance to hold as much power as I just had.

I would allow Stefanie to choose which side she was on
but apart from that, she was dead to me for as long as she
chose not to reciprocate my feelings. She knew Victor was
rotten to the core, but she chose to be with him for the
status it gave her – fine, but she was also choosing to die
with him then.

The world seemed harshly defined. Reality seemed crystal
clear to me. There was no black and white anymore. Either
I killed everyone or reached the exit portal, or both, or died
trying. I was no longer just playing a game. I was protecting
my life.

I remembered as the dust had settled, I saw a figure,
darting off into the forest. I reached out with my mind,
trying to immobilise the threat, but as our minds crossed, he
or she slipped through my fingers, so to speak.

It almost felt like I had interacted with a ghost, somebody
half there but half not there. This person had definitely been
the source of my power – I could feel their mind still
crackling with energy – but why would they help me and
then run away?

It wasn’t B3ast or Victor – and by the feel of his mind, I
could just tell it wasn’t a girl – so then who was it?
I resigned myself to accepting that it was somebody
Simulator had conjured and decided that if it wasn’t a threat
to me, then I didn’t need to worry. I just needed to be
cautious that some people out there were a lot stronger than
I was.
As I focussed on the scene around me, I realised the extent
of the damage, and I was grimly satisfied.
For twenty or so meters in any direction, the forest had
been utterly wrecked. Trees lay shattered, silvery soil lay
upturned, giant shards of rock pierced the ground – it
looked as if a fierce hurricane had passed through.
I was that hurricane.
I realised now that I needed a game plan. The terrain of
this arena could be endless and without a map or some way
to find the others, I couldn't be sure that walking in any one
direction would be useful.
I sat thinking for a moment and came up with an idea.
Summoning my power, I propelled myself into the sky.
The energy required to do so noticeably drained me, but
remembering my power surge from before, I knew I could
cope with a hell of a lot more.
When I was above the highest branches of the forest, I
surveyed the landscape.
It was surprisingly easy to see to the forest floor. It was
mostly due to the fact that the trees were spaced quite
widely apart and most of them were transparent but I now
realised the advantage of having this ability.
Not wanting to sap my strength unnecessarily by
suspending myself for too much longer, I decided to head
towards the river I could see snaking its way between the
trees ahead and then use it as a guideline to travel across the
landscape. Just as I was about to begin lowering myself, I
saw something moving between the trees a short distance
away.
At first I thought it might’ve been that strange half-person
from before, or some kind of animal – but as the figure came
closer, I realised it was B3ast.
Excellent.
I changed my plan, moving myself into the branches of a
tree just on the edge of the damage zone. B3ast was
expecting to come and confirm I was dead – instead it was
he who would be dead. Irony.
Perching myself in the perfect position, I decided I was
showing no mercy. B3ast had enclosed me with the
intention of drowning me. He would pay.
I lay in wait to cause the first death in Simulator.

*
*
*
“My name is Grace Evans,” I whispered to the camera,
“And I’m so sorry.” A genuine tear rolled down my cheek. I
wiped it away.

I hated it. Hated what I’d become. What I’d been reduced
to. Hated what the world had turned me into.
“I hate it,” I said just as quietly.
The interviewer’s eyes lit up. “Tell us more.” There was a
brief pause.
The camera lens rotated, zooming in on my face. And I
began.
*
*
*
My parents weren’t harsh or cruel. I wasn’t sent away to
Elitus against my will. In fact, I came from a well-off family,
who just wanted to see the best for me.
However, they were clueless.
When I first won the state spelling bee, it was a great
achievement, but nothing spectacular, really. When I won
the national spelling bee and then repeated the feat in
sixteen other countries in 9 different languages, then it
became spectacular.
Immediately after winning the Finnish National Spelling
Bee, in a particularly obscure dialect of Finnish, I received a
letter in the mail, offering me a position to some preppy
school named Elitus Academy.
My parents looked into it and when everything checked
out – and we found out how prestigious the offer was - they
sat me down and asked me if I wanted to go.
The fees were non-existent, supposedly because everybody
who graduated from there became extremely rich and made
some very big contributions, so money wasn’t a factor.
Being apart from my family would be nerve-racking and I’d
miss my younger sister, Alannah, too. But it didn’t take
much thought to know that this would be the biggest
opportunity of my life – and so I accepted.
I had been placed several year levels above my age –
something not exactly uncommon at the Academy and in
my first few weeks I settled in excellently, flying through all
my classes and just generally loving life.
I’d call home every few days to see how things were going
and for about a month or so, it was all great.
Then the “popular girls” came along.
Apparently it was hunting season for them and they chose
me as their next prey. I wasn’t one to be bullied and I stood
my ground every-time, it frustrated them when they failed to
humiliate me. So then they got serious.
They started targeting my friends and bullied the weaker
people around me. When people figured out that it was me
who was causing all their problems, they shunned me. I was
the new girl, the popular girls were almost a part of the
furniture, and nobody stood up to them except for me.
After a couple of months of increasing loneliness, I
snapped. In the dead of the night, I sneaked out past
curfew, trashed their lockers, their dorm and while they
were sleeping, substituted some corrosive chemicals from
the science lab, with their hair, skin and nail products.
It seemed preppy and cliché and even dangerous but there
was no other way to confront them. The moment when they
arrived in the breakfast hall, hair coming out in clumps, skin
flaking off and nails looking as if they’d been placed in a
shredder, gave me the biggest sense of satisfaction I’d ever
had.
In the following days, the school tried, without success, to
identify the vandal.
If anybody suspected me, they didn’t dare say it. I then
went to the girls and told them they looked hideous. I said
that they looked nearly, not quite, but nearly, as poor as
their self-esteem – and they broke down.
From that day forth they were scared of me. They
befriended me, came and sat with me, looked to me for
approval for the things they were about to or had done and
subconsciously I became the queen of their twisted colony.
Still, at this point, I was pretty in touch with myself. I still
called home once a week and was all about getting the girls
into line – but then there was the boy.
Collin Harvey was a year older than me, in my year level at
the Academy, in nearly all of my language classes and helped
me with my “study”. He was the first serious crush I had
ever had and the feelings between us were mutual. We spent
more and more time together until eventually, we were
hardly seen apart.
But the girls didn’t like that and so they took my phone
before the Christmas break, texted him that I was dumping
him because I’d found someone else, hired out some flash
hotels in the nearest city and kept me in total isolation from
him for four weeks.
When I realised my phone went missing, I asked to borrow
one of the girls’ but they all had some excuse or another as to
why they didn’t have theirs and by the time the Christmas
break was over, Collin was dating Jessica Simmons…
Jessica had been one of my best friends in my first month at
the Academy, had abandoned me out of fear for being
bullied and had tried to hitch onto me during my rise to
popularity. I had told her I liked Collin and now she was
spiting me by going out with him.
I attempted to explain to Collin what had happened – he
told me the sex was better with Jessica and that he’d told
everybody else that too.
In that moment, all love and happiness left my being and I
became a shell of apathy. I swore revenge – and got it too –
but it left me feeling empty. A feeling I could only quench by
manipulating the world around me.
I was never the same again.
Going into Simulator was something unexpected but not
surprising. I was the most prominent person in our year
level and the Academy submitted an application on my
behalf without asking.
It was an advantage to have everyone be older than me in
the game – they had no idea who I was, and I used it to my
advantage by feigning total innocence.
In the hexagonal room, I chose the wand as my weapon. It
was supposed to produce illusions of their user’s desire, it
appealed to me.
When I went into the clearing, I thought taking out as
many people as possible would be the best way to go.
Frankly, I wanted them all dead. I hated everyone and
everything about them. They represented the Academy and
therefore, needed to be brought down.
Then I realised that I needed a strategy. Victor and I had
been seeing each other for some time and he had told me all
about why he didn’t like Stefanie. I liked Victor but realised
he could never commit to a relationship. He was a threat
too, and I needed him to think he was manipulating me in
order to get him when his guard was down. That and he’d
probably kiss me in attempt to convince me of his allegiance
– and I never said I didn’t think he was hot…
So I plotted with him to help dispose of Stefanie, knowing
full well he had no intentions of doing so himself – and set
out to kill Xander.
Xander confused me. He wasn’t easy to figure out and
there was a constant edge of spontaneity to his actions.
When I confronted him, I was intentionally cruel. I disliked
him. Even so, as a person, I was now naturally cold.
I had secured us into that small area with the orange rope,
I showed off my extreme-speed and wanted to make him
scared before I killed him.
I had not expected him to be able to fight back. I
remember when he used his mind power, I attempted to
remain cool and collected but then he attacked me from a
distance and held me in place.
When he faltered, I thought I had him and I picked up a
rock off the ground. I intended on pushing it through his
sternum, into his heart – but somehow he summoned that
wave of power.
When it hit me I nearly died.
By the time I had recovered, I lost his trail. I was furious
and decided I wasn’t going to be so “playful” again.
So I found Lily.
When I spotted her, I ran faster than I ever had before. I
stood behind a tree, waiting to pounce and somehow she
seemed to sense me - but it was too late.
It was then that something bizarre happened, however.
Hearing footsteps behind me, I spun around and watched
as… I collided into myself! There had been two of me!
I had no time to think about it though, Lily was right there
and so I jumped on her, hands around her throat, hoping to
at the very least knock her unconscious. She would pay for
attacking me.
I felt her writhe beneath my grip, but she could do nothing
to stop me. Finally, after what seemed like minutes, she
went limp.
Her chest was still rising and falling, albeit shallowly, and I
searched around for something I could kill her with without
making too much of a mess.
“Bye bye Lily,” I said while I searched.
I contemplated the clone that had disappeared into me
before. Simulator was a dangerous place and this thing was
now inside of me. Like physically.
All I did was run. It couldn’t have been me who caused it.
It was almost like a duplicate image of myself trying to catch
up with me…
Oh. My. God.
I flashed back to me advanced physics class at the
Academy. Neutrinos, tiny particles that reached speeds
above that of light, often had “photon duplicates” that traced
behind their true path in the air.
I had run faster than light – faster than time.
Checking that Lily was not waking up anytime soon, I
bolted through the forest and back again and waited for my
shadow-self to catch up… It did.
Grabbing the wand I had secured in my pocket, I created a
simple illusion – one of an egg – and projecting it in front of
me, I ran.
It seemed to be part of the time warp with me – because it
hatched. I watched, still running, as the bird matured, flew
around me and then seemed to wither with age and die. In
minutes I had passed through years of time. But neither I
nor the world around me had changed.
I contemplated what this meant and whether or not it was
even useful.
I thought to try something risky. Jumping on the spot, as
fast as I could, I projected an image of a prison cell. I wasn’t
prepared to dispose of any of the contestants immediately,
so I needed a place to contain them.
Channelling the vibration of my body that I felt whenever I
moved this fast, I tried to focus my power externally. Sure, I
could run fast, faster than light, but I wondered if I could
make anything else move that fast, bring anything else
through time.
Focussing on the jail cell, I shifted my mental focus. The
image began to vibrate.
I leaped backward as a huge crash sounded through the
forest. Hundreds of trees that had been standing where the
illusion was, were crushed. The sound of bricks on metal
and cold concrete cementing over grass joined the noise.
I felt a sudden loss of energy; what I had done was barely
within my limits – but it had worked.
The theory behind it was flawed in reality, yes - but in
Simulator, it wasn’t. I had focused on one of the many
infinite possibilities of the future – alternate endings almost
– and dragged it to the present by bringing it through time.
The immensity of my power struck me and even though I
realised that I had limits as far as energy was concerned, I
could focus on any one thing happening in the future – and
bring myself to it. Messing with time was dangerous but I
didn’t care – I was going to master it.
The prison that stood before me was a simple brick
building with metal door entrance. I already knew what was
inside – a staircase that led underground and a concrete
hallway that went on for about fifteen meters or so. Marking
the hallway were entrances to cells. It was dank, dark,
gloomy and depressing.
Calling on my power again – for an easier task – I drew on
the future possibility of Lily ending up in there, and turned
it into reality.
I watched her body disappear and knew that it had landed
in the furthest cell from the entrance. I would deal with her
later.
Exploring my new power – I conjured an image of Stefanie
using my wand. It was a memory of her receiving some
award back at school.
Rather than travel into the actual memory, however, I was
going to attempt to bring myself to what the image
represented – and that was Stefanie.
If I travelled into the illusion, I’d be transported to some
fake place in Simulator that was a representation of Elitus,
but not quite… Not only would I be helpless from the
energy loss, Victor wouldn’t be there. Instead, I needed to
be brought to Stefanie, as opposed to bringing her to me.
I focussed and felt the vibrations travel through me again
and… with a tug I found myself standing amongst a patch of
trees that were solid gold. This world was kind of
incredible…
I could hear voices and confident that one of them
belonged to Stefanie, I stalked forward.
“– something you’re not telling me. What’s wrong?” I heard
Stefanie’s voice ask. To me it always sounded whiny.
Quickly deciding on what to do, I withdrew my wand and
imagined a swirling mass of people surrounding them. I
didn’t commit too much energy to the illusion, just enough
to startle them.
“I-“ Victor stopped mid-sentence.
I began to push through the people. Finally, when I
reached the centre, I smiled at the couple.
Victor shot me a love-pained look, one that I knew was
entirely fake but I winked back at him. Stefanie had
blanched, looking as lifeless as ever. Eugh, to think I’d be
following in her footsteps.
I watched as Victor tried to teleport them away but as they
began to fade, I gave Victor the illusion that his power
wouldn’t work. As long as he thought it wouldn’t, it couldn’t
– or so I hoped.
I watched with glee as he failed to go anywhere. Good.
“Today,” I began, breaking the silence, “only one person
can teleport out of here at a time. Too bad you need him,” I
jerked my thumb in Victor’s direction, “to teleport.”
I saw Stefanie comprehend what I’d just said, and she
looked as if she was going to cry.
I commanded the men to move forwards and disguised
myself as one of them. I needed Victor and Stefanie to
believe that the men weren’t just an illusion, but tangible, so
they wouldn’t just walk through them. I darted forward and
pulled Stefanie backwards.
Victor gave her one last look and vanished, able to do so
without me stopping him.
Stefanie didn’t even attempt to fight back. Just like I’d done
with Lily, I conjured the image of the prison cell – and sent
Stefanie away. I grinned as I mentally felt her thud to the
floor.
I now had Stefanie AND Lily locked up.
I laughed with joy.
This was going to be fun.