Gamers Con: The First Zak Steepleman Novel (13 page)

I looked to the others, then said, “Okay, who’s first?”

* * *

I have to admit that there was a moment when I was absolutely certain that it
wasn’t
going to work at all, and that I
was
going to look like that nutcase.

But,
it did
.

I watched as—one by one—they disappeared into thin air.

For me, it was an odd experience since I’d never actually witnessed the effect from a third-person perspective before.

It was simple—elegant, even.

One second they were there.

The next they
weren’t
.

It was my turn last of all, and it felt sort of surreal to be standing alone in Kate’s hotel room with nobody there with me.

I breathed in deeply, glanced up at the TV screen—still darkness—and then I brushed my fingertips up against the infrared panel.

* * *

That manky smell seemed to smother just about everything.

And it was pitch-black.

Now, though, instead of being totally silent, I could hear all three of them: Chung, Kate and James all whispering away.

I wondered why they didn’t just speak in normal voices, and then I guessed that—most likely—it was the atmosphere that prompted them to lower their tone so much.

I whispered for them all to bunch together, and for us to work our way towards the hall where the Cloaked Figure would be awaiting us.

That was the first time that I thought about how our previous meeting had ended up.

What with the Cloaked Figure touching me in the centre of my chest, giving me that icy sensation that had flooded my entire body, seemed to
consume
me.

And then I’d been thrown back out, to my bedroom.

But there wasn’t much point in thinking about that now—because there would be no turning back without some sort of intervention from that Cloaked Figure.

Moving together, we snuck our way along the marble wall.

I was aware of the others even though they were totally silent.

Thrown into a complete hush.

Then again, I guess that having actually managed to successfully transport themselves into a
video game
for the first time had most likely been a fairly novel experience for them all.

For me, it was already becoming somewhat old hat.

When the darkness waned slightly—that silvery glow beginning to illuminate some of our surroundings—I sensed the others getting a little anxious, about what they were going to come across out ahead.

And, sure enough, there was the Cloaked Figure, standing with his back to us, facing down into the dark-purple pool there, seemingly contemplating those swirling galaxies.

I felt Kate draw near to me, felt her warm breath up against my earlobe as she said, “What do we do now?”

I blinked back the darkness, trying my best to help my eyes grow more accustomed to the dim light, and then said, “We try to get a peek into that pool, try to see what he’s
staring
into.”

Nobody said anything to that, though I didn’t see why there would be any sort of a comment to add . . . after all, we’d all come here on a joint mission to work out what
the hell
was going on around here.

And so, all four of us moving together, we approached the Cloaked Figure.

This time I didn’t announce our presence.

The Cloaked Figure didn’t turn to look, either.

And it wasn’t like we walked silently across those sleek marble floors.

As I drew closer, I noticed the darkness moving in on us again, and I caught onto the idea that we needed to move faster, that perhaps the Cloaked Figure had more control over our surroundings—over this
hall
—than I might’ve imagined.

I quickened my pace, trying to see past the Cloaked Figure, and down into that dark-purple pool, but as I got nearer still, he only seemed to grow larger—so large, in fact, that he towered over us, like a storm cloud gaining momentum.

The pool disappeared from view.

His cloak consumed
everything
.

And then, just like that, an invisible, icy wave blasted over us all.

I felt myself tumbling backwards—alongside the other three.

Falling down the whole way . . . seeming to keep on going right through the centre of the earth, and out the other side, into the
emptiness
of space . . .

29

“COOL.”

It was James who spoke first.

I realised that my eyes were clasped shut, that
I’d
been keeping them clasped shut.

“So that’s your secret?” Kate said. “That’s how you’re such a successful gamer? I mean,” she went on, “I’ve heard of
getting into
the game, but never really thought of
literally
doing that . . .”

“When did you find this out?” Chung said, eyebrows arched, fixed on the TV screen and the fading cut scene with the Cloaked Figure disappearing and becoming one with the darkness.

“Uh,” I said, thinking it over—recalling how I’d been playing
They Came from Hell!! 2
and how the power lead had come loose, and how I’d rounded the console and had a jiggle about with the cables to see what was wrong . . . that was when I’d come across that plastic panel . . . but, thinking of my audience, and seeing that it had just ticked over to two thirty in the morning from Kate’s bedside alarm clock, I settled on, “Just poking about here and there.”

Chung nodded back, still staring at the screen.

I looked to Kate and James, saw that the two of them had the same wide eyes that Chung had. But what exactly had I expected?

“So,” I said, “I guess that none of you knew about that, huh?”

They all shook their heads.

And I had no reason, from their reactions,
not
to believe them.

We all stared at the screen till it went totally blank and a menu popped up—simple white lettering on a sable background, it was asking whether or not we wanted to start a new game.

I looked across them, guessing that I was going to have to be the one to use my words. “I guess none of us got the chance to actually
play
the game, then?”

Again, they all shook their heads.

“Do you think we should?” I said.

It was then that Kate caught sight of her own alarm clock, and she let out something between a muffled screech, and a
squeal
. She turned to look at us. “It’s late,” she said, “we all have to be ready to play at eight tomorrow morning, so we should get some sleep.”

James picked up the slack. “Well, if it’s what we think, that they’re working to get us through the rounds, then it probably doesn’t really matter how much sleep we
do
or
don’t
get.” He breathed in hard. “But this thing—I mean, we can’t just forget about it. We have to investigate further.”

“Yeah,” Chung said, nodding along. “We need to find out what’s been going on with this Alive-Action-Games thing. It’s what ties us all together.”

I breathed in deeply, and then breathed out just as hard. “So, you reckon that maybe we pick a time to meet up here tomorrow, see what we can find out from the game? See if we play along for a while if we can discover anything else?”

“I guess that makes sense,” James said with a shrug.

I got to my feet, feeling a yawn coming on, but fending it off at the last moment.

Just as I pressed the Eject button, and watched the disk tray grind open, Chung spoke up.

“You know,” Chung said, “tomorrow’s gonna be pretty useful for getting that Alan guy alone—we all saw him in the game, right?”

We all nodded.

“So, I say that whoever gets paired with him in the quarter finals—whoever is going to have their matchup with him, that they
don’t
let him go.”

I chirped up. “What if none of us get matched up with him?”

Chung allowed himself a smirk, then said, “Oh, just a feeling . . .”

Nobody said anything about that at all.

There was nothing
to
say.

We all realised the implications of this thing—of what was going on.

And we were a team now . . . for want of a better word.

Because, after all, only
one
of us could take the trophy.

* * *

I could hear Dad’s snoring even from the door of the hotel room.

I thought a little about hotel design and how, surely, in theory, they were meant to solve problems like that, being able to make it so that a snorer would only bother the person in the same room, not somebody in the corridor outside.

Then I stopped thinking about that, telling myself that it was already almost three in the morning and I needed to turn my brain off for a few hours.

Even if I was going to get fed the answers, I still needed to be vaguely awake to actually do the grunt work and tap away at the plastic buttons of the controller.

And my left wrist could do with some rest.

Maybe it’d feel a little better in the morning.

The swelling had certainly gone done a little now—and I didn’t get that intense,
pounding
pain any longer.

As I prised myself in between the sheets, I noticed that my dad had stopped snoring, and I could hear him moving about in his bed, apparently getting himself comfortable once again.

“Zak?” he said, sounding sleepy.

My stomach crunched in on itself. I got that same icy sensation through my blood like the one that I’d had when I’d been thrown out of
Halls of Hallow
with the others just now.

I wondered if I was going to get into trouble for sneaking out in the middle of the night . . . . maybe he thought that I wasn’t taking the gaming competition seriously enough.

“Yeah?” I said, sighing out a yawn, trying to make it sound like I’d just woken up myself, though I was fairly certain he’d heard the door open and shut.

“Your mother and I,” he said, “we’re getting divorced.”

Well, I guess that my dad knows just the right thing to say to send a kid into a sound night’s sleep.

30

FOR SOME REASON, I didn’t sleep all that well that night.

Me and Dad didn’t say anything else, and I guess that there really wasn’t anything much to be said at all.

It was just a bombshell that we had to deal with.

As I lay there, the dawn light dribbling in through the netted curtains, I turned over all the things that’d happened in the past weeks. I guess that I should’ve seen it—should’ve picked up on more of the signs . . . well, like that one with my dad
only
playing on that chess app of his, never really present at all, really.

And as for Mum not coming along for Gamers Con, that should’ve been the clue which gave it all away.

But I guess that I’d been too self-absorbed to notice.

It’d teach me a lesson if nothing else.

Without much sleep at all behind me, I took a shower around six thirty, and then headed off to breakfast, Dad lagging at my heels still hooked up to his mobile, and his chess app.

We didn’t speak much at breakfast either.

I knew pretty much what Dad was thinking, about how he didn’t want to throw me off my game, didn’t want to laden my head down with too many distracting thoughts . . . though it was a fair bet that we were well past
that
point.

I got myself down to the quarter finals soon afterwards, caught sight of Harold and Steve already there, among the other purple shirts.

That morning Mr Yorbleson was there too.

Today, he wore the same suit, but this time he had a dark-purple handkerchief sticking out of his breast pocket. He was smiling that slimy smile of his, and when I drew close to him, he grinned widely and held his hand out for me to shake.

I shook it.

There was something about all of this that I didn’t like at all.

That put me on
edge
.

And when I glanced about James, Chung and Kate, I saw that they were wearing similar, suspicious expressions.

Once the invigilators called us together, and a minor crowd had formed—if there’s anything that gamers have in common it’s that we
really
don’t like mornings—Harold went on to explain that there had been a sudden rule change from yesterday evening.

That they’d come together and decided on a different route to the Grand Final: one which he claimed, when Harold was prompted by a glare from Mr Yorbleson, was a much ‘fairer’ way to decide things.

The upshot of this was that there wouldn’t be a straight knockout after all with the remaining eight players.

Instead, there would be another league-like round where all players would play one another, with the top five players going through to the Grand Final.

I didn’t see how it was fairer, but I certainly
did
see how it made more sense as a method to get all five of us from Alive Action Games through to the next stage.

Before, with a straight knockout in the quarter finals, it would’ve meant that at least one of us—if not more—would’ve been eliminated as the field was narrowed down to four players for the semi-finals, and then a further
two
, if not more, would’ve been cut for the final.

But that still didn’t answer the
why.

Why was the administration of Gamers Con going to such lengths to help us along so obviously, to give us kids, all of us with a connection to the now-defunct Alive Action Games . . . was it really just as simple as feeling
sympathy
for us?

That couldn’t be it.

That
made no sense.

And yet, there was really nothing else to go on.

I did settle on one thing, though, one thing
for sure
.

And that was, whatever the explanation for this whole deal was, Alan—the red-haired kid—surely had something to do with it.

As luck would have it, as the names with the first matchups appeared up on the plasma screen, I saw that I was paired with Alan.