Gamer (Gamer Trilogy) Read online

  Victor chuckled a little as well but he started to talk. “Well, I just learnt this really cool trick… I’ll show you!” He looked really excited and a look of concentration crossed over his face.

  A faint popping sound and suddenly he was standing at the other end of the clearing. Several more pops and he went from the ground, to the top of a tree, to just a few meters in front of me and then back behind me again. It took me a second to process everything - and then I realised he’d discovered his power.

  Even Grace and Xander looked shocked. “How do you do it?” Grace asked meekly.

  “I don’t know,” Victor said, “I just do.” He went on, his voice as masculine as ever, “When I realised Lily was going to attack Grace,” he grimaced a little, “I was slow to react. But then I saw Stefanie drop to the ground and fire her laser, the sound just made me want to get away… So I did.”

  An expression of realisation dawned on his face. “I can bloody teleport,” he cheered. Bewildered and yet as cocky as ever. He puffed out his chest and then hugged me from behind. I went a little red considering Xander and Grace were right there and so I pushed away a little.

  Xander began to talk, pretending not to notice what had just happened. “Um guys, we need a plan. We can’t just stay here until night falls or Lily comes back, so I think we should set up a camp somewhere.” His eyes dropped to the floor and I processed what he just said. It was true.

  Untangling myself from the suddenly very grabby Victor, I asked, “Where do you think we should go?”

  Xander looked up, looking a little surprised that I’d actually listened and both Grace and even Victor were watching him.

  He cleared his throat and stood up a little straighter, I couldn’t help but think that the light was hitting his face very well… “Actually, I think we should camp right here,” he said. “It’s an open space that we could probably easily defend - in case Lily or something comes back, there’s a water source somewhere in that direction,” he pointed to where the sound of running water was coming from, “and, in case you haven’t noticed, the grass really retains heat… it’s perfect.”

  I couldn’t help but agree, not only because I didn’t actually have any better suggestions, but also because it made sense.

  I started to ask what we’d use to build the shelter when suddenly the entire world shook. Not just the ground, but the whole thing. All the trees were vibrating, then everything went out of focus, a blanket of static covered everything and for a second, I was scared. I yelled but no sound came out.

  Then it was all over as quickly as it had come. The clearing came back into focus.

  All four of us had fallen to the ground, and I was a little dizzy. As the world steadied I only had to look over to Victor’s face to see that I wasn’t the only one who’d seen static.

  I opened my mouth to speak but suddenly, as if on the inside of the Simulator goggles, big red letters appeared. MALFUNCTION.

  It was like looking through a window with the word pasted over. Then it flashed just once and disappeared.

  Now the sun felt hotter, the colours seemed more vivid and the world around us seemed more real.

  One word pushed its way into my mind, as if placed there by something beyond my power.

  In what seemed like unison, the four of us murmured the one word, like robots - “trapped.”

  A wave of panic rode through me and for some reason, this didn’t feel like just a game anymore.

  4

  B3AST I was in a forest. It was beautiful, but I wasn’t here to enjoy the scenery. I looked around at the other Testees, most of them looked dazed.

  Stefanie was in a solid stupor, Victor had a confused look on his face, Grace was in her own little world and Lily was also seemingly lost. Alexander just looked brain-dead.

  I didn’t know any of them too well and I was surprised that they had been selected. But the surprise was a pleasant one, because dumb contestants meant an easy victory.

  I knew I needed a plan, but what could I do? At a loss, I opened my computer. Straight away a map and compass came up. Bingo.

  In just seconds I managed to memorise where I needed to go - we were on a circular-shaped island, and right now we were in the centre of it. I wanted to go north – some feature of the map was highlighted there.

  The beauty of this world didn’t appeal to me, as far as I saw it, I was here to win the Omega. I knew that for everyone else, winning the Omega would just be an addition to all the things they already had – they were all rich, famous and goodlooking – I hated them for it.

  For me, however, winning the Omega would be the only thing I had. Sure, I was the best gamer in the country, but the fact that I had to work so hard to get where I was – while never being quite good enough – was what inspired my contempt for those who had life handed to them on a silver platter. It was also what inspired me to win – for me, this meant proving my superiority to the spineless students of Elitus that had never and would never, work an honest day in their lives – the interest from their trust funds ensured that.

  As far as family went, I had none. My parents were both dead – they both managed to contract a lethal strain of an influenza virus - and any aunts and uncles I had were all back home in China. I lived full-time at the academy, unceasingly working to try and get somewhere in life.

  I was a typical nerd. Even though I was one of the world’s best gamers, I didn’t have many friends. I was bullied before Elitus and at Elitus I was ignored. In both instances, teachers didn’t particularly care too much.

  Without this lack of interest in my wellbeing that every teacher I had ever known showed me, however, I would never have gotten my name…

  There was one bully at my first school. They called him The Beast. He was my worst tormentor; wedgies, thumbtacks on my chair, dipping all my school books in a foul-smelling liquid and physically beating me up in every spare moment he had, were just a few of the ways in which he attacked me. Worse than the bullying, however, was the way other kids treated me because of it, nobody wanted to risk being the target also, so nobody risked speaking to me. It was an awful childhood.

  But, of course, I made sure to get him back. In fact, to this day, he swears he had nothing to do with the terrorist threats e-mailed to every leader of every country in the

  Commonwealth, from his IP address and still attempts to deny that the bombing plans on his computer – planning the take-over of several top-secret nuclear warheads - were not his either. “Oh but Beast, who besides you had access to your computer…?” The prosecutors would ask.

  It seemed unlikely that anybody would’ve gone to such an effort to framing a minor for an offence punishable by death…

  Wait a second… I would!

  Now who’s the B3ast?

  To their dying day, my parents instilled into me that secondbest was never good enough - from doing the best in my exams to getting into Elitus. In my family, doing well wasn’t rewarded – it was expected.

  The Academy itself also just piled on the pressure to achieve and so as soon as the opportunity arose – my name was put down for Simulator – and I was determined to win.

  See, there were two straightforward reasons I wanted the Omega. The first was that I didn’t want anyone else to have it. If some idiot like Victor managed to beat me at a computer game, I’d likely jump off a bridge. That being said, I also needed that Omega – I had nothing that would ever guarantee my success in life. That meant there was a chance that I could fail.

  Succeeding was a duty to my parents and my school. I needed to be the best at everything or else I was a nobody. I was nothing without success.

  I couldn’t even say I had friends – I was too quiet, too creepy, and too weird. Nobody wanted to mix with the lanky gaming Asian kid but I didn’t care. I would win Simulator at any cost.

  I was still running through the forest, deciding to put as much distance between myself and everyone else as possible. Every few seconds I’d check the map. I was m
aking steady progress. I began to sweat hard and according to the computer we’d been in Simulator for a solid forty-five minutes.

  I stopped for a break. Although it was a great plan to run north, I wasn’t exactly the fittest individual. I needed food, a water source, some kind of shelter and perhaps even a fire. On the map, the nearest water source was about five hundred meters to my right. It would take me a little off course but it would be worth it.

  I walked, deciding to check out the wireless interface of the computer. If Tech had wanted people to only have maps, that would’ve been an option – surely this was something more.

  Just as I began to focus, I heard a faint kind of popping noise. Suddenly I realised how silent it had been but I also realised that there was something wrong. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. I turned around quickly to see Victor standing there, just as surprised as I was. I didn’t have time to react before he disappeared again.

  “Great,” I murmured into open space. Victor could teleport.

  I sat down, the water wasn’t going anywhere but this could be important. I looked back down at the screen. I sent out a ping for a wireless signal. Instantly I got a perfect connection to a network called B3ast. I didn’t think that it was a coincidence.

  Clicking onto it, I found it was password protected. In less than fifteen seconds I hacked in and- sweet mother of Jesus. I was in the main file directory of Simulator. Every file on every person, animal, plant and building was right before my eyes.

  This was the developer mainframe – if Tech had wanted to turn all the trees purple or make the sky yellow, this would’ve been how he did it…

  Maybe I could- YES!

  Nearly every file was alterable. The lack of proper encryption made me a little suspicious – but surely if I wasn’t supposed to have access to the mainframe, then the computer wouldn’t have been an option… right?

  I briefly thought about the possible danger involved with messing around the files but the moment was fleeting. I was here to win – and this was how I was going to do it.

  I had complete and total control over the game.

  I found a folder named Player Data. Clicking into it I was pleasantly surprised to find the six individual files that determined EVERYTHING about us in the game… Powers!

  I opened my own file.

  Name: B3ast

  Age: 13

  Power: Undefined

  Location: Outer-edge/Inner; Forest [56, 98]

  I didn’t have any powers at all. But I will soon, I thought to myself. I briefly tried to open some of the other player files but as I expected, they were all encoded properly. Hacking them would take hours – but it was still achievable, maybe if I had time later. I wondered what would happen if Victor had his power taken away mid-teleport… oops.

  I went back out into the main folder, looking for a particular file – found it.

  Powers.main

  This was a list of all the powers Simulator could create. Flying, venomous, invisibility, super-strength, teleportation, element controlling... The list went over thirty pages. I couldn’t believe what I was doing.

  I selected one of the powers and then clicked and dragged it to my player file… it worked!!

  I felt a throbbing in my hands. Dropping the laptop, I followed my instincts. I pointed towards a tree and with a tiny upwards motion of my hand - ripped it straight out of the ground.

  I blew a windstorm through the forest that ripped up trees of its own. I forced the ground to shake and split, creating a fissure.

  Finally, the water source nearby… Reaching out with my mind, I mentally pulled the water towards me, heaving it from the ground and twirling it through the trees.

  A long thread of water was now circling me and with just a glance, it turned to ice. One clench of my hand and the ice just exploded outwards.

  Focusing my mind on one of the glass trees… BOOM! The whole thing just shattered.

  I made my hands into fists and chorused in my head. I was invincible. Nobody would be able to stop me now. And so finally, just before I went off to dispatch the opposition, I deleted one of the files that was essential to allowing the other contestants to escape.

  Knowing very well what I could be unleashing on them, I didn’t even hesitate.

  TimeKeeper.dat – delete.

  A wall of static covered my vision and a warning message plastered itself across my goggles. Then the goggles just disappeared and suddenly I felt like I’d been plunged into a bucket of iced water – we were now in the game for good – and it was my doing!

  I fell to the ground, feeling like I’d been tipped upside down yet still euphoric about what I’d just done. There was no more time cap in Simulator, no more rules or limits – we were here forever. Now I’d never have to leave – I was the grand master of this world.

  B3ast.

  5

  XANDER

  Dappled sunlight streamed through the glass trees above us and we stood back to admire our handiwork. We’d all decided to try and forget the creepy, unison, in sync speech from before and we had made a decision to leave the clearing altogether, regardless of how logical it was to stay.

  We had walked for what felt like an hour or so before Victor, who had been teleporting ahead, found a cave that would fit us all as well as keep out the wind and rain – if there ever was any.

  When Victor appeared and told us that he’d found a spot, we were already tired and didn’t think we could actually make it to the cave without a rest in-between. Not to worry though, super Victor and his amazing powers saved the day, again, and he figured out that he could teleport another person as well as himself.

  And so he took us all, one by one, to the cave. My trip, however, was a little more interesting than the others.

  Victor had left me till last, and when he came back to get me, he gave me a warning. “Stefanie has never liked you, does not like you and will never like you. Stop crushing on my girl in your own time, before I make you stop. In fact, she wouldn’t even care if I told her you’d mysteriously run away before I could teleport you back…”

  Ouch. Did Stefanie really feel that way? Either way, I wouldn’t let Victor see that. I just nodded my

  acknowledgment, and extended my arm, waiting for him to teleport me.

  I could see him actually contemplating leaving me here, but then he gave in and teleported me despite his threats.

  Teleporting was a rush, no doubt about it. We landed perfectly at the entrance of a massive stone cave and Stefanie and Grace seemed to have already set to work.

  The golden grass here was just as plentiful, if not more so, than the grass in the clearing. Here it wasn’t as tall, but definitely thicker – the grass only came up to our ankles but seemed to trap in even more heat than the clearing did.

  I looked down and saw I had no shoes on and realised that I’d lost them coming into Simulator – I remembered feeling the grass between my toes in the clearing. Looking down at my legs, my pants had been destroyed and so had my shirt, I realised. My watch had stopped working.

  I wished I had a change of clothes.

  Suddenly a warm feeling passed through me and a soft thump reached my ears. Out of nowhere, a small, neat pile of clothes lay folded on the grass in front of me.

  I could hardly believe it. Had I done this?

  I quickly had to toss up between changing my clothes to look decent once again – but also have to answer tricky questions – or just ignore what had happened. Hesitantly, I decided to change.

  When I was sure nobody was watching, I took off my clothes and put on the new ones – a tough, black, jacket type item, with a grey hood and a pair of dark-blue jeans.

  I looked myself up and down, scrunching what remained of my old clothes in a pile and I began to walk in Stefanie’s direction, hoping she could explain to me what we were doing for food, assuming we could even get hungry. Also, I wanted to try and find an explanation for what had just happened.

  Stefanie and Grace
were ripping out handfuls of golden grass from the forest floor and filling the cave with it insulation.

  I thought of telling Stefanie what happened, but it was probable she would tell Victor, which would create trouble in itself. According to her boyfriend, she didn’t want to talk to me anyway.

  After at least two hours of near slave labour, we’d finally finished, barely beating sunset. And the cave was damn warm.

  “Hey Xander…” I heard Stefanie’s voice rise with a question. Victor stiffened beside her. “Why are you wearing new clothes?”

  Nobody had yet noticed and suddenly Grace, Victor and Stefanie all looked at me suspiciously.

  “Ah,” I tried to come up with a good excuse, “I found them in between some trees, just lying there…” It didn’t seem to be working. “My old clothes were ruined as it was and I decided to try them on… perfect fit, huh.”

  Stefanie still looked suspicious and for a moment the air was tense, then she shrugged, smiled pleasantly and turned to Victor.

  I exhaled a long, steady breath of air.

  Victor quickly moved closer to Stefanie, wrapped his arms around her, and whispered something in her ear. Even in the setting sun, there was enough light to see her blush.

  “Guys, I think we need to plan again, like again again,” Grace’s voice rang through the trees, like a bell, strong and clear.

  “What do you mean?” Victor asked.

  “Well,” Grace began, “we’ve got our shelter and whatnot, but, someone is going to be trying to win this game – and that means we need to decide whether we’re on a team, or not.”

  I was a little surprised to hear her prompt this conversation, I mean she was by no means unintelligent or anything, but she was the youngest, the one who wasn’t supposed to be thinking of tactics and technicalities. But clearly she was one step ahead. I made a mental note not to underestimate her.

  Stefanie, for the second time that day, unwound herself from Victor and asked, “well what do you think we should do?”