Gamers Con: The First Zak Steepleman Novel Read Online Free
huh?
Fat chance.
I could still taste the remainder of the grease from my hamburger and chips, still had that kind of crackly taste from the half a litre of Brizzmere Buzz that I’d blasted down my gullet. I kept getting hot and cold flushes—those reactions that I just knew were nerves.
Nerves? Me? At this?
A beginners’ tournament?
Because not one of the people buzzing about the place could compete with me . . . well, perhaps that Chinese kid aside, the one who’d also got himself burned by Alive Action Games—just that name sent waves of nausea through my stomach.
But there were five spots, if the guy at the desk had been telling the truth.
I only had to place in the top five.
And that would be simple.
Dad was still glued to his chess match as we lined up, once again, along with all the other kids for the first test. I did have to admit that the sheer number of kids here was intimidating. There must’ve been at least as many as the two hundred or so there’d been in the queue for passes that afternoon.
But I remained focussed.
Eyes fixed on our destination.
Up ahead, I saw the large plastic dome, and the darkened doorway which led inside of it. And, beyond, I could see that there were others.
Kids wandered in through the archway of the dome, and then wandered out the other side.
Onto the next step.
I was familiar with these initiation tournaments—or Ignition , as the flyer stated—they pretty much always took the form of a few timed challenges, with the winner of each round appearing up on the board to continue onto the final round.
My goal, first off, was simply to play through these initial timed challenges, absolutely destroy them, before getting down to the nitty-gritty of the final stage.
As we approached the first plastic dome, this woman dressed in a dark-purple polo shirt with purple-grey hair and a clipboard took my name and— embarrassingly —the serial number attached to my Pass-of-Shame . . . but, as I told myself, over and over again, that pass would not be around my neck for much longer.
Nope, I would be certain to make sure of that.
When we arrived to the archway of the first plastic dome, I found that I could look inside, see the current kid there, playing away.
It was Ridgeway Highway —an old-style, fifties motorbike racing game.
Like pretty much all racing games, or any games really for that matter, I had achieved one-hundred-per-cent completion on my first run-through.
Hadn’t so much as looked at it again after that.
Developers send me a whole bunch of stuff, and I really never have much time to bother looking a second time at most games.
Unless I’m planning to enter a competition for one of them.
And I hadn’t planned on entering a competition with Ridgeway Highway .
Maybe I should’ve dug out my copy and had a quick play-through . . . but, then again, I hadn’t known till now just what games I would up be against.
Retrospect is a fine thing.
The kid with the pad in his hands, I saw right away, was that same black kid from the queue earlier on.
I couldn’t help but give a slight smirk as I thought about him tapping away at his mobile playing on whatever ‘game’ he’d had on there.
Then I turned my attention to the screen.
I noted, straightaway, that it was the level of Ridgeway Highway where you have to breach this tunnel between the east of Russia, and the far west of the US . . . it’s an imaginary undersea tunnel, and the idea is to arrive on the Alaskan coast where you proceed onto the next stage—through snow , obviously—before returning to face the final race in Las Vegas.
I watched as the black kid steered the leathered-up rider, slumped low on the motorbike, handlebars pretty much sticking into his chest, through the tricky course.
He took the corners nicely . . . no, I mean really nicely.
I mean, this kid, he really knew how to drift.
How to catch that extra boost out of each of the corners.
How to absolutely jet right ahead.
As
Fat chance.
I could still taste the remainder of the grease from my hamburger and chips, still had that kind of crackly taste from the half a litre of Brizzmere Buzz that I’d blasted down my gullet. I kept getting hot and cold flushes—those reactions that I just knew were nerves.
Nerves? Me? At this?
A beginners’ tournament?
Because not one of the people buzzing about the place could compete with me . . . well, perhaps that Chinese kid aside, the one who’d also got himself burned by Alive Action Games—just that name sent waves of nausea through my stomach.
But there were five spots, if the guy at the desk had been telling the truth.
I only had to place in the top five.
And that would be simple.
Dad was still glued to his chess match as we lined up, once again, along with all the other kids for the first test. I did have to admit that the sheer number of kids here was intimidating. There must’ve been at least as many as the two hundred or so there’d been in the queue for passes that afternoon.
But I remained focussed.
Eyes fixed on our destination.
Up ahead, I saw the large plastic dome, and the darkened doorway which led inside of it. And, beyond, I could see that there were others.
Kids wandered in through the archway of the dome, and then wandered out the other side.
Onto the next step.
I was familiar with these initiation tournaments—or Ignition , as the flyer stated—they pretty much always took the form of a few timed challenges, with the winner of each round appearing up on the board to continue onto the final round.
My goal, first off, was simply to play through these initial timed challenges, absolutely destroy them, before getting down to the nitty-gritty of the final stage.
As we approached the first plastic dome, this woman dressed in a dark-purple polo shirt with purple-grey hair and a clipboard took my name and— embarrassingly —the serial number attached to my Pass-of-Shame . . . but, as I told myself, over and over again, that pass would not be around my neck for much longer.
Nope, I would be certain to make sure of that.
When we arrived to the archway of the first plastic dome, I found that I could look inside, see the current kid there, playing away.
It was Ridgeway Highway —an old-style, fifties motorbike racing game.
Like pretty much all racing games, or any games really for that matter, I had achieved one-hundred-per-cent completion on my first run-through.
Hadn’t so much as looked at it again after that.
Developers send me a whole bunch of stuff, and I really never have much time to bother looking a second time at most games.
Unless I’m planning to enter a competition for one of them.
And I hadn’t planned on entering a competition with Ridgeway Highway .
Maybe I should’ve dug out my copy and had a quick play-through . . . but, then again, I hadn’t known till now just what games I would up be against.
Retrospect is a fine thing.
The kid with the pad in his hands, I saw right away, was that same black kid from the queue earlier on.
I couldn’t help but give a slight smirk as I thought about him tapping away at his mobile playing on whatever ‘game’ he’d had on there.
Then I turned my attention to the screen.
I noted, straightaway, that it was the level of Ridgeway Highway where you have to breach this tunnel between the east of Russia, and the far west of the US . . . it’s an imaginary undersea tunnel, and the idea is to arrive on the Alaskan coast where you proceed onto the next stage—through snow , obviously—before returning to face the final race in Las Vegas.
I watched as the black kid steered the leathered-up rider, slumped low on the motorbike, handlebars pretty much sticking into his chest, through the tricky course.
He took the corners nicely . . . no, I mean really nicely.
I mean, this kid, he really knew how to drift.
How to catch that extra boost out of each of the corners.
How to absolutely jet right ahead.
As
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