Gamers Con: The First Zak Steepleman Novel Read Online Free Page A

he approached the finishing straight, I couldn’t help but glance up at the timer.
    Though I hadn’t played Ridgeway Highway for quite a while, I still had a vague notion of just what the timings meant . . . I guess some things are impossible to completely singe from your mind . . . and I knew that, for this level, the black kid was absolutely whipping along.
    He finished up and I watched as the invigilator—another guy with a clipboard and dark-purple polo shirt—made a note of the time.
    After the black kid and his dad—or the guy I thought was his dad—skirted on out of the booth, the invigilator glanced at me, nodded, and then I handed over my badge.
    Watched him scrawl down the serial number on his page, then hand me the badge back.
    And, just like that, with Dad watching over my shoulder, I picked up the pad and started into Ridgeway Highway .

 
     
     
    6
     
     
    TEN ROUNDS LATER—and a whole host of games I’d hoped I’d never see again . . . even— shudder —the truly awful Bubbled Up! . . . I wandered on out to the main concourse of the convention centre, to the place with the slicked-up, white floor tiles, to where a plasma screen was spewing out the results from the tournament so far.
    We each had a score graded from—I guessed—zero to ten thousand.
    Our names were all up there on the board, written out in neat, crisp, white block capitals.
    After everything that had happened earlier that day, I was feeling pretty low.
    So I started off reading from the bottom upwards.
    It was a bit of a boost to see—of the hundred or so other people there—that I was sitting right at the top of the list with 9,640 points.
    The next name down had 9,420 points.
    Chung Wen.
    I guessed that was the Chinese kid I’d seen earlier in the queue—with his mother getting angry with the official.
    Pretty much on autopilot, I skimmed the next eighteen names on the list: the names which appeared before the neon-red line which read ‘CUT OFF’ . . . the people I’d have to face off against in the final round.
    I watched on as lots of kids skulked away, their parents consoling them.
    I also watched a couple of adults—clearly unable to understand how they’d got beaten by a bunch of kids—getting all angry with some of the officials with clipboards.
    I looked about me as the crowd thinned out, sizing up my competition.
    Sure enough, I spotted right away the Chinese kid—Chung Wen—and his mother alongside him. Both of them wore neutral expressions, like they hadn’t expected anything else. And I knew that though I didn’t need to beat Chung Wen right now, I most certainly would have to face him at some point if I actually managed to get through into the Grand Tournament later on.
    When the angry adults, and the weeping children, had finally skulked off to their hotel rooms, the officials—the invigilators —called us all together, surrounding us with their clipboards and dark-purple polo shirts.
    They explained the rules to us: the remaining twenty.
    How we would be participating in five groups of four and—quite simply—the player with the most wins in each group would be the ones to receive the passes.
    Five winners of the All-Access Pass.
    And I was determined to be one of them.
    As the invigilators read out our groups—all of them organised fairly by our ranking—I noted the blond girl from earlier on, watched as she pranced over to join her group.
    Then, a little less surprisingly, given his performance on Ridgeway Highway , I saw the black kid heading off to join his group.
    The Chinese kid—Chung Wen—headed off to another.
    I blinked a few times, tried to bring the world back into focus. Tried to get my brain back into gear for the games ahead of us.
    I looked about my group—Group A—looked to their faces.
    All of the people in my group were at least ten years older than me, and I couldn’t help noticing just a few snide sidelong glances at me as if I didn’t deserve to be here at all, as if