Gamers Con: The First Zak Steepleman Novel

by Dave Bakers

  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 itsel
f. 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.

  Now it seemed like I’d finally get some answers.

  31

  BEFORE WE HEADED ONWARDS, to the next stage of the tournament, there was another announcement—that, from now on, now the field had been narrowed down so thinly, we would each be accompanied throughout the convention by an invigilator.

  That we would not be permitted any other form of contact with other gamers still in the competition till the conclusion of the tournament that evening.

  So, I guessed that put paid to me and the others meeting up in Kate’s room again and trying to bust open this whole Halls of Hallow thing.

  There wasn’t any other comment about this, but I got the impression that it was because of suggestions of some gamer receiving tips from outside.

  Maybe someone had complained.

  I would have.

  Whether or not the Gamers Con officials—Steve and Harold—had noticed what had gone on yesterday, what with me and the other three—four with Alan?—getting fed button combinations wasn’t mentioned.

  But I had my own thoughts about it.

  The invigilator assigned to me was Steve.

  And I was glad.

  In a way, I was hoping, if somebody tried to feed me button presses again, that I would get caught . . . maybe I’d even turn myself in . . . that would’ve been the honest thing to do.

  Maybe it was the prospect of my parents’ divorce, wheedling its way through my head that had me messed up, didn’t really allow me to sit back and think straight.

  Because, after all, there was no doubt what the moral thing to do would be.

  To tell the truth.

  But, the way I saw it so far, I knew at least the other four had cheated in some way, that they’d got the same button presses I’d got, so it felt like a somewhat level playing field.

  Or maybe I wanted the Grand Tournament Trophy so badly that I was determined to do just about anything to get my hands on it.

  As me and Alan were filed along to the plastic pods where they kept the game consoles, I flashed a glance up to my dad—to where he sat in the spectator seats—and he gave me a wave, and one of those sturdy, man-to-man smiles . . . one of those ones he always puts on whenever there’s a ‘serious’ subject like school, or chess, to blab about.

  I eyed the monitor up ahead, saw that we would be playing just a standard game—not another curveball like throwing us into play shooting games with gun peripherals had been.

  However we’d managed to get here, I knew for certain that this was the meat of the competition.

  And I was prepared to do all that was necessary to win.

  I noticed that Harold was hot on Alan’s heels, and I guessed that he had been assigned to keep an eye on him, while Steve was already puffing away on my own heels.

  Apparently already out of breath.

  When I picked up the gamepad, I felt just a sliver of that pain from the day before.

  That morning, when I’d woken up, all bleary-eyed having only had about three hours’ sleep at most, I’d spent a good half an hour running my wrist under the cold tap.

  The welt was now under control, though.

  And I only really felt pain when I jerked from one side to the other too swiftly.

  As I eyed the game coming up, I recognised it right away:

  Harbours of Pain

  I gave a slight smile.

  Thought about how I wouldn’t need to flex my wrist.

  Pretty much the whole game was played out with the right hand—with the hand
that tapped away at the plastic buttons of the controller.

  Guess I lucked out.

  It was also one of my favourite games.

  With Steve staring over my shoulder, and Harold looking over Alan’s, I thought to myself that Harold had better keep his eye on Alan the best he could since—from everything I’d talked about with the others—Alan seemed the one most likely to win this whole tournament: to have it all fixed in his favour.

  As for me, I was determined just to enjoy it.

  The screen faded up from black, and those crystal-clear, blue waters all twinkled into view—in the bleached sunshine.

  I couldn’t help but allow myself a smile.

  For me, Harbours of Pain has always been one of those comfort games.

  One of those games, what with its flawless blue skies, and insanely clear waters, that you can just stick into the Sirocco and escape with for a little while.

  Oh, sure, there’s battle to be had, too.

  That’s where the Pain comes from.

  But it’s mainly a free-roaming sailing title.

  The way it works is that you have a boat—which starts out as a dinghy, but gets more and more impressive as you go—and then you basically navigate the waters of the globe.

  You only really get into battles if you truly want to have them . . . most of the time, when I fire up Harbours of Pain, it’s just to sail—and keep sailing—right out into the distance, sail for the horizon.

  Kind of a relaxation thing I’ve got going.

  However, in this case, since we were facing off for a place in the final of the Grand Tournament of Gamers Con, I knew that I couldn’t afford to allow my brain to float away.

  So I snapped right back to the task at hand.

  Readied the cannons.

  Watched the timer tick down.

  3 . . . 2 . . .

  32

  . . . 1 . . . GO!

  All at the same time, I mashed my palm down on all the buttons.

  Fired everything I had right at Alan.