Gamers Con: The First Zak Steepleman Novel by Dave Bakers

eyebrows, and then scrawled something down on his clipboard.
    I felt totally puzzled as I headed on back to the waiting area—off to await my position in the last eight of Round Two.
     
    * * *
     
    It was a strange atmosphere—just like at all video-game competitions.
    Though everybody waiting to play their next matchup was sitting about in close proximity, nobody at all was speaking.
    It was odd to feel alone with the pounding pain in my wrist. All I could really do was stare at the bright-red welt forming there, and try to will it to go away.
    A couple of times, I looked back up to my dad, now sitting back in his seat, tapping away at his mobile, wrapped up in his chess match again.
    I couldn’t blame him.
    It wasn’t exactly a thrilling spectator sport if you didn’t know what was going on.
    I got through the next two rounds with three-zero victories.
    I held my own in the first two games, and then used the tip which my first opponent had slipped me when Hardened Voyage rolled around.
    So then it was off to the final.
    I faced off with another thirteen-year-old kid, where I did just the same.
    No sweat.
    Not at all.
    In fact, I finished them all off in such record time—booked my place in the quarter finals so fast—that I was able to go around the back of the curtain and watch the final stages of the matchup between Chung Wen and another competitor.
    Almost on instinct, I spun around, gazed on up to the spectators, and picked out Chung’s mum sitting there.
    Unlike my dad, she was sitting on the very edge of her seat, hands clasped in her lap, staring intently at her son, watching how well he was doing.
    When I turned my attention back to the screen, I saw that they’d just started into Hardened Voyage . . . and, surprisingly, that Chung seemed to be having just the same trouble getting to grips with it as I had.
    That was to say that he kept on taking minor blows from the other competitor, who was gradually chipping away at his damage meter.
    And then Chung did something which near enough took my breath away.
    He tried out the same button combination that I had.
    The same combination that my first opponent had given me.
    Without which I surely would’ve bombed out of the competition.
    Chung won the round, and then the next, and the next.
    He won his own tree, and, just like I did, he went through to the quarter final.
    I could feel my heart beating up in my throat, and the pain seemed to pulse against my wrist.
    I couldn’t quite believe it.

 
     
     
    25
     
     
    AS STEVE AND HAROLD jointly announced me and Chung to have gone through to the quarter finals, among the other gamers clapping politely, I tried to catch sight of my opponent from the first round of the knockout.
    I couldn’t see him anywhere.
    When I turned my attention back to Steve and Harold, they were handing out medals to those who’d got this far, who’d managed to reach the Second Round.
    I remembered that medal, I still had it back home, in my bedroom.
    A silver gamepad on a velvety-purple cord.
    The other gamers all took their medals politely—just as politely as they’d clapped—and then they shuffled on off, apparently back to their hotel rooms, maybe even looking forward to being able to enjoy the rest of Gamers Con.
    I overheard a few of them mumble things about how Hardened Voyage had been a complete curveball, and not a fair one at that.
    I supposed—on some level—I had to agree.
    It wasn’t an authentic fighting game after all.
    But, then again, this was Gamers Con. And we were supposed to be the best. So we had to cope with whatever it was they put before us.
    No excuses.
    When the others had gone, it left me alone with Chung and the two invigilators: Steve and Harold.
    Already, Harold was gesturing for me to come on over, to hear the plan for Sunday . . . what would be the final day of the competition.
    I held off for a moment, saw that my dad was clambering his way down the steps from the spectators’ platform, coming