Gamer (Gamer Trilogy) (4 page)

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 making 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.

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?”
Grace looked up, as innocent as ever, and said, “Well, I think
we should all stick together. It’s only a matter of time until
Lily or B3ast find us and if we’re together, we probably have a
better chance of survival…” She blinked twice, exaggeratedly.
“Plus I like you guys,” she added as an afterthought.
I found myself nodding in agreement. What Grace said was
logical but this meant that we were also accepting that B3ast
and Lily were now our enemies. Stefanie seemed to have read
my mind.
“So we’ve written them off? Both B3ast and Lily I mean,”
she asked.
Grace just nodded. It was hard to find any flaw in her
argument, I mean we couldn’t just all stay friends, or else the
game would never end – and B3ast and Lily were as good a
place to start as any.
Now it was getting dark though, and I started to make my
way into the cave. I could feel the heat radiating out of it from
meters away.
But before I could get in, Victor asked me, “Hey Xander,
can you take your pack and fill it up with water for us?
Thanks.”
Instead of choosing a weapon, I’d chosen the bag of supplies
– one of the items inside of it had been a water-bottle type
container. I had subconsciously been lugging it around all
day. It was fairly light.
The river sounded quite close, and not wanting to be rude,
I just mumbled “sure,” put on a half-smile, and walked in the
direction of the sound of flowing water.
After five minutes of walking through progressively wetter
and colder, knee-high grass, I reached a stream. It was no
way big enough to be a river itself, it must’ve been an offshoot
from the main source but it would do.
I started thinking of life at the Academy, and was beginning
to regret signing up for Simulator. I probably wouldn’t be
able to win anyway and now one of the few friends I’d
thought I’d had, turned out to not like me at all. It sucked.
And then there was the fact that if I didn’t win, I’d be
labelled as useless to the school – a fact my teachers had taken
note of. Without the Academy, I had nowhere else to go.
I was surprised by how much time had passed – looking up
at the sky, the sun had completely set. The plastic container –
one of the many seemingly useful items in my pack - finally
finished filling up. I got up to return to the camp, screwing
the lid of water-skin type container - but found Grace
standing right behind me. I dropped the bottle out of shock
and then smiled at my own stupidity. I tried to laugh it off.
Looking up at Grace I said apologetically, “I didn’t hear you
coming. You scared me.” Still smiling I tried to walk
forwards towards the camp, but she blocked my way.
My smile faltered a little. “Quit it Grace, let’s go back to the
others,” I said.
But she refused to move.
If this was going to be a confrontation, I’d win hands down.
No way was she going to be able to best me.
But then there was a pop behind her and Victor appeared.
Stefanie was in his arms, limp and lifeless, a fresh wound,
bright red, on her forehead.
“What have you guys done to her?!” I growled.
I ran forward, or at least tried to, to help Stefanie – but
Grace tripped me. With lightning fast speed, she was
suddenly in front of me again.
“You mean what have
you
done,” Victor said.
“Me?!” I asked incredulously. And then I realised.
Victor teleported away, with Stefanie’s body bundled in his
arms. She was still alive, that much I was certain of – her
chest had been rising and falling, albeit weakly. I groaned at
my realisation, however. He was going to tell her I’d attacked
them, and she’d all too readily believe him. Or he’d probably
finish her off, find the others, and tell them it was me. Either
way, I was screwed.
I stood again, regaining my balance, and Grace did several,
impossibly fast laps of the small clearing we were in, stringing
something around us. It was orange rope – another item from
my pack. Before I could even blink, we were closed in. Grace
had discovered her power – extremespeed.
My eyes searched for a possible escape, between the trees, or
under/over the rope – but it was no use. I looked over to
Grace, an evil look etched into her features.
She began to stalk forwards, preparing to kill me.