Gamer (Gamer Trilogy) (5 page)

From the moment I was in the clearing, I knew something
was very wrong. In my head, I found myself thinking: ‘
I’m
going to kill themall, one by one. They all think I’mweak,
stupid, and too innocent to do any damage. This is going to
be too easy.’

And I stood there stunned for a moment, wondering where
this sudden hatred had come from. Sure I had my mood
swings here and there but this was intense. I had a feeling it
wasn’t even me thinking it – was someone inside my head?

It took me a brief second to understand – these weren’t my
thoughts, but Grace’s.
Having been forced to spend the last nine years
underground (I’ll explain in a minute) the light being
reflected and distorted by all the trees was so distracting. I
noticed this as I turned to look at Grace, there was no way
this could actually be her – Simulator was probably doing
this to all of us, trying to make us attack each other…
But double-checking, I realised that maybe I was actually
onto something - the twisted look on her face was so harsh
and yet somehow, everybody seemed oblivious to it.
I watched as she raised her wand, conviction etched into her
somehow sweet and innocent face. She was going to kill
someone… Xander.
I donned my cloak - the weapon I chose.
Apparently it was equipped with three thousand different
survival mechanisms that appeared in random sequence every
time you put it on. It was a little bit of a risk – for all I knew, I
could’ve been turned into a butterfly - but there really weren’t
many options.
And then I felt my skin harden and my knuckles extend - into
metal spikes. Trust Simulator, even the grass looked like it
had teeth.
I weighed up my options in a millisecond. Charge at and
“kill” Grace and have everyone think of me as the heartless
killer that Grace actually was or run off into the forest and let
Xander die… I’d already invested so much effort into keeping
him alive up until this point – I still had a gash from where
one of the crazy, ground-popping trees had attacked me – but
I wasn’t about to give up now.
I flexed my metallic muscles, really feeling the suit. I needed
to treat this methodically. Cool and calculating. Shouldn’t be
too hard for a fifteen-year-old genius like me. Should not be
hard at all, I told myself… and it wasn’t.
Attack mode. My brain instantly computed the most tender
spot of Grace’s body to target. My spiked knuckle was aiming
right for her chest when I pounced.
It was dead on. Grace whirled around almost a fraction too
late as the tip of my knuckle brushed her chest – BOOM!
I was jolted sideways and into one of the glass trees. It
smashed with ease, shards flying everywhere.
And then my cloak seemed to wriggle. Thousands of little
worm-like creatures emerged from the surface of my metallic
layer of skin and I could feel them! Eugh! MAGGOTS!
She’s going to ruin everything.
I turned my head to see Victor, battle-axe in hand, dissipate
into thin air after a longing glance at… Grace?
They were in this together.
Before Stefanie could reload or Victor could do some
damage, I turned and fled into the forest, heart racing.
I kept trying to fling the individual maggots off but after
about a minute of sprinting, they just disappeared, leaving no
trace. Her wand must have some sort of a range.
I slowed to a jog and then eventually sat down on a rock,
trying to make sense of what had just happened…
Grace was secretly plotting to kill everyone, one at a time. At
the same time, she was also having some creepy love affair
with Victor. Stefanie was now going to think of me as her
enemy and Grace would make sure they saw me that way. All
the while her aim would be to remove Stefanie from the
picture… Great.
The whole journey through the dome with Xander would
more likely than not be forgotten, and so he’d also side with
Grace – until she eventually killed him too.
B3ast on the other hand had somehow managed to avoid all
the conflict and would probably be the biggest threat out of
everyone…
I took in my surroundings almost instantly; five blades per
each clump of grass, and each clump had exactly 3mm
distance from the one next to it. The arrangement was
repetitive and unyielding – a perfect, digitally synchronized
pattern, and my brain processed this in a matter of seconds.
The glass trees themselves were not as dense as real glass,
they refracted the light at a different angle and also seemed
far more fragile – probably another digital imaging effect.
Above, the sky was a crisp blue, a little too vivid to be real in
my opinion, but that was maybe just because I knew better.
Either way, this entire arena was just a patterned
arrangement of codes and data. With the right knowledge, it
wouldn’t be too hard to draw a relatively accurate terrain map
– it was all just a sequence.
I found it a little funny how my upbringing, as traumatic as
it was, somehow managed to end in something so successful
– me!
Before, I mentioned that I’d literally grown up in the dark…
Just to clarify – I had never felt what actual sunshine was until
I came to Elitus two years ago.
At six-months of age, I was sent off to an orphanage – my
birth parents died in lab experiment (they were particle
physicists) - and then the family I had been left to – along with
my inheritance – decided they didn’t want me.
Although orphanages in themselves are generally unpleasant
places to be, my foster parents sent me to a special kind of
orphanage – a military, child think-tank - a place that
guaranteed the academic success of all its prodigies.
My foster parents believed I would be traumatized for the
rest of my life, destined to become a menace. In their attempt
to be pro-active, unfortunately, I became one such prodigy.
By the age of two I couldn’t just write and read, I was
speaking fluent Latin and studying Ancient Greek. By the
age of four, the piano was something I could play with my
eyes closed while at the same time reciting the names of every
capital city in the world and their individual histories.
By age five – the normal school-age for most children – I was
learning how to calculate the atomic-mass of any given area of
dark matter and by age seven I’d already submitted four
theses to the Pentagon explaining how the speed of light was
actually just proverbial and made by man…
These congregations of super child education facilities were
few and far between, but they existed and nobody else knew
about them.
My particular facility was underground and maintained a
temperature around that of what you’d find in an average
fridge – cold supposedly stimulates the mind.
Then they would demonstrate how to carry out the
procedure of the task they expected from you. If you couldn’t
do it, you were shocked by the electric collar around your
neck. In that place you learned fast – those who didn’t were
never let up… above ground.
Even though it sounds impossible that a four-year old could
play, let alone comprehend Beethoven, it really wasn’t – and I
was living proof. They gave us these strange injections, laced
with only God-knows-what, which they placed in the bases of
our skulls. The resulting effect was an hour or so of perfect
clarity – each sensation being translated directly into memory.
The long-term effects involved multiplication of brain cells, a
simple yet effective treatment that gave us the brains of
superhumans.
To escape that excruciating feeling that your entire body
was seizing up and stretching beyond what was physically
possible – as was the torture of the electric collars - I was
forced to comply with whatever they told me to do, and pray
that it was good enough. Supposedly the electricity also
stimulated our muscle and neuron synapses, an interesting
theory but in my eyes, an excuse to torture young children.
That place was a living hell.
In my time there, I had just one friend. Her name was Eliza.
Her specialty was, by far, language.
Even though we were all learning three or four languages at
a time, she could learn an entire dictionary by heart, in under
five days. My strengths were more in the field of
mathematics, patterns and molecular physics.
Anyway, she and I, we used to share one of those
underground one-person cave-like stone dorms – lit by a
single candle. And every night we used to tell each other
about our day, talk about the teachers we hated most, the
subjects we would be taking up the next day and recite all the
things we’d learnt. It was probably this human contact that
kept us both sane.
The day I graduated, however, was the day our friendship
ended – that’s how things usually go, anyway, after you put
somebody into a vegetative state.
We were in the same macrobiotics lecture, and she raised
her hand to ask a question about information that had been
told to us the year before. She knew she was going to get into
trouble – but not nearly as much had she dropped beneath
her 100% average on her daily testing. And so she took a risk,
and it ended badly.
The lecturer smirked with cruelty at her question and he
produced a small remote from his pocket – a big red button
embedded into it.
All the other students just stared ahead, without any
emotion, as Eliza writhed from the current of the collar – we
were like dogs.
Except then the lecturer didn’t stop, he was a particularly
harsh one, but even for him, it was a little far.
A few people exchanged nervous glances and even though
we were trained to be emotionless, we were all a little
influenced by last period’s literature class, it was our first
exposure to not actually perceiving everything from just a
factual perspective and it confused a few people…
Anyway, after what looked to be causing some serious
damage – Eliza’s mouth was frothing up – I actually rose out
of my chair and objected.
As soon as I did it, I regretted it. The reputation that would
get me above ground was shattered in an instant but this only
seemed to make the lecturer happier.
Mr Klazpt seemed overjoyed and he called me down to the
board.
I was confused but I didn’t dare disobey, in case I was
shocked too, and when I got to him, without a word, he
handed me the remote.
With one look I was subdued into silence, and forced to
push the button and watch my best friend twist and writhe
with increasing pace until… silence. The years of trauma
overwhelmed her and she had snapped… weak, I know.
I awoke out of my reminisce, a tear was leaking down my
cheek but I quickly wiped it away.
“At least it got me out of there,” I sighed into the slight
breeze that had picked up.
So in short, I killed my best friend to set myself free, so yes, I
did sometimes step back and ask how the absolute
annihilation of a child’s soul somehow equated into a humanrobot like me, I shouldn’t have been able to take that – but I
did.
Now, however, I was out to win that Omega. Just the other
day the orphanage head – Phelix – sent me a letter and
expressed his concern that I was slipping – I had come
second in the Annual Elitus Spelling Bee to a girl who was
six years older than me, and just as robotic.
Regardless, there was never an excuse for failure, and my
punishment was to be deployed into Simulator to win the
Omega - or else…
Remembering the choking, splitting pain that came with
every second of the collar, I pushed myself up off the rock I
was sitting on, and decided to just not stop walking.
Another tear leaked down my cheek and I settled myself.
She wasan obstacle, just something in-betweenthe way of
you and success.
But I couldn’t force myself to believe it.
Now that I was in Simulator, just slightly removed from all
the pressure, I was, well, feeling.
Two years away from that hell hole and things were starting
to look up, coming second wasn’t even that big of a deal for
me. I just wanted to be free.
“ARGH!”
I spun around. Someone was coming.
After a few seconds, I figured it must’ve been my
imagination – but it was such a strong feeling.
I slowly edged my way into a bush and just waited for
something to happen.
Finally someone did come… B3ast!
He was sweating profusely and he dropped his computer…
A huge split in the ground opened up about a dozen meters
away – a resounding crack echoed along the forest.
Power.
The one thought that was resonating in his head.
I had another flash in my mind – instinctively, I ducked and
jumped away.
Just seconds later the glass tree I’d been hiding behind
smashed to pieces. B3ast was controlling the elements…
Holy crap.
Even with my mind there was no way I could compensate
for that – if he spotted me I’d be dead.
And now these visions… I was having short bursts of a
foresight almost. But I’d taken enough lessons in metaphysics
to know it was total bullshit… then again, so was elemental
control.
B3ast ran off with determination on his face, having picked
up his laptop again.
I sort of collapsed to the ground as a wave of static passed
over me – it felt almost like the electric current collar. But it
was weak and it didn’t really affect me, I’d read B3ast’s
thoughts and known it was coming anyway… So we were
actually in the game now… Did that mean we could actually
die?
I walked over to where B3ast had just been and sat on the
ground. I needed a plan and some direction.
Focusing my thoughts, the flash came just a millisecond too
late. Extremely fast footsteps and cruel thoughts bombarded
my senses.
I barely had time to look up as Grace wrapped her hands
around my neck. She was wearing white gloves, like you’d
expect to see at a ladies’ tea party, but they were coated in
something sticky, that was now covering my neck.
It didn’t take much effort to know Grace had just fulfilled
her twisted love promise to Victor – it was blood. She had
already killed.
I then heard one thought pierce my mind, as if she knew I
could hear her…
Die.

My
heart rate soared. My palms were sweaty. My breathing
became shallow. And Grace slapped me six times before I
could even blink.