Gamers Con: The First Zak Steepleman Novel by Dave Bakers Page A

leaving a voicemail message.
    I handed my dad his mobile back.
    He near enough snatched it out of my fingers, and I saw that he already had five moves to see to . . . five different games that were awaiting his input.
    I rolled my eyes and tried to get my brain into gaming mode.
    To get myself all revved up.

 
     
     
    14
     
     
    ALL THE GAMERS in our group—Group M—were clustered around our invigilator: the same guy from this morning who had taken us through briefing.
    I looked across to James, caught his eye.
    He smiled at me.
    I smiled back.
    Then I remembered that he was the competition.
    That I couldn’t afford to think of him as a friend.
    . . . At least not till I’d crushed him, and the rest of the players in my group, beneath my oversized bottom.
    The invigilator, like the rest of the staff at Gamers Con, wore a dark-purple polo shirt. His name badge read: Steve, though since he never formally introduced himself to us, I guess that he might’ve conceivably been called something else.
    Steve was one of those trusty guys.
    He was well-built, which was to say that he was fat —fat enough that a fat kid like me could comfortably get away with calling him fat.
    He’d obviously taken the extra-large size of polo shirt, but that was still struggling to cover his belly which kind of flopped out over his waistline showing off the fuzzy black hair which clung to his skin.
    A couple of times, when I got too close to Steve, I caught a whiff of his sweat—realised that there was maybe a lingering odour of chip grease there too . . . and I wondered if, maybe, he’d eaten in the same food court as me and Dad.
    But Steve was serious about what he did. Not once, throughout the entire explanation, did he crack a smile or even hint at a dry-humoured joke . . . I like that.
    The First Round was to be shooting games using peripherals.
    There was a bit of a collective sigh around me.
    I knew just what everybody else was thinking, because I felt just the same.
    That peripherals were below me.
    Of course they were.
    They weren’t serious .
    But, then again, I knew that this was Gamers Con, and whatever they said was Law.
    If they wanted to tumble us into a bunch of giant inflatable balls and have us try to knock one another off a narrow ledge then we would’ve had to do it . . . or admit defeat.
    Nope, this First Round would be a true challenge of our gaming credentials.
    The first step to proving the all-round gamer who would eventually take the trophy.
    We filed along, away from the meeting area—that section beneath the large letter M which was, logically, where our group: Group M, would get together before each of these First Round events.
    I felt pumped looking upwards, seeing all the people looking down on us from above, looking down into the area restricted to only All-Access Passes, and, for the first time at Gamers Con, I felt, well and truly, like I belonged.
    After a five-minute walk which got, at least, both me and Steve breathing heavily, I found myself facing off with a whole row of arcade machines, all of them with a shooting peripheral.
    Again, I sensed that heaviness in the air, that sense that these gamers were all about to take part in something that was beneath them.
    Well, the only ones who’d end up thinking this was beneath them would find themselves knocked out of the Grand Tournament.
    Strangely enough, nobody quit there and then.
    We all listened attentively to yet more instructions and then it was playtime.
    I lined myself up at the machine I’d been assigned.
    I checked out my competition, the rest of them all at their own machines.
    The rules were simple.
    Whoever scored the most points would win.
    We wouldn’t know which game we were playing till the screen blazed into life.
    That suited me just fine.
    I could sharp shoot in just about any shooting game.
    I picked up the plastic gun from its holster, checked to my left, then my right, saw that neither of the gamers who stood beside me was