Gamers - Amazon Read Online Free PDF

off, her parents finally spoke up in one of those dual speaking modes, where they each finished each other's sentences and overlapped so much it was hard to actually tell who was speaking.
    "Honey. Sweetie," said her parents. "We know you're under a lot of stress with your Final Raid next week. You've been working so hard, for so long, and maybe this is getting to you."
    The parent duality paused, and Gabby realized then how much they were caricatures of parents in their shiny skins, buffed to a fine glow. She wondered why she'd never seen this before.
    "So we're going to defer this decision until after the Final Raid. We don't want this to interfere with your LifeScore anymore than it already is." Her parents cast the sad-face, and nodded.
    Gabby sighed. She hadn't won, but she hadn't lost, either. Her parents had gamed their way out of making the decision until they could find a better strategy. She could do the same. A week would give her enough time to figure out what the Frags were doing with her files.
    If it were truly nefarious, which Gabby seriously doubted, then she could turn them into the LGIE. And if not, then she'd have the evidence to keep her parents from letting them into her files.
    All the while, she needed to keep her LifeScore up. Final Raid was in a week and the schools like to mix things up with new games to test the students' ingenuity. Surprise games were much harder to hack too, so Gabby would have to be on her A-game.
    Gabby put on her own smile and gave her parents obligatory hugs.
    "Thank you," said Gabby. "I should go up to my room now. I need to get a few more points before the day is over. I would be happy to talk about this again next week."
    As Gabby turned to trudge up the stairs, she let her smile fade. She needed to get busy up in her room, but it certainly wasn't grinding a few worthless points. She had to figure out a way to contact the Frags and fast.
    Because she knew her parents would take the week to analyze her playback and figure out that she was bluffing. Once they did that, they'd give her files to the LGIE in a heartbeat.

Chapter Five
    She'd taken the idea for her room from an old book Blair had shown her once with a golden dragon on the cover. A blonde haired woman rode the dragon and looked triumphant. Gabby had always imagined herself as the woman.
    Her wall-scenes made the room appear to be near the entrance of a huge cave. The back half rested on a sand floor, while the front faced the edge of a cliff that disappeared off the mountainside into the crisp and occasionally cloudy air.
    When she glanced up, she would often see dragons with tiny riders on them, soaring through the skies, belching flame at airborne parasites. Occasionally, they would land at the mouth of the cave and amble into the chamber behind her, wings tucked and metallic skin gleaming in the torch light.
    But today she had no time for fantasies. So she let her room revert to its normal, boring state.
    First, Gabby pulled out the two books that Blair had given her. She paged through the titleless book with the owl on the front, learning that it was about some long dead philosopher from a few millennium ago. His big innovation was to ask questions. Gabby shrugged and put it back in the backpack.
    The second book was about the Stasi, the secret police in East Germany, a place that she'd never heard of.
    She read sections at random. Some of the information was shocking. The Stasi had almost complete control of their population through a blanket of informers. One in six people were informing or watching the others.
    A shiver went down Gabby's spine. She could sense the similarities between the Stasi and the LGIE, but not what it meant for her. The LGIE only had better technology. If it weren't for the bleeding edge encryption everyone had access to, they'd probably already be snooping through her stuff.
    Which lead her to wonder how the Frags were doing the same. She threw the book onto the bed and called up her