Gamers Con: The First Zak Steepleman Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

surprised to watch me spin right through them and score more goals than the rest of them all put together.
    I finished with maximum points in my group—and earned myself the long-awaited All-Access Pass.
    I would’ve liked to say that that was where it ended, that right after spinning my way through the Ignition Tournament—winning back my rightful All-Access Pass—that I could simply wake Dad up from where he’d slipped off to sleep on the step, drift on up to the hotel room, and then get a solid night’s sleep before the Real Deal started the next day . . . but that wasn’t how it panned out.
    I was just about to leave, to head out of the dome with the Sirocco 3000 and the still-flickering plasma screen which continued to show the leader board, and the final group ranking. The others had all slipped out, some of them swearing under their breath, when Harold the Invigilator called me back.
    Throughout the whole of the group games, he’d looked just a touch nervous, and I’d thought that it was most likely because of the three large men who were all taking on a plump, thirteen-year-old . . . and what with the thirteen-year-old wiping the floor with them.
    But it turned out to be something else entirely.
    I studied Harold’s wispy beardy chin, and gave him one of my squinty-eye specials—it was getting on for eleven o’clock at night, so I suppose I was looking forward to my beauty sleep. “What?” I said. “What’s the matter? I am getting the All-Access Pass, aren’t I?”
    Harold flashed me a smile for a quarter of a millisecond, and then he got all fidgety, started to curl up the corner of the page resting on his clipboard. “Oh yes,” he said, “of course you will. Tomorrow morning, at nine o’clock, we’ll be hosting a Winners’ Breakfast where everybody will be presented with their All-Access Pass along with a goodie bag.”
    “Fine,” I said, shrugging my shoulders, then firing off a glance at my dad who was slumped up against the banister of the stairs, snoring away.
    “There’s just, uh, one thing .”
    “What?”
    “Are you, uh . . . I mean, were you , previously associated with Alive Action Games?”
    I felt a slight tickle at the base of my throat, and wondered if it might be my heart that had got lodged up there.
    Though some pro gamers might say different, it’s not often they get recognised . . . and I’m not even a pro gamer . . . yet .
    “Yeah?” I said, not really sure where this was going.
    Harold gave me another of his unconvincing smiles. “I thought so,” he said. “Terrible what’s happened—what with the passes, and all that . . . still, at least the five of you managed to squeak through on your own merit.”
    “The five of us?” I said.
    “Yes, all five of you.”
    I thought about what he’d said—I hadn’t got a chance to look at the other winners and, it seemed, just about everyone else had headed up to their hotel rooms for the night.
    The only people still down here, on the conference centre floor, close to eleven at night, were me and Harold.
    “You see,” Harold said, his eyes leaving mine, finding the flickering screen behind me quite quickly, “this is really the first year that we’ve put on this Ignition Tournament—it’s not particularly in keeping with Gamers Con regulations to hand out All-Access Passes at the very last minute.” He flashed a too-brief smile again. “Difficult administration-wise.”
    “Yeah,” I said, already mentally picturing my fluffy bed and, actually, also feeling my mouth water just a touch at the notion of a Winners’ Breakfast.
    “It was when Alive Action decided to pull their funding—to cease to sponsor the five of you that Gamers Con thought that we really must do something.”
    I couldn’t help but give a yawn right then, though I did my best to cover it up with the back of my hand . . .
    Harold seemed to get the message and began to speak faster. “You have heard what happened with Alive Action—why