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

silver cutlery alongside.
    Now, I know that Gamers Con is pretty great—but even I doubt that it was real silver.
    Most likely just some other metal.
    Which one, I’m not sure.
    Look, I’m a gaming genius, not a chemistry whizz, okay?
    But by far the most beautiful sight there were the plasticky badges that lay on everybody’s plate: the ones which read All-Access and had that cheery red ribbon all about the border.
    Now, I knew, I really had arrived at Gamers Con.
    For some reason I got all timid then, and just sort of hovered at the door to the place with my dad sort of hanging off me, apparently equally as taken aback by this breakfast awaiting us, though I’m not sure why . . . that’s another way that me and Dad are different.
    While I eat like a shire horse, Dad eats more like a sparrow, and a very weight-conscious sparrow at that.
    “Please, Mr Steepleman, take a seat.”
    I glanced around. Saw that it was Harold standing there. Another of his nervous grins splitting his cheeks, though it wasn’t like I could mention anything about that grin.
    And he kept grinning, holding out his hands to, apparently, indicate the chair at the head of the table.
    I hung back precisely half a second more, and then sat down.
    It was one of those plumped-up leather chairs, the ones that have a whole bunch of air inside of them, and I immediately found myself sinking into it, probably coming quite close to dying of comfort.
    The chair was white leather so I made a mental note to myself to try not to let anything stain it . . . that’s the thing with white materials, you’ve always got to take extreme caution with them.
    My dad sat down beside me.
    And it began.
     
    * * *
     
    It was only after I’d demolished a good three—or was it four?—stacks of pancakes that I realised someone was standing in the doorway, waiting to come inside, hanging back in the same—slightly nervous—way that I had.
    I saw that it was the Chinese kid: Chung Wen.
    Luckily for Chung, though, his mum wasn’t as timid as my dad had been, and she shepherded him in through the doorway, and over to the seat furthest away from me and Dad that she could possibly pick.
    I gave a sort of sheepish grin in Chung’s direction.
    He didn’t respond in any way.
    Another pile of pancakes later, and I noticed another couple walking in.
    The black kid, and the blond girl.
    The ones who I’d noticed standing in the queue.
    While the black kid wasn’t much of a surprise, the blond girl certainly was.
    Oh, sure, I’d seen her down there going through with the ‘Ignition Tournament,’ but I hadn’t thought, not really even for a minute, that she would actually go on to win one of the five places . . . and there was always that knowledge that I’d gained from Harold the day before, that all of us—all five of us—had been associated with Alive Action Games.
    So, apparently, she was a serious gamer too.
    . . . At least as serious as me.
    We all sat down to eat without any words to one another—each of us with our respective parents . . . Chung with his mother, and the rest of us with our dads.
    By the time one of the officials in their purple polo shirt offered me yet more pancakes, I couldn’t believe that I was actually thinking of turning them down.
    Of telling them that I was full.
    There was also the thing where I was constantly glancing up to the doorway to see who might come through next. Who might complete this five-some of kids who’d all worked, and been discarded by, Alive Action Games.
    But nobody else did come .
    We just went on waiting.
    Finally, at the end of the breakfast, a familiar figure appeared.
    Mr Yorbleson as I recognised him from the evening before.
    Like yesterday, he wore a suit, but today he had a light-blue, silk handkerchief sticking out from the breast pocket. He had on the same smile as before, and his eyes just seemed to slink about the room kind of like a snake looking through a boxful of mice and trying to decide which one