Читать книгу Game World - C.J. Farley - Страница 7

“Ariel November!” Ines announced.

The crowd cheered wildly.

Dylan felt his heart shrink three sizes.

He was finished. He hadn’t been picked. Game over.

The world was a blur. Eli was saying something. Emma was shaking her head.

He had been fooling himself. Of course he wasn’t a Game Changer! Nothing good ever happened to him. He was just another middle school loser. And now it was time for him to go home to his loserdom, his epic fail life, his kitchenette of cockatoos, and his urine-flavored lemonade bought in bulk. This time he’d drink the whole friggin’ glass and if he was lucky it would kill him.

“Ariel?” Ines called out. “Mr. or Ms. November? Going once, going twice . . .”

The crowd murmured. Ariel November, whoever he or she was, wasn’t there.

Ines stroked her long black hair. “No worries . . . We’ll just move on to our alternate . . . Dylan Rudee!”

The crowd roared again. Dylan didn’t know what to think. Did they really call his name?

“Dylan, come on down!”

His name! He was somebody. He was one of the best gamers in town. He thought of all the kids at school who called him nerd or loser or Loopy or worse. Maybe they were watching him on TV. He finally had one thing that he did well and it was games. And not only that, he had a way of playing this particular game that nobody else had. Then a note of doubt echoed through Dylan’s head—what if he really wasn’t one of the best? What if he was really just a sneaky kid with inside info?

“C’mon, Dylan,” Emma cheered. “Go on down!”

Dylan couldn’t feel his legs, but somehow he was moving. Everything seemed like one of those dreams where you know you’re dreaming. He came down from the stands into the spotlight and saw his face on the big screen; in front of him he saw Eli smiling.

“Sweet!” Eli shouted. “Sweeeeeeeeet!”

Just then, Chad threw an elbow that caught Dylan in the nose and knocked him down. He tasted blood in his mouth. The crowd, which saw the hit on the screen, let out a gasp.

“Man up, Loopy—’cause I’m taking you down!” Chad barked. “That’s right, I said it.” Suddenly aware that he was on camera, he mugged for the crowd. The gasps turned to cheers. He chewed hard on his gum, blew a bubble, then let loose an Olympic-sized fart. The crowd loved it. “I got my swagger back!” he boomed.

Dylan scrambled to his feet. The cheap shot returned him to reality. As he stumbled into his spotlight, his left nostril was leaking blood. He couldn’t play Xamaica like this; he thought maybe his nose was broken.

“Shhhhh. Lean forward, not back. You have to give the blood a place to go.”

Emma had come up behind him. She put her pirate doll against his nose; he hadn’t even noticed that she had brought it with her, but the darn thing made an excellent sponge. Emma pinched Dylan’s nose bridge, then rolled up the doll’s tiny felt hat and slipped it into his left nostril, stopping the bleeding.

“I-I-I didn’t know you knew how to do that,” Dylan stammered.

“There are a lot of things about me you don’t know,” Emma smiled.

“Gracias por tu ayuda!” Eli said. “That’s a good woman!”

“She’s a nine-year-old girl,” Dylan fired back. “And she carries around a pirate doll.”

Emma crossed her arms. The doll was a sore spot—Chad and his boys had stolen it once, and the whole episode was kind of a disaster. “This isn’t about me. If we lose the apartment, do you really think social services will let the Professor keep us? You have to win that prize.”

“No pressure, huh?” Dylan muttered, as Emma returned to the stands.

A countdown appeared on the big screen: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!

Naturally, Dylan and Eli chose each other as teammates. To start the game, a player had to say two and a half simple words:

“It’s on!” Dylan yelled.

* * *

The game had begun. Xamaica’s technology was a trade secret: users normally signed up online, and without a controller or any visible hardware, the game was transmitted into the field of vision of each of the players. Users were only faintly visible beneath their avatars. One time, Dylan remembered, Emma had tried the game out and she only had one comment afterward: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. Clarke.” He hated to admit it, but she was so right. Now, playing the game, Dylan looked out onto a tropical land shrouded by a low mist. Of course, he was only viewing a video image, but it seemed totally real. Images of what the players were seeing were projected on the big screens for the crowd.

An orange sun and two pale moons glowed in the blue sky. This is what he loved about Xamaica: it was fantastical and yet so real. It was a world so welcoming it made him want to leave his own.

A player couldn’t choose his or her avatar. Dylan had filled out an online form that had asked all sorts of weird questions, including, Was your great-great-grandaunt left-handed? and, Have you ever eaten a plantain tart under a full moon? and, What’s life all about anyway? Dylan had no idea why they needed to know those things, and he’d left half the answers blank. But soon after, an avatar was assigned to him that was supposed to reflect what he was about. Since Dylan’s avatar was a duppy, it looked like him, only a little transparent. But it had many powers. As a spirit-creature, he was a shape-shifter and a mimic—for brief bursts, he could take on the powers of any magical beast in Xamaica. He could shoot fire like a Rolling Calf, even fly like an Iron Lion—a creature with a lion body, a human face, and huge metallic butterfly wings.

In Xamaica, thanks to the special powers he had, people called Dylan the Duppy Defender. It had a better ring than Loopy.

Dylan looked around to get his bearings. Right beside him was Eli—his avatar was a Rolling Calf, kind of like a Minotaur that’s on fire but never gets burned. When Rolling Calves stampeded they were an unstoppable force. Eli scraped the ground with his hoofs, throwing off sparks. His tail lashed back and forth, trailing flames and smoke. Fire blew from his nostrils. Dylan liked Eli this way.

There were forty-two other avatars in the contest, including a Steel Donkey, half-shark half-vulture Luscas, and a couple slinky Dlos (part-snake, part-human, mostly trouble). They were gathered in the field of combat, a large grassy plain fenced in by palm trees. Dylan had never seen so many magical beasts—it was a fire-breathing, shape-shifting, wind-walking, magical mystery melee.

“Okay, I have a plan.” Eli’s voice sounded bigger, more bullish, when he was playing the game.

“Not again,” groaned Dylan, whose own game voice was distant and echoey, like something rattling around in an attic. “Is this new plan anything like what you pulled in the JV football locker room?”

“Dude—it’s not like the super glue didn’t come out eventually.”

“So what do you have this time?”

“Teamwork.”

“Teamwork? That’s the plan?”

“It’s the Fellowship of the Ring. Harry Potter doesn’t get anything done without his amigos. The Narnia kids have each other’s back. If you want to survive a fantasy situation, you have to roll with a crew. We’re the real Game Changers, man! These other brothers are just playing!”

“So we do everything together? Coordinate every attack?”

“Exactly. Most of these clowns are working together for the first time, or they’re in it for themselves. We work together, we got a shot.”

Dylan figured they had more than a shot, because he had a secret, a way to game the game that nobody else knew. He cupped his hand over his mouth to cover his lips. Many video games had cheat codes—secret ways of gaining access to new levels that were known only to a few. Dylan had stumbled onto the ultimate cheat code for Xamaica—a secret word he only had to say once out loud to unlock and multiply the powers of his avatar. He whispered it now, to himself, and his avatar became supercharged.

About half the competitors went down in the first few seconds. The Luscas were pretty vicious. There was a pair of them and they worked well as a team. They circled the air like flying sharks and swooped down on their victims, seizing them with squidlike tentacles. They were merciless—a couple kids whose avatars were Wata Mamas, seal-like creatures as bulky and as useless as waterlogged mattresses, never had a chance. The last things they saw were six rows of teeth diving down on them from the air. Dylan thought that was a pretty grim way to get offed, even if it was just a video game.

Eli was good at this combat stuff. As a Rolling Calf, he was one of the most powerful creatures. He burned like a forest fire without the forest, and after he took out a couple zombies, nobody else wanted to come near him. His attacks were a one-two punch: he’d throw flames first and trample over anything that was left, which was usually just ashes. Dylan was his advance man, snooping out opponents hiding behind ferns or in the branches of banana trees. With his enhanced powers, nobody could stop him.

“Sweet!” Eli said to Dylan. “You’re a beast!”

Meanwhile, two Seven-Tailed Lizards were doing some damage. Each of their tails could cause an earthquake—and they had fourteen tails between them, each one covered, naturally, in Richter scales. Other avatars were getting crushed by the tremors the two creatures were setting off. Eli couldn’t even get close to them because the ground kept giving way. For a while it looked like the lizards were going to win the battle in a rout.

But, as it turned out, the lizards weren’t much of a team. They kept squabbling with each other about which avatars to go after next. Eventually they began to chase after each other’s tails. That was the end of the tale of the Seven-Tailed Lizards.

There was one other Loopy in the fight. Anjali was an Airavata—an oversized elephant with nine trunks and too many tusks to count. When she tooted those trunks she sounded like that French horn she was always playing. She was paired with a floppy Wata Mama. Anjali used her trunks to pull the vulturous Luscas out of the sky—but they ended up falling right on top of her and her partner. They were all knocked out of the battle and trunks, teeth, and dorsal fins went flying. The crash took out the nearby Steel Donkey, which gave a last tinny bray before collapsing in a heavy metal crash. Just to be nice, Dylan and Eli saved a few sweetly useless Wata Mamas from getting crushed. The creatures, who it turned out weren’t even players, bleated and waddled away toward a stream.

A Dlo whose partner had gone down early was mounting a challenge. He was slithering in and out of holes in the ground, striking quickly, and slipping away. Dylan couldn’t figure out which hole he was going to pop out of next. The Dlo was taking out the field one by one, and nobody could do anything about it.

Eli had a solution. He blew fire into one hole until smoke came out of all the rest. Pretty soon the Dlo was smoked out. Hacking and hissing, he was an easy target.

Soon, Eli and Dylan were one of two pairs left. They were up against Chad and his partner, Ivan, who were both towering Moongazers. Even with Dylan’s supersized powers, this was real trouble.

Moongazers were among the most fearsome creatures in Xamaica. Because their bearlike bodies were made of mist they were hard to get ahold of. Their claws, however, were long and sharp and could tear through wood, metal—and the hides of other beasts.

“End of the road, Dylan. That’s right, I said it.” The twin Moongazers looked exactly alike, but there was no mistaking Chad’s typically insulting tone.

“Teamwork,” Eli cautioned. “Don’t let him bait you.”

“That’s right, Loopy, listen to the cripple!” Chad barked.

“Shut up!” Dylan warned, even as Eli tried to hold him back.

“Make me!” Chad caught a Wata Mama sunning itself near a stream and flung it by the tail.

Dylan caught the poor creature, put it down safely, and flew at Chad in a rage—but then he remembered the other Moongazer. He just ducked a swipe from the creature’s massive claws. He wasn’t, however, able to dodge the beast’s backhand, which knocked him back twenty feet. Dylan was a spirit creature, so blows like that usually went through him. But there was something about the Moongazer’s vaporous body that allowed it to have an effect on noncorporal beings.

Chad howled and took two menacing strides forward to finish the job.

A blast of fire shot between the Moongazers and Dylan. Dylan scrambled behind a rock where Eli was waiting, his eyes flickering with flame. “Teamwork—remember!”

“Teamwork’s cool,” Dylan panted. “But we need to change the playbook.”

His extra cheat-code powers were wearing off—they never lasted long. He needed a new approach. As a duppy, Dylan could shape-shift into any creature. But what form should he pick?

“I need to turn into something that can fight that thing,” Dylan said.

“Like what?” Eli asked.

“A Rolling Calf?”

“Dude—my fire blast barely fazed him.”

“An Iron Lion?”

“Seriously? You’re not gonna be able to hold that form long.”

The Moongazers were sniffing around the rock. They were closing in. What form should he choose? Then it hit him. If you can’t beat ’em . . .

Dylan turned into a Moongazer.

“Sweet!” Eli said, picking up on the plan.

It was a powerful beast, so he wasn’t going to be able to maintain the shift, but he should be able to do it long enough. He charged.

“What are you trying to pull, Loopy?” said one of the Moongazers. Based on the sneer in his voice, Dylan figured that one was Chad.

Dylan tackled the other one. They wrestled and rolled on the ground and it was impossible to tell who was who—which was exactly what Dylan was counting on.

Chad looked confused. After hesitating, he attacked anyway. One of the Moongazers howled in pain. By mistake, Chad had done in his partner.

Working together, Eli and Dylan handled their opponent quickly. Dylan blocked Chad’s escape while Eli fireblasted his gaseous body into smoke. You know how a lit match can air out a room after someone has let one rip? Same principle.

“You lose,” Dylan said to Chad. “That’s right, I said it.”

Dylan and Eli had won the Tournament of Xamaica.

Eli bumped his fist against Dylan’s. “Dude—that was epic! How did you know he’d attack the wrong Moongazer?”

“I didn’t. But I got a tip this morning about the kind of guy Chad is. So I figured he’d attack first and ask questions later. I guess we just had to get a little lucky.”

The twin wounds across Dylan’s chest began to ache.

“What’s the matter?” Eli asked.

“It’s those scratches. I don’t know why they’re hurting so bad.”

“How bad could it be?”

“Ever put the tip of your tongue against a frozen metal pole? Imagine doing that with your bare chest—and then ripping it away.”

“Gross. Let’s get out of here. Game over.”

Xamaica faded away. Then Dylan and Eli were in the arena and the crowd was cheering all around them. A group of uniformed Xamaica officials came out and ushered the two boys to a circular stage in the center of the arena while the crowd yelled louder.

“So what’s the Grand Major Triple-Secret Prize?” Dylan asked.

“It better be straight-up cash,” Eli said. “If only the dinero in the game was real! Then we’d be talking serious money.”

The circular stage descended beneath the floor of the arena. Emma was waiting there, clapping and waving her bloodstained pirate doll. Dylan, Eli, and Emma were hustled into a hall, through a door, and outside the building. Their escorts left abruptly, slamming the door behind them.

The kids were standing there in an empty alley as a light rain began falling.

Eli scowled. “Well, this sucks canal water. What about the friggin’ Grand Major Triple-Secret Prize? If my wheelchair rusts, I’m gonna be pissed.”

At that moment, a black stretch limo pulled up. A tinted back window rolled down. Someone was clapping. Dylan recognized the dark gaze and the peek-a-boo hairstyle.

“That was beyond awesome!” Ines Mee purred. “Now it gets hard.”