Challenge Accepted (Eternal Combat Book 1), page 6
"You first," he said.
"Do I look stupid?" Riley asked.
"On three?"
"Oh, just man up already," she snapped before stepping through the door.
Once inside she turned and began to back up the stairs, listening for a hint of his movement. She was halfway up before he entered. Void was good. Rather than simply charging up after her, he went to the opposite side, planning to use the other staircase. Problem was that they were both used to this game, so sat waiting at the halfway point.
[VOID] What do I get if I win?
[QQ] My foot up your ass?
[VOID] Not quite what I was hoping for.
[QQ] Sucks to be you.
While he typed, she'd carefully crept slowly up the stairs, pausing each time his message came across, replying as quickly as possible. When he said nothing more, she waited, nearly convinced he'd already moved on – before she heard him turn in place. That was all she needed.
Lifting her cross hair, she aimed at the far wall and tossed a grenade. It bounced, rolling down the staircase, forcing Void to move or die. He chose to move. He just happened to pick the wrong way. Rushing to the top of the stairs, Riley met him with a pair of bullets to the head. The kill spam hit her screen before Void even reacted.
He laughed, loudly and enthusiastically. "Holy shit, QQ! Did not expect you to be there."
Riley just shrugged, refusing to show anything but her game face. "Good fight, Void. Next time try to pick up girls at the bar."
"Lesson learned." He shot her an amused grin, then stood and offered his hand across the table.
She took it, aware that once again, he gripped it like an equal, not a fragile toy that would break. Damn, they were nice hands.
Chapter 7
Riley was shocked to hear that for taking first place, she would get a check for a thousand dollars. She expected something frivolous, like speakers or yet another keyboard that she'd never touch. A check for a thousand dollars was music to her ears.
Reaching in her back pocket, she pulled out her phone and let Kitty know. That would be welcome news. Enough money to buy hay for one more month. The reply she got back was not the one she'd expected.
KITTY: Watching the stream, so I knew that. Void's fucking hot.
RILEY: And someone cut the line to my water cooling. I'm using a donated PC.
KITTY: How'd you sucker someone into that?
RILEY: Guys from Paradox in EC. Nice group. Looks like they got my back here. IceMan, Ryno, Knock, Swish.
KITTY: Well you aren't done yet. Don't let Mr. Sexy distract you.
RILEY: Not gonna happen.
She tucked her phone back in her pocket and saw the crowd was starting to thin. Calling out to Knock, she waved him over. "Hey, mind if I use this for the next round?"
"Hells no," he said, grinning proudly.
"That's a damned nice machine you've got. Not even a hint of hitching or lag."
"Thanks for the shout out for Paradox," Ryno said, moving closer. She could tell he honestly meant it.
"Anytime. Thanks for helping me get this far." She turned to Ice. "Sorry you didn't make it."
"Didn't expect to. Fuck. Void caught me napping. Not much I can do about that. Worth it to see our outfit's name on national television, though." He shrugged. "Lunch?"
Riley shook her head. "Not for me. What's the schedule?"
"You missed that?" Ryno sounded truly shocked.
"I just heard I won a thousand dollars. I was a little distracted."
He laughed. "Good point. Two hours, then the last match. There's only four of us."
"Then I'm not taking my eyes off this damned computer until this is all over." She grinned. "Good luck, Ryno."
"Thanks, but I'm the weak player in this group," he said, winking at her as he left the room.
Riley knew she'd need to take the top spot in the next round or risk walking away from all of this with nothing. She sighed and folded her arms on the desk, resting her forehead against them.
The next thing she knew, a gentle hand was shaking her shoulder. "Riley," a man whispered in her ear.
She jumped, pushing him away before she was truly awake. Void stepped back, chuckling.
"Sorry," she said, pressing her hands to her face.
"I take it you didn't sleep well last night?"
"No," she corrected. "I'm not really a morning person. What time is it?"
"Thirty minutes. You look a little rumpled around the edges." He flicked one of her dreads back. "I'll keep an eye on your rig if you want to put on a pretty face for the cameras."
She nodded. "Yeah. I owe you one."
"I plan to collect on it, too," he teased with that damned smile.
"Keep dreaming." Pulling herself to her feet, she couldn't quite hide her own amusement.
Just outside the door, she found a ladies room. For the first time in the history of the world, the men's line was longer than the women's. Riley made her way to the mirror and dug in her pocket, pulling out the tubes she'd stuck there that morning.
A touch of eyeliner made her eyes look just a bit brighter and her lips needed another layer of gloss. Shoving the makeup back in her pocket, she began to mess with her hair, trying to decide what impression she wanted to give. Grabbing the section at the crown, she tied it in a knot at the back of her head, leaving most of the dreads trailing down her back with her real bangs loose at her face.
One last glance in the mirror, and she was as ready as she was going to get, so made her way back to the computer area. This time, a man checked her wristband at the door before letting her inside. They seemed to have tightened security, at least.
While she was gone, the staff had moved the tables around. Void gestured for her to come to the front of the room where she saw her borrowed rig sitting at the end of the row.
"What the hell?" she asked.
"They want to make it easier to film." He leaned close so he could keep his voice low. "It's made for TV. Enjoy it, and try to smile at least a bit."
"Yeah, I wouldn't get your hopes up."
Void laughed, then moved to his chair, glancing back at her only once. Ryno had already found his own machine and was running a quick check when she sat beside him.
"Make ya a deal," he said, not even bothering to look up.
"What's that?"
"You don't hold your fire and I won't."
"You think you'd get the drop on me?" She looked at him with lifted brows.
"I can always get lucky. I don't want to place because you didn't take a shot and I'm pretty sure you don't either. I watched your stream. There's no way you saw the tip of a rifle but missed me in the bottom left corner."
"I was distracted by the chat." Riley tried to shrug it off. "It was a stupid move."
"Thanks. You played it smooth. I wasn't even sure until just now."
"I knew the cameras were on, but I wasn't about to be the one to knock you out. Now, it's all about the money."
"Then may the best gamer win." Ryno offered her his hand. They shook on it.
She powered up her machine and checked the temp, clock speed, fan speeds, and her network connectivity out of habit. It might be redundant, but the rumor flying around was that the prize for the winner would be fifty thousand dollars. She'd rather be redundant than regret a simple check.
When the game loaded, she wasn't surprised at all when a message dinged onto her screen.
[VOID] May the best man win.
[QQ] Yeah. Just let me know when you find a few, ok?
[VOID] :)
It was the next message that shocked her.
[DREADKNOT] Charm the boys all you want, I'm still going to make a fool out of you.
[QQ] Cry moar.
[DREADKNOT] Suck my balls, bitch.
[QQ] You have some? Who knew!
And then the lights dimmed so the public spectacle could begin. The MC
– Riley still hadn't learned his name – began a litany of crap, speaking directly into the camera that hovered mere feet from his face. He eventually made it to introducing the finalists – the four of them who made it to the last round – and each one nodded to the camera when their name was called, but nothing more.
The dramatic display made her realize, for the first time, that there were people watching her every move. Her stomach began to clench and butterflies tried to make their way into her throat.
"Think of it as better lighting than we had before," Ryno said behind his screen. "Relax, we got this."
"You as nervous as I am?" she asked.
"More! You look like you've done this a thousand times."
"Funny, I was going to say the same about you."
Then it was time. The announcer explained the rules to the audience. There would be no time limit; it was nothing more than kill or be killed, and he promised a new map that had never been seen. With that, she clicked on the server and entered the world.
Like always, she checked her loadout first, looking to see what advantages and disadvantages she'd have. Surprisingly, she found a full supply of everything she could've hoped for and then some: medical kits, mines, grenades, and even an ammo pack. That's when she looked at the map.
Everything was different. The buildings had always been just copies or mirrors of the same thing. These were all-new structures, surrounded by all-new vegetation. Of course, displaying new content for the game was the main reason for the event, but it sure wouldn't make the fight any easier.
The oversized screen was behind them now, making it nearly impossible to use it to their advantage. Riley didn't care. She'd never been willing to risk looking away from her monitor during a match, so when the counter started ticking down, she was more than ready to just get this ordeal over with.
As soon as she could, she was on the move, listening to the click of keys from the edges of her headset. She pushed at the volume wheel, surprised to find it was already maxed out, and ducked into the first building she came across.
They might be new designs, but they held to the same principle every first person shooter had followed since the beginning of the genre. Every room had two ways in, every floor had two sets of stairs, and every window was little more than a chance to get shot in the back. She shuffled through quickly and moved on to the next, finding it basically the same thing. That's when Riley decided to take to the hills.
Around the cluster of buildings was a digital forest with sloping terrain overlooking the so called town. Dreadknot liked to hole up and snipe, so she wanted to make sure she didn't give him the chance to aim at her.
Finding a large tree, she changed to her sniper rifle, crouched, and scanned the town. As she drifted her mouse across the screen, she saw a scope pointing back. She didn't even think. Her finger reflexively brushed the left mouse button and she jerked to the side. Her cursor changed to a red X, indicating a hit. The man ducked behind a window, but she knew she'd taken a good chunk of life away.
But she didn't want to sit still too long. Her position was compromised, she had to move. Sprinting, she pushed deeper into the trees, always listening for a sound that would give her the drop on the enemy. When it finally came, it was almost her undoing.
Little more than a click, Riley heard her own weapon reloading, and spun, flicking her quick knife. It hit. She tapped the key again, mashing on F2 for her pistol. This close, there was no way the rifle in her hand would do her any good, but before she could change weapons, her opponent fled.
She thought it was Void, but it may have been Ryno. Two failed attacks, two men pissed and out to get her. Riley gritted her teeth, all too aware that she'd just made the game that much harder.
At least the new flora was amazing. It made losing an opponent possible in the open world. Without it, Void – or whoever – never would have gotten away. It would have made him the first death on a map in her memory. Moving higher on the hill, she heard the sound of gunfire and wanted to groan when she saw the kill spam. Void had killed Ryno. Maybe it hadn't been Void she'd knifed.
Beside her, Ryno simply pushed his keyboard back and locked his fingers behind his head, leaning over blatantly to watch her screen.
She checked the map, noting the red dots. They only showed up for a moment after a weapon was fired, but it let her know where they had been, and were unlikely to still be. Novice gamers made that mistake. Veterans knew that sticking around was a sure way to get dead.
It was down to just her and the two best gamers in the match. She used the sniper scope to check the buildings, as well as the vegetation, but saw nothing. Moving around the town, keeping her path random and varied, she slowly spiraled in until she had the chance to slip inside. They wouldn't make a mistake. She knew that. So if she were in their shoes, where would she be?
Dreadknot liked to snipe from safety. He'd used the hills last time and seemed to be hovering around the center this time. Void was as unpredictable as the wind, patient enough to let her draw Dreadknot out, good enough to make the most of any mistake she made.
So she shouldn't make a mistake.
Running from building to building, Riley worked ever closer to the center. There was only one place Dreadknot could be. Of course, that also meant he likely wouldn't be there. That was how these things worked and they all knew it.
Footsteps sounded in her left ear. Someone was in the next room! Riley had no interest in giving herself away, so flicked a key and pulled a sensor, dropping it in the center of the building as she passed. She nearly gasped.
Not only was one of them in the building, but both! The only question now was which floor. She slipped around a corner and everything seemed to happen at once.
Void stood in her line of sight, his weapon pointed at the stairwell to her left but she knew Dreadknot had his trained on her. She smashed the key that moved her backward, dropped her mouse, and reached across her keyboard to hit her medical kit macro, then slapped at F12 before reaching for her mouse again. Bullets hammered into the wall where she'd just been, the heal-over-time med kit went off with a whine, and a bright red grenade sailed into the second floor room, giving enough distraction for Riley to take aim and put five bullets in Void's chest before the explosion went off.
She turned, running down the stairs as quickly as possible, then strafed around the edge, looking down her sights, listening with every fiber of her being. Her goal was to flank around Dreadknot. She'd just turned to the stairs when gunshots slammed into her, coming from the last direction she expected, the door outside. She scrolled the mouse, trying to get another medical kit, but she was too late. Her health was falling. The flinch from each shot made her character respond slower and slower. He'd gotten the jump on her, and she'd lost, fairly. Just as her screen turned red and her character moaned, everything in the room went dark. Everything.
Riley was completely stunned for a moment, trying to understand what happened as she sat staring at a dim monitor. Only sunlight trickling through the tiny doors lit the room.
"Someone get the backup generators on!"
"Stay seated, we'll have power back up in a moment."
"I fucking had you!"
The last was from Dreadknot at the far end of their table.
"We'll run that over," the MC said, trying to calm him. "We'll do a face off between the two of you to make it fair."
"I fucking had the bitch," he growled again.
"Yeah," Riley said, leaning forward to see him at the other end of the table. "You kicked the shit out of me with the best flanking I've seen in a long time. I got the kill screen. You won, Dread."
Her words stunned them all. Voices fell silent, trying to hear what the finalists on the stage were yelling about. The pissed off man at the end of the table just stared at her open mouthed.
"What?"
"Pull up the stream. I got the death screen. You won."
"That's a lot of money you're just throwing away, QQ."
She shrugged. "If it's a question of money or ethics, I'll take the ethics. I'd sure like both, but I'm not quite ready to be a sell out."
That, of course, was when the power kicked back on. The sound of dozens of computers firing to life made a gentle, whirring counter point to the directions being issued by the camera men.
"And, we're back. Sorry for the unexpected interruption in our stream," the announcer said with a false smile at the camera. "We lost power here at the Regency and there's some disagreement about how exactly that match ended. Let's see if we caught it on the live stream." At the side of the room, a woman held up her hand, thumb pointing at the sky. "And it looks like we did! Let's play that back for our viewers at home."
The four finalists turned to look at the screen behind them. It was from Riley's point of view. Her steps were careful, too predictable. She made a perfect sweep of the room, then began to slide around the edge of the steps when the bullets hit her, the damage marker indicating the direction. She turned, her health falling fast, and tried for a med-pack when her screen went red and the character died. The background dimmed, a picture of her killer fading in when the stream just stopped. Even so, it wasn't hard to make out the name. It was blurry, but "Dreadknot" was legible.
Riley stood and walked around the front of their tables to stand before the tall man. With a tilt of her head, she offered her hand.
"It was a damned good move, Dreadknot."
"You pulled it on me in the last match, QQ. I can't take credit for it. Damned good fight, girl." He laughed and accepted her hand. "You've got bigger balls than all the rest of the men in this room combined."
"Pretty big compliment coming from you." She winked, then made her way back to her chair.
"And there you have it! The winner of the Fourteenth Annual Professional League of Gamers Tournament! Dreadknot!"
Chapter 8
When she tried to leave the computer area, the cameras assaulted her, women with bleached blonde hair shoving microphones in her face, asking stupid questions like how it felt to lose. Riley made the most of it, reminding herself to smile, but she was glad when the post-game excitement finally died away. Most of the gamers had already made their way to see the rest of the convention, but a group of four men sat in a cluster around a brightly lit computer, waiting for her to return.
