“Dad didn’t think it was stupid.”
“Well, I do. You and him spent all summer playing it. I barely got to see him. And now he’s gone. It’s not fair.”
“We asked you to join us,” Casey said, turning around. “But you just wanted to play Fortnite. It was your choice.”
“Shut up!” Pete yelled, furious. “Just shut up.”
Casey shook her head at him. “Why are you always so immature?”
“Because I’m not perfect like you.”
“Who says I’m perfect?” she asked, surprised.
“I do. Look at me, I’m Casey, the perfect gamer. I’m Casey, the perfect daughter. Well you know what you’re not perfect at? Being my sister.”
With that, he stormed out of the garage. Casey thought about going after him, but she didn’t know what to say. He was angry and sad. She got that. But she was too. It wasn’t fair of him to blame her for everything. Part of her did feel guilty, though. She’d enjoyed the time she’d had with her dad that summer and, if she was truthful, she’d liked not having Pete around to share it.
The machine bleeped, reminding her that it was waiting. She pressed the 1 PLAYER button and watched the familiar rows of aliens appear. They advanced slowly across the screen as the game’s throbbing bass pounded the speakers.
Duh-dah. Duh-dah. Duh-dah. Duh-dah. Duh-dah. Duh-dah. Duh-dah.
Casey started shooting right away. Her gun turret slid from left to right as she counted her shots in her head.
Move. Stop. Shoot.
Within a couple of minutes, she’d cleared the first wave, blasting through the rows and columns of their attack until there were none left. The game reset and the next wave advanced on her, faster than the last. She skidded her gun turret along the bottom of the screen again … straight into a missile from a crab-shaped invader. Her gunship exploded.
She cursed. She now had two lives left.
For the next few minutes she worked methodically and slowly, blasting through screen after screen of invaders. Her hands darted over the controls. Her index finger ached from hammering the fire button.
Move. Stop … “No!”
Her turret exploded as it was hit by another missile. Why hadn’t she seen it coming? She stared at her score unhappily. It wasn’t anywhere near her personal best, let alone her dad’s high score. She took a deep breath and carried on. One life left.
She shot six invaders, then dodged a falling missile by sliding under the cover of one of her bases. That was close. Then she blasted through the base’s defensive cover, creating a narrow channel through it that her turret could shoot up. A crab-shaped alien above her exploded into diagonal lines as she scored a direct hit. She resisted the urge to punch the air. She had to focus.
The mysterious UFO raced across the top of the screen, sirens blaring. She was ready for it and caught it with her twenty-third shot, just like her dad had taught her, to get bonus points.
Her score spun upwards. She didn’t even look at it.
Move. Stop …
Shoot.
Her mind emptied and she became totally immersed in the game. Nothing in the universe mattered except for this brave little gunship fighting to stop the relentless tide of advancing aliens. Her hands flew over the controls. Her fingers moved without needing to be told what to do.
Time slowed right down. She wasn’t thinking about anything. She wasn’t worrying about anything. She wasn’t even mourning her dead dad any more.
She was in the zone.
This, this was flow.
She blasted through another set of aliens until only one remained. The final squid raced across the screen at supersonic speed, getting closer and closer to her gunship. If she didn’t catch him, it was game over. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth. Her heartbeat matched the duh-dah, duh-dah of the game’s sound. A feeling of immense calm came over her.
Move.
Stop.
Shoot!
The last invader exploded. Her high score hit 17,180.
And then, without ceremony, the screen reset and five new rows of aliens began to descend on her gun turret. She realized that she could never win this game. It was relentless. The invaders never stopped.
It suddenly occurred to her that all along the only person she had been trying to beat was her dad. She was hit by a wave of sadness and took her hands off the controls. Her gun turret sat at the bottom of the screen, motionless. She watched as an invader’s missile fell towards it and scored a direct hit. It exploded.
GAME OVER.
The machine asked her to enter her initials. She tapped the buttons, writing out a K and then a C and then an H to represent “Casey Henderson”.
She looked at it. It didn’t seem right. She chewed her lip and tapped the buttons again, changing the last letter.
It now read KCF. Casey Flow.
The high score table appeared. KCF was in first place. MCH, her dad, was now in second place. She didn’t feel elated or even pleased, just a little empty inside.
She picked up the dog tags hanging over the edge of the cabinet and put them around her neck. The metal felt cold against her skin. Then she flipped the power switch on the wall and the picture on the screen imploded, shrinking down until it was a tiny white dot in the middle of the monitor. It blinked and vanished.
She never turned it on again.
23
DON’T BE A DUMMY, YOU DUMMY
Casey sat perched on a display plinth in Next, surrounded by a family of mannequins wearing beach outfits. They looked happy and carefree, the exact opposite of how she felt. The plasma rifle lay at her feet. She didn’t want to carry it any more. She didn’t want to do anything any more. She’d had enough of running and fighting, enough of trying to fix what was impossible to fix. She held her head in her hands and closed her eyes.
She expected to hear the nagging voice in the back of her head telling her how rubbish she was. But it didn’t come. Maybe it didn’t need to. It had done its job and it had been right all along. She was a failure. She thought of Cheeze, and even Dreyfus and his soldiers, left to the mercy of the alien invaders. But, most of all, she thought of Pete on the dropship on the roof.
“It’s all my fault,” she whispered to herself. “I’ve lost everyone today.” She felt her body heave as she let out the sobs she hadn’t known she’d been holding back. Once she started crying, she wondered if she’d ever stop.
“Nobody could have done anything differently,” Brain said quietly, sitting beside her. “Statistically, our chances—”
“Nobody cares about your statistics, bruv,” Elite told him testily. “We lost Cheeze, and Casey lost her little brother. No amount of statistics or logic can explain how to feel about that.”
“I know,” Brain whispered, taking off his glasses and wiping his own eyes.
Elite stared at the floor, his gaze fixed on his scuffed white trainers. “I know you know, brainiac,” he said, relenting. “It’s not your fault. I feel you.”
He gave Brain a fist bump.
“Quiet,” Fish hissed from the shop doorway where he was on watch for Red Eyes. “Someone’s coming.”
The Ghost Reapers fell silent as they heard movement outside. Peering between the mannequins, the team saw the squad of Red Eyes that had attacked the security control room coming back up the escalators. Two of them were carrying the gurney with Scratch on it. The others guarded a prisoner.
It was Dreyfus.
The military man had been stripped of his biohazard suit. He looked naked without it, dressed in just cargo trousers and an olive-green polo shirt. He wore a heavy shackle around his neck. Casey could tell from his body language that he was furious about being captured. She waited, hoping to see Cheeze. But there was no sign of their teammate, nor the soldiers Wilson and Tucker.
After the aliens had safely passed, Fish returned to the group. He still held the yellow detonator box under his arm.
“What do we do now?” he aske
d
“We need to get downstairs and go out through the tunnel,” Casey said.
“And then what?” Fish asked. “What if the people in charge outside want to blow the place up too? All day long you’ve been telling us how we need to rescue everyone.”
“And all day long you’ve been telling me the truth,” Casey replied. “You were right. I’m not a leader and we’re not a crack military team. It was fun while we were playing in our bedrooms with our headsets on. But this is something else. It’s over.”
Elite sucked his teeth. “If we go downstairs now, it’ll be like logging off in the middle of a game,” he said. “Those guys upstairs are SkyWakers, just like us. We can’t leave them. They’re fam.” He looked around the group, gauging their reaction.
Fish grunted in agreement. “That’s what I’ve always loved about this game,” he admitted. “It’s a proper community. All that time we spent together online, sharing stories, having a laugh, made me feel like we were mates. Proper mates. Even better than my real-life friends, or my useless brothers.”
“Word,” Elite agreed.
Fish paused a moment, wanting to say more. “That’s why I got so mad when I found out Casey Flow wasn’t a boy,” he continued. “It felt like everything we’d shared was fake.”
“I’m really sorry,” Casey said.
Fish shifted his weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably. Finally, he looked her in the eye. “Thing is, though, you were right,” he confessed. “If I’d known you were a girl, I probably would have rage-quit or called you a noob and told you to play support instead of DPS. But the fact is, you’re the best SkyWake player I’ve ever met.”
He picked up the plasma rifle. His arms sagged under its weight as he held it out like a peace offering for Casey to take.
“If your brother’s still here, we can still rescue him,” he said. “You lead and we’ll follow. You’re the shot caller, just like in the game.”
Casey looked at the boys. She wasn’t sure she deserved their belief in her.
“Fish is right,” Brain said. “You’re incredible with that rifle. I don’t know how you’re doing everything you’re doing, but you’ve got …”
“Mad skillz,” Elite said, finishing his sentence for him.
“Yeah,” the others agreed.
Fish pushed the rifle at her, forcing her to take it. It felt good in her hands. It was true, she did seem to know how to use it. Whatever was happening to her today was giving her an edge. But would that be enough? She chewed her bottom lip, uncertainly.
“We’ve got no chance if we attack the Red Eyes head-on, have we?” she asked, turning to Brain.
Brain nodded. “I’d say it’s less than five per cent. But it’s like Elite said. It’s not purely about numbers any more. We can’t just stand around like these dummies.” He waved his arm at the mannequins in their swimsuits and sun hats. “We’ve got to at least try to help.”
Casey rested the barrel of the gun on her shoulder. With her free hand she reached out to the dog tags around her neck. She let her fingers run over the embossed letters of her dad’s name, wondering what he would tell her to do.
It was an impossible choice: run away and leave Pete to be taken on the dropship, or die trying to getting him back.
“OK,” she said after a moment. “We’ll go upstairs and scavenge some weapons from the supply crates. Then we’ll see what we can do. But if it’s too dangerous, we should retreat back to the tunnel. We’ve lost enough people today.”
She looked down at the gun she was holding and wished her hands would stop shaking.
24
WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK
Pete was small, but he could run fast. He dashed through the Arcturian dropship, leaving the loadout bay behind. The ship’s gloom worked in his favour. Every corridor was bathed in shadow, obscuring him from the pursuing Red Eyes.
He turned the corner and looked around, uncertain where to go next. Running blindly through the dropship didn’t seem like much of a plan. He noticed a cluster of thick venting pipes that ran down from the ceiling and along the length of the floor. They were mounted on supports that lifted them off the ground. A control panel hung on the wall beside them. As Pete watched, the pipes released a cloud of gaseous green plasma. It hissed around the corridor, giving him an idea.
He tapped the control panel, trying to turn off the supply of plasma to the vents. He didn’t fancy getting a faceful. The control panel didn’t respond to his touch and so, frustrated, Pete pulled the wires out. It sparked for a moment and then fell dead. The smell of burning electrical circuits filled his nostrils.
Behind him, Pete could hear his pursuers approaching. He rolled under the pipes, and, making himself as small as he could, he squeezed into the gap between them and the floor. He’d just got into position, lying on his belly in the gloom under the pipes, when two Red Eyes arrived. They stopped and looked around, wondering which way he’d run.
The pipes were warm to the touch and Pete guessed they were connected to the ship’s engine system. The dropships were powered by a central plasma engine core that ran hot and was susceptible to blowing up if it wasn’t kept at the right temperature. He’d learned that in the game.
And so far today, everything in the game was proving to be true.
He held his breath as the two Red Eye grunts searched the corridor. He lay on the ground under the pipes, his heart hammering in his chest as their boots walked right past his head. He prayed they wouldn’t notice that the pipes weren’t venting their regular clouds of green plasma or see the busted control panel on the wall.
One Red Eye growled something to the other in Arcturian. Pete tensed, expecting to be hauled out of his hiding place at any moment. But they marched on down the corridor and vanished around the corner.
He’d tricked them!
Pete allowed himself to take a breath. He felt small and scared. But more than that, he felt like a coward. He’d left Xander and the rest of Strike Force behind so he could save his own skin. He hadn’t meant to run away; he just couldn’t help himself. It had been a case of fight or flight. And flight had won. Big time.
He fought back tears, ashamed. If he couldn’t fight, maybe he could still do something to help. Maybe he could save them some other way. But how?
If the Red Eyes were taking the gamers onto the dropship, they must be planning on leaving with them. Maybe Pete could sneak off the ship and find help. The thought of getting back outside into the sunlight and fresh air made his heart leap. He tried to tell himself it was because he wanted to help Xander. But deep down he knew it was because he was afraid of this dark, gloomy craft and the thought of where it might take him.
He heard a low hum as a drone sailed around the corner. He paused, wondering if it had been sent by the Red Eyes to find him, but no, it was an engineering drone, one of the many autonomous bots that kept the dropship running smoothly. It stopped at the pipes and scanned the control panel Pete had busted. Clearly the ship’s systems had realized there was a problem and dispatched the drone to see what was going on. Pete watched as the machine extended a jointed metal spike towards the dead controls. It expertly removed the section of wall panel to reveal the wires that Pete had yanked out of place.
He guessed it would ignore him. Just to be sure, though, he stayed hidden. He’d wait until it had finished, then carry on.
The sound of footsteps jolted Pete back to his predicament. The Red Eyes were returning to the corridor. They clearly didn’t believe he’d run on. He lay still under the nest of pipes as the aliens shouted instructions to one another. They were spreading out along the corridor, searching every corner.
He was busted.
He felt a shiver of dread creeping up his spine. What should he do? What should he do? What should he do?
He looked over at the drone. It was busily removing wall panels as it went about its repair job, oblivious to his presence. As the drone’s spiked tool detached a section of venting, it rev
ealed a gaping black hole that led into the ship’s innards. The drone hovered over to the opening and flew inside. A moment later there was a crackle and a flicker of sparks as it began repairing the electrical wiring. The drone bleeped and chirruped to itself, like a builder whistling while he worked.
Pete stared at the Red Eyes. One carried a plasma rifle. Another had an energy sword. Another held some kind of tracking device and was sweeping it around as if he was trying to get a fix on a signal.
Pete looked down at the exo-suit he’d been kitted out with. Could there be a tracking device inside it? Some way for the Arcturians to keep tabs on their prisoners? In the game, your mini-map always showed the location of your squad mates. Still lying under the pipe, he unclipped the harness holding the armour in place and silently wriggled out of it.
The Red Eyes were drawing closer. The one with the tracking device was jabbing an excited finger in Pete’s direction, one eye on the screen of his handheld device.
Pete knew it was time to move.
He rolled out from under the pipes, staying low and using the shadows as cover. He crawled into the vent, pushing past the drone as it finished up the repairs, and it bleeped as if complaining at his rudeness. Pete crept into the shadows. He watched as the Red Eyes found his exo-suit. One picked it up and waved it at the others angrily, shouting in annoyance that it was nothing more than a red herring. They seemed sure they’d lost him.
The drone gave out a satisfied beep and its soldering tool retracted into its body. It turned around in mid-air and stared at him, a light on its front flickering on and shining into his eyes.
He remained dead still, letting the light blind him. He didn’t even dare close his eyes. The drone whistled something to itself and then, satisfied that nothing was amiss, turned again and headed out of the vent. A moment later it replaced the cover, sealing him inside.
Pete felt the darkness close in around him, and as it did, a growing sense of relief enveloped him. He realized he was trapped. That meant there was no way he could be a hero now.
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