Page 127 of Forbidden Game

“Shut up, English,” Jackson cuts in.

“You’ll see that I am at the top. Four games in a row now.”

“Fuck off,” Aleks growls.

“How’s the weather down there, boys?”

I grin like a child, the taste of victory fresh. I was crushing everyone in Kill Strike tonight. It didn’t matter what the lads tried, I just kept coming out on top. I was one-shot, one-killing like a madman.

This was probably my best stream in weeks.

We play another round, and I manage to get off a triple kill in no time.

“Do you see that, my little coffeemakers? Your boy is sending it today.” I flick my eyes to the comments and grin.

Jackson and Aleks groan and grumble, trash talking in their growing frustration.

The round ends with me sitting MVP again.

“That’s it, I’m done. Have fun stroking your dick.” Jackson exits the lobby.

We’ve been streaming for five hours, so we are due to end anyway.

“All right, let’s end it,” Aleks agrees.

We say our goodbyes, and I spend a few extra minutes on my own stream, chatting with the commenters before clicking off.

I push my headset around my neck and reach across my desk to flip my phone over.

A text from my grandfather shines back at me, and instead of feeling like I’m on cloud nine, it’s like I’m falling through the sky. I’m plummeting to the ground at breakneck speed, and I have no idea if the parachute on my back is going to save me or not.

I shove the phone in my pocket.

I hang up my headset and give my neck a crack as I grab the screen recording of the stream and drop it into my shared folder. Our editors would work on doing their magic with it and posting it to the appropriate social channels. I power off my monitors and then push back from my desk with a sigh.

I lean my head back against the chair and just bask in the blue LED-lit room.

My streaming room is one of my favorite places in the world. There’s just something about it that calms me, that brings me back to center. Sure, the games can be stressful, and I spend hours shouting with the lads, but that’s just part of the appeal. This is my home base. It’s my core.

I use my feet to twirl the chair around and around, spinning in the blue darkness.

Tomorrow we fly out to Vegas for the championship.

Everyone’s going, and I can’t tell if that makes me more or less nervous.

Since Halloween, I’ve spent every waking second grinding. The team and I even decided to skip the last practice tournament in Dallas so that I could get more hours in with Final Destiny.

Mathias had the team review Creep’s gameplay from the Miami game, and they’d come up with an intensive training schedule for me that I’d been following to a T the last three weeks. Honestly, once the championship is over, I never want to play Final Destiny again.

All I need to do is defeat Creep once. That is it.

Mathias keeps reminding me that I don’t necessarily need to beat Creep’s time in Final Destiny so long as my times for Dreadlander and Styx are up to par. But I don’t care. Because I know I am better than him in Dreadlander and Styx. He isn’t the competition I am trying to beat there.

OnlyVan would give me a run for my money in Styx, and JustAGame would come at me in Dreadlander, but Creep is undisputed in his times for Final Destiny. Even if I crush Creep in Dreadlander and Styx, it would mean nothing if I have a repeat of Miami.

Twenty minutes would end me.

Statistically speaking, less than five minutes would separate the top three speedrunners at the end of the night. So, if I don’t stick close to Creep, nothing else matters.

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