Page 1 of How We Play the Game
MEET IVAN
CHAPTER ONE
IVAN HUNT WAS not going to play, until they promised no one remembered what happened last time. “Ancient history,” they called it, which Ivan wanted to believe, but if there was one thing he knew to be true from his eighteen years of life, it was that “ancient history” and “the internet” werenotcompatible concepts. Still, the company insisted. “Consider it a second chance,” the email read. And didn’t everyone deserve a second chance?
So he showed up. And now he was here. The new year had just begun a few short hours ago, which Ivan imagined meant there’d be scores of leftover confetti swirling from the sky to herald his return to the Wizzard Theater, but that was not the case. By the time he emerged from the subway station at Forty-Second Street, all traces of the world’s biggest party had been swept away and replaced with a bog-standard, cold afternoon in Times Square. Something about that gave Ivan hope for the day, even as he realized his trademark shearling leather jacket was nowhere near thick enough to keep him warm outside.
At least I don’t have to wait in line, he thought. The line for convention security was so long it stretched the entire three blocks between the station and the theater, and some of the people waiting outside looked frantic, freezing, and miserable. A second thought clung to the end of Ivan’s first, but it was unkind:What a bunch of losers.He shook his head, willing the thought to clear away like it was stuck in a cobweb of meanness and a good jiggle might get it out. It sounded like something his old team would say. That was a bad thing. This convention was his chance to leave them behind for good.
What a bunch of … cold people, he mentally amended, feeling a little proud of himself for making the change. Then he felt a self-conscious pang of guilt for feeling proud—if not calling a bunch of pre-pneumonic cosplayers “losers” meant he was clearing the bar of basic decency, then that bar wasn’t a bar at all. It was a sewer pipe. In hell.I’m sorry they’re waiting out here, he strove to think instead. That looks difficult.
The last thing Ivan needed today was a difficult crowd, and to make it worse, the fans were cordoned off on each side of the theater’s grand double doors. The red carpet laid between them may as well have been a bed of hot coals for all Ivan wanted to step on it, but it was exactly that carpet he had come to walk along with the rest of today’s VIP players.
Ivan let a wave of tourists shield him from view on the sidewalk while he assessed the people on the carpet. Some of them he didn’t recognize. Those were his competition today, wannabe superstars who’d come to battle it out for one of the top two spots in today’sGuardians League Royalematch. Ivan wasn’t too worried about them. He was more concernedabout the ones he did recognize, the VIP selection of Wizzard Games’ favorite influencers and players from their pro league. They were here to be seen, posed and ready to take advantage of the photo ops and exclusive drops the company doled out to appease famous faces at their competition events.
The sight of those people made Ivan’s throat tighten up until he felt like he was breathing through a bent coffee straw. Some of the kids on the carpet had been his friends until last year, others he only knew from the predictably in-depth (and mostly wrong) videos they made online after he disappeared: “What REALLY Happened to TEAM FURY,” “Is Ivan (VANE) BANNED FROM WIZZARD?” “My CRAZY THEORY about IVAN HUNT Was RIGHT????”
I can go home, Ivan told himself.No one’s seen me yet; I can turn around and just go home.And he was going to, when—
“Wait, no way!” One fan’s voice broke through the street noise. They pointed straight at Ivan. “Is that Ivan Hunt?”Dang it.
Ivan expected to feel dread after hearing his name in that disbelieving tone, but he didn’t. He felt the beginnings of an adrenaline rush, a bubbly, smiley feeling that used to make him feel so at home in front of an audience. That, or he was fully in fight-or-flight mode and his body was taking way too long to figure out which was less likely to result in serious injury or death.
When his body made the choice it was neither fight nor flight but freeze. This was what he signed up for, right? To be accountable? Whatever they were going to lob at him was probably rude, true, and nothing Ivan hadn’t imagined hearing a million times before.
Would they start by calling him a cheat or get right to the part where he publicly betrayed the most respected player in Wizzard Games’ pro league? Maybe they’d ask Ivan how he dared show his face, or assume he was jealous and here to ruin things for the better players, betterpeoplehe’d hurt last year. Any way it came, he probably deserved it.
“We love you, Ivan!” Okay, not that; he did not think he deserved that.
“Hey, it’s VANE! VANE is back!” Not that either.
By some miracle, more than half the crowd and nearly all of the VIPs seemed thrilled to see him, standing on their tiptoes to get a glimpse of Wizzard’s prodigal son and waving stiffly with cold arms and hands. A smaller percentage stared at him with expressions that ranged from unreadably blank to the exact face a person would make in response to finding a spider in their pasta at a restaurant. They muttered disgustedly among themselves, and even from the short distance of the sidewalk, Ivan could pick out a few words. “Last year’s championship … huge tournament … girl who won … his old teammate … total traitor.”
Ivan wasn’t sure what to do with either reaction. The relief he felt when he realized he wasn’t about to get heckled was immense, but clearly some people still remembered why he’d gone away in the first place.
“Can I get a selfie?” One of the girls in the fan crowd pushed her way to the front and pointed to her phone shyly.
“Sure?” Ivan nodded reflexively, then dodged a few fast walkers to lean over the rope barrier that separated the campers from morning foot traffic.
“Oh my god, thank you. I used to watch you play all the time!” The girl who’d asked for a selfie spoke incredibly loudly and was dressed like a character fromGuardians League Royale. Her crop top, aviator helmet, and pink cargo pants were a streetwear spin on theGLRavatar’s starter outfit.Cool costume, Ivan thought,but isn’t she cold?He felt like asking her just to make conversation but stopped himself at the last moment. Was that weird to ask someone he didn’t know? What was he even trying to say with that?Hey, girl, your costume is great, but I’ve noticed there’s not a lot of it, which doesn’t seem weather appropriate, if you ask me, which you haven’t.What could he say instead that had a zero percent chance of being interpreted badly?
“You look sick,” Ivan said.
“What?” the girl asked, blushing redder in the cold.
“Sick like cool!” Ivan corrected, hearing exactly where he went wrong. “Not likesicksick, I’m—oh my god, I—You look fine, healthy even, but I’m not privy to your private medical information, so obviously I can’t really comment, which I shouldn’t do in the first place. That’s your business. Not mine. Or the state’s, for that matter. Why are you looking at me like that?” He all but panicked. “Do you still want the picture? It’s fine if you don’t. I get it. I will scoot right on out of here, like, no problem.”
“What?” the girl asked again, this time raising just the right side of her helmet to yank a wireless earbud out of her ear.
“I said nice costume,” Ivan said. “Say cheese.” He took her phone from her mittened hands and took a burst before showing her how to tap the screen and select the best one.
Another voice called out, this time from the VIP group. “Get this man to the front!” they said. A muted cheer rose up, and all of the players and influencers on the carpet parted to give him a clear route to the double doors. All of them, save one.
A girl Ivan did not recognize as a typical Wizzard VIP was arguing with the door guard.Someone trying to talk their way in early, he thought.Probably got fed up waiting in the cold.The energy of the crowd had reminded him of exactly who he was, which was Ivan freakin’ Hunt, and he forgot what it felt like to be nervous about today. What was a closed door when Ivan Hunt had returned? His smile, his real smile, came back as he cooly walked to the front of the line. As he got closer, he heard more of the girl’s argument.
“It’s right there.” The girl pointed past the security guards and through the glass doors at something on the floor in the theater’s lobby. “I can physically see it; can you please just let me grab it?”
“Can’t let you in without a lanyard,” the guard said. “Move aside, please.”
