Page 4 of How We Play the Game
“Normally you can’t trust anyone in a battle royale,” she said, “but, I don’t know, it’s my first competition, and maybe I could use a little help.” One of her hands crept up toward the fuzzy curls that just brushed at her shoulders, where she twirled one around her finger. Ivan’s eyes caught on the gesture and lingered there for a moment before he pulled his gaze away.Don’t be weird, he told himself.
“If we have a secret ally in the field, we have a much better shot of making it. Together,” Zora said matter-of-factly. “It would be nice to come out of today with a winand, you know”—Zora visibly fought the shy, borderline flirty smile that threatened to take over her stern face—“a friend.”
Ivan was being weird. “My thoughts exactly. So … partners?”
“Temporarypartners,” Zora warned him playfully. “Just until we’re both in the top two.”
“Totally.” Ivan nodded automatically. What would his naysayers say now, seeing him partner up with an unknown girl gamer to dominate aGLRmatch?
“Listen, I gotta go.” Zora pointed over toward the auditorium doors. “If you’re serious about doing this, I always start my matches on the ruined tower in the center of the map. My name in the game is ZORA.” That unforgettable smile reached her eyes for the first time since their conversation started, and Ivan considered his victory secured.
“Of course, sure. Meet you there. I mean—mine’s VANE. And I’m Ivan.”
“Oh, I know who you are. Ivan.” Zora lowered her gaze to the floor, trying to hide just how wide her smile had gotten since Ivan agreed to partner up. She’d be eating out of his hand by lunchtime. “See you in the battle, then. Partner.”
“The battle, yeah.” Ivan nodded, most of his attention focused on the way Zora was looking up at him through her dense, curling eyelashes. He tried to blink away the effect that sloe-eyed stare had on him. He—they—had a match to win. “See you in there.”
Zora slipped through the theater doors and left Ivan to wrangle his thoughts in the vestibule. He was still wrangling them, barely believing his luck, when he headed up to the players’ lounge, rubbed elbows with a few familiar faces who weren’t as surprised to see him as he’d have thought, and walked out to take his place at one of the fifty PC stations laid out in rows on the Wizzard Theater’s massive stage.
Ivan barely heard the countdown to the match through his noise-canceling headphones, but he felt beyond ready to take his rightful place in the top two when the starting hornblew. His character parachuted gracefully from the digital sky above theGuardians League Royaleisland arena and toward the familiar broken tower in the center of the map. He saw Zora’s character already rummaging through an ammo chest on the parapet and maneuvered his parachute to land a few steps away from her.
It was a good place to start the match. High ground, good sight lines, plenty of cover—but before he could spin his camera around to send Zora an approving thumbs-up emote, he heard a laser shot reverberate through his headphones.Pew—zap!
His screen went red, then black, then scrolled the announcement no player wanted to read less than ten seconds into any game, ever.
GAME OVER. Player VANE has been eliminated by player ZORA.
Youreallycouldn’t trust anyone in a battle royale.
ZORA
CHAPTER TWO
EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT a battle royale is; they just don’t know that they know. It’s a fight where the only rules are survival of the fittest, everyone for themselves, eat or be eaten. They gave it a special name becauseBattle Royaleis the English title of a Japanese book about a bunch of high schoolers trapped on a remote island and forced to hunt each other until one student remains. And, uh. Yeah. That pretty much sums up the genre.
Metaphors for capitalism’s for-profit transmutation of youth into trauma aside, the concept of a battle royale is basically made to inspire video games, so it does, and itwhips. Wizzard’sGuardians League Royaleis my favorite, and while there are many battle royale titles that arelikeGLR, none of them can touch it when it comes to player base and sheer originality. Some come close, but Wizzard Games is the industry’s uncontested number one. This is the part where I toss my curls over my shoulder and say something arrogant like “Being number one? I can totally relate,” so I will. Internally.
But seriously, I am so fricking good atGuardians League Royale. That is my mantra and I know for a fact it’s all I need to survive this summer. As far as mantras go it’s a little specific, but I’ve always had a hard time applying vague, universal language to myself. Like “I am a strong and powerful woman.” Cool. That imparts zero information. Or “love and light.” Anyone can say two nouns. My favorite unrelatable mantra is “I have the same number of hours in my day as Beyoncé,” which, no. No, I do not. Beyoncé bends time, and anyone who doesn’t believe that is delusional.
Focus, Zora. Get hype. Is it possible to do both? I need to calculate the precise emotional equilibrium between focus and hype that results in a positive outcome. In this case, a positive outcome means I roll up to today’s orientation and unleash a can of digital whoop-ass on forty-nine other players who all want to do the exact same thing to me. As established, that’s going to be the easy part. The hard part is everything else about today. New Year’s Day was one thing, when the Wizzcon crowd made it easy to slip in and out of the theater without attracting attention.
Well, almost. There was that one … nope. Not thinking about him. That boy does not exist. I knocked him out of the running; I did it on purpose, and that means I never have to see or think about him again. Nothing—he, whatever. Never mind.
I reflexively yank my phone out of my jean shorts pocket and check my texts to see if anything has changed. Nothing new, just the last three messages from “Your Nemesis,” aka Cassius Sharpe, the other winner of the January battle that day at Wizzcon. In the parlance of the summer academy, we were both considered “top two winners,” so I don’t like toadmit that Cassius beat me, not the other way around. I’ll only agree to admit it because Cass is kind of the best thing ever.
I’m not the most gracious loser, in fact I would rather lick the sidewalk and die, so my second-place finish must have activated my Resting Murder Face. I didn’t have high hopes when the winner that day, a tall, skinny boy wearing the classic T-shirt and cargo shorts fit in January approached me after the match. I thought he was going to say something condescending at best or embrace the toxic gamer stereotype and be a legit Nazi at worst (both options are subtle variations on the ways people communicate the extent to which girls, especially Black girls, don’t belong in games). I was loading several ways to say “kick rocks” into the chamber and getting ready to shoot, but Cassius stayed my trigger finger by offering me a rematch. Not onstage, obviously, but later and online, just for fun.
So we kept in touch. We got in the habit of voice chatting while we kicked everyone’s butts, and those hours added up. Cass is an apex predator of the East Coast server and the best friend to have if you’re really frickin’ good atGuardians League Royaleand have trouble reading social cues.
From: Your Nemesis
running late
Attached is a GIF of a guy running away from a dragon. Cute.
From: Your Nemesis
theres big red stairs here im gonna wait here
