5
Ash
“Rush! Behind you!”
“Way ahead of you, bro.”
Even before Snark had finish yelling, Ashton Hunt, a.k.a. Rush, had already done a leaping one-eighty and put a bullet between the eyes of two enemy players, and he was hardly even trying. Rush sat with his feet up on his desk, casually holding his controller and watching the screen from a jaunty angle, occasionally reaching out with one hand to sneak a sip of his energy drink between kills.
His top-of-the-line headset and his amped-up controller were both connected by cords to the console, so he had to be careful in grabbing the drink to make sure his arm didn’t get caught up in either one. It was, to be honest, more attention than he had to pay to the game itself. He and his friends were just warming up with a free-play match, and the random players they had pulled as enemies were pathetically slow by comparison.
“Seriously, man, you really think you have to warn me about these noobs?” Rush asked. “I’m tellin’ you, I’m goin’ pro in August. You’ll see.”
“Hey, I got faith, man. I believe.”
“You sure about that? I heard you and Wingman were taking bets against me.”
Snark’s laughter burst through the headset, briefly overriding the game sound, but it didn’t stop Rush from one-shotting another enemy who had been trying to sneak up behind him.
“Not against you, man! Who the hell said that? Me and Wing were bettin’ on how many people you’d have to beat out for it. He said two million, but I think it won’t be more than one.”
“Online mags are sayin’ four,” Rush countered.
“Whoa. Four million betas?”
“Yeah.” Rush blew another enemy away and then tried to hit his drink again, frowning at it when the can ran out.
“I’m out of juice,” Rush said. “Cover me, Snark.”
“Do my best, Chief.”
Ashton pulled his headset off and set the controller on the desk, kicking his feet down onto the floor. He was absurdly fit for a guy who did little more than go to school and play video games, but he wasn’t one to eat chips or pound sodas, not even while he was gaming. The energy drinks were his biggest vice, but he only drank the sugar-free kind. Staying lean gave him an edge. Ashton Hunt might not have been anyone important, but when ‘Rush’ talked about gaming, other gamers listened. Now his whole team stayed fit, following his lead.
He stretched his six-foot frame leisurely, then dropped the empty can into the trash and pulled another one out of the mini-fridge. He popped the top open, took a swig, and then sauntered back to his desk, propping his feet back up and sliding the headset down over his short, dark hair. He picked up the controller, and his ice-blue eyes focused back in on the screen like a hawk’s.
“Hey, Snark. You suck.”
Snark laughed through the headset again. While Rush had been gone from the game, Snark had gotten them both killed.
“Sorry, man. Team of three got me.”
“Meh, no worries. It’s just a scrub match.”
“Yeah,” Snark agreed.
Rush didn’t care about random matches. They didn’t count in the ranking system. In fact, Hostage Rescue Team Alpha: Year One was slated for official sale in August, still several months out, and when the title hit the shelves, rankings from the beta version would be wiped clean. They only mattered to Rush because the top-ranked beta players would be invited in August to compete for spots on the five-man pro team that the game developers were sponsoring.
“They’re really sayin’ four million now?” Wingman wanted to know. His Texan drawl always made Rush grin.
“Yeah. The beta’s gone viral, so they’re letting more people in.”
“Damn,” Snark said.
“Yeah. I don’t even care though. They can let five million in. I’ll still get a spot.”
Rush had been carefully maintaining his HRT Alpha ranking, refusing to move higher than number twenty. The launch competition would include the top one hundred beta players in the world, and he wanted to guarantee his spot without attracting too much attention. Everyone would be ganging up on the top five during the competition weekend. He had no intention of starting out with a target on his back.
Rush felt confident he could win it either way, but he was willing to take any competitive edge he could get. The sponsorship wasn’t just a couple of free controllers and a pat on the back. This was a genuine, pro team, paid to attend gaming conferences all over the world and play matches in front of live audiences of thousands—even tens of thousands—and far more over the televised broadcasts. The online streaming income alone represented a small fortune.
“Don’t forget us when you’re pro, man,” Snark said, his voice betraying a hint of genuine concern. At seventeen years old, Rush had already been playing with the same four guys for three years. Snark was his oldest gaming friend. He was good, but he wasn’t as good as Rush, and they both knew it.
“Naw, man,” Rush said. “You know I won’t. Ima send you guys my swag. You’ll see. T-shirts, games, controllers, snacks… Ima hook you guys up.” He meant it, too. Nobody had ever had his back like Snark, Wingman, Fuego, and Stryker.
“Damn straight you hookin’ us up, Rush. But I ain’t takin’ no T-shirts. I’m takin’ your women, like it or not, bro.” This last was Fuego, always the first to lighten up a serious mood.
“Yeah, OK. We’ll see about that,” Rush said, laughing.
“Yeah, we will, bro. You just wait!”
“Fuego, only girl of mine I’m lettin’ you have is my sister,” Rush shot back.
“Thought you didn’t have a sister,” Stryker chimed in.
“Exactly.”
And with that, they all dissolved into laughter. They won their match easily, and it was time for Rush to queue them up for another.
“Let’s play ‘Light It Up,’” Rush suggested.
“Seriously?” Snark complained.
“Again?” Fuego added a few curses in Spanish, just for good measure. HRT Alpha: Year One offered thirteen different game modes for player-versus-player beta matches. Rush enjoyed most of them, but ‘Light It Up’ was his favorite.
“Fuego, you just said yesterday you liked it,” Rush countered.
“‘Like’ is Mexican for ‘hate,’ bro,” Fuego quipped, and Rush laughed. That was Fuego’s personal code. If he said a word meant something in Spanish, he was telling you the truth. If he said it meant something in Mexican, he was making a joke.
“I’ll play whatever,” Stryker said, as he always did.
“Wingman?” Rush asked.
“What’s my name?”
“Wingman,” Rush said, grinning.
“And why am I the Wingman?”
“’Cause you always got my back,” Rush answered. “‘Light It Up’ it is!” He smiled as he put them in queue for another unranked match. The team was quiet for a while, waiting for the system to find them a game, until Stryker finally spoke up, breaking the silence.
“Did you guys all take that test today?”
Stryker was the quietest of them all. He rarely said anything, and when he did, it was because it was gnawing at him. Rush knew one of the main reasons Stryker stuck with them was because they didn’t mind him being so quiet—and because they would always talk to him anyway when he needed to get something off his chest. So when a few long moments passed without a response, Rush stepped up to the plate.
“I think we all did, didn’t we? I heard it was in every school in the country.”
“Not me, bro,” Fuego offered up. “I’m home-schooled.”
“If by ‘home-schooled’ you mean ‘illegal,’” Snark replied. It was common knowledge among the team that Fuego was, in fact, an illegal immigrant whose family did not send him to school for fear that he might get picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“That’s what I said,” Fuego replied easily. “‘Home-schooled’ is Mexican for ‘illegal.’”
Rush couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, everyone else took it. Why, Stryker? What’s up, man?”
“It was weird, right?” Stryker said.
“Yeah,” Snark and Wingman both agreed.
“I wouldn’t know,” Rush said.
“I thought you just said you took it?” Stryker asked.
“Well, I kinda did, and I kinda didn’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Snark demanded.
“Means I read the first three questions, decided it was stupid, and just filled in random blanks after that for the first two sections,” Rush admitted.
Snark laughed so hard he finally toggled his mic off to keep from splitting their eardrums.
“You didn’t,” Wingman objected.
“Truth,” Rush said.
“Wow,” was all Stryker had to say.
“Hey, guys, wait a sec,” Rush interjected, hearing his mother calling him down to dinner. “I gotta go eat. Meet back in twenty?”
“Yeah.”
“OK.”
“Sure.”
“Sounds good.”
“Awesome. See you then.” Dinner shouldn’t take long, and then he could get back to practicing for August. Come hell or high water, he would be ready.