Chapter Two

  Alex ripped the VR helmet from her head, throwing it onto the messy bed beside her desk. Sweat rolled down her forehead, and she wiped it away with the sleeve of her shirt.

  She knew the mechanics of the game too well not to know that once she'd been disconnected the AoD had killed her with two seconds remaining.

  Her room was already sweltering in the August heat now that the power was out. But it shouldn't have kicked her out of the game. Her dad had installed a generator years ago before he died for the cold Kentucky winters, and Alex had kept up with the maintenance since the region of Appalachia they lived in had frequent outages.

  Alex wanted to punch her gaming rig. The motion capture camera stared back at her with an unblinking eye.

  How could the power fail at that critical moment?

  "I thought I had the generator in perfect working order," she said, on the verge of tears.

  Alex stood up, nearly passing out from the sudden movement. She leaned against her bed, which took up most of the room and was covered in clothes—dirty and clean. The walls were covered in posters: two Hello Kitty!, a bunch of gaming related ones that varied between the cutesy Japanese anime style and the hard-core death metal armor style, and in the corner was a poster of Invictus, who was the head patron of the Hundred Halls, which was the only magical university in the world. Before she'd received her Merlin scores, she'd wanted to join the Hundred Halls, but her low testing had erased that dream.

  When she heard the sounds of her mother in the living area, Alex climbed over her bed, knocking off the container of plastic frogs to spill on the floor.

  Sunlight filled the room through the open windows. The front door had been blocked open to let the breeze in through the screen door.

  Her mother looked up from her knitting, frown plastered firmly on her lips.

  "About time you came outta there, wasting away your life with those games."

  The dismissive comment brought a blind rage to Alex that quickly threatened to summon tears.

  "It's not a waste," said Alex, fighting not to cry because otherwise her mom wouldn't take her response seriously, as if the tears actually changed what she had to say. "I was about to beat this unbeatable boss, which would have been a double ultra-platinum, but then the power went out, and now I'm not going to win the five-thousand-dollar bounty."

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Alex and her mother looked nearly the same, except for the gray streaks and the lack of glasses. Kids at school had always told Alex that she looked like a dark-haired Velma.

  "Alexandria," said her mother, "I don't even know what you just said, but I really doubt someone was going to pay you five thousand dollars for a double banana split thingy."

  The calculated snark burned away the burgeoning tears, leaving Alex with cold smoldering pain. She jawed at the empty air before blasting through the screen door to check on the generator beneath the trailer.

  As soon as she saw the switch locked into the off position she knew exactly what had happened. With trembling hands, Alex threw the switch on the generator, summoning the greasy motor to life. The lights in the trailer blinked back on.

  "You turned it off, didn't you?" asked Alex as the door smacked shut behind her.

  Her mother flashed her a flat stare before returning to her knitting. "You really should switch that off. We can't afford to use the gas on frivolous things."

  Frivolous things.

  The air choked in Alex's throat like deep desert air. She could feel the sand blasting her thoughts.

  "But...I was going to win money, actual money. I could have paid off the damn trailer with those winnings. I would have, I would have..."

  Alex let the words trail away. She'd wanted to say, I would have taken you out for your birthday. She wanted nothing more than to repair the chasm that had grown between them since her dad's death. She knew her mom was at her wit’s end, working two worthless jobs that didn't pay anything just to keep up with the interest from when her dad was in the hospital, but it didn't give her the right to turn off the generator.

  "You know," said her mom, not looking up from her knitting, "we could probably sell your gear for quite a lot. If you really wanted to help out, you could do that."

  Alex didn't know how to answer, so she retreated into her room, not even bothering to slam the door.

  When she saw her VR headset, it only reminded her of how close she'd been to winning. Hell, she had won. It was only a quirk of fate that had cheated her.

  All the hours of calculations, playing through the twenty different classes to find an exploit that would take down the AoD, then the practice of running through the canyon when the boss was absent.

  Her fingers hesitated over the keyboard when she went to log back in. She really didn't want to read the comments. Even if they were supportive, she wasn't sure she could take it.

  The soft beeps of her computer rebooting soothed her concerns. It wasn't like she had anything else to do. She'd finished a whole semester's worth of calculus homework while grinding levels. She almost thought about doing it again, just to have something non-game related to do, but the lure of the online world was too much.

  When Alex reconnected, two dozen message requests appeared. She immediately X'd out the known trolls from the achievement forums, and anyone whose name she didn't recognize. She was about to click on the last unknown when the text gave her pause. It was a line from her favorite movie.

  [Shall we play a game?]