These Deadly Games(29)

Zoey.

Might as well. I lined up my shot with the fire staff, aiming for her head. But the fireball whizzed past her. She spun, searching for the flame’s source, and sprinted toward me. Dammit. I couldn’t help caring—I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of killing me. I lined up my shot again, but before I could fire, lightning streaked across the screen, and her avatar vaporized.

“No!” she shouted as her health potions scattered. “Ugh, I thought I had you.”

“That wasn’t me,” I said. Matty cleared his throat. For a moment, I thought he was claiming credit, but then the feed in the corner reporting the most recent kills updated.

Icy tendrils wrapped around my heart.

An0nym0us1 took out DaggerQueen29 with a shock staff.





CHAPTER 12


Every hair on my body stood on end. An0nym0us1 had found me in the game. How?

I glanced at Zoey, who watched her screen, nibbling on her pink-lacquered fingernail. She’d once said it was impossible to stalk a specific user onto a map without hacking MortalDusk. And even though we were livestreaming, there was no way for anyone to join a map once it was already in play. But An0nym0us1 clearly had hacking skills.

Zoey threw me a baffled look. “You gonna move?”

She was watching my avatar, which meant An0nym0us1 could see me, too. After dying, you got to watch the person who killed you until they died, then the person who killed them until they died, and so on. We rarely stuck around to watch; dying early was a chance to get homework done.

But one time a couple of months ago, I did watch. Zoey had blasted me with a fireball through a window, and when my vantage point switched to hers, I did a double take. She was way over on Crescent Hill. “Whoa, you blasted me all the way from there?” I gaped at the feed: DaggerQueen29 eliminated ShardsOfGlass with a fire staff. Maybe a pro archer like Randall could pull off that kind of shot with a fire arrow. But with a staff? Impossible.

Her cheeks flushed. “Sorry. Didn’t realize that was you.”

“No worries, but how?” Zoey kinda sucked at aiming, relatively speaking. She usually preferred blade combat.

“Lucky shot, I guess.” She clamped her lips together so tight all the pink disappeared. I narrowed my eyes. Was she lying to me?

Dylan chuckled. “Don’t be a sore loser.”

Now it was my turn to blush. “I’m not! I’m just … surprised. Whatever, forget it.” I tabbed over to my English essay, trying to ignore the niggle at the base of my skull. But Zoey kept getting lucky, racking up MortalBucks faster than anyone. I couldn’t help it—it bugged me how good she got so fast. I needed to play in the tourney. I needed that prize money to help Mom pay the mortgage. Zoey’s parents were already loaded. They’d foot her college bills, no question, and once she joined their dental practice as an oral surgeon, she’d make bank. Her future was laid out before her like a red carpet dotted with silver platters. The works. She didn’t need the money. She wouldn’t have to move if she lost.

I tried casting aside these resentful thoughts, feeling like a crap friend. But something felt off. Like when you see a blur move in your peripheral vision, but nothing’s there. Or when you feel your phone buzz in your pocket, but nobody texted. A glitch in the matrix.

I started watching the feed like a hawk—DaggerQueen29 was knocking people out with all sorts of weapons and spells. Players usually mastered two or three, but Zoey was suddenly good at all of them. So the next time we sparred, I let her kill me and pretended to tab over to my homework with a huff. Instead, I watched her play. She chased her next victim out in the open—reckless, like she felt immune—and drew a fire arrow while sprinting. The white aim dot fluttered around the enemy’s back, then bounced up to their head and stilled. Even when they darted behind a tree, the dot remained where their head would be, like Zoey had X-ray vision or something. And the split second they reemerged, she loosed her bow and landed a fatal head shot.

My stomach curdled like sour milk. She was totally using an aimbot—software to automatically aim at other players’ heads. A high-profile streamer recently got banned from MortalDusk for aimbotting—username, IP address, everything—for life. Why would Zoey risk it? How dare she betray us like that! I glared at her over my monitor, wanting to smack that smirk right off her face.

But the thought of calling her out in front of everyone made me want to curl up like a pill bug. I hated conflict. And what if I was wrong? She’d accuse me of being a jealous bitch—and rightfully so. I needed proof she was cheating.

“Why are you just standing there?” Zoey demanded as Matty started coughing, snapping me from the memory as I gaped at An0nym0us1’s username in the feed.

But I didn’t need to move. A figure dressed in black from head to toe stepped into my line of sight, stopping directly in front of the cottage. I right-clicked the avatar. But I already knew.

An0nym0us1.

“Easy kill,” Zoey said bitterly.

They didn’t fire at me. They simply stared me down as though to say, I’m watching you everywhere. My headphones amplified my pulse thrashing in my ears, drowning out everything else. It felt like the walls were closing in.

“Yo.” Randall shoved Matty’s shoulder. “That’s enough, dude.”

Matty laughed through his cough. “Egads, I’m choking on my own spit here—” But he started hacking again.