SkyWake Invasion Read online

  Behind her stood two hulking Arcturian soldiers, the sworn enemy of the Bactu. They wore black armour and carried enormous plasma rifles in their gloved hands. Their mechanical eyes, set deep in their their helmets, burned red.

  “Look at those outfits,” Pete whispered, staring at the soldiers in awe as he caught up with his sister.

  “They must be professional cosplayers,” Casey said, admiring the level of detail on their suits. She wondered how the costume designers had managed to mimic the fiery gaze that gave the Arcturians their “Red Eye” nickname.

  Her phone buzzed.

  “Who is it?” Pete asked, straining to see the screen as she read the message.

  “It’s Cheeze.”

  CH33ZEMUNK3Y was one of the players in her online clan.

  “Cheese? Like cheddar?”

  “No, like cheezing. When you exploit a glitch in a game.”

  “Don’t you know his real name?”

  Casey shook her head. “I don’t know any of their names. Just their gamertags.” Her face clouded as she read the message. “He says they’re waiting for me in Starbucks.”

  “Let’s get over there, then.”

  She pulled him back. “No. I don’t want to meet them. We’re just going to watch.”

  “But they’re expecting you!”

  “They’re expecting a guy,” Casey replied. Saying it out loud, it all seemed so stupid. She wished she’d never pretended she was anyone other than herself. “They’re going to be mad if they find out I’ve been lying to them all this time.”

  The queue moved forward.

  “Name?” asked the bored-looking woman in a tone that sounded like it was the nine-hundredth time that day she’d asked the same question.

  “Casey Henderson. My gamertag is Casey Flow.”

  The woman arched her eyebrows slightly and scrolled through her list.

  “Have you got your VIP invite?”

  Casey took out her phone and pulled up the invitation she’d received. The woman scanned the QR code embedded in it and her tablet beeped.

  “Clan name?”

  “Ghost Reapers. This is my brother. He’s my plus one,” she added, gesturing towards Pete, who was still staring at the Red Eye cosplayers. He reached out a hand to touch one of them and then jumped in fright when the soldier spun around and pointed his plasma rifle at him.

  “Ignore those idiots,” the woman said, exasperated. “I’ve been trying to get them to talk all morning, but they must be method actors or something. They’re staying totally in character.” She rolled her eyes and handed Casey two plastic badges hanging on blue lanyards. “Your passes.”

  Casey’s badge was stamped with a QR code along with the word COMPETITOR in blocky, futuristic writing. Pete’s badge was blank with SPECTATOR stamped on it. Both were branded with the familiar SkyWake logo, two fiery suns rising above the horizon of an alien planet.

  Casey slipped her lanyard around her neck.

  “Can you tell me something?” she asked the woman. “What happens if a team captain doesn’t play? Do you disqualify the whole team or just the captain? Could someone else take my place?”

  The woman stared at Casey as if she was talking a foreign language.

  “I’m just paid to work here today, hon.” She shrugged. “If you want answers, talk to Lee over there. He’s in charge.” She pointed towards a man who was pacing up and down, having a heated argument with someone on his phone.

  “I never ordered any cosplayers,” Casey overheard him saying crossly. “Fine. Well, just don’t try and bill me for them later. I’ll be checking the invoices.”

  Casey turned back to quiz the woman some more, but she was already waving a new gamer forwards with a shout of, “Next!”

  Casey and Pete stepped aside. Casey’s phone buzzed. Cheeze again.

  Casey! Where r u?!

  “What are you going to do?” Pete asked.

  “I don’t know,” Casey muttered, pocketing her phone and pulling the sleeves of her hoodie down over her hands. She’d got herself into a right mess. What had she been thinking?

  “They won’t care who you are,” Pete reassured her, “just how well you play.”

  Casey bit her lip. “Maybe if I don’t show up they’ll find a replacement for me,” she suggested doubtfully. She knew that wouldn’t be possible. Not this close to the start.

  They were just a few metres away from the coffee shop. She stared at the familiar logo. Pete followed her gaze and smiled slyly to himself.

  “Oh well,” he said, “it’s probably better if we don’t go. Mum’s always warning us about people you meet online. They could be serial killers or anything.”

  “I guess we could just go and see what they look like…” Casey said. Pete grinned. “But we won’t introduce ourselves,” she added firmly. “They won’t even know who we are unless we tell them. They’ve never seen either of us before.”

  “We’ll be like spies,” Pete said, his imagination running away with him. “Or undercover cops.”

  “Whatever happens,” Casey warned her little brother, “don’t give me away.”

  “Promise,” he told her, his face suddenly serious.

  In the months since SkyWake’s first release, Casey had spent hours leading her team on the battlefield. Shoulder to shoulder, they had fought against the Bactu hordes. Together they had celebrated wild victories and tasted the bitterness of defeat. Through it all they had been a team, a unit, a band of brothers (and one secret sister).

  Now, though, as she stood in the doorway of the crowded coffee shop, she realized that she didn’t have a clue what any of them looked like. It didn’t help that everyone in the coffee shop seemed to be wearing SkyWake merch. Everywhere she turned, she saw T-shirts and caps and messenger bags, all emblazoned with the game’s logo. She noticed there were plenty of cool-looking gamer girls among the crowd too. Casey bet they didn’t use voice changers.

  She scanned the faces of the customers, trying to match them to the voices she knew so well. But it was impossible.

  “You know,” Pete said in a low voice, as she checked out the customers, “maybe you’re the one making assumptions.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe they’ve been trolling you. Maybe they all use voice changers too. Maybe the whole team are girls!”

  For the first time that morning, Casey laughed.

  “Don’t you know anything about them?” Pete asked.

  “I know Cheeze lives in Birmingham – he’s good with computers. Fish is from Glasgow – he’s always in a bad mood but he’s the best tank player I’ve ever seen. Elite is from London – he wants to be a rapper and keeps getting mugged on the bus. Spock’s Brain is from Leeds and—”

  “Wait,” interrupted Pete. “Whose brain?”

  “Spock,” Casey said, “like Mr Spock from Star Trek. He’s a big sci-fi nerd.”

  “Is that it? Don’t you know anything else about them?”

  “I know they all love SkyWake.”

  “Look around,” Pete told her. “This is SkyWake Central.”

  Her phone buzzed again, insistent.

  Casey???!!!!!! Why aren’t you answering me???

  “Give it to me,” said Pete, snatching it from her. “I’ll message him.”

  “Don’t you dare!” Casey warned, trying to grab the phone. Pete dodged her, his fingers already typing a message on the screen.

  “I’ll say you’re stuck in traffic and we’ll see whose phone buzzes when I reply. Then at least you’ll know what they look like…”

  “Just give me the phone!” Casey hissed. Her fury stopped Pete in his tracks.

  “Fine,” he said sulkily, a little hurt. “I was just trying to help.”

  He was about to pass her the handset when it burst into life with an incoming call.

  BRRRRRRRIIIINNNNGGGG!

  The ringtone was so loud that several people stopped talking and looked over. Pete fumbled with the phone, trying to mute it
.

  It was too late. They’d been spotted.

  “Casey!” a voice shouted. It belonged to a boy in a lime-green wheelchair wearing a skateboarder hoodie and holding a phone to his ear. He rolled over to them, propelling himself with his hands, on which he wore fingerless, black leather gloves. Casey saw that his wheelchair was covered in pouches holding a laptop, cables and an electrical toolkit. It looked like a mobile computer repair shop.

  “We’ve been looking for you everywhere!” the boy said, excited. “I’m Cheeze.”

  Casey was about to reply when she realized that he wasn’t talking to her. He was looking directly at Pete.

  “You are Casey Flow, aren’t you?” Cheeze asked, sensing his hesitation.

  For an awkward moment nobody said anything. Then a voice spoke.

  “Yes, I’m Casey,” it said.

  But it wasn’t Casey who was speaking – it was Pete.

  And for some reason, Casey didn’t do anything to stop him.

  3

  DEEP-FRIED MARS BARS

  The rest of the Ghost Reapers were sitting in a booth at the back of the coffee shop. Cheeze led Pete over to them. Casey trailed behind.

  “Look who I found,” Cheeze announced, grabbing Pete by the wrist and holding his arm aloft. “It’s our fearless team leader.”

  The group regarded Pete with inquisitive but welcoming eyes.

  “Hey, Casey. Great to finally meet you,” said one of the boys. As they introduced themselves, Casey put faces to their gamertags. They were nothing like she had imagined.

  XxxEL1TESN1P3RxxX was a pale, wiry boy from Lewisham in South London. He wore a zip-up Puma tracksuit and a pair of brilliant white trainers that looked like they were straight out of the box. He was the team’s sniper and, like all snipers, he was convinced he was God’s gift to video games.

  “Yo. Call me Elite,” he said, giving Pete a homie handshake that totally confused him. Pete was so thrown that he even bungled the fist bump at the end.

  “Aw-right?” growled FISH_HEAD_04, a stocky Scottish boy in a faded SkyWake T-shirt. A splodge of dark brown freckles across the bridge of his nose made him look like he’d dunked his face in a jar of Marmite. Casey knew his family ran a fish and chip shop in Glasgow, which explained his gamertag and his accent. He played as the team’s tank.

  SP0CK5_BR@IN was black and, at seventeen years old, the elder statesman of the group. He had thick glasses that made his serious eyes look like dinner plates. He was planning to study applied mathematics at Oxford University. Casey didn’t know what applied mathematics was exactly, but you clearly needed to be super smart to understand it. He played as the team’s medic.

  “Who’s the blue girl?” Fish asked Pete, casting an unimpressed glance at Casey’s hair with its streaks of bubblegum dye.

  “Um, this is my sister…” stammered Pete. “She’s just here to watch.”

  “I thought you had a brother,” Cheeze said, confused.

  “Yeah, that’s right. A younger brother and an older sister,” Pete lied, glancing at Casey nervously.

  “Hey,” Casey said to the group. She lifted her hand in a pointless wave and instantly regretted it. Nice one, loser, she thought to herself.

  “Does your sister have a name?” Cheeze asked. He smiled at Casey, trying to put her at ease.

  Casey shifted her weight from one foot to the other. This was her moment to tell them the truth. She paused, uncertain where to start. It felt ridiculous now. Why on earth had she kept up the pretence for so long? They stared at her expectantly.

  “I’m Rebecca,” Casey heard herself say. Rebecca was her mum’s name.

  The boys, oblivious to her inner turmoil, smiled and nodded politely. Then they turned their attention back to Pete.

  “So, team leader,” Cheeze asked him, “what’s our strategy?”

  “I can’t believe they think you’re me,” Casey hissed at Pete later, as they stood outside the tournament zone. The rest of the team were glued to a giant TV screen that was showing SkyWake footage on a never-ending loop. They were arguing over which gun was the most over-powered.

  “You’ve been pretending to be a boy all year,” Pete snapped back. “It’s not my fault you were so convincing.”

  Casey sighed. It was her fault. If she hadn’t used a voice changer, nobody would ever have mistaken Pete for their team leader. She was regretting her decision to bend the truth. Pete, however, was loving every minute of it. He’d always wanted to be like Casey, and now here he was with a group of older boys being treated like a star player. He hadn’t stopped grinning since this whole mess had started.

  Casey didn’t know if he would still be grinning when it was time to play in the tournament, though. Pete wasn’t bad at SkyWake. But he wasn’t great either. He didn’t play with a proper clan, just with his mates from school. She felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. Could Pete really step into her shoes in more than just name?

  This whole thing had become a disaster. The longer the lie went on, the harder it became to tell everyone the truth. It was like a boulder rolling downhill, getting faster and faster. The only way to stop it was by jumping in front of it. But if she did that, it would flatten her…

  As the boys continued their argument about which of SkyWake’s weapons needed to be nerfed, Cheeze spun around in his wheelchair. He tilted onto his back wheels and then set it back down in front of Casey with a flourish.

  “So, Rebecca,” he asked casually, “are you a gamer?”

  “I bet she’s into Candy Crush,” Fish muttered scornfully. He took a bite from a greasy burger he’d just bought from a food stand.

  “I play SkyWake, actually,” Casey replied. “I love the adrenaline rush you get from first-person shooters.”

  “What class do you play?” Cheeze asked.

  “I bet she’s a medic,” Fish suggested, taking another bite of burger. “Girls always play support roles. They like helping people. It’s in their nature.”

  “She probably shoots better than you,” Cheeze said.

  “That wouldn’t be hard,” Elite chipped in with a grin.

  The Scottish boy glared at him. “I don’t do guns. I’m a shield tank. It’s my job to keep you all alive.”

  “Is that why you always blame everyone else when we lose?”

  “I just call it how I see it, pal!” Fish shot back.

  “I main-assault actually,” Casey interrupted, her voice as sharp as vinegar. “I like raining down fire on the enemy.” She mimed mowing down bad guys. “My dad was in the army…”

  “Yeah, your brother told us,” Cheeze said. Then he added softly, “He died, didn’t he?”

  Casey paused a moment, remembering how much she’d told these boys in game chat over the last year. They knew everything about her. Well, almost everything. She felt a little sad. If only she’d been brave enough to be herself, this meet-up could have been fun.

  “Who your dad was doesn’t have nothing to do with how you play,” Fish butted in. “Games aren’t like real life.”

  “I wish they were,” Cheeze said. “I’d go around smashing crates looking for loot.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’d munch a green Mario ’shroom and grow three times my size,” Fish said. “Crush all the noobs under my feet.”

  “If you keep eating junk food, you won’t need a mushroom,” Brain said, pointing to what was left of Fish’s burger. “Do you know how many calories are in that thing? Six hundred and fifty-seven.”

  “I eat what I want and never put on weight. It’s my superpower,” Fish declared through a mouthful of sesame bun.

  “That is totally illogical!”

  Fish took an extra big bite of his burger, licking ketchup and mayo off his lips. “You can keep your logic, pal,” he retorted. “All that maths is turning you into a robot.”

  Casey smiled to herself. They were always bickering like this in online team chat.

  “Next he’ll be offering you a deep-fried Mars bar,” she said to Brain wi
th a chuckle.

  A few weeks back, Fish had told them how his dad put chocolate bars into the deep fat fryer in his family’s fish and chip shop. He claimed it was a speciality. Casey was pretty sure he’d said it just to wind Brain up. The older boy was a vegan and he hated junk food with a passion.

  Casey, still laughing to herself, looked up, then froze. They were all staring at her in surprise.

  “How do you know about that?” Fish demanded, his eyes narrowing.

  “Oh, er… Well, I remember Pe— I mean, Casey, telling me.” She turned to Pete for help, but he wasn’t listening. He was still glued to the SkyWake footage on the TV.

  “What’s up?” he asked, noticing them all looking at him.

  “We were talking about the chip shop,” Casey said, giving him a hard stare. “The one Fish lives above.” She spoke each word with emphasis, trying to get Pete to understand. It didn’t work.

  “You live above a fish and chip shop?” Pete squealed. “That is so cool! Do you get free chips?”

  The rest of the team looked at one another, confused.

  “You already know that, Casey,” Brain said, his serious eyes squinting behind his spectacles. “We’ve talked about it loads in game chat.”

  “Oh yeah,” Pete replied hastily, realizing his mistake. “I was just messing with you. Of course I know about it. Everyone does…”

  “Even your sister,” Fish said. He shot Casey a suspicious look. She could see that he sensed something was wrong but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. “You know,” he said, turning to Pete, “your voice sounds different in real life.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Elite, “you’re a total squeaker, bruv.”

  “It must be my rubbish mic,” Pete lied. “It’s only a cheap one.”

  “You’re shorter than I imagined, too,” Fish said, looking him up and down. Just then, an announcement rang out on the public address system.

  “Calling all SkyWake competitors. We are ready to battle.”

  In a flash, the boys forgot about interrogating Pete and hurried towards the sandbagged entrance to the tournament zone.

  Before Casey could follow, Brain tapped her arm.