Spark(7)

He gave her a surprised look, quickly overtaken by a grin. “That’d be great.”
“Miss Jaxley,” the stage manager called. “All done with your little meet-n-greet up there? We need to check the feed to the screens.”
“See you tomorrow,” she said. “Nice meeting you, Aran.”
“You too, Miss Jax—”
“Call me Spark. Not nearly enough people do.”
His smile emphasized his high cheekbones. “All right, Spark. Later.”
The stage manager cleared his throat. Aran tucked the paper and pen in his back pocket, then jumped down off the stage, lean and agile.
“Miss Jaxley,” the tech said, “here’s your gear.”
Spark took the gleaming helm and visor and pulled on the LED-studded gaming gloves. Just before she slid into the sim chair to begin running the interface, she saw Aran in the back of the theater. He lifted his hand in farewell, then slipped out, leaving only shadows behind.






 
    Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure,   Magic
    
 


 

CHAPTER THREE


“No way!” Bix snatched the folded paper with Spark’s autograph out of Aran’s fingers and pressed it theatrically over his heart. “Now I really hate you, man.”
“Give that back.” Aran held out his hand. “I’m sure someone around here would show a little appreciation for a custom autograph.”
“Seriously—I owe you,” Bix said.
“Not really.” Aran shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, then back to his heels. “I didn’t get much opportunity to talk to Spark. Hey—any chance you can show up to the con early tomorrow?”
Bix’s frown scrunched up his forehead. “The only way I can come at all tomorrow is if I go to worship with my family in the morning. They’re practically foaming at the mouth at the thought of me spending any time here on the Sabbath.”
“Among the unwashed heathens and devil gamers, right? At least you can still attend.”
For once, Aran was glad of Bix’s hyper-religious parents. If Bix had been able to come, Aran would have found a way to finagle him time on the new FullD systems—but this way, Aran didn’t have to ask Spark’s forgiveness for bringing along an uninvited guest.
Not that he was telling Bix exactly where he’d be at nine a.m. Getting the autograph almost erased the guilt he felt at not revealing that Spark Jaxley had invited him to come early and try out the FullD.
Not only would Bix be beyond jealous, Aran didn’t want his friend to know—or even guess at—what he did to make a living. Sim hackers were not universally loved. Pretty much the opposite, in fact.
Sure, everybody wanted to know the cheats and exploits, but it was a sneaky, underhanded way to turn a profit. The honorable players refused to use the hacks, and then were at a disadvantage because of their nobleness. Bix was one of those, and he’d said dozens of times how much he despised the scum that found the exploits in the first place and then sold the information. If he saw Aran playing an advance version of the game, and then BlackWing started selling hacks before the system was released—well, Bix wasn’t dumb.
“Come on,” Bix said. “There’s a new combat game demo at one of the booths, and they’re raffling off good stuff to try and get attention. Even a new Slix system.”
“An almost obsolete sim set-up. Just what every gamer needs.”
“Not everybody is going to be moving to the FullD when it releases next week. And maybe VirtuMax’s design is still full of bugs. They took long enough to launch the thing. Come on.”
Aran followed his friend through the increasingly crowded floor of the Expo Hall. Posters featuring Spark Jaxley kept catching his eye, especially that particular shade of magenta hair nobody could quite match. Plenty of gamers, both male and female, tried. One in ten people at the convention had some variation of pinkish-reddish hair.
But none of them were Spark.
Tomorrow, he reminded himself.



“Five minutes, Miss Jaxley,” the stage manager said.
Spark nodded from her position in the wings. For a few more minutes she could be just herself, a nervous seventeen-year-old standing in the shadows. The moment she stepped out under the lights, she’d be the sim queen, the celebrated gamer, the girl people loved, envied, and hated in equal measure.
In the early months of her fame, she’d read all her fan mail herself. Until the day she got the death threat, complete with gruesome details. It had shaken her. Not the gory descriptions, but that someone out there in the world loathed her so much they’d send all that negativity her way.