Gamer Girl Read online

  Gamer Girl

  Mia Archer

  Contents

  1. Academy Life

  2. Etherea Lab

  3. Character Creation

  4. Questing

  5. Game Over

  6. Naughty Inn

  7. Wrong Party

  8. Escape

  9. Sneaking

  10. Taking A Break

  11. Hunted

  12. Welcome Bear

  13. Predator and Prey

  14. Odd Statuary

  15. Waking Up

  16. IRL Scheming

  17. Dinner Date

  18. Rescue Mission

  19. Character Creation Redux

  20. New Old Quest

  21. Revenge

  22. Hot Pursuit

  23. Creepy Crawly

  24. Rescued

  25. Leverage

  26. I Have the Power?

  27. Red Light District

  28. Cancelled Classes

  29. Dungeon Run

  30. Date With Destiny

  31. Calixia

  32. New Champion

  33. Back in the Frying Pan

  34. Another Escape

  35. Infiltration

  36. Storm the Lair

  37. IRL

  38. Angry Mob

  39. Back to the Game

  40. Secret Identity

  Subscribe

  Also by Mia Archer

  Gamer Girl

  By Mia Archer

  Copyright 2018 Mia Archer

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Individuals pictured on the cover are models and used for illustrative purposes only.

  First digital edition electronically published by Mia Archer, May 2019

  Thanks for downloading this story and supporting me!

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  Created with Vellum

  1

  Academy Life

  "Watch where you're going loser!"

  I instinctively braced for the hit before it came. It was something I did without thinking these days. An elbow slammed into my back and I pitched forward, my arms flailing as I tried and failed to catch my balance.

  The stars around the edge flew past and then I was going down. Damn it.

  The lower gravity here in the elevator was a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it only added to my lack of balance since everything felt weird up here compared to the surface. On the other hand that lower gravity meant I didn’t hit as hard when the inevitable consequence of that lack of balance happened.

  Stars danced in front of my eyes that had nothing to do with the star view around the edges. I knew the pain would come, but honestly I was used to it at this point.

  One benefit of the lower gravity was the fall didn’t hurt as much.

  I looked up to see Chelsey staring down at me, with Tori by her side looking meek as always. Chelsey’s cool blue eyes sparkled under her perfectly straight and shiny brown hair. That was the look of a woman who owned the world around her, and she knew it.

  I took a moment to enjoy the view, for all that the bitch had just knocked me over. She wore a short skirt that showed off everything. It was the latest fashion from orbital of course. She wore a crop top that looked like it’d be more suited to clubbing than class, and it showed off a generous amount of her impressive cleavage and her flat toned and tanned stomach, so I wasn’t complaining.

  The lower gravity also did interesting things to her chest. To everyone’s chest, for that matter. Booyah.

  She was still a cruel bitch, but that miniskirt always raised my opinion of her ever so slightly. Hey, I wasn’t dead, even if she’d done her best to help me along the way.

  Speaking of. I felt all around. Did a quick damage report. Wondered if there was anything broken. Everything seemed okay. Mostly. I reached up and felt at my nose. At least it wasn't bleeding this time.

  Damn it. I hated that I was so used to this bullshit that I was doing a damage check and thinking I was lucky that I'd only slammed my cheek into the ground. There’d be a hell of a bruise there later, even accounting for the lower gravity.

  "What's going on here?" a voice, like the crack of a whip, came through the laughing crowd staring down at me.

  I looked up to see Professor Biggins staring down at me and then up to Chelsey and Tori. Disapproval was written plainly on his face.

  "No trouble here at all sir,” Chelsey said, smiling a pretty smile that’d no doubt gotten her out of plenty of trouble over the years.

  "Are you okay Reynolds?" Professor Biggins asked, turning to me.

  Not for the first time I thought about saying something. About trying to deal with this once and for all. Only I didn't.

  I'd appealed to the authorities before, and it hadn't done a damn bit of good. It’d done the opposite of good, making my life a living hell.

  What was the point in trying to appeal to those authorities when they relied on the money Chelsey’s dad, granddad, and great granddad gave to the place?

  It was tough going up against someone who had their family name on various buildings around campus because of all the money they’d pumped into this place. They had to if they wanted to make sure their line of rich assholes continued attending the Academy.

  The family line might’ve been intelligent enough to make a fortune once upon a time, but several generations of marrying trophy spouses for looks rather than smarts had diluted the old gene pool making them more stupid and more attractive with each successive generation of old money.

  A payoff was the only way they’d ever get in if Chelsey was anything to go on. She had a look and an attitude that was more suited to modeling than academics, but then again this place was more about breeding the next generation of rich assholes to rule the world than it was about studying hard.

  "I'm fine," I lied, knowing it wasn’t worth it to fight.

  Professor Biggins looked between us, a frown on his face. Clearly he knew there was something going on here, and clearly he also knew he couldn't do anything about it if I wasn't going to say anything. Which was more than most of the professors would do.

  Heck, he probably couldn’t do anything about it even if I did say something.

  There were plenty of teachers at the Orbital Academy who wouldn't say boo when something like this happened. It disgusted me. Here I was twenty years old, at the most prestigious academy in the elevator, and I felt like shit most of the time because the environment here was worse than any hardship I’d faced down on the flatland.

  It was bad enough that if I'd known life was going to be like this once I got this far I might not have worked quite so hard to get here in the first place. But I was here now, and I’d have to make the best of it. They were relying on me down there.

  I shook myself. Stood up and made a point of dusting myself off.

  "You're sure you're okay?" Professor Biggins asked, concern plain on his face. And the distaste also plain on his face as he looked at Chelsey and Tori standing there smirking.

  She knew she was going to get away with this. Just like she got away with everything.

  "Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied.

  "Very well," Biggins said with a sharp look for Chelsey. "But that will be the last incident like this that happens in this building. Are we understood?”

  "Sure thing doc,” Chelsey said, earning an even deeper frown. Though again that was something she could get away with because of her name. She turned and glared daggers at me.

  "You better watch where you're going in the future you fucking rizon,” she spat.

  I winced at the language. Rizon. Short for horizon. So
meone who grew up on the planet surface where there was a horizon and not in the elevator where you could always see the curve of the earth off in the distance.

  I shook my head and let it roll off of me. Just like I always did. I put my slate under my arm and walked off along the path leading back to the dorms. At least there I could get some quiet. I had a lock on my door there.

  My room wasn’t much, the sort of one room efficiency the Academy gave everyone who was here on a scholarship, but that one room gave me privacy.

  It was also nice to walk on the grass and feel the light overhead. It reminded me of home, even if it was an expensive imitation of life on the planet surface. Which always struck me as odd. They looked down on us from the elevator even as they spent ridiculous amounts of money trying to recreate what was available naturally down below.

  That there was even grass here for me to walk on, not to mention a reasonable facsimile of a blue sky projected overhead even though we were well out of the atmosphere where a blue sky could be seen, spoke volumes about just how wealthy the people who called this place home were.

  Not that there was any part of the elevator that wasn't wealthy, but this was extravagance beyond even the normal sort of everyday extravagance to be found in the elevator. And I was here purely because of good grades. I’d worked so hard to bring myself into this hell.

  I shook my head.

  Who knew getting everything I wanted would become a personal hell?

  "You should really learn to stand up to that asshole," a voice said from behind me.

  I turned to see Katie following me, and boy was she a sight for sore eyes. Not that there were many people who weren’t a sight for sore eyes up here. See what I mentioned before about generations of wealth interbreeding with generations of trophy wives and hot pool boys and you get an idea of just how hot the elevator dwellers could be after a few generations.

  Katie was a blonde bombshell in a pair of shorts and a tank top that showed off her body quite nicely, thank you very much. Her green eyes peered at me with something that approached genuine concern, which was odd for the Academy.

  She cocked her head to the side. She was a child of privilege, but she hadn't let it go to her head. At least not as much as the other students here at the Academy, which was saying something.

  "Yeah, you try doing that," I said.

  "I do it all the time," she said with a shrug. “Chelsey doesn't mess with me. She wouldn't mess with you either if you just stood up to her.”

  I opened my mouth, then went quiet. We were from two different worlds, even if she was pretty cool about it.

  How to explain to someone whose father was the elevator Director that it was easy for her to stand up to Chelsey because her family had power that went beyond Chelsey’s family wealth? That if I tried to do the same thing I’d probably just get the shit kicked out of me and have the incident covered over because the school didn't want to stop the donations from coming in?

  "It's something to think about," she said, again with a shrug. A shrug that caused her body to move in a most distracting way. God bless low gravity.

  Then again everything about her was distracting. Everything about all the women at the Academy was distracting, and it was made all the more frustrating knowing none of them would give me the time of day even if most of them were willing to play some experimental games while they were off at the equivalent of college.

  They just weren’t willing to slum it to play those games with a rizon, damn it.

  We walked along in silence. What else was there to say? It's not like I was going to take her advice, though it was nice to have the company. I glanced at her occasionally, sneaking a peek. Katie was beautiful, but I didn’t dare try anything.

  After all, I was just a lowly rizon. For all that I'd risen above that somewhat. I knew that even with a degree from the Academy the best I could hope for was to maybe become an administrator somewhere down on the planet.

  Not exactly the most promising career, even if it meant a comfortable life. The key point being that I’d be top among my people, which was still below the lowliest person living in any of the four elevators.

  "I'm surprised I didn't see you at the dedication yesterday," she said, breaking that silence.

  "The dedication?" I asked. "What are you talking about?"

  "The new VR lab? For Etherea Online?” she said. “You’ve been going on about that game so much I figured you would've been one of the first people in the new lab after the ribbon cutting."

  I shook my head. Etherea was a game, sure, and I was slightly obsessed with it even though I couldn’t hope to afford to play it until it went live for the unwashed masses, but I had no idea what the fuck she was going on about

  "The new lab?" I asked. "What are you talking about?"

  “The game you won't shut up about?" she said. "The thing that's taking the world by storm? Did that hit from Chelsey knock a few brain cells loose or something?”

  I shook my head. The game that was taking the world by storm? More like the game that was taking the world's richest by storm, but of course that meant everyone knew about it, and everyone wanted to play considering the world’s richest were all about showing off that lifestyle.

  Etherea was an immersive VR world. The kind of experience that would take you out of the drudgery of your day to day life. Not that the people who could afford early access needed an escape from their life at the top of the world.

  Literally.

  The only escape I had these days was in the campus computer labs where technically I wasn’t supposed to use the lab machines for gaming, but those labs were always empty so no one ever said anything. Everyone else could afford their own gaming rigs in their private apartments maintained by their servants.

  Gaming was my one outlet, the one thing I was good at other than studying, and even that had sucked lately because I knew Etherea was coming and I couldn’t afford to play it.

  Supposedly there were units being shipped all around the world for a big wide launch, but right now it was a game that was exclusively the playground of the very wealthy who could buy early access, because of course it was.

  Wily game developers had realized a long time ago that they could pump even more money out of their cash cows by making early access to their games exclusive to anyone willing to pay the right price.

  So of course everyone at the Academy played. Everyone who wasn't there on a scholarship and barely scraping by, that is. Which included me, unfortunately.

  Only…

  What if there was a benefit I was getting from the Academy that went above and beyond getting an education at a place that would allow me to write my ticket, as long as that ticket went somewhere on the dead-end that was the planet surface? What if being here could get me an early ticket into Etherea?

  “Y’know what?" I said. "I think I need to go check that out."

  Katie smiled. God she was beautiful under the fake sunlight. She shook her head and her blonde hair caught the fake sunlight and reflected it.

  "I thought you might say something like that," she said. "Don't stay in there for too long though. That stuff is addictive."

  "Well at least I'll be able to find out how addictive it is for myself now instead of relying on other people doing livestreams,” I said.

  I grinned. Maybe I had to put up with Chelsey and her asshole bullshit, but whatever. All that really mattered was I had a portal into Etherea. I couldn't believe my luck!

  All that hard work getting into this place was totally worth it if it meant I could finally check that game out and enjoy the world's first totally immersive VR massive online world.

  "I'll see you later Katie,” I said.

  "Yeah, see you around," she said, giving me a once over that might’ve had me hopeful if I didn’t know there wasn’t a chance anything was happening because of our different worlds. "Try not to have too much fun!"

  2

  Etherea Lab

  I worried that I wa
s going to find the lab completely packed. Only it was dead.

  A pretty girl sat at a desk by the door. I almost thought I recognized her, Orbital Academy was small enough that I knew everybody on sight even if it was impossible to know everybody personally.

  It was even more impossible for me since most people tended to avoid me after they realized I was a scholarship case.

  Everyone knowing everybody at the Academy meant everyone knew who the few “charity cases” were and ignored them accordingly.

  "Can I help you?" she asked.

  “Um, yeah?" I said. "I was interested in trying out one of the VR rigs?”

  She blinked a couple of times. As though she was surprised someone would actually be coming in here to use the place for its intended purpose. Which seemed odd considering Etherea was all the rage, but whatever. Then she fumbled with a slate on her desk and handed it over to me.

  "Sure!" she said. "Just add your biosignature here and you'll be good to go."

  I thumbed the slate and it glowed green. The girl blinked a couple more times. Like she was almost surprised that the thumbprint went green. I tried to avoid grinning.

  It wouldn't be the first time someone had looked at me askance when it turned out I had access to something I obviously should’ve had access to since I was a fucking student here like everyone else.