Last Light of the Gaming Legend Son-In-Law

Chapter 4: The Back Room at Respawn

Respawn smelled like old fries and new paint, and Maggie Shaw was wiping the counter as if it had insulted her mother.

“We’re closed till noon,” she said without looking up.

“Even for me?”

She stopped wiping.

Maggie was short and strong, with curly red hair going gray at the edges, a face full of freckles, reading glasses pushed up on her head and the same old leather apron she’d worn for three years. When Team Titan was the biggest team in the world, she was the one who booked our flights, fixed our contracts, yelled at our sponsors and made sure we ate real food. Nobody outside the team ever knew her name. She liked it that way.

She looked at me, at my face, at the drops I’d just put in my eyes, and her own eyes narrowed.

“You saw Dr. Morgan this morning.”

“Twenty degrees,” I said.

She set the rag down very carefully. Maggie was the other person who knew everything; for three years, she’d guarded my secret and my money like a bulldog, nine million dollars of old prize money, sitting quietly in a trust that nobody could trace back to me.

“What do you need, kid?”

“The back room.”

For a second, she didn’t move. Then a slow smile spread across her freckled face, and she pulled off her apron and hung it on the hook.

“Monarch’s coming back,” she said.

“Just for the weekend.”

“That’s what you said about your first tournament, and that lasted eight years.” She lifted the counter flap. “Come on. Tell me while I set it up.”

The back room had a dusty old practice PC that used to belong to Team Titan, two worn gaming chairs, and a window covered with black paper. I told her everything while she worked: Crown Fall on TV, the three words in the chat, the loan, Spencer’s one dollar, the King’s Gauntlet.

“I saw Crown Fall last night,” she said, plugging in a monitor. “I was behind this bar with a glass in my hand, and I nearly threw it through the TV. Only five of you knew that move, Cole. Five.” She shook her head. “Somebody you trusted is selling you by the piece.”

“I know.”

“Do you know who?”

“I have a guess,” I said. “I’ll tell you when I’m sure.”

She grunted and went back to the cables. “Five hundred grand. Exactly what your wife needs.”

“Exactly.”

“And if you win, how do you give it to her without her knowing it’s from you?”

“I haven’t figured that part out yet.”

Maggie snorted. “Of course you haven’t. You never planned anything off the map in your life.” She paused, and her voice went softer. “When this weekend is over, win or lose, I have something for you. Oliver left it with me before he died.”

“What is it?”

“Not now. He told me when to give it to you, and it isn’t time yet.” She cleared her throat. “Okay, first things first, your eyes. Tell me what you can’t see.”

“The edges. Anything in the corners. The little map in the bottom right, especially when there’s a lot going on.”

“So we make everything bigger.” She opened the game settings and started changing things fast, the way she used to. “Big interface. High-contrast colors, bright enemies on dark ground. And sound…” She turned to me. “You remember the sound packs we tested in your second year? For training in the dark?”

“You kept them?”

“I keep everything.” She dug an old flash drive out of a drawer full of cables. “Each area of the map gets its own sound. North, a low bell. South, a click. River, a hum. If someone moves where you can’t see, you’ll hear where he is.”

I put on the headset, and the room disappeared. The game’s music swelled in my ears, and for the first time in three years, my hands rested on a real keyboard and a real mouse.

They didn’t shake.

“You okay?” Maggie asked from behind me.

“Better than I’ve been in three years,” I said, and I meant it.

“Five hundred and twelve players,” Maggie read from her laptop. “Single elimination, best of three until the top eight, best of five after that. Your first match is in nine minutes. Some kid from Texas called DragonFang.”

“Okay.”

“Cole.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “What’s the plan, exactly?”

“Win five hundred thousand dollars by Sunday night,” I said, watching the timer count down. “Save my wife’s team before nine a.m. on Monday.”

“And what’s in your way?”

“My eyes. Five hundred and eleven other players. A family that wants me gone.” I cracked my knuckles. “Same as always.”

“Same as always,” she said quietly, and stepped back.

The match started.

DragonFang came at me fast, the way young players always did, all rush and no patience. I let him chase me into the middle lane, stepped sideways, and cancelled my attack at the last second with a tiny flick of my thumb on the side button, so the swing he dodged never came, and the real hit landed half a second later.

He was gone in a minute and a half.

“That was fast,” Maggie said.

“He was eager.”

The second player was better, a Canadian with a tricky, careful style, and he took eight minutes to beat. The third was a pro from a small team in Ohio, and he made me sweat. He was patient, and he hid in the far corner of the map, exactly where my eyes were weakest. For a long minute, I couldn’t find him at all.

Then I heard it, very faint, under the music: the low bell of the north side.

“Gotcha,” I whispered.

I turned north without seeing him, set a trap where the sound said he would walk, and he walked straight into it. At the end of it, LastLight had three wins in a row without losing a single game.

I took off the headset and closed my eyes for the ten minutes Dr. Morgan had made me promise. My eyes burned. My heart was pounding in a way I’d almost forgotten.

“Uh, kid,” Maggie said slowly. “You should see this.”

“I can’t see much of anything right now. Read it to me.”

She cleared her throat and read from the tournament’s live chat on her laptop. “LastLight’s kind of nasty. Who is this guy? Then somebody wrote, his cancel looks familiar. And then…” She paused. “Somebody wrote, bro, that thumb cancel. That’s Monarch’s thumb cancel. I’d know it anywhere.”

I opened my eyes.

“It’s just fans joking,” I said.

“Fifty people are joking about it now. A hundred.” She scrolled. “And they’ve started clipping your matches, Cole. They’re putting them side by side with old Monarch videos.”

I looked down at my right hand, at the thumb that had made that move ten thousand times, without ever thinking about it.

Three years of hiding, and my own hand had given me away in under an hour.

“The Gauntlet breaks for lunch at noon,” Maggie said. “Round four starts at two.”

“Good.” I stood up. “Because it’s Saturday.”

“So?”

“So every Saturday at noon, I bring my wife lunch at the Lions Den.” I grabbed my jacket. “And if I don’t show up today, after last night, she’ll start asking where I go.”