Chapter One:

A Firefight Behind Sal's

Raindrops covered his visor as he pulled the pin from his last phase grenade.

"Come on, make this one count."

James Arwell,

Level 14 Neuromancer,

Username: NetH4ck,

And soon to be left for dead behind Sal's Discount Augments if he couldn't find a way out of this alley.

Sal's was a common noob trap. Anyone who read the beginner's guide and paid attention to the unfunny hints would've known as much, but then James always liked to learn things the hard way.

He was trapped behind a dumpster in a dead end alley, the only entrance was now blocked off by multiple Level 25 capture drones.

"Think you idiot."

The bars on the grenade were filled almost halfway to the top, meaning he had another 5 seconds to decide where it would need to go.

Stun bolts kept whizzing past him and the idea came to him at the last moment. His nano swarm ability was useless against high level drones, and they were too smart to stand next to a cooked grenade, but put together…

A grey swarm covered the glowing ball as it hurtled through the air, the drones kept firing, unfazed by the mass of bots heading in their direction.

Suddenly the shots stopped. The drones heard something hit the ground, but it was too late. A purple wormhole opened in the middle of the group of bots and slammed shut just as quickly, leaving scraps of metal behind.

He heard a few gasps, a couple of cheers and a lot of disappointed sighing from the people who bet against him while he was busy fighting for his life.

"Great going, Lamehack" Someone muttered.

"What?" James looked around, confused. "What did I do?" He hastily collected the loot from the drones and logged off as soon as the combat timer expired. The crowd behind him dispersed and the common room fell mostly quiet.

"No one ever makes it out of Sal's alive." The voice came from behind the screen opposite his, a somewhat high pitched tone that sounded almost soothing. "But you did."

James packed up his gear and poked out from around his screen. Grace. That was the voice. He had only met her last week in his Intro to Raiding class but this was the first time they interacted. VGHS had only been his home for three weeks and he was already willing to leave. When his uncle told him that he could get him into VGHS he was ecstatic, now all he could think about was leaving. Only in the first week he made a mortal enemy of his roommate, who challenged him to a duel in Technopunk Online as a 'joke'. The joke, as it turned out, was at his roommate's expense as James managed to win not only his access to the Neuromancer class but also knock him down enough ranking points to very nearly have him expelled.

James still wasn't entirely sure how he pulled it off but when he turned Craig's explosive RC tank against him and won the duel, Craig looked about ready to explode himself.

"I thought Sal's was just the normal gear vendor for this zone though?" He fumbled around to the other side of the desk, trying to look less clumsy than he was.

"Sal's is probably one of the best places to farm and trap noobs because they still haven't fixed the broken drone spawn." Grace looked at him from behind her tiny pair of glasses. "You're not bad."

Grace, as it turned out, was a Level 16 Cyberskater. Cyberskaters were notoriously difficult to play yet incredibly powerful due to their ability to jump around cyberspace. Her in-game avatar looked a lot like her though the real Grace wore far less neon blue.

"Aren't you in my raiding class?" Grace logged off too and began to pack away too. Classes were due to start any minute.

James stumbled over his words but eventually formed a full sentence.

"Yeah we…Covered getting server first kills last week. You corrected the professor on which Gang downed Baron Firewall first in the last expansion."

She gave him a smirk. "How do you even forget the Psych0z?"

Without either of them noticing, they found themselves walking to class together. Advanced Market Flipping was the first thing on today and neither of them were really looking forward to it.

"I don't suppose you'd wanna play sometime?" He asked her nonchalantly. VGHS had been a three week rollercoaster so far and he still felt the urged to leave, but he was so caught up in all the bad things that happened that he completely forgot the one rule to not hating school: Make a friend.

Grace seemed taken aback. The faint air of confidence she had around her fizzled away. "And ruin my reputation?" She forced a joke as if to cover her tracks but it didn't seem to work too well. "I'll talk to you after class, we'll see about playing then."

Maybe VGHS wouldn't be too bad after all.