Strong Signal (Cyberlove #1) (2 page)

As I was reading my Chat log to get some ideas on what to do, a donation rolled in from KinderKid, one of my long-term subscribers. She’d been with me since the beginning, and was a high school teacher. Sometimes she talked about her job in Chat.

The donation was $250. With it came a donation message:
“Kai, recently got some inheritance money and wanted to share. Xoxo.”

“Kinder!” I pointed at the screen. “That’s too much, and you know it!” I pressed a hand over my heart and made puppy dog eyes into my webcam. “Chat, show Kinder some major love. Right now.”

They did, of course. They usually listened to me. My Chat was now spammed with hearts and love for Kinder, which pleased me very much. I blew a kiss. “Thanks, Kinder. I’ll buy the non-generic ice cream to celebrate.”

Chat, of course, had suggestions on brand and flavor. I loved them. But they came to watch me play video games, not get all moony. I pulled out my AK-47 and emptied the magazine into a couple of risen dead. I might have squealed because my Twitch Chat log exploded with activity.

I rolled my eyes. Out of thousands of viewers, there were always a couple of bigots. Chat immediately rushed to my defense. That was the thing. I told myself I needed them for the money from their subscriptions to my channel, which averaged a few thousand a month in income, and the advertising dollars that now came with it, but if I was honest? They were my friends. I didn’t know if that was pathetic or a sign of the future, where we formed relationships though binary.

Despite questionable spelling skills, they were a great group. “Thanks, my darlings.”

Hazzard’s name caught my eye. God, what did he want? To sit around and judge my viewers? He could hate on me all he wanted, but being scathing about my loyal fans was enough to get under my skin.

Forcing a grin, I didn’t respond and instead shot another couple zombies. After a lot more ammo, more yelling (Chat) and more squealing (me), I managed to finish the mission and make it to the checkpoint. And somehow ignore Hazzard’s once-again silent presence.

I stretched, careful to show off my shirtless chest because my audience expected it. I wasn’t a gym-rat or anything, but I knew part of my appeal was that I was moderately attractive. Also, I kind of liked knowing they were watching but that I held all the control. No one could touch me here. No one could even talk to me privately unless I allowed it.

I leaned in close to my webcam and dropped my chin into my hands. “I’m about done shooting corpses, ’kay? I’ll be back tomorrow. You want more of this game or
FWO
?” I watched the Chat log scroll rapidly. It was about fifty-fifty—a lot wanting to watch my orc Samwise dance over fallen noobs and the rest enjoying my squeals as I battled zombies. “Okay then, it’ll be a surprise.” I winked and waved. “’Night, darlings.”

After powering off, I stared at the blank screen for a minute. Receiving large donations always surprised me even though it happened frequently. It was all so surreal. Sometimes I wanted to go back and tell shy, twelve-year-old Kai not to be embarrassed about playing video games, because one day, that was exactly what would pay the rent.

I’d grown up bouncing around among relatives’ homes, trying to blend into the background, and had picked up a controller somewhere along the way. I’d never felt at home unless I was immersed in a made up world through my Nintendo or Sega or whatever gaming system one of my cousins had owned. They’d always wanted to play
Madden
or
FIFA
, but I was into MMORPGs—games where I could escape to another time or place. Where I could
be
someone else. I’d preferred it to the real world, and now as an adult with no friends and no family that cared, I’d succeeded in shutting the real world out almost completely.

I took off my headphones, which had left my ears hot and my hair sticky, and stretched my arms over my head. My chair reclined backwards, and I stared at the ceiling of my bedroom. It wasn’t an ideal place to stream, but there wasn’t enough room in the living room for my enormous L-shaped desk. My compromise had been angling the webcam so viewers could only see an old-school Sega poster instead of my bed. That would have encouraged the creepers who came out in the middle of the night.

After working out the kinks in my back from five hours of straight streaming, I wandered down the short hallway to my kitchen. I needed a hot shower after hours of sitting at my desk, but food came first. I stuck my head into the freezer and pushed aside some seriously grody frozen waffles in search of my treasure. My fingers closed around the cardboard container and I hauled out my booty.

The tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream was getting dangerously low. There was only about two dinners’ worth left in the container and that wouldn’t do. I opened up the note app on my phone and typed in MOAR ICE CREAM to remind myself to order some on my next grocery delivery.

I leaned against the counter and stared at the opposite wall of my kitchen. I’d painted it teal last week on a whim, and now I wasn’t so sure I liked it. That was the downside of ordering paint off of Amazon and then not even bothering to apply a sample before fucking going to town with the roller.

I was going for a rainbow theme. Which, I realized teal wasn’t really in the rainbow—ROY G. BIV and all that—but I fucking liked teal, dammit. And it was my apartment. The living room was purple, the hallway was yellow and my bedroom was blue.

The bathroom was red, which was actually not my favorite, but I was too lazy to paint over it with like five coats of primer. Also, I was worried about killing brain cells with the paint fumes.

This was adulting—eating out of the ice cream container and painting my space however the hell I wanted. I didn’t do much adult stuff like…oh…say leave my apartment, but I could eat the hell out of a tub of Breyer’s.

With the carton in one hand and the spoon in another, I grabbed my laptop and stretched out on my bed. When I logged into
FWO
again, I was still in the Catacomb where I’d perfected my victory dance over Hazzard’s body.

Why had he even followed me onto Twitch? People fought over rooms all the time in
FWO
. That was the beauty of it being an open world with no restrictions. I’d never seen him in the chat before, and the fact that he’d followed me nearly immediately after I’d flamed his ass was not a coincidence. Flamed. I snorted. As soon as he’d seen me on Twitch, he’d likely clued to the fact that he’d been flamed in more ways than one. Because I was clearly a raging homo.

And now I was back to rehashing the comments he’d made in Chat. Asshole. He was probably a redneck, drinking Bud Light in his trailer with a…God, what did rednecks do?…with a deer carcass nearby. Or something.

Why was I thinking about him? It wasn’t like he was the first gamer to hate-view my stream, but something about him sent a chill down my spine. I’d have to fish around. Better to be proactive about protecting myself from some Internet crazy.

After considering the guilds I regularly played with, I sent a group message to a few of the officers.

“Deployed?” I squeaked. Oh fuck, I’d burned an American hero into a crisp. Fuck me. That was some bad karma.

There was no answer for a while and I began to chew my already ragged thumbnail.

Finally there was a response:

I powered everything down and sat up in the middle of my bed, gnawing on my thumbnail until I tasted blood.

This was bad, right? These guys had like…guns and other things that caused bodily harm. They knew how to kill with a glare and a hidden poison dart. Or maybe that was just Bond.

I fluttered my hands and tried to take deep breaths. Anxiety was a bitch. And I was
its
bitch. Everything was okay. This guy was several oceans away. He had more important things to worry about than some gay guy killing his archer. Right? Fuck. What if he was a psycho? The kind that wrote manifestos and went on rampages.

I stared down at my nails and cursed. Yep, I was bleeding again. When I was younger, my aunt had slathered them with calamine lotion to get me to quit chewing my nails. So instead of bloody nails, I had pink-stained, bad-tasting ones.

Too bad anxiety couldn’t be cured with calamine lotion.

It was fine. I was fine. Hazzard wouldn’t…come after me with a grenade. I wouldn’t have a fucking convoy with AK-47s busting through my tiny apartment in Philly. Just because he was a butthurt gamer didn’t automatically mean he was an angry redneck who went on homophobic rampages, right? Except…that was who a lot of my biggest haters were. I knew because my mods sometimes looked into their profiles on social media and found evidence of truly scary individuals.

Okay, I needed to stop. I was overreacting. Hazzard was, potentially, a normal person.

These were the times I wished I had…friends. Real-life friends. Not friends made through
FWO
or my stream chat. But friends who could come over when I was being a paranoid freak, and who would stop at the store along the way and get me more goddamn ice cream. Well, I did have one friend but, he was a teenager so I had to work hard not to be a total basketcase in front of him.

Deep breaths were needed. In. Out. In. Out.

I fired up my system again and searched Hazzard’s name in the game’s armory. It loaded quickly, and I was surprised to see his stats weren’t bad. Well…they weren’t
my
stats, but then no one’s were. Other people had jobs and lives and things that I didn’t. I could sit behind my computer and level my orc the hell up all I wanted.

There were no links on his profile. Nothing for me to determine if he was some crazy dude with a Confederate flag on his black Ford truck. Oh God, he was probably one of those assholes with the plastic nuts on his tailgate.

Truck Nuts Hazzard.

Okay, now I was just being dumb. I closed out
FWO
and stared at the wall beside my bed. I’d painted it with chalkboard paint and right now, there was the beginning of a lame emo poem I’d written the other night after one too many shots of vodka. In another corner was a drawing of a cock and balls because I’d been bored and a little horny. I knee-walked over to the side of the bed and grabbed a piece of green chalk.

In my script-like scrawl, I wrote:
If you find my body, ask Hazzard.

I leaned back and surveyed my words. Then I drew a little bow and arrow. The police would need clues, right?

Garrett

“I have good and bad news but they’re both pretty weird, so just tell me which you want to hear first.”

Nicole’s voice came through the speakers choppy and digitized, which was a sign that the Internet was phenomenally shitty today. It was the primary reason I’d insisted we do audio on Skype instead of watching her lag across my screen in a video, but my secret secondary reason was that I really despised being on any sort of camera.

I didn’t know how Kai did it.

Kai, the effervescent little fuckhead, was the third reason I’d skipped my weekly Skype date with my sister. While she spoke, I was watching him on Twitch and I didn’t think the satellite could handle both. He still had that zombie game going in the upper right hand corner of his channel, but my eyes were trained on his face. He was so goddamn expressive. He’d been playing
Aftermath
for a solid couple of weeks now, and was in the process of playing through the hardcore mode, but his eyes still widened each time an undead dude jumped out at him.

I tried not to focus on how hot Kai was by typing occasional smartass comments in Chat. He probably hated me if he even noticed I was alive. Assuming an Internet celeb was paying attention to my stupid comments in his crowded Chat was the first step in developing a one-sided infatuation. Or had the first step been giving up my precious gaming time to stare at his face?

“Garrett, what are you doing?”

“Oh uh.” I tabbed away from Twitch. If Kai was on the screen there was no way I could focus. Not with him shirtless and curled up in his chair all graceful and long limbed. “Yeah, sorry, I was reading an email.”

“Uh huh.” The sound of Nicole popping her gum filled the speakers. “Whatever, guessing game is over. Ma’s dating some dumb redneck she met on OKCupid but the good news is—he runs a trucking company so he’s rich as hell.”

It took some time for me to process that statement. Our mother was dating. A redneck. A redneck who owned a trucking company. He was probably a serial killer. “When the fuck did she start dating?”

“Well, they went on one date. But whatever. It’s not like dad didn’t date his way through their entire marriage sooo don’t be getting all up in arms about her not mourning her life away.”

She had a point. Our father had been a serial cheater and domestic abuser, and yet somehow his death had still caught me completely off guard. He was the reason I’d stayed in the closet for so long that I didn’t even know how to start the conversation with Nicole and mom now that he was gone. “I want his name and birth date.”